Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (293 page)

Looking up and down the empty street, he scrubbed the sleeve of his coat
across his face, trying to rub away the ichor that stung and burned his skin. The cloth
came away stained green and black. There was a cut on the back of his hand too, a
nasty one. He could use a healing rune. One of Charlotte’s,
preferably. She was particularly good at drawing
iratzes.

A shape detached itself from the shadows and moved toward Will. He started
forward, then paused. It wasn’t Jem, but rather a mundane beat policeman wearing a
bell-shaped helmet, a heavy overcoat, and a puzzled expression. He stared at Will, or
rather
through
Will. However accustomed Will had become to
glamour, it was always strange to be looked through as if he weren’t there. Will
was seized with the sudden urge to grab the policeman’s truncheon and watch while
the man flapped around, trying to figure out where it had gone; but Jem had scolded him
the few times he’d done that before, and while Will never really could understand
Jem’s objections to the whole enterprise, it wasn’t worth making him
upset.

With a shrug and a blink, the policeman moved past Will, shaking his head
and muttering something under his breath about swearing off the gin before he truly
started seeing things. Will stepped aside to let the man pass, then raised his voice to
a shout: “James Carstairs! Jem! Where are you, you disloyal bastard?”

This time a faint reply answered him. “Over here. Follow the
witchlight.”

Will moved toward the sound of Jem’s voice. It seemed to be coming
from a dark opening between two warehouses: A faint gleam was visible within the
shadows, like the darting light of a will-o’-the-wisp. “Did you hear me
before? That Shax demon thought it could get me with its bloody great pincers, but I
cornered it in an alley—”

“Yes, I heard you.” The young man who appeared at the mouth of
the alley was pale in the lamplight—paler even than
he
usually was, which was quite pale indeed. He was bare-headed, which drew the eye
immediately to his hair. It was an odd bright silver color, like an untarnished
shilling. His eyes were the same silver, and his fine-boned face was angular, the slight
curve of his eyes the only clue to his heritage.

There were dark stains across his white shirtfront, and his hands were
thickly smeared with red.

Will tensed. “You’re bleeding. What happened?”

Jem waved away Will’s concern. “It’s not my
blood.” He turned his head back toward the alley behind him. “It’s
hers.”

Will glanced past his friend into the thicker shadows of the alley. In the
far corner of it was a crumpled shape—only a shadow in the darkness, but when Will
looked closely, he could make out the shape of a pale hand, and a wisp of fair hair.

“A dead woman?” Will asked. “A mundane?”

“A girl, really. Not more than fourteen.”

At that, Will cursed with great volume and fluency. Jem waited patiently
for him to be done.

“If we’d only happened along a little earlier,” Will
said finally. “That bloody demon—”

“That’s the peculiar thing. I don’t think this is the
demon’s work.” Jem frowned. “Shax demons are parasites, brood
parasites. It would have wanted to drag its victim back to its lair to lay eggs in her
skin while she was still alive. But this girl—she was stabbed, repeatedly. And I
don’t think it was here, either. There simply isn’t enough blood in the
alley. I think she was attacked elsewhere, and she dragged herself here to die of her
injuries.”

Will’s mouth tightened. “But the Shax demon—”

“I’m telling you, I don’t think it
was
the Shax. I think the
Shax was pursuing
her—hunting her down for something, or someone, else.”

“Shaxes have a keen sense of scent,” Will allowed.
“I’ve heard of warlocks using them to follow the tracks of the missing. And
it did seem to be moving with an odd sort of purpose.” He looked past Jem, at the
pitiful smallness of the crumpled shape in the alley. “You didn’t find the
weapon, did you?”

“Here.” Jem drew something from inside his jacket—a
knife, wrapped in white cloth. “It’s a sort of misericord, or hunting
dagger. Look how thin the blade is.”

Will took it. The blade was indeed thin, ending in a handle made of
polished bone. Both blade and hilt were stained with dried blood. With a frown he wiped
the flat of the knife across the rough fabric of his sleeve, scraping it clean until a
symbol, burned into the blade, became visible. Two serpents, each biting the
other’s tail, forming a perfect circle.

