He broke off with a cough. Tessa looked at him in alarm, and even Wil was roused out of his silent despondency, turning to look at Jem with narrowed eyes. Jem coughed again, his hand pressed to his mouth, but when he took it away, there was no blood visible. Tessa saw Wil ’s shoulders relax.
“Just some dust in my throat,” Jem reassured them. He looked not il but very tired, though his exhaustion only served to point up the delicacy of his features. His beauty did not blaze like Wil ’s did in fierce colors and repressed fire, but it had its own muted perfection, the loveliness of snow fal ing against a silver-gray sky.
“Your ring!” She started up suddenly as she remembered that she was stil wearing it. She put the button back into her pocket, then reached to draw the Carstairs ring off her hand. “I had meant to give it back to you earlier,” she said, placing the silver circlet in his palm. “I forgot . . .”
He curled his fingers around hers. Despite her thoughts of snow and gray skies, his hand was surprisingly warm. “That’s al right,” he said in a low voice. “I like the way it looks on you.”
She felt her cheeks warm. Before she could answer, the train whistle sounded. Voices cried out that they were in London, Kings Cross Station.
The train began to slow as the platform came into view. The hubbub of the station rose to assault Tessa’s ears, along with the sound of the train braking. Jem said something, but his words were lost in the noise; it sounded like a warning, but Wil was already on his feet, his hand reaching for the compartment door latch. He swung it open and leaped out and down. If he were not a Shadowhunter, Tessa thought, he would have fal en, and badly, but as it was, he simply landed lightly on his feet and began to run, pushing his way among the crowding porters, the commuters, the gentility traveling north for the weekend with their massive trunks and hunting hounds on leashes, the newspaper boys and pickpockets and costermongers and al the other human traffic of the grand station.
Jem was on his feet, hand reaching for the door—but he turned back and looked at Tessa, and she saw an expression cross his face, an expression that said that he realized that if he fled after Wil , she could not fol ow. With another long look at her, he latched the door shut and sank into the seat opposite her as the train came to a stop.
“But Wil —,” she began.
“He wil be al right,” said Jem with conviction. “You know how he is. Sometimes he just wants to be alone. And I doubt he wishes to take part in recounting today’s experiences to Charlotte and the others.” When she didn’t move her eyes from his, he repeated, gently, “Wil can take care of himself, Tessa.”
She thought of the bleak look in Wil ’s eyes when he had spoken to her, starker than the Yorkshire moors they had just left behind them. She hoped Jem was right.
THE CURSE
A n orphan’s curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
A nd yet I could not die.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Magnus heard the sound of the front door opening and the fol owing clatter of raised voices, and thought immediately, Will. And then was amused that he had thought it. The Shadowhunter boy was becoming like an annoying relative, he thought as he folded down a page of the book he was reading—Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods; Camil e would be furious he had dog-eared her volume—someone whose habits you knew wel but could not change. Someone whose presence you could recognize by the sound of their boots in the hal way. Someone who felt free to argue with the footman when he’d been given orders to tel everyone that you were not at home.
The parlor door flew open, and Wil stood on the threshold, looking half-triumphant and half-wretched—quite a feat. “I knew you were here,” he announced as Magnus sat up straight on the sofa, swinging his boots to the floor. “Now, wil you tel this—this overgrown bat to stop hovering over my shoulder?” He indicated Archer, Camil e’s subjugate and Magnus’s temporary footman, who was indeed lurking at Wil ’s side. His face was set in a look of disapproval, but then it was always set in a look of disapproval. “Tel him you want to see me.”
Magnus set his book down on the table beside him. “But maybe I don’t want to see you,” he said reasonably. “I told Archer to let no one in, not to let no one in but you.”
“He threatened me,” Archer said in his hissing not-quite-human voice. “I shal tel my mistress.”