And Wil —those few moments out on the balcony with Wil had been the most confusing of her life. After the way Wil had spoken to her on the roof, she had sworn never to entertain romantic thoughts of him again. He was no dark, brooding Heathcliff nursing a secret passion, she had told herself, merely a boy who thought himself too good for her. But the way he had looked at her on the terrace, the way he had smoothed her hair back from her face, even the faint tremble in his hands when he’d touched her—surely those things could not be the product of falsehood.
But then, she had touched him back the same way. In that moment she had wanted nothing but Wil . Had felt nothing but Wil . Yet just the night before she had touched and kissed Jem; she had felt that she loved him; she had let him see her as no one had ever seen her before. And when she thought of him now, thought of his silence this morning, his absence from dinner, she missed him again, with a physical pain that could not be a lie.
Could you real y love two different people at once? Could you split your heart in half? Or was it just that the time with Wil on the balcony had been a madness induced by warlock drugs? Would it have been the same with anyone? The thought haunted her like a ghost.
“Tessa.”
Tessa nearly leaped out of her seat. The voice was almost a whisper. It was Jessamine. Her eyes were half-open, the reflected firelight flickering in their brown depths.
Tessa sat up straight. “Jessamine. Are you . . .”
“What happened?” Jessamine’s head rol ed fretful y from side to side. “I don’t remember.” She tried to sit up and gasped, finding her hands bound. “Tessa! Why on earth—”
“It’s for your own good, Jessamine.” Tessa’s voice shook. “Charlotte—she has questions she has to ask you. It would be so much better if you were wil ing to answer them—”
“The party.” Jessamine’s eyes flicked back and forth, as if she were watching something Tessa couldn’t see. “Sophie, that little monkey, was going through my things. I found her with the invitation in her hands—”
“Yes, the party,” said Tessa. “At Benedict Lightwood’s. Where you were meeting Nate.”
“You read his note?” Jessamine’s head whipped to the side. “Don’t you know how rude and improper it is to read another person’s private correspondence?” She tried to sit up again, and fel back once more against the pil ows. “Anyway, he didn’t sign it. You can’t prove—”
“Jessamine, there is little advantage in falsehood now. I can prove it, for I went to the party, and I spoke with my brother there.”
Jessamine’s mouth opened in a pink O. For the first time she seemed to note what Tessa was wearing. “My dress,” she breathed. “You disguised yourself as me?”
Tessa nodded.
Jessamine’s eyes darkened. “Unnatural,” she breathed. “Disgusting creature! What did you do to Nate? What did you say to him?”
“He made it very clear you have been spying for Mortmain,” said Tessa, wishing that Sophie and Charlotte would return. What on earth was taking them so long? “That you have betrayed us, reporting on al our activities, carrying out Mortmain’s commands—”
“Us?” Jessamine screamed, struggling upright as much as the ropes would al ow her. “You are not a Shadowhunter! You owe them no loyalty!
They do not care about you, any more than they care about me. Only Nate cares for me—”
“My brother,” Tessa said in a barely control ed voice, “is a lying murderer, incapable of feeling. He may have married you, Jessamine, but he does not love you. The Shadowhunters have helped and protected me, as they have done for you. And yet you turn on them like a dog the moment my brother snaps his fingers. He wil abandon you, if he does not kil you first.”
“Liar!” Jessamine screamed. “You don’t understand him. You never did! His soul is pure and fine—”
“Pure as ditch water,” Tessa said. “I understand him better than you do; you are blinded by his charm. He cares nothing for you.”
“Liar—”
“I saw it in his eyes. I saw the way he looks at you.”
Jessamine gasped. “How can you be so cruel?”
Tessa shook her head. “You can’t see it, can you?” she said wonderingly. “For you it is al play, like those dol s in your dol house—moving them about, making them kiss and marry. You wanted a mundane husband, and Nate was good enough. You cannot see what your traitorousness has cost those who have always cared for you.”
Jessamine bared her teeth; in that moment she looked enough like a trapped, cornered animal that Tessa almost shrank back. “I love Nate,” she said. “And he loves me. You are the one who does not understand love. ‘Oh, I cannot decide between Wil and Jem. Whatever shal I do?’” she said in a high-pitched voice, and Tessa flushed hotly. “So what if Mortmain wants to destroy the Shadowhunters of Britain. I say let them burn.”