The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel (24 page)

“Yes,” said Will. “Do you think I should have told him I missed him?”

“No,” said Jem.

“Is he always like that?” Tessa asked. “So awful?”

“You should see his older brother,” said Jem. “Makes Gabriel look sweeter than gingerbread. Hates Will even more than Gabriel, too, if that’s possible.”

Will grinned at that, then turned and began making his way down the corridor, whistling as he went. After a moment’s hesitation, Jem went after him, gesturing for Tessa to follow.

“Why would Gabriel Lightwood hate you, Will?” Tessa asked as they went. “What did you do to him?”

“It wasn’t anything I did to him,” Will said, stalking along at a rapid pace. “It was something I did to his sister.”

Tessa looked sideways at Jem, who shrugged. “Where there’s our Will, there’s a half-dozen angry girls claiming he’s compromised their virtue.”

“Did you?” Tessa asked, hurrying to keep up with the boys. There was simply only so fast you could walk in heavy skirts
that swished around your ankles as you went. The delivery of dresses from Bond Street had come the day before, and she was only just beginning to get used to wearing such expensive stuff. She remembered the light dresses she’d worn as a little girl, when she’d been able to run up to her brother, kick him in the ankle, and dart away without him being able to catch her. She wondered briefly what would happen if she tried to do that to Will. She doubted it would work out to her advantage, though the thought had a certain appeal. “Compromise her virtue, I mean.”

“You have a lot of questions,” Will said, veering sharply to the left and up a set of narrow stairs. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” Tessa said, the heels of her boots clicking loudly on the stone steps as she followed Will upward. “What’s
parabatai
? And what did you mean about Gabriel’s father being a disgrace to Shadowhunters?”

“
Parabatai
in Greek is just a term for a soldier paired with a chariot driver,” said Jem, “but when Nephilim say it, we mean a matched team of warriors—two men who swear to protect each other and guard each other’s backs.”

“Men?” said Tessa. “There couldn’t be a team of women, or a woman and a man?”

“I thought you said women didn’t have bloodlust,” Will said without turning around. “And as for Gabriel’s father, let’s say that he has something of a reputation for liking demons and Downworlders more than he should. I would be surprised if some of the elder Lightwood’s nocturnal visits to certain houses in Shadwell haven’t left him with a nasty case of demon pox.”

“Demon pox?” Tessa was horrified and fascinated at the same time.

“He’s made that up,” Jem hastily reassured her. “Really, Will. How many times do we have to tell you there’s no such thing as demon pox?”

Will had stopped in front of a narrow door at a bend in the staircase. “I think this is it,” he said, half to himself, and jiggled the knob. When nothing happened, he took his stele out of his jacket and scrawled a black Mark on the door. It swung open, with a puff of dust. “This ought to be a storeroom.”

Jem followed him inside, and after a moment so did Tessa. She found herself in a small room whose only illumination was from an arched window set high in the wall above. Watery light poured through, showing a square space filled with trunks and boxes. It could have been any spare storage room anywhere, if it hadn’t been for what looked like piles of old weapons stacked in the corners—heavy rusty-looking iron things with broad blades and chains connected to spiked chunks of metal.

Will took hold of one of the trunks and moved it sideways to create a clear square of space on the floor. More dust puffed up. Jem coughed and shot him a reproachful look. “One would think you brought us here to murder us,” he said, “if it weren’t that your motivations for doing so seem cloudy at best.”

“Not murder,” Will said. “Hold on. I need to move one more trunk.”

As he pushed the heavy thing toward the wall, Tessa cast a sidelong look at Jem. “What did Gabriel mean,” she asked, pitching her voice too low for Will to hear, “‘your disability’?”

Jem’s silvery eyes widened fractionally, before he said, “My ill health. That’s all.”

He was lying, Tessa knew. He had the same sort of look Nate did when he lied—a little too clear-eyed a gaze to be a truthful
one. But before she could say anything else, Will straightened up and announced, “There we are. Come sit down.”

He then proceeded to seat himself on the dusty stained floor; Jem went to sit beside him, but Tessa hung back for a moment, hesitant. Will, who had his stele out, looked up at her with a crooked smile. “Not going to join us, Tessa? I suppose you don’t want to ruin the pretty dress Jessamine bought you.”

