After murmuring that she was delighted to meet him, Tessa sat down at the table beside Jem, diagonal y from Fel , and tried not to stare at him out of the corner of her eye. As Magnus’s cat’s eyes were his warlock’s mark, Fel ’s would be his horns and tinted skin. She couldn’t help being fascinated by Downworlders stil , warlocks in particular. Why were they marked and she wasn’t?
“What’s on the carpet, then, Charlotte?” Ragnor was saying. “Did you real y cal me out here to discuss dark doings on the Yorkshire moors? I was under the impression that nothing of great interest ever happened in Yorkshire. In fact, I was under the impression that there was nothing in Yorkshire except sheep and mining.”
“So you never knew the Shades?” Charlotte inquired. “The warlock population of Britain is not so large . . .”
“I knew them.” As Fel sawed into the ham on his plate, Tessa saw that he had an extra joint to each finger. She thought of Mrs. Black, with her elongated taloned hands, and repressed a shudder. “Shade was a little mad, with his obsession with clockwork and mechanisms. Their death was a shock to Downworld. The ripples of it went through the community, and there was even some discussion of vengeance, though none, I believe, was ever taken.”
Charlotte leaned forward. “Do you remember their son? Their adopted child?”
“I knew of him. A married warlock couple is rare. One who adopts a human child from an orphanage is rarer stil . But I never saw the boy.
Warlocks—we live forever. A gap of thirty, even fifty, years between meetings is not unusual. Of course now that I know what the boy grew up to be, I wish I had met him. Do you think there is value in attempting to discover who his true parents were?”
“Certainly, if it can be discovered. Whatever information we can glean about Mortmain could be useful.”
“I can tel you he gave himself that name,” said Fel . “It sounds like a Shadowhunter name. It is the sort of name someone with a grudge against Nephilim, and a dark sense of humor, would take. Mort main—”
“Hand of death,” supplied Jessamine, who was proud of her French.
“It does make one wonder,” said Tessa. “If the Clave had simply given Mortmain what he wanted—reparations—would he stil have become what he did? Would there ever have been a Pandemonium Club at al ?”
“Tessa—,” Charlotte began, but Ragnor Fel waved her silent. He gazed amusedly down the table at Tessa. “You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” he said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at al , they say.”
Tessa swal owed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. “No. No mark.”
He grinned around his fork. “I do suppose they’ve looked everywhere?”
“I’m sure Wil ’s tried,” said Jessamine in a bored tone. Tessa’s silverware clattered to her plate. Jessamine, who had been mashing her peas flat with the side of her knife, looked up when Charlotte let out an aghast, “Jessamine!”
Jessamine shrugged. “Wel , he’s like that.”
Fel turned back to his plate with a faint smile on his face. “I remember Wil ’s father. Quite the ladies’ man, he was. They couldn’t resist him. Until he met Wil ’s mother, of course. Then he threw it al in and went to live in Wales just to be with her. What a case he was.”
“He fel in love,” said Jem. “It isn’t that peculiar.”
“‘Fel ’ into it,” said the warlock, stil with the same faint smile. “Hurtled into it is more like. Headlong-crashed into it. Stil , there are always some men like that—just one woman for them, and only she wil do, or nothing.”
Charlotte looked over at Henry, but he appeared completely lost in thought, counting something—though who knew what—off on his fingers. He was wearing a pink and violet waistcoat today, and had gravy on his sleeve. Charlotte’s shoulders slumped visibly, and she sighed. “Wel ,” she said. “By al accounts they were very happy together—”
“Until they lost two of their three children and Edmund Herondale gambled away everything they had,” said Fel . “But I imagine you never told young Wil about that.”
Tessa exchanged a glance with Jem. My sister is dead, Wil had said. “They had three children, then?” she said. “Wil had two sisters?”
“Tessa. Please.” Charlotte looked uneasy. “Ragnor . . . I never hired you to invade the privacy of the Herondales, or Wil . I did it because I had promised Wil I would tel him if harm came to his family.”
Tessa thought of Wil —a twelve-year-old Wil , clinging to Charlotte’s hand, begging to be told if his family died. Why run? she thought for the hundredth time. Why put them behind you? She had thought perhaps he did not care, but clearly he had cared. Cared stil . She could not stop the tightening at her heart as she thought of him cal ing out for his sister. If he loved Cecily as she had once loved Nate . . .
Mortmain had done something to his family, she thought. As he had to hers. That bound them to each other in a peculiar way, she and Wil .