chapter 5: Shades of the Past
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
A ssailed the monarch's high estate;
(A h, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
-Edgar all an Poe, "The Haunted Palace"
Tessa barely noticed the interior of the station as they fol owed Starkweather's servant through its crowded entry hall. Hustle and bustle, people bumping into her, the smel of coal smoke and cooking food, blurring signs for the Great Northern Railway company and the York and North Midland lines. Soon enough they were outside the station, under a graying sky that arched overhead, threatening rain. A grand hotel reared up against the twilit sky at one end of the station; Gottshal hurried them toward it, where a black carriage with the four Cs of the Clave painted on the door waited near the entrance. After settling the luggage and clambering inside, they were off, the carriage surging into Tanner Row to join the flow of traffic.
Will was silent most of the way, drumming his slim fingers on his black- trousered knees, his blue eyes distant and thoughtful. It was Jem who did the talking, leaning across Tessa to draw the curtains back on her side of the carriage. He pointed out items of interest-the graveyard where the victims of a cholera epidemic had been interred, and the ancient gray wal s of the city rising up in front of them, crenel ated across the top like the pattern on his ring. Once they were through the wal s, the streets narrowed. It was like London, Tessa thought, but on a reduced scale; even the stores they passed -a butcher's, a draper's-seemed smal er. The pedestrians, mostly men, who hurried by, chins dug into their col ars to block the light rain that had begun to fall, were not as fashionably dressed; they looked "country," like the farmers who came into Manhattan on occasion, recognizable by the redness of their big hands, the tough, sunburned skin of their faces.
The carriage swung out of a narrow street and into a huge square; Tessa drew in a breath. Before them rose a magnificent cathedral, its Gothic turrets piercing the gray sky like Saint Sebastian stuck through with arrows. A massive limestone tower surmounted the structure, and niches along the front of the building held sculpted statues, each one different. "Is that the Institute? Goodness, it's so much grander than London's-"
Will laughed. "Sometimes a church is only a church, Tess."
"That's York Minster," said Jem. "Pride of the city. Not the Institute. The Institute's in Goodramgate Street." His words were confirmed as the carriage swung away from the cathedral, down Deangate, and onto the narrow, cobbled lane of Goodramgate, where they rattled beneath a smal iron gate between two leaning Tudor buildings.
When they emerged on the other side of the gate, Tessa saw why Will had laughed. What rose before them was a pleasant-enough-looking church, surrounded by enclosing wal s and smooth grass, but it had none of the grandeur of York Minster. When Gottshal came around to swing the door of the carriage open and help Tessa down to the ground, she saw that occasional headstones rose from the rain-dampened grass, as if someone had intended to begin a cemetery here and had lost interest halfway through the proceedings.
The sky was nearly black now, silvered here and there with clouds made near-transparent by starlight. Behind her, Jem's and Will 's familiar voices murmured; before her, the doors of the church stood open, and through them she could see flickering candles. She felt suddenly bodiless, as if she were the ghost of Tessa, haunting this odd place so far from the life she had known in New York. She shivered, and not just from the cold.
She felt the brush of a hand against her arm, and warm breath stirred her hair. She knew who it was without turning. "Shal we go in, my betrothed?"
Jem said softly in her ear. She could feel the laughter in him, vibrating through his bones, communicating itself to her. She almost smiled. "Let us beard the lion in his den together."
She put her hand through his arm. They made their way up the steps of the church; she looked back at the top, and saw Will gazing up after them, apparently unheeding as Gottshal tapped him on the shoulder, saying something into his ear. Her eyes met his, but she looked quickly away; entangling gazes with Will was confusing at best, dizzying at worst.
The inside of the church was smal and dark compared to the London Institute's. Pews dark with age ran the length of the wal s, and above them witchlight tapers burned in holders made of blackened iron. At the front of the church, in front of a veritable cascade of burning candles, stood an old man dressed all in Shadowhunter black. His hair and beard were thick and gray, standing out wildly around his head, his gray-black eyes half-hidden beneath massive eyebrows, his skin scored with the marks of age. Tessa knew him to be almost ninety, but his back was still straight, his chest as thick around as the trunk of a tree.