“
Ouroboros
,” Jem said, leaning in
close to stare at the knife. “A double one. Now, what do you think that
means?”

“The end of the world,” said Will, still looking at the
dagger, a small smile playing about his mouth, “and the beginning.”

Jem frowned. “I understand the symbology, William. I meant, what do
you think its presence on the dagger signifies?”

The wind off the river was ruffling Will’s hair; he brushed it out
of his eyes with an impatient gesture and went back to studying the knife.
“It’s an alchemical symbol, not a warlock or Downworlder one. That usually
means humans—the foolish mundane sort who think trafficking in magic is the ticket
for gaining wealth and fame.”

“The sort who usually end up a pile of bloody rags inside some
pentagram.” Jem sounded grim.

“The sort who like to lurk about the Downworld
parts of our fair city.” After wrapping the handkerchief around the blade
carefully, Will slipped it into his jacket pocket. “D’you think Charlotte
will let me handle the investigation?”

“Do
you
think you can be trusted in
Downworld? The gambling hells, the dens of magical vice, the women of loose
morals . . .”

Will smiled the way Lucifer might have smiled moments before he fell from
Heaven. “Would tomorrow be too early to start looking, do you think?”

Jem sighed. “Do what you like, William. You always do.”

Southampton. May.

Tessa could not remember a time when she had not loved the clockwork
angel. It had belonged to her mother once, and her mother had been wearing it when
she’d died. After that it had sat in her mother’s jewelry box until her
brother, Nathaniel, had taken it out one day to see if it was still in working
order.

The angel was no bigger than Tessa’s pinky finger, a tiny statuette
made of brass, with folded bronze wings no larger than a cricket’s. It had a
delicate metal face with shut crescent eyelids, and hands crossed over a sword in front.
A thin chain that looped beneath the wings allowed the angel to be worn around the neck
like a locket.

Tessa knew the angel was made out of clockwork because if she lifted it to
her ear, she could hear the sound of its machinery, like the sound of a watch. Nate had
exclaimed in surprise that it was still working after so many years, and he had looked
in vain for a knob or a screw, or some other method by which
the
angel might be wound. But there had been nothing to find. With a shrug he’d given
the angel to Tessa. From that moment, she had never taken it off; even at night the
angel lay against her chest as she slept, its constant
tick-tock,
tick-tock
like the beating of a second heart.

She held it now, clutched between her fingers, as the
Main
nosed its way between other massive steamships to find a spot at the
Southampton dock. Nate had insisted that she come to Southampton instead of Liverpool,
where most transatlantic steamers arrived. He had claimed it was because Southampton was
a much pleasanter place to arrive at, so Tessa couldn’t help being a little
disappointed by this, her first sight of England. It was drearily gray. Rain drummed
down onto the spires of a distant church, while black smoke rose from the chimneys of
ships and stained the already dull-colored sky. A crowd of people in dark clothes,
holding umbrellas, stood on the docks. Tessa strained to see if her brother was among
them, but the mist and spray from the ship were too thick for her to make out any
individual in great detail.

Tessa shivered. The wind off the sea was chilly. All of Nate’s
letters had claimed that London was beautiful, the sun shining every day. Well, Tessa
thought hopefully, the weather there was better than it was here, because she had no
warm clothes with her, nothing more substantial than a woolen shawl that had belonged to
Aunt Harriet and a pair of thin gloves. She had sold most of her clothes to pay for her
aunt’s funeral, secure in the knowledge that her brother would buy her more when
she arrived in London to live with him.

A shout went up. The
Main,
its shining
black-painted hull gleaming wet with rain, had anchored, and tugs were plowing
their way through the heaving gray water, ready to carry baggage
and passengers to the shore. Passengers streamed off the ship, clearly desperate to feel
land under their feet. So different from their departure from New York, Tessa thought.
The sky had been blue then, and a brass band had been playing. Though with no one there
to wish her good-bye, it had not been a merry occasion.

