Wil hesitated.
“Wil , you know you cannot go near them,” Jem said desperately. “If nothing else, it is the Law. If we bring danger to them, the Clave wil not move to help them in any way. They are not Shadowhunters anymore. Will.”
Slowly Wil lowered his arm to his side. He stood, with one of Jem’s arms stil around his shoulders, staring down at the pile of scrap metal at his feet. Black liquid dripped from the blade of the sword that dangled in his hand, and scorched the grass below.
Tessa exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until that moment. Wil must have heard her, for he raised his head and his gaze met hers across the clearing. Something in it made her look away. Agony stripped so raw was not meant for her eyes.
*
In the end they hid the remains of the destroyed automaton as swiftly as possible, by burying them in the soft earth beneath a rotting log. Tessa
helped as best she could, hampered by her skirts. By the end of it her hands were as black with dirt and mud as Wil ’s and Jem’s were.
None of them spoke; they worked in an eerie silence. When they were done, Wil led the way out of the copse, guided by the light of Jem’s witchlight rune-stone. They emerged from the woods nearly at the road, where the Starkweather carriage waited, Gottshal dozing in the driver’s seat as if only a few moments had passed since they had arrived.
If their appearances—filthy, smeared with mud, and with leaves caught in their hair—surprised the old man at al , he didn’t show it, nor did he ask them if they had found what they had come looking for. He only grunted a hel o and waited for them to climb up into the carriage before he signaled the horses with a click of his tongue to turn around and begin the long journey back to York.
The curtains inside the carriage were drawn back; the sky was heavy with blackish clouds, pressing down on the horizon. “It’s going to rain,” Jem said, pushing damp silvery hair out of his eyes.
Wil said nothing. He was staring out the window. His eyes were the color of the Arctic sea at night.
“Cecily,” said Tessa in a much gentler voice than she was used to using with Wil these days. He looked so miserable—as bleak and stark as the moors they were passing through. “Your sister—she looks like you.”
Wil remained silent. Tessa, seated next to Jem on the hard seat, shivered a little. Her clothes were damp from the wet earth and branches, and the inside of the carriage was cold. Jem reached down and, finding a slightly ragged lap rug, settled it over the both of them. She could feel the heat that radiated off his body, as if he were feverish, and fought the urge to move closer to him to get warm.
“Are you cold, Wil ?” she asked, but he only shook his head, his eyes stil staring, unseeing, at the passing countryside. She looked at Jem in desperation.
Jem spoke, his voice clear and direct. “Wil ,” he said. “I thought . . . I thought that your sister was dead.”
Wil drew his gaze from the window and looked at them both. When he smiled, it was ghastly. “My sister is dead,” he said.
And that was al he would say. They rode the rest of the way back to the city of York in silence.
Having barely slept the night before, Tessa fel in and out of a fitful doze that lasted until they reached the York train station. In a fog she dismounted from the carriage and fol owed the others to the London platform; they were late for the train, and nearly missed it, and Jem held the door open for her, for her and Wil , as both of them stumbled up the steps and into the compartment after him. Later she would remember the way he looked, hanging on to the door, hatless, cal ing to both of them, and recal staring out the window of the train as it pul ed away, seeing Gottshal standing on the platform looking after them with his unsettling dark eyes, his hat pul ed low. Everything else was a blur.
There was no conversation this time as the train puffed its way through countryside increasingly darkened by clouds, only silence. Tessa rested her chin on her palm, cradling her head against the hard glass of the window. Green hil s flew by, and smal towns and vil ages, each with their own neat smal station, the name of it picked out in gold on a red sign. Church spires rose in the distance; cities swel ed and vanished, and Tessa was aware of Jem whispering to Wil , in Latin, she thought—“Me specta, me specta,” and Wil not answering. Later she was aware that Jem had left the compartment, and she looked at Wil across the smal dimming space between them. The sun had begun to go down, and it lent a rosy flush to his skin, belying the blank look in his eyes.
“Wil ,” she said softly, sleepily. “Last night—” You were kind to me, she was going to say. Thank you.