"Young Herondale, are you?" he barked as Will stepped forward to introduce himself. "Half-mundane, half-Welsh, and the worst traits of both, I've heard."
Will smiled politely. "Diolch."
Starkweather bristled. "Mongrel tongue," he muttered, and turned his gaze to Jem. "James Carstairs," he said. "Another Institute brat. I've half a mind to tel the lot of you to go to blazes. That upstart bit of a girl, that Charlotte Fairchild, foisting you all on me with nary a by-your-leave." He had a little of the Yorkshire accent that his servant had, though much fainter; still, the way he pronounced "I" did sound a bit like "Ah." "None of that family ever had a bit o' manners. I could do without her father, and I can do without-"
His flashing eyes came to rest on Tessa then, and he stopped abruptly, his mouth open, as if he had been slapped in the face midsentence. Tessa glanced at Jem; he looked as startled as she did at Starkweather's sudden silence. But there, in the breach, was Will.
"This is Tessa Gray, sir," he said. "She is a mundane girl, but she is the betrothed of Carstairs here, and an Ascendant."
"A mundane, you say?" demanded Starkweather, his eyes wide.
"An Ascendant," said Will in his most soothing, silken voice. "She has been a faithful friend to the Institute in London, and we hope to welcome her into our ranks soon."
"A mundane," the old man repeated, and broke into a fit of coughing. "Well, times have-Yes, I suppose then-" His eyes skipped across Tessa's face again, and he turned to Gottshall, who was looking martyred among the luggage. "Get Cedric and Andrew to help you bring our guests' belongings up to their rooms," he said. "And do tell El en to instruct Cook to set three extra places for dinner tonight. I may have forgotten to remind her that we would have guests."
The servant gaped at his master before nodding in a seeming daze; Tessa couldn't blame him. It was clear that Starkweather had meant to send them packing and had changed his mind at the last moment. She glanced at Jem, who looked just as mystified as she felt; only Will, blue eyes wide and face as innocent as a choirboy's, seemed as if he had expected nothing else.
"Well, come along, then," said Starkweather gruffly without looking at Tessa. "You needn't stand there. Fol ow me and I'll show you to your rooms."
"By the Angel," Will said, scraping his fork through the brownish mess on his plate. "What is this stuff?"
Tessa had to admit, it was difficult to tell. Starkweather's servants-mostly bent old men and women and a sour-faced female housekeeper-had done as he'd asked and had set three extra places for supper, which consisted of a dark, lumpy stew ladled out of a silver tureen by a woman in a black dress and white cap, so bent and old that Tessa had to physical y prevent herself from leaping up to assist her with the serving. When the woman was done, she turned and shuffled off, leaving Jem, Tessa, and Will alone in the dining room to stare at one another across the table.
A place had been set for Starkweather as well, but he wasn't at it. Tessa had to admit that if she were him, she wouldn't be rushing to eat the stew either. Heavy with overcooked vegetables and tough meat, it was even more unappetizing-looking in the dim light of the dining room. Only a few tapers lit the cramped space; the wal paper was dark brown, the mirror over the unlit hearth stained and discolored. Tessa felt dreadful y uncomfortable in her evening dress, a stiff blue taffeta borrowed from Jessamine and let out by Sophie, which had turned to the color of a bruise in the unhealthy light.
Still, it was awful y peculiar behavior for a host, to be so insistent that they join him for supper and then not to appear. A servant just as frail and ancient as the one who'd ladled out the stew had led Tessa to her room earlier, a great dim cavern full of heavy carved furniture. It too was dimly lit, as if Starkweather were trying to save money on oil or tapers, though as far as Tessa knew, witchlight cost nothing. Perhaps he simply liked the dark.
She had found her room chil y, dark, and more than slightly ominous. The low fire burning in the grate had done little to warm the room. On either side of the hearth was carved a jagged lightning bolt. The same symbol was on the white pitcher full of chil y water that Tessa had used to wash her hands and face. She had dried off quickly, wondering why she couldn't remember the symbol from the Codex. It must mean something important. The whole of the London Institute was decorated with Clave symbols like the Angel rising from the lake, or the interlocked Cs of Council, Covenant, Clave, and Consul.