It was the truth, actually. Tessa had no desire to wreck the nicest item of clothing she had ever owned. But Will’s mocking tone was more annoying than the thought of destroying the dress. Setting her jaw, she went and sat down opposite the boys, so that they formed a triangle between them.

Will placed the tip of the stele against the dirty floor, and began to move it. Broad dark lines flowed from the tip, and Tessa watched in fascination. There was something particular and beautiful about the way the stele scrawled—not like ink flowing from a pen, but more as if the lines had always been there, and Will was uncovering them.

He was halfway through when Jem made a noise of realization, clearly recognizing the Mark that his friend was drawing. “What do you—,” he began, but Will held up the hand he wasn’t drawing with, shaking his head.

“Don’t,” Will said. “If I make a mess of this, we could well fall through the floor.”

Jem rolled his eyes, but it didn’t seem to matter: Will was already finished, and was lifting the stele away from the design he had drawn. Tessa gave a little cry as the warped floorboards between them seemed to shimmer—and then became as transparent as a window. Scooting forward, forgetting entirely
about her dress, she found herself staring through it as if through a pane of glass.

She was looking down into what she realized was the library. She could see the large round table and the Enclave seated at it, Charlotte between Benedict Lightwood and the elegant white-haired woman. Charlotte was easily recognizable, even from above, by the neat knotting of her brown hair and the quick movements of her small hands as she spoke.

“Why up here?” Jem asked Will in a low voice. “Why not the weapons room? It’s next to the library.”

“Sound radiates,” said Will. “Just as easy to listen from up here. Besides which, who’s to say one of them wouldn’t decide to pay a visit to the weapons room halfway through the meeting to see what we’ve in stock? It’s happened before.”

Tessa, staring down in fascination, realized that indeed she could hear the murmur of voices. “Can they hear us?”

Will shook his head. “The enchantment is strictly one-way.” He frowned, leaning forward. “What are they talking about?”

The three of them fell silent, and in the quiet the sound of Benedict Lightwood’s voice rose clearly to their ears. “I don’t know about this, Charlotte,” he said. “This whole plan seems very risky.”

“But we cannot simply let de Quincey go on as he has,” Charlotte argued. “He’s the head vampire of the London clans. The rest of the Night Children look to him for guidance. If we allow him to cavalierly break the Law, what message does that send to Downworld? That the Nephilim have grown lax in their guardianship?”

“Just so I understand,” Lightwood said, “you’re willing to take Lady Belcourt’s word that de Quincey, a longtime
ally of the Clave, is actually murdering mundanes in his own house?”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised, Benedict.” There was an edge to Charlotte’s voice. “Is it your suggestion that we
ignore
her report, despite the fact that she has given us nothing but reliable information in the past? And despite the fact that if she is once again telling the truth, the blood of everyone that de Quincey murders from this point onward will be on our hands?”

“And despite the fact that we are bound by the Law to investigate any report of the Covenant being broken,” said a slender dark-haired man at the far end of the table. “You know that as well as the rest of us, Benedict; you’re simply being stubborn.”

Charlotte exhaled as Lightwood’s face darkened. “Thank you, George. I appreciate that,” she said.

The tall woman who had earlier called Charlotte Lottie gave a low, rumbling laugh. “Don’t be so dramatic, Charlotte,” she said. “You must admit, the whole business is bizarre. A shape-changing girl who may or may not be a warlock, brothels full of dead bodies, and an informant who swears he sold de Quincey some machine tools—a fact that you seem to regard as a piece of the most consummate evidence, despite refusing to tell us your informant’s name.”

“I swore I wouldn’t involve him,” Charlotte protested. “He fears de Quincey.”

“Is he a Shadowhunter?” Lightwood demanded. “Because if not, he isn’t reliable.”

“Really, Benedict, your views are most antiquated,” said the woman with the catlike eyes. “One might believe, talking to you, that the Accords had never happened.”

“Lilian is correct; you’re being ridiculous, Benedict,” said George Penhallow. “Looking for an entirely reliable informant is like looking for a chaste mistress. If they were virtuous, they would be little use to you in the first place. An informant merely provides information; it is our job to
verify
that information, which is what Charlotte is suggesting that we do.”

