Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“You’re a werewolf,” he said. “One of the packless ones, buying yin fen off the ifrits down the Chapel. Aren’t you?”

The werewolf’s eyes roamed over them both, and fastened on Jem. His lids narrowed, and his hand shot out, grabbing Jem by the lapels. “You,” he wheezed. “You’re one of us. ’ave you got any of it on you—any of the stuff—”

Jem recoiled. Will seized the werewolf by the wrist and yanked his hand free. It wasn’t difficult; there was very little strength in his nerveless fingers. “Don’t touch him.” Will heard his own voice as if from a distance, clipped and cold. “He doesn’t have any of your filthy powder. It doesn’t work on us Nephilim like it does on you.”

“Will.” There was a plea in Jem’s voice: Be kinder.

“You work for Mortmain,” said Will. “Tell us what you do for him. Tell us where he is.”

The werewolf laughed. Blood splashed up over his lips and dribbled down his chin. Some of it splattered onto Jem’s gear. “As if—I’d know—where the Magister was,” he wheezed. “Bloody fools, the pair of you. Bloody useless Nephilim. If I ’ad—me strength—I’d chop yer into bloody rags—”

“But you don’t.” Will was remorseless. “And maybe we do have some yin fen .”

“You don’t. You think—I don’t know?” The werewolf’s eyes wandered. “When ’e gave it to me first, I saw things—such things as yer can’t imagine—the great crystal city—the towers of Heaven—” Another spasming cough racked him. More blood splattered. It had a silvery sheen to it, like mercury. Will exchanged a look with Jem. The crystal city. He couldn’t help thinking of Alicante, though he had never been there. “I thought I were going ter live forever—work all night, all day, never get tired. Then we started dying off, one by one. The drug, it kills ya, but ’e never said. I came back here to see if maybe there was still any of it stashed somewhere. But there’s none. No point leavin’. I’m dyin’ now. Might as well die ’ere as anywhere.”

“He knew what he was doing when he gave you that drug,” said Jem. “He knew it would kill you. He doesn’t deserve your secrecy. Tell us what he was doing—what he was keeping you working on all night and day.”

“Putting those things together—those metal men. They don’t ’arf give you the willies, but the money were good and the drugs were better—”

“And a great deal of good that money will do you now,” said Jem, his voice uncharacteristically bitter. “How often did he make you take it? The silver powder?”

“Six, seven times a day.”

“No wonder they’re running out of it down the Chapel,” Will muttered. “Mortmain’s controlling the supply.”

“You’re not supposed to take it like that,” said Jem. “The more you take, the faster you die.”

The werewolf fixed his gaze on Jem. His eyes were shot through with red veins. “And you,” he said. “ ’Ow much longer ’ave you got left?”

Will turned his head. Charlotte was motionless behind him at the top of the stairs, staring. He raised a hand to gesture her over. “Charlotte, if we can get him downstairs, perhaps the Silent Brothers can do something to help him. If you could—”

But Charlotte, to Will’s surprise, had turned a pale shade of green. She clapped her hand over her mouth and dashed downstairs.

“Charlotte!” Will hissed; he didn’t dare shout. “Oh, bloody hell. All right, Jem. You take his legs, I’ll take his shoulders—”

“There’s no point, Will.” Jem’s voice was soft. “He’s dead.”

Will turned back. Indeed, the silver eyes were wide open, glassy, fixed on the ceiling; the chest had ceased to rise and fall. Jem reached to close his eyelids, but Will caught his friend by the wrist.

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to give him the blessing, Will. Just close his eyes.”

“He doesn’t deserve that. He was working with the Magister!” Will’s whisper was rising to a shout.

“He is like me,” said Jem simply. “An addict.”

Will looked at him over their joined hands. “He is not like you. And you will not die like that.”

Jem’s lips parted in surprise. “Will . . .”

They both heard the sound of a door opening, and a voice calling out Jessamine’s name. Will released Jem’s wrist, and both of them dropped flat to the ground, inching to the edge of the gallery to see what was happening on the warehouse floor.

It was a peculiar experience walking the streets of London as a boy, Tessa thought as she made her way along the crowded pavement of Eastcheap. The men who crossed her path spared her barely a glance, just pushed past her toward the doors of public houses or the next turn in the street. As a girl, walking alone through these streets at night in her fine clothes, she would have been the object of stares and jeers. As a boy she was—invisible. She had never realized what it was like to be invisible before. How light and free she felt—or would have felt, had she not felt like an aristocrat from A Tale of Two Cities on his way to the guillotine in a tumbrel.

She caught sight of Cyril only once, slipping between two buildings across the road from 32 Mincing Lane. It was a great stone building, and the black iron fence surrounding it, in the vanishing twilight, looked like rows of jagged black teeth. From the front gates dangled a padlock, but it had been left open; she slipped through, and then up the dusty steps to the front door, which was also unlocked.

Inside she found that the empty offices, their windows looking out onto Mincing Lane, were still and dead; a fly buzzed in one, hurling itself over and over against the plated glass panes until it fell, exhausted, to the sill. Tessa shuddered and hurried on.

In each room she walked into, she tensed, expecting to see Nate; in each room, he was not there. The final room had a door that opened out onto the floor of a warehouse. Dim blue light filtered in through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. She looked around uncertainly. “Nate?” she whispered.

He stepped out of the shadows between two flaking plaster pillars. His blond hair shone in the bluish light, under a silk top hat. He wore a blue tweed frock coat, black trousers, and black boots, but his usually immaculate appearance was disheveled. His hair hung lankly in his eyes, and there was a smear of dirt across his cheek. His clothes were wrinkled and creased as if he had slept in them. “Jessamine,” he said, relief evident in his tone. “My darling.” He opened his arms.

She came forward slowly, her whole body tensed. She did not want Nate touching her, but she could see no way to avoid his embrace. His arms went around her. His hand caught the brim of her hat and pulled it free, letting her fair curls tumble down her back. She thought of Will pulling the pins from her hair, and her stomach involuntarily tightened.

“I need to know where the Magister is,” she began in a shaking voice. “It’s terribly important. I overheard some of the Shadowhunters’ plans, you see. I know you didn’t wish to tell me, but . . .”

He pushed her hair back, ignoring her words. “I see,” he said, and his voice was deep and husky. “But first—” He tipped her head up with a finger under her chin. “Come and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty.”