Heavy old portraits were everywhere as well -in her bedroom, in the corridors, lining the staircase. After changing into evening dress and hearing the dinner bel ring, Tessa had made her way down the staircase, a great carved Jacobean monstrosity, only to pause on the landing to gaze at the portrait of a very young girl with long, fair hair, dressed in an old-fashioned child's dress, a great ribbon surmounting her smal head. Her face was thin and pale and sickly, but her eyes were bright-the only bright thing in this dark place, Tessa had thought.
"Adele Starkweather," had come a voice at her elbow, reading off the placard on the portrait's frame. "1842."
She had turned to look at Will, who'd stood with his feet apart, his hands behind his back, gazing at the portrait and frowning.
"What is it? You look as if you don't like her, but I rather do. She must be Starkweather's daughter-no, granddaughter, I think."
Will had shaken his head, looking from the portrait to Tessa. "No doubt.
This place is decorated like a family home. It is clear there have been Starkweathers in the York Institute for generations. You've seen the lightning bolts everywhere?"
Tessa had nodded.
"That is the Starkweather family symbol. There is as much of the Starkweathers here as there is of the Clave. It is bad form to behave as if one owns a place like this. One cannot inherit an Institute. The guardian of an Institute is appointed by the Consul. The place itself belongs to the Clave."
"Charlotte's parents ran the London Institute before she did."
"Part of the reason old Lightwood is so tinder-tempered about the whole business," Will had replied. "Institutes aren't necessarily meant to stay in families. But the Consul wouldn't have given Charlotte the post if he hadn't thought she was the right person for it. And it's only one generation. This-"
He swept his arm about as if to encompass the portraits, the landing, and odd, lonely Aloysius Starkweather, all in one gesture. "Well, no wonder the old man thinks he has the right to throw us out of the place."
"Mad as hops, my aunt would have said. shall we go down to dinner?"
In a rare show of gentility, Will had offered his arm. Tessa hadn't looked at him as she'd taken it. Will dressed for dinner was handsome enough to take away her breath, and she'd had the feeling she'd need her wits about her.
Jem had already been waiting in the dining room when they'd arrived, and Tessa had settled herself beside him to await their host. His place had been set, his plate fil ed with stew, even his wineglass fil ed with dark red wine, but there had been no sign of him. It was Will who had shrugged first and begun to eat, though he'd soon looked as if he wished he hadn't.
"What is this?" he went on now, spearing an unfortunate object on a fork and raising it to eye level. "This . . . this . . . thing?"
"A parsnip?" Jem suggested.
"A parsnip planted in Satan's own garden," said Will. He glanced about. "I don't suppose there's a dog I could feed it to."
"There don't seem to be any pets about," Jem-who loved all animals, even the inglorious and il -tempered Church-observed.
"Probably all poisoned by parsnips," said Will.
"Oh, dear," Tessa said sadly, laying her fork down. "And I was so hungry too."
"There's always the dinner rol s," said Will, pointing to a covered basket.
"Though I warn you, they're as hard as stones. You could use them to kil black beetles, if any beetles bother you in the middle of the night."
Tessa made a face and took a swig of her wine. It was as sour as vinegar.
Will set his fork down and began cheerful y, in the manner of Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense: "There once was a lass from New York Who found herself hungry in York.
But the bread was like rocks, The parsnips shaped like-"
"You can't rhyme 'York' with 'York,'" interrupted Tessa. "It's cheating."
"She's right, you know," said Jem, his delicate fingers playing with the stem of his wineglass. "Especial y with 'fork' being so obviously the correct choice-"
"Good evening." The hulking shadow of Aloysius Stark-weather loomed up suddenly in the doorway; Tessa wondered with a flush of embarrassment how long he'd been standing there. "Mr. Herondale, Mr. Carstairs, Miss, ah -"
"Gray," Tessa said. "Theresa Gray."
"Indeed." Starkweather made no apologies, just settled himself heavily at the head of the table. He was carrying a square, flat box, the sort bankers used to keep their papers in, which he set down beside his plate. With a flash of excitement Tessa saw that there was a year marked on it-1825- and even better, three sets of initials. JTS, A ES, A HM.