“I would simply hate to see the powers of the Enclave misused in this instance,” Lightwood said in a silky tone. It was very odd, Tessa thought, hearing this group of elegant adults addressing one another without honorifics, simply by their first names. But it seemed to be Shadowhunter custom. “If, for instance, there were a vampire who had a grudge against the head of her clan, and perhaps wanted to see him removed from power, what better way than to get the Clave to do her dirty work for her?”

“Hell,” Will muttered, exchanging a glance with Jem. “How does he know about that?”

Jem shook his head, as if to say
I don’t know.

“Know about what?” Tessa whispered, but her voice was drowned out by Charlotte and the white-haired woman both talking at once.

“Camille would
never
do that!” Charlotte protested. “She isn’t a fool, for one thing. She knows what the punishment for lying to us would be!”

“Benedict has a point,” said the older woman. “It would be better if a Shadowhunter had seen de Quincey breaking the Law—”

“But that’s the point of this whole enterprise,” Charlotte said. There was a tinge to her voice—of nervousness, a strained
desire to prove herself. Tessa felt a flicker of sympathy for her. “To observe de Quincey breaking the Law, Aunt Callida.”

Tessa made a startled noise.

Jem looked up. “Yes, she’s Charlotte’s aunt,” he said. “It was her brother—Charlotte’s father—who used to run the Institute. She likes to tell people what to do. Although, of course
she
always does whatever she wants.”

“She does at that,” Will agreed. “Did you know she propositioned me once?”

Jem did not look as if he believed this even slightly. “She did not.”

“She did,” Will insisted. “It was all very scandalous. I might have acceded to her demands too, if she didn’t frighten me so much.”

Jem simply shook his head and turned his attention back to the scene unfolding in the library. “There is also the matter of de Quincey’s seal,” Charlotte was saying, “which we found inside the body of the clockwork girl. There is simply too much evidence linking him to these events, too much evidence not to investigate.”

“I agree,” said Lilian. “I for one am concerned about this matter of the clockwork creatures. Making clockwork girls is one thing, but what if he’s making a clockwork army?”

“That’s pure speculation, Lilian,” said Frederick Ashdown.

Lilian dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “An automaton is neither seraph nor demon in its alliance; it is not one of the children of God or of the Devil. Would it be vulnerable to our weapons?”

“I think you’re imagining a problem that does not exist,”
said Benedict Lightwood. “There have been automatons for years now; mundanes are fascinated with the creatures. None has posed a threat to us.”

“None has been made using magic before,” said Charlotte.

“That you know of.” Lightwood looked impatient.

Charlotte straightened her back; only Tessa and the others, looking down upon her, could see that her hands were knotted tightly together in her lap. “Your concern, Benedict, seems to be that we will unfairly punish de Quincey for a crime he has not committed, and in doing so jeopardize the relationship between the Night Children and the Nephilim. Am I correct?”

Benedict Lightwood nodded.

“But all that Will’s plan calls for is for us to
observe
de Quincey. If we do not see him breaking the Law, we will not act against him, and the relationship will not be threatened. If we do see him breaking the Law, then the relationship is a lie. We cannot allow abuse of Covenant Law, however … convenient it might be for us to ignore.”

“I agree with Charlotte,” said Gabriel Lightwood, speaking up for the first time, and much to Tessa’s surprise. “I think her plan is a sound one. Except in one part—sending the shape-shifter girl in there with Will Herondale. He isn’t even old enough to be at this meeting. How can he be trusted with a mission of this gravity?”

“Smarmy little prig,” Will snarled, leaning farther forward, as if he longed to reach through the magical portal and strangle Gabriel. “When I get him alone …”

“I ought to go in with her instead,” Gabriel went on. “I can look out for her a bit more. Instead of simply looking out for myself.”

“Hanging’s too good for him,” agreed Jem, who looked as if he were trying not to laugh.

“Tessa knows Will,” protested Charlotte. “She
trusts
Will.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” muttered Tessa.

“Besides,” Charlotte said, “it’s Will who devised this plan, Will who de Quincey will recognize from the Pandemonium Club. It’s Will who knows what to search for inside de Quincey’s town house to tie him to the clockwork creatures and the murdered mundanes. Will’s an excellent investigator, Gabriel, and a good Shadowhunter. You have to give him that.”