Clockwork Prince (17 page)

Will had gone back to staring out the window, and looked at neither of them as they spoke.

“It’s a start,” said Jem, and he sat down beside her. “Here. Give me your hands.”

Surprised, Tessa held her hands out to him—and was horrified. They were filthy, the nails cracked and broken and thick with half-moons of dirt where she had clawed at the Yorkshire earth. There was even a bloody scratch across her knuckles, though she had no memory of having gotten it.

Not a lady’s hands. She thought of Jessamine’s perfect pink and white paws. “Jessie would be horrified,” she said mournfully. “She’d tell me I had charwoman’s hands.”

“And what, pray tell, is dishonorable about that?” said Jem as he gently cleaned the dirt from her scratches. “I saw you chase after us, and that automaton creature. If Jessamine does not know by now that there is honor in blood and dirt, she never will.”

The cool cloth felt good on her fingers. She looked up at Jem, who was intent on his task, his lashes a fringe of lowered silver. “Thank you,” she said. “I doubt I was any help at all, and probably a hindrance, but thank you all the same.”

He smiled at her, the sun coming out from behind clouds. “That’s what we’re training you for, isn’t it?”

She lowered her voice. “Have you any idea what could have happened? Why Will’s family would be living in a house Mortmain once owned?”

Jem glanced over at Will, who was still staring bitterly out the window. They had entered London, and gray buildings were beginning to rise up around them on either side. The look Jem gave Will was a tired, loving sort of look, a familial look, and Tessa realized that, though when she had imagined them as brothers, she had always imagined Will as the older, the caretaker, and Jem as the younger, the reality was far more complicated than that. “I do not,” he said, “though it makes me think that the game Mortmain is playing is a long one. Somehow he knew exactly where our investigations would lead us, and he arranged for this—encounter—to shock us as much as possible. He wishes us to be reminded who it is who has the power.”

Tessa shuddered. “I don’t know what he wants from me, Jem,” she said in a low voice. “When he said to me that he made me, it was as if he were saying he could unmake me just as easily.”

Jem’s warm arm touched hers. “You cannot be unmade,” he said just as softly. “And Mortmain underestimates you. I saw how you used that branch against the automaton—”

“It was not enough. If it had not been for my angel—” Tessa touched the pendant at her throat. “The automaton touched it and recoiled. Another mystery I do not understand. It protected me before, and again this time, but in other situations lies dormant. It is as much a mystery as my talent.”

“Which, fortunately, you did not need to use to Change into Starkweather. He seemed quite happy simply to give us the Shade files.”

“Thank goodness,” said Tessa. “I wasn’t looking forward to it. He seems such an unpleasant, bitter man. But if it ever turns out to be necessary . . .” She took something from her pocket and held it up, something that glinted in the carriage’s dim light. “A button,” she said smugly. “It fell from the cuff of his jacket this morning, and I picked it up.”

Jem smiled. “Very clever, Tessa. I knew we’d be glad we brought you with us—”

He broke off with a cough. Tessa looked at him in alarm, and even Will was roused out of his silent despondency, turning to look at Jem with narrowed eyes. Jem coughed again, his hand pressed to his mouth, but when he took it away, there was no blood visible. Tessa saw Will’s shoulders relax.

“Just some dust in my throat,” Jem reassured them. He looked not ill but very tired, though his exhaustion only served to point up the delicacy of his features. His beauty did not blaze like Will’s did in fierce colors and repressed fire, but it had its own muted perfection, the loveliness of snow falling against a silver-gray sky.

“Your ring!” She started up suddenly as she remembered that she was still wearing it. She put the button back into her pocket, then reached to draw the Carstairs ring off her hand. “I had meant to give it back to you earlier,” she said, placing the silver circlet in his palm. “I forgot . . .”

He curled his fingers around hers. Despite her thoughts of snow and gray skies, his hand was surprisingly warm. “That’s all right,” he said in a low voice. “I like the way it looks on you.”