"No doubt your young miss Will be pleased to know I've buckled to her demands and searched the archives all day and half last night besides,"
Starkweather began in an aggrieved tone. It took Tessa a moment to realize that in this case, "young miss" meant Charlotte. "It's lucky, she is, that my father never threw anything out. And the moment I saw the papers, I remembered." He tapped his temple. "Eighty-nine years, and I never forget a thing. You tell old Wayland that when he talks about replacing me."
"We surely will, sir," said Jem, his eyes dancing.
Starkweather took a hearty gulp of his wine and made a face. "By the Angel, this stuff's disgusting." He set the glass down and began pul ing papers from the box. "What we have here is an application for Reparations on behalf of two warlocks. John and Anne Shade. A married couple.
"Now, here's the odd bit," the old man went on. "The filing was done by their son, Axel Hol ingworth Mortmain, twenty-two years old. Now, of course warlocks are barren-"
Will shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes slanting away from Tessa's.
"This son was adopted," said Jem.
"Shouldn't be all owed, that," said Starkweather, taking another slug of the wine he had pronounced disgusting. His cheeks were beginning to redden.
"Like giving a human child to wolves to raise. Before the Accords-"
"If there are any clues to his whereabouts," said Jem, gently trying to steer the conversation back onto its track. "We have very little time-"
"Very well, very well," snapped Starkweather. "There's little information about your precious Mortmain in here. More about the parents. It seems suspicion fell on them when it was discovered that the male warlock, John Shade, was in possession of the Book of the White. Quite a powerful spel book, you understand; disappeared from the London Institute's library under suspicious circumstances back in 1752. The book specializes in binding and unbinding spel s-tying the soul to the body, or untying it, as the case may be. Turned out the warlock was trying to animate things. He was digging up corpses or buying them off medical students and replacing the more damaged bits with mechanisms. Then trying to bring them to life.
Necromancy-very much against the Law. And we didn't have the Accords in those days. An Enclave group swept in and slaughtered both warlocks."
"And the child?" said Will. "Mortmain?"
"No hide nor hair of him," said Starkweather. "We searched, but nothing.
Assumed he was dead, til this turned up, cheeky as you please, demanding reparations. Even his address-"
"His address?" Will demanded. That information had not been included in the scrol they had seen at the Institute. "In London?"
"Nay. Right here in Yorkshire." Starkweather tapped the page with a wrinkled finger. "Ravenscar Manor. A massive old pile up north from here.
Been abandoned now, I think, for decades. Now that I think about it, can't figure how he could've afforded it in the first place. It's not where the Shades lived."
"Still," said Jem. "An excel ent starting point for us to go looking. If it's been abandoned since his tenancy, there may be things he left behind. In fact, he may well still be using the place."
"I suppose." Starkweather sounded unenthusiastic about the whole business. "Most of the Shades' belongings were taken for spoils."
"Spoils," Tessa echoed faintly. She remembered the term from the Codex.
Anything a Shadowhunter took from a Downworlder who had been caught breaking the Law belonged to him. Those were the spoils of war. She looked across the table at Jem and Will ; Jem's gentle eyes resting on her with concern, Will 's haunted blue ones holding all their secrets. Did she real y belong to a race of creatures that was at war with what Jem and Will were?
"Spoils," Starkweather rumbled. He had polished off his wine and started on Will 's untouched glass. "Do those interest you, girl? We've quite a col ection here in the Institute. Puts the London col ection to shame, or so I'm told." He stood up, nearly knocking over his chair. "Come along. I'll show them to you, and tell you the rest of this sorry tale, though there's not that much more to it."
Tessa looked quickly to Will and Jem for a cue, but they were already on their feet, following the old man out of the room. Starkweather spoke as he walked, his voice drifting back over his shoulder, making the rest of them hurry to match his long strides.
"Never thought much of this Reparations business myself," he said as they passed down another dimly lit, interminably long stone corridor. "Makes Downworlders uppity, thinking they have a right to get something out of us. all the work we do and no thanks, just hands held out for more, more, more.
Don't you think so, gentlemen?"
"Bastards, all of them," said Will, who seemed as if his mind were a thousand miles away. Jem looked at him sideways.