Hunching her shoulders, Tessa joined the disembarking crowd. Drops of rain
stung her unprotected head and neck like pinpricks from icy little needles, and her
hands inside their insubstantial gloves were clammy and wet. Reaching the quay, she
looked around eagerly, searching for a sight of Nate. It had been nearly two weeks since
she’d spoken to a soul, having kept almost entirely to herself on board the
Main.
It would be wonderful to have her brother to talk to
again.

He wasn’t there. The wharves were heaped with stacks of luggage and
all sorts of boxes and cargo, even mounds of fruit and vegetables that were wilting and
dissolving in the rain. A steamer was departing for Le Havre nearby, and damp-looking
sailors swarmed close by Tessa, shouting in French. She tried to move aside, only to be
almost trampled by a throng of disembarking passengers hurrying for the shelter of the
railway station.

But Nate was nowhere to be seen.

“You are Miss Gray?” The voice was guttural, heavily accented.
A man had moved to stand in front of Tessa. He was tall, and was wearing a sweeping
black coat and a tall hat, its brim collecting rainwater like a cistern. His eyes were
peculiarly bulging, almost protuberant like a frog’s, and his skin was as
rough-looking as scar tissue. Tessa had to fight the urge to cringe away from him. But
he knew her name. Who here
would know her name except someone who
knew Nate, too?

She nodded. “Yes?”

“Your brother sent me. Come with me.”

“Where is Nate?” Tessa demanded, but the man was already
walking away. His stride was uneven, as if he had a limp from an old injury. After a
moment Tessa gathered up her skirts and hurried after him.

He wound through the crowd, moving ahead with purposeful speed. People
jumped aside, muttering about his rudeness as he shouldered past, with Tessa nearly
running to keep up. He turned abruptly around a pile of boxes and came to a halt in
front of a large, gleaming black coach. Gold letters had been painted across its side,
but the rain and mist were too thick for Tessa to read them clearly.

The door of the carriage opened, and a woman leaned out. She wore an
enormous plumed hat that hid her face. “Miss Theresa Gray?”

Tessa nodded. The bulging-eyed man hurried to help the woman out of the
carriage—and then another woman, following after her. Each of them immediately
opened an umbrella and raised it, sheltering themselves from the rain. Then they fixed
their eyes on Tessa.

They were an odd pair, the women. One was very tall and thin, with a bony,
pinched face. Colorless hair was scraped into a chignon at the back of her head. She
wore a dress of brilliant violet silk, already spattered here and there with splotches
of rain, and matching violet gloves. The other woman was short and plump, with small
eyes sunk deep into her head; the bright pink gloves stretched over her large hands made
them look like colorful paws.

“Theresa Gray,” said the shorter of the
two. “What a delight to make your acquaintance at last. I am Mrs. Black, and this
is my sister, Mrs. Dark. Your brother sent us to accompany you to London.”

Tessa—damp, cold, and baffled—clutched her wet shawl tighter
around herself. “I don’t understand. Where’s Nate? Why didn’t he
come himself?”

“He was unavoidably detained by business in London. Mortmain’s
couldn’t spare him. He sent ahead a note for you, however.” Mrs. Black held
out a rolled-up bit of paper, already dampened with rain.

Tessa took it and turned away to read it. It was a short note from her
brother apologizing for not being at the docks to meet her, and letting her know that he
trusted Mrs. Black and Mrs. Dark—
I call them the Dark Sisters,
Tessie, for obvious reasons, and they seem to find the name
agreeable!
—to bring her safely to his house in London. They were, his note
said, his landladies as well as trusted friends, and they had his highest
recommendation.

That decided her. The letter was certainly from Nate. It was in his
handwriting, and no one else ever called her Tessie. She swallowed hard and slipped the
note into her sleeve, turning back to face the sisters. “Very well,” she
said, fighting down her lingering sense of disappointment—she had been so looking
forward to seeing her brother. “Shall we call a porter to fetch my
trunk?”

“No need, no need.” Mrs. Dark’s cheerful tone was at
odds with her pinched gray features. “We’ve already arranged to have it sent
on ahead. It would hardly fit in the carriage anyway.” She snapped her fingers at
the bulging-eyed man, who
swung himself up into the driver’s
seat at the front of the carriage. She placed her hand on Tessa’s shoulder.
“Come along, child; let’s get you out of the rain.”