The room was ful of glass-fronted cabinets, and over each cabinet was mounted a lamp of witchlight, il uminating the contents within. Tessa saw Wil ’s back stiffen, and Jem reached for her, his hand tightening on her arm with an almost bruising grip. “Don’t—,” he began, but she had pushed forward, and was staring at the contents of the cabinets.
Spoils. A gold locket, open to a daguerreotype of a laughing child. The locket was splattered with dried blood. Behind her Starkweather was talking about digging the silver bul ets out of the bodies of freshly kil ed werewolves and melting them down to recast. There was a dish of such bul ets, in fact, in one of the cabinets, fil ing a bloodstained bowl. Sets of vampire fangs, row on row of them. What looked like sheets of gossamer or delicate fabric, pressed under glass. Only on closer inspection did Tessa realize they were the wings of faeries. A goblin, like the one she had seen with Jessamine in Hyde Park, floating open-eyed in a large jar of preservative fluid.
And the remains of warlocks. Mummified taloned hands, like Mrs. Black’s. A stripped skul , utterly de-fleshed, human-looking save that it had tusks instead of teeth. Vials of sludgy-looking blood. Starkweather was now talking about how much warlock parts, especial y a warlock’s “mark,”
could be sold for on the Downworld market. Tessa felt dizzy and hot, her eyes burning.
Tessa turned around, her hands shaking. Jem and Wil stood, looking at Starkweather with mute expressions of horror; the old man was holding up another hunting trophy—a human-looking head mounted to a backing. The skin had shriveled and gone gray, drawn back against the bones.
Fleshless spiral horns protruded from the top of its skul . “Got this off a warlock I kil ed down by Leeds way,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the fight he put up—”
Starkweather’s voice hol owed out, and Tessa felt herself suddenly cut free and floating. Darkness rushed up, and then there were arms around her, and Jem’s voice. Words floated by her in ragged scraps. “My fiancée—never seen spoils before—can’t stand blood—very delicate—”
Tessa wanted to fight free of Jem, wanted to rush at Starkweather and strike the old man, but she knew it would ruin everything if she did. She clenched her eyes shut and pressed her face against Jem’s chest, breathing him in. He smel ed of soap and sandalwood. Then there were other hands on her, drawing her away from Jem. Starkweather’s maidservants. She heard Starkweather tel ing them to take her upstairs and help her to bed. She opened her eyes to see Jem’s troubled face as he looked after her, until the door of the spoils room closed between them.
It took Tessa a long time to fal asleep that night, and when she did, she had a nightmare. In the dream she lay manacled to the brass bed in the house of the Dark Sisters . . .
Light like thin gray soup seeped through the windows. The door opened and Mrs. Dark came in, followed by her sister, who had no head, only the white bone of her spine protruding from her raggedly severed neck.
“Here she is, the pretty, pretty princess,” said Mrs. Dark, clapping her hands together. “Just think of what we will get for all the parts of her.
A hundred each for her little white hands, and a thousand for the pair of her eyes. We’d get more if they were blue, of course, but one can’t have everything.”
She chuckled, and the bed began to spin as Tessa screamed and thrashed in the darkness. Faces appeared above her: Mortmain, his narrow features screwed up in amusement. “A nd they say the worth of a good woman is far above rubies,” he said. “What of the worth of a warlock?”
“Put her in a cage, I say, and let the groundlings stare at her for pennies,” said Nate, and suddenly the bars of a cage sprang up around her and he was laughing at her from the other side, his pretty face twisted up in scorn. Henry was there too, shaking his head. “I’ve taken her all apart,” he said, “and I can’t see what makes that heart of hers beat. Still, it’s quite a curiosity, isn’t it?” He opened his hand, and there was something red and fleshy on his palm, pulsing and contracting like a fish flipped out of water, gasping for air. “See how it’s divided into two quite equal parts—”
“Tess,” a voice came, urgently, in her ear. “Tess, you’re dreaming. Wake up. Wake up.” Hands were on her shoulders, shaking her; her eyes flew open, and she was gasping in her ugly gray dimly lit bedroom at the York Institute. The covers were tangled around her, and her nightgown stuck to her back with sweat. Her skin felt as if it were burning. She stil saw the Dark Sisters, saw Nate laughing at her, Henry dissecting her heart.
“It was a dream?” she said. “It felt so real, so utterly real—”
She broke off.
“Wil ,” she whispered. He stil wore his dinner clothes, though they were rumpled, his black hair tangled, as if he had fal en asleep without changing for bed. His hands remained on her shoulders, warming her cold skin through the material of her nightgown.