"Absolutely!" barked Starkweather, clearly pleased. "Not that one should use such language in front of a lady, of course. As I was saying, this Mortmain was protesting the death of Anne Shade, the male warlock's wife -said she'd had nothing to do with her husband's projects, hadn't known about them, he claimed. Her death was undeserved. Wanted a trial of those guilty of what he called her 'murder,' and his parents' belongings back."
"Was the Book of the White among what he asked for?" Jem inquired. "I know it's a crime for a warlock to own such a volume . . ."
"It was. It was retrieved and placed in the London Institute library, where no doubt it remains still. Certainly no one was going to give it to him."
Tessa did a quick mental calculation in her head. If he was eighty-nine now, Starkweather would have been twenty-six at the time of the Shades' deaths. "Were you there?"
His bloodshot eyes danced over her; she noticed that even now, a little drunk, he didn't seem to want to look at her too directly. "Was I where?"
"You said an Enclave group was sent out to deal with the Shades. Were you among them?"
He hesitated, then shrugged. "Aye," he said, his Yorkshire accent thickening for a moment. "Dinna take long to get the both of them. They weren't prepared. Not a bit. I remember them lying there in their blood. The first time I saw dead warlocks, I was surprised they bled red. I could have sworn it'd be another color, blue or green or some such." He shrugged. "We took the cloaks off them, like skins off a tiger. I was given the keeping of them, or more rightly, my father was. Glory, glory. Those were the days." He grinned like a skull, and Tessa thought of Bluebeard's chamber where he kept the remains of the wives he had kil ed. She felt both very hot and very cold all over.
"Mortmain never had a chance, did he," she said quietly. "Filing his complaint like that. He was never going to get his reparations."
"Of course not!" barked Starkweather. "Rubbish, all of it-claiming the wife wasn't involved. What wife isn't neck-deep in her husband's business?
Besides, he wasn't even their blood son, couldn't have been. Probably more of a pet to them than anything else. I'd wager the father'd have used him for spare parts if it came down to it. He was better off without them. He should have been thanking us, not asking for a trial-"
The old man broke off as he reached a heavy door at the end of the corridor and put his shoulder to it, grinning down at them from beneath beetling brows. "Ever been to the Crystal Palace? Well, this is even better."
He shouldered the door open, and light blazed up around them as they passed through into the room beyond. Clearly it was the only well -lit room in the place.
The room was full of glass-fronted cabinets, and over each cabinet was mounted a lamp of witchlight, il uminating the contents within. Tessa saw Will '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 skull, 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 Will 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 skull. "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 hollowed 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 fiancee-never seen spoils before-can't stand blood-very delicate-"
Tessa wanted to fight free of Jem, wanted to rush at Stark-weather 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 smelled of soap and sandalwood. Then there were other hands on her, drawing her away from Jem. Starkweather's maidservants. She heard Starkweather tell 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 still 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.
"Will," she whispered. He still 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.
"What did you dream?" he said. His tone was calm and ordinary, as if there were nothing unusual about her waking up and finding him sitting on the edge of her bed.
She shuddered at the memory. "I dreamed I was being taken apart-that bits of me were being put on display for Shadowhunters to laugh at-"
"Tess." He touched her hair gently, pushing the tangled locks behind her ears. She felt pulled to him, like iron filings to a magnet. Her arms ached to go around him, her head to rest in the crook of his shoulder. "God damn that devil Starkweather for showing you what he did, but you must know it's not like that anymore. The Accords have forbidden spoils. It was just a dream."
But no, she thought. This is the dream. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark; the gray light in the room made his eyes glow an almost unearthly blue, like a cat's. When she drew a shuddering breath, her lungs felt fil ed with the scent of him, Will and salt and trains and smoke and rain, and she wondered if he had been out, walking the streets of York as he did in London. "Where have you been?" she whispered. "You smel like nighttime."
"Out kicking over the traces. As usual." He touched her cheek with warm, call used fingers. "Can you sleep now? We're meant to rise early tomorrow.
Starkweather is lending us his carriage so that we might investigate Ravenscar Manor. You, of course, are welcome to remain here. You need not accompany us."
