“Or where Mortmain is,” put in Jessamine, with a sort of dark glee. “Only nine more days, Charlotte.”
Charlotte put her head back into her hands. “Tessa,” she said, “I hate to ask this of you, but it is, after al , why we sent you to Yorkshire, and we must leave no stone unturned. You stil have the button from Starkweather’s coat?”
Wordlessly Tessa took the button from her pocket. It was round, pearl and silver, strangely cold in her hand. “You want me to Change into him?”
“Tessa,” Jem said quickly. “If you do not want to do this, Charlotte—we—would never require it.”
“I know,” Tessa said. “But I offered, and I would not go back on my word.”
“Thank you, Tessa.” Charlotte looked relieved. “We must know if there is anything he is hiding from us—if he was lying to you about any part of this business. His involvement in what happened to the Shades . . .”
Henry frowned. “It wil be a dark day when you cannot trust your fel ow Shadowhunters, Lottie.”
“It is a dark day already, Henry dear,” Charlotte replied without looking at him.
“You won’t help me, then,” Wil said in a flat voice. Using magic, Magnus had built the fire up in the grate. In the glow of the leaping flames, the warlock could see more of the details of Wil —the dark hair curling close at the nape of his neck, the delicate cheekbones and strong jaw, the shadow cast by his lashes. He reminded Magnus of someone; the memory tickled at the back of his mind, refusing to come clear. After so many years, it was hard sometimes to pick out individual memories, even of those you had loved. He could no longer remember his mother’s face, though he knew she had looked like him, a mixture of his Dutch grandfather and his Indonesian grandmother.
“If your definition of ‘help’ involves dropping you into the demon realms like a rat into a pit ful of terriers, then no, I won’t help you,” said Magnus.
“This is madness, you know. Go home. Sleep it off.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“You might as wel be.” Magnus ran both hands through his thick hair and thought, suddenly and irrational y, of Camil e. And was pleased. Here in this room, with Wil , he had gone nearly two hours without thinking of her at al . Progress. “You think you’re the only person who’s ever lost anyone?”
Wil ’s face twisted. “Don’t make it sound like that. Like some ordinary sort of grief. It’s not like that. They say time heals al wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. Over. This is a fresh wound every day.”
“Yes,” said Magnus, leaning back against the cushions. “That is the genius of curses, isn’t it.”
“It would be one thing if I had been cursed so that everyone I loved would die,” said Wil . “I could keep myself from loving. To keep others from caring for me—it is an odd, exhausting procedure.” He sounded exhausted, Magnus thought, and dramatic in that way that only seventeen-year-olds could be. He also doubted the truth of Wil ’s statement that he could have kept himself from loving, but understood why the boy would want to tel himself such a story. “I must play the part of another person al day, each day—bitter and vicious and cruel—”
“I rather liked you that way. And don’t tel me you don’t enjoy yourself at least a little, playing the devil, Wil Herondale.”
“They say it runs in our blood, that sort of bitter humor,” said Wil , looking at the flames. “El a had it. So did Cecily. I never thought I did until I found I needed it. I have learned good lessons in how to be hateful over al these years. But I feel myself losing myself—” He groped for words. “I feel myself diminished, parts of me spiraling away into the darkness, that which is good and honest and true—If you hold it away from yourself long enough, do you lose it entirely? If no one cares for you at al , do you even real y exist?”
He said this last so softly that Magnus had to strain to hear him. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Something I read somewhere once.” Wil turned to him. “You would be doing me a mercy, sending me to the demon realms. I might find what I am looking for. It is my only chance—and without that chance my life is worthless to me anyway.”
“Easy enough to say at seventeen,” said Magnus, with no smal amount of coldness. “You are in love and you think that is al there is in the world.
But the world is bigger than you, Wil , and may have need of you. You are a Shadowhunter. You serve a greater cause. Your life is not yours to throw away.”
“Then nothing is mine,” said Wil , and pushed himself away from the mantel, staggering a little as if he real y were drunk. “If I don’t even own my own life—”