She felt her cheeks warm. Before she could answer, the train whistle sounded. Voices cried out that they were in London, Kings Cross Station. The train began to slow as the platform came into view. The hubbub of the station rose to assault Tessa’s ears, along with the sound of the train braking. Jem said something, but his words were lost in the noise; it sounded like a warning, but Will was already on his feet, his hand reaching for the compartment door latch. He swung it open and leaped out and down. If he were not a Shadowhunter, Tessa thought, he would have fallen, and badly, but as it was, he simply landed lightly on his feet and began to run, pushing his way among the crowding porters, the commuters, the gentility traveling north for the weekend with their massive trunks and hunting hounds on leashes, the newspaper boys and pickpockets and costermongers and all the other human traffic of the grand station.

Jem was on his feet, hand reaching for the door—but he turned back and looked at Tessa, and she saw an expression cross his face, an expression that said that he realized that if he fled after Will, she could not follow. With another long look at her, he latched the door shut and sank into the seat opposite her as the train came to a stop.

“But Will—,” she began.

“He will be all right,” said Jem with conviction. “You know how he is. Sometimes he just wants to be alone. And I doubt he wishes to take part in recounting today’s experiences to Charlotte and the others.” When she didn’t move her eyes from his, he repeated, gently, “Will can take care of himself, Tessa.”

She thought of the bleak look in Will’s eyes when he had spoken to her, starker than the Yorkshire moors they had just left behind them. She hoped Jem was right.

Magnus heard the sound of the front door opening and the following clatter of raised voices, and thought immediately,
Will.
And then was amused that he had thought it. The Shadow-hunter boy was becoming like an annoying relative, he thought as he folded down a page of the book he was reading—Lucian’s
Dialogues of the Gods
; Camille would be furious he had dog-eared her volume—someone whose habits you knew well but could not change. Someone whose presence you could recognize by the sound of their boots in the hallway. Someone who felt free to argue with the footman when he’d been given orders to tell everyone that you were not at home.

The parlor door flew open, and Will stood on the threshold, looking half-triumphant and half-wretched—quite a feat. “I
knew
you were here,” he announced as Magnus sat up straight on the sofa, swinging his boots to the floor. “Now, will you tell this—this overgrown bat to stop hovering over my shoulder?” He indicated Archer, Camille’s subjugate and Magnus’s temporary footman, who was indeed lurking at Will’s side. His face was set in a look of disapproval, but then it was always set in a look of disapproval. “Tell him you want to see me.”

Magnus set his book down on the table beside him. “But maybe I don’t want to see you,” he said reasonably. “I told Archer to let no one in, not to let no one in but you.”

“He threatened me,” Archer said in his hissing not-quite-human voice. “I shall tell my mistress.”

“You do that,” said Will, but his eyes were on Magnus, blue and anxious. “Please. I
have
to talk to you.”

Drat the boy,
Magnus thought. After an exhausting day spent clearing a memory-blocking spell for a member of the Penhallow family, he had wanted only to rest. He had stopped listening for Camille’s step in the hall, or waiting for her message, but he still preferred this room to others—this room, where her personal touch seemed to cling to the thorned roses on the wallpaper, the faint perfume that rose from the draperies. He had looked forward to an evening spent by the fire here—a glass of wine, a book, and being left strictly alone.

But now here was Will Herondale, his expression a study in pain and desperation, wanting Magnus’s help. He was really going to have to do something about this annoying softhearted impulse to assist the desperate, Magnus thought. That, and his weakness for blue eyes.

“Very well,” he said with a martyred sigh. “You may stay and talk to me. But I warn you, I’m not raising a demon. Not before I’ve had my supper. Unless you have turned up some sort of hard proof . . .”

“No.” Will came eagerly into the room, shutting the door in Archer’s face. He reached around and locked it, for good measure, and then strode over to the fire. It
was
chilly out. The visible bit of window not blocked by drapes showed the square outside darkening to a blackish twilight, leaves blown rattling across the pavement by a brisk-looking wind. Will drew off his gloves, laid them on the mantel, and stretched his hands out to the flames. “I don’t want you to raise a demon.”