She shuddered. "Stay here without you? In this big, gloomy place? I would prefer not to."
"Tess." His voice was ever so gentle. "That must have been quite a nightmare, to have taken the spirit out of you so. Usual y you are not afraid of much."
"It was awful. Even Henry was in my dream. He was taking apart my heart as if it were made of clockwork."
"Well, that settles it," Will said. "Pure fantasy. As if Henry is a danger to anyone except himself." When she didn't smile, he added, fiercely, "I would never let anyone touch a hair on your head. You know that, don't you, Tess?"
Their gazes caught and locked. She thought of the wave that seemed to catch at her whenever she was near Will, how she had felt herself drawn over and under, pulled to him by forces that seemed beyond her control-in the attic, on the roof of the Institute. As if he felt the same pull, he bent toward her now. It felt natural, as right as breathing, to lift her head, to meet his lips with hers. She felt his soft exhalation against her mouth; relief, as if a great weight had been taken from him. His hands rose to cup her face. Even as her eyes fluttered shut, she heard his voice in her head, again, unbidden: There is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks.
She turned her face quickly, and his lips brushed her cheek instead of her mouth. He drew back, and she saw his blue eyes open, startled-and hurt.
"No," she said. "No, I don't know that, Will." She dropped her voice. "You have made it very clear," she said, "what kind of use you have for me. You think I am a toy for your amusements. You should not have come in here; it is not proper."
He dropped his hands. "You called out-"
"Not for you."
He was silent except for his ragged breathing.
"Do you regret what you said to me that night on the roof, Will ? The night of Thomas's and Agatha's funeral?" It was the first time either of them had made reference to the incident since it had happened. "Can you tell me you did not mean what you said?"
He bent his head; his hair fell forward, hiding his face. She clenched her own hands into fists at her sides to stop herself from reaching out and pushing it back. "No," he said, very low. "No, the Angel forgive me, I can't say that."
Tessa withdrew, curling in on herself, turning her face away. "Please go away, Will."
"Tessa-"
"Please."
There was a long silence. He stood up then, the bed creaking beneath him as he moved. She heard his light tread on the floorboards, and then the door of the bedroom shutting behind him. As if the sound had snapped some cord that held her upright, she fell back against the pil ows. She stared up at the ceiling a long time, fighting back in vain against the questions that crowded her mind-What had Will meant, coming to her room like that? Why had he shown her such sweetness when she knew that he despised her? And why, when she knew that he was the worst thing in the world for her, did sending him away seem like such a terrible mistake?
The next morning dawned unexpectedly blue and beautiful, a balm to Tessa's aching head and exhausted body. After dragging herself from the bed, where she had spent most of the night tossing and turning, she dressed herself, unable to bear the thought of assistance from one of the ancient, half-blind maidservants. As she did up the buttons on her jacket, she caught sight of herself in the room's old, splotched mirror. There were half-moons of shadow under her eyes, as if they had been smudged there with chalk.
Will and Jem had already gathered in the morning room for a breakfast of half-burned toast, weak tea, jam, and no butter. By the time Tessa arrived, Jem had already eaten, and Will was busy cutting his toast into thin strips and forming rude pictographs out of them.
"What is that supposed to be?" Jem asked curiously. "It looks almost like a -" He glanced up, saw Tessa, and broke off with a grin. "Good morning."
"Good morning." She slid into the seat across from Will ; he glanced up at her once as she sat, but there was nothing in his eyes or expression to indicate that he recal ed that anything had passed between them the night before.
Jem looked at her with concern. "Tessa, how are you feeling? After last night-" He broke off then, his voice rising, "Good morning, Mr.
Starkweather," he said hastily, jostling Will 's shoulder hard so that Will dropped his fork, and the toast bits slid all over his plate.
Mr. Starkweather, who had swept into the room, still wrapped in the dark cloak he had worn the night before, regarded him baleful y. "The carriage is waiting for you in the courtyard," he said, his clipped diction as tight as ever.
"You'd better cut a stick if you want to get back before dinnertime; I'll be needing the carriage this evening. I've told Gottshal to drop you straight at the station on your return, no need for lingering. I trust you've gotten everything you need."
