With a sigh Gabriel reached up and freed two long sticks from their holsters on the wal . He handed one to Tessa. “Today,” he began, “we shal be working on parrying and blocking . . .”
As usual, Tessa lay awake a long time that night before sleep began to come. Nightmares had plagued her recently—usual y of Mortmain, his cold gray eyes, and his colder voice saying measuredly that he had made her, that There is no Tessa Gray.
She had come face-to-face with him, the man they sought, and stil she did not real y know what he wanted from her. To marry her, but why? To claim her power, but to what end? The thought of his cold lizardlike eyes on her made her shiver; the thought that he might have had something to do with her birth was even worse. She did not think anyone—not even Jem, wonderful understanding Jem—quite understood her burning need to know what she was, or the fear that she was some sort of monster, a fear that woke her in the middle of the night, leaving her gasping and clawing at her own skin, as if she could peel it away to reveal a devil’s hide beneath.
Just then she heard a rustle at her door, and the faint scratch of something being gently pushed against it. After a moment’s pause she slid off the bed and padded across the room.
She eased the door open to find an empty corridor, the faint sound of violin music drifting from Jem’s room across the hal . At her feet was a smal green book. She picked it up and gazed at the words stamped in gold on its spine: “Vathek, by Wil iam Beckford.”
She shut the door behind her and carried the book over to her bed, sitting down so she could examine it. Wil must have left it for her. Obviously it could have been no one else. But why? Why these odd, smal kindnesses in the dark, the talk about books, and the coldness the rest of the time?
She opened the book to its title page. Wil had scrawled a note for her there—not just a note, in fact. A poem.
For Tessa Gray, on the occasion of being given
a copy of Vathek to read:
Caliph Vathek and his dark horde
A re bound for Hell, you won’t be bored!
Your faith in me will be restored—
Unless this token you find untoward
A nd my poor gift you have ignored.
—Wil
Tessa burst out laughing, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Drat Wil , for always being able to make her laugh, even when she didn’t want to, even when she knew that opening her heart to him even an inch was like taking a pinch of some deadly addictive drug. She dropped the copy of Vathek, complete with Wil ’s deliberately terrible poem, onto her nightstand and rol ed onto the bed, burying her face in the pil ows. She could stil hear Jem’s violin music, sweetly sad, drifting beneath her door. As hard as she could, she tried to push thoughts of Wil out of her mind; and indeed, when she fel asleep at last and dreamed, for once he made no appearance.
It rained the next day, and despite her umbrel a Tessa could feel the fine hat she had borrowed from Jessamine beginning to sag like a waterlogged bird around her ears as they—she, Jem, Wil , and Cyril, carrying their luggage—hurried from the coach into Kings Cross Station.
Through the sheets of gray rain she was conscious only of a tal , imposing building, a great clock tower rising from the front. It was topped with a weathercock that showed that the wind was blowing due north—and not gently, spattering drops of cold rain into her face.
Inside, the station was chaos: people hurrying hither and thither, newspaper boys hawking their wares, men striding up and down with sandwich boards strapped to their chests, advertising everything from hair tonic to soap. A little boy in a Norfolk jacket dashed to and fro, his mother in hot pursuit. With a word to Jem, Wil vanished immediately into the crowd.
“Gone off and left us, has he?” said Tessa, struggling with her umbrel a, which was refusing to close.
“Let me do that.” Deftly Jem reached over and flicked at the mechanism; the umbrel a shut with a decided snap. Pushing her damp hair out of her eyes, Tessa smiled at him, just as Wil returned with an aggrieved-looking porter who relieved Cyril of the baggage and snapped at them to hurry up, the train wouldn’t wait al day.
Wil looked from the porter to Jem’s cane, and back. His blue eyes narrowed. “It wil wait for us,” Wil said with a deadly smile.
The porter looked bewildered but said “Sir” in a decidedly less aggressive tone and proceeded to lead them toward the departure platform.
People—so many people!—streamed about Tessa as she made her way through the crowd, clutching at Jem with one hand and Jessamine’s hat with the other. Far at the end of the station, where the tracks ran out into open ground, she could see the steel gray sky, smudged with soot.