“Huh.” Magnus put his booted feet up on the small rosewood table before the sofa, another gesture that would have infuriated Camille, had she been there. “That’s good news, I suppose—”

“I want you to send me through. To the demon realms.”

Magnus choked. “You want me to do
what
?”

Will’s profile was black against the flickering fire. “Create a portal to the demon worlds and send me through. You can do that, can’t you?”

“That’s black magic,” said Magnus. “Not quite necromancy, but—”

“No one need know.”

“Really.” Magnus’s tone was acid. “These things have a way of getting out. And if the Clave found out I’d sent one of their own, their most promising, to be rent apart by demons in another dimension—”

“The Clave does not consider me promising.” Will’s voice was cold. “I am not promising. I am not anything, nor will I ever be. Not without your help.”

“I am beginning to wonder if you’ve been sent to test me, Will Herondale.”

Will gave a harsh little bark of laughter. “By God?”

“By the Clave. Who might as well be God. Perhaps they simply seek to find out whether I am willing to break the Law.”

Will swung around and stared at him. “I am deadly earnest,” he said. “This is not some sort of test. I cannot go on like this, summoning up demons at random, never having them be the correct one, endless hope, endless disappointment. Every day dawns blacker and blacker, and I will lose her forever if you—”

“Lose
her
?” Magnus’s mind fastened on the word; he sat up straight, narrowing his eyes. “This
is
about Tessa. I knew it was.”

Will flushed, a wash of color across the pallor of his face. “Not just her.”

“But you love her.”

Will stared at him. “Of course I do,” he said finally. “I had come to think I would never love anyone, but I love her.”

“Is this curse supposed to be some business about taking away your ability to love? Because that’s nonsense if I’ve ever heard it. Jem’s your
parabatai.
I’ve seen you with him. You love him, don’t you?”

“Jem is my great sin,” said Will. “Don’t talk to me about Jem.”

“Don’t talk to you about Jem, don’t talk to you about Tessa. You want me to open a portal to the demon worlds for you, and you won’t talk to me or tell me why? I won’t do it, Will.” Magnus crossed his arms over his chest.

Will rested a hand on the mantel. He was very still, the flames showing the outlines of him, the clear beautiful profile, the grace of his long slender hands. “I saw my family today,” he said, and then amended that quickly. “My sister. I saw my younger sister. Cecily. I knew they lived, but I never thought I would see them again. They cannot be near me.”

“Why?” Magnus made his voice soft; he felt he was on the verge of something, some sort of breakthrough with this odd, infuriating, damaged, shattered boy. “What did they do that was so terrible?”

“What did
they
do?” Will’s voice rose. “What did
they
do? Nothing. It is me. I am poison. Poison to them. Poison to anyone who loves me.”

“Will—”

“I lied to you,” Will said, turning suddenly away from the fire.

“Shocking,” Magnus murmured, but Will was gone, gone into his memories, which was perhaps for the best. He had begun to pace, scuffing his boots along Camille’s lovely Persian carpet.

“You know what I’ve told you. I was in the library of my parents’ house in Wales. It was a rainy day; I was bored, going through my father’s old things. He kept a few things from his old life as a Shadowhunter, things he had not wanted, for sentiment I suppose, to give up. An old stele, though I did not know what it was at the time, and a small, engraved box, in a false drawer of his desk. I suppose he assumed that would be enough to keep us out, but nothing is enough to keep out curious children. Of course the first thing I did upon finding the box was open it. A mist poured out of it in a blast, forming almost instantly into a living demon. The moment I saw the creature, I began to scream. I was only twelve. I’d never seen anything like it. Enormous, deadly, all jagged teeth and barbed tail—and I had nothing. No weapons. When it roared, I fell to the carpet. The thing was hovering over me, hissing. Then my sister burst in.”