It wasn't a question. Jem nodded. "Yes, sir. You've been very gracious."
Starkweather's eyes swept over Tessa again, one last time, before he turned and stalked out of the room, his cloak flapping behind him. Tessa couldn't get the image of a great black bird of prey-a vulture, perhaps-out of her mind. She thought of the trophy cases full of "spoils," and shuddered.
"Eat quickly, Tessa, before he changes his mind about the carriage," Will advised her, but Tessa shook her head.
"I'm not hungry."
"At least have tea." Will poured it out for her, and ladled milk and sugar into it; it was much sweeter than Tessa would have liked, but it was so rare that Will made a kind gesture like that-even if it was just to hurry her along-that she drank it down anyway, and managed a few bites of toast. The boys went for their coats and the baggage; Tessa's traveling cloak, hat, and gloves were located, and they soon found themselves on the front steps of the York Institute, blinking in the watery sunlight.
Starkweather had been as good as his word. His carriage was there, waiting for them, the four Cs of the Clave painted across the door. The old coachman with the long white beard and hair was already in the driver's seat, smoking a cheroot; he tossed it aside when he saw the three of them, and sank down farther in his seat, his black eyes glaring out from beneath his drooping eyelids.
"Bloody hell, it's the Ancient Mariner again," said Will, though he seemed more entertained than anything else. He swung himself up into the carriage and helped Tessa in after him; Jem was last, shutting the door behind him and leaning out the window to call to the coachman to drive on. Tessa, settling herself in beside Will on the narrow seat, felt her shoulder brush his; he tensed immediately, and she moved away, biting her lip. It was as if last night had never happened and he were back to behaving as if she were poison.
The carriage began moving with a jerk that nearly flung Tessa into Will again, but she braced herself against the window and stayed where she was.
The three of them were silent as the carriage rol ed down narrow, cobbled Stonegate Street, under a wide sign advertising the Old Star Inn. Both Jem and Will were quiet, Will reviving only to tell her with a ghoulish glee that they were passing through the old wal s, under the city entrance where once traitors' heads had been displayed on spikes. Tessa made a face at him but gave no reply.
Once they had passed the wal s, the city quickly gave way to countryside.
The landscape was not gentle and rol ing, but harsh and forbidding. Green hil s dotted with gray gorse swept up into crags of dark rock. Long lines of mortarless stone wal s, meant for keeping in sheep, crisscrossed the green; here and there was dotted the occasional lonely cottage. The sky seemed an endless expanse of blue, brushed with the strokes of long gray clouds.
Tessa could not have said how long they had been traveling when the stone chimneys of a large manor house rose in the distance. Jem stuck his head out the window again and called to the driver; the carriage came to a rol ing stop.
"But we're not there yet," said Tessa, puzzled. "If that's Ravenscar Manor -"
"We can't just rol right up to the front door; be sensible, Tess," said Will as Jem leaped out of the carriage and reached up to help Tessa down. Her boots plashed into the wet, muddy ground as she landed; Will dropped down lightly beside her. "We need to get a look at the place. Use Henry's device to register demonic presence. Make sure we're not walking into a trap."
"Does Henry's device actual y work?" Tessa lifted her skirts to keep them out of the mud as the three of them started down the road. Glancing back, she saw the coachman apparently already asleep, leaning back in the driver's seat with his hat tipped forward over his face. all around them the countryside was a patchwork of gray and green-hil s rising starkly; their sides pitted with gray shale; flat sheep-cropped grass; and here and there copses of gnarled, entwined trees. There was a severe beauty to it all, but Tessa shuddered at the idea of living here, so far away from anything.
Jem, seeing her shudder, gave a sideways smile. "City lass."
Tessa laughed. "I was thinking how odd it would be to grow up in a place like this, so far from any people."
"Where I grew up was not so different from this," said Will unexpectedly, startling them both. "It's not so lonely as you might think. Out in the countryside, you can be assured, people visit one another a great deal. They just have a greater distance to traverse than they might in London. And once they arrive, they often make a lengthy stay. After all, why make the trip just to stay a night or two? We'd often have house guests who'd remain for weeks."
Tessa goggled at Will silently. It was