“I would forgive Tessa anything,” Jem said gravely.
Tessa could not see his expression, she was facing Jessamine, but she felt her heart skip a beat. She could not look at Jem, too afraid her expression would betray her feelings.
“Jessie, please,” she said instead.
Jessamine was silent for a long time. When she spoke, final y, her voice was as thin as a thread. “You wil be meeting him, I suppose, disguised as me.”
Tessa nodded.
“You must wear boys’ clothes,” she said. “When I meet him at night, I am always dressed as a boy. It is safer for me to traverse the streets alone like that. He wil expect it.” She looked up, pushing her matted hair out of her face. “Have you a pen and paper?” she added. “I wil write the note.”
She took the proffered items from Jem and began to scribble. “I ought to get something in return for this,” she said. “If they wil not let me out—”
“They wil not,” said Jem, “until it is determined that your information is good.”
“Then they ought to at least give me better food. It’s dreadful here. Just gruel and hard bread.” Having finished scribbling the note, she handed it to Tessa. “The boys’ clothes I wear are behind the dol ’s house in my room. Take care moving it,” she added, and for a moment again she was Jessamine, her brown eyes haughty. “And if you must borrow some of my clothes, do. You’ve been wearing the same four dresses I bought you in June over and over. That yel ow one is practical y ancient. And if you don’t want anyone to know you’ve been kissing in carriages, you should refrain from wearing a hat with easily crushed flowers on it. People aren’t blind, you know.”
“So it seems,” said Jem with great gravity, and when Tessa looked over at him, he smiled, just at her.
15
THOUSANDS MORE
There is something horrible about a flower;
This, broken in my hand, is one of those
He threw it in just now; it will not live another hour;
There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose.
—Charlotte Mew, “In Nunhead Cemetery”
The rest of the day at the Institute passed in a mood of great tension, as the Shadowhunters prepared for their confrontation with Nate that night.
There were no formal meals again, only a great deal of rushing about, as weapons were readied and polished, gear was prepared, and maps consulted while Bridget, warbling mournful bal ads, carried trays of sandwiches and tea up and down the hal s.
If it hadn’t been for Sophie’s invitation to “come and have a pickle” Tessa probably wouldn’t have eaten anything al day; as it was, her knotted throat would al ow only a few bites of sandwich to slide down before she felt as if she were choking.
I’m going to see Nate tonight, she thought, staring at herself in the pier glass as Sophie knelt at her feet, lacing up her boots—boys’ boots from Jessamine’s hidden trove of male clothing.
A nd then I am going to betray him.
She thought of the way Nate had lain in her lap in the carriage on the way from de Quincey’s, and the way he had shrieked her name and held on to her when Brother Enoch had appeared. She wondered how much of that had been show. Probably at least part of him had been truly terrified— abandoned by Mortmain, hated by de Quincey, in the hands of Shadowhunters he had no reason to trust.
Except that she had told him they were trustworthy. And he had not cared. He had wanted what Mortmain was offering him. More than he had wanted her safety. More than he had cared about anything else. Al the years between them, the time that had knitted them together so closely that she had thought them inseparable, had meant nothing to him.
“You can’t brood on it, miss,” said Sophie, rising to her feet and dusting off her hands. “He aren’t—I mean, he isn’t worth it.”
“Who isn’t worth it?”
“Your brother. Wasn’t that what you were thinking on?”
Tessa squinted suspiciously. “Can you tel what I’m thinking because you have the Sight?”
Sophie laughed. “Lord, no, miss. I can read it on your face like a book. You always have the same look when you think of Master Nathaniel. But he’s a bad hat, miss, not worth your thoughts.”
“He’s my brother.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re like him,” said Sophie decisively. “Some are just born bad, and that’s al there is to it.”
Some imp of the perverse made Tessa ask: “And what of Wil ? Do you stil think he was born bad? Lovely and poisonous like a snake, you said.”
Sophie raised her delicately arched eyebrows. “Master Wil is a mystery, no doubt.”
Before Tessa could reply the door swung open, and Jem stood in the doorway. “Charlotte sent me to give you—,” he began, and broke off, staring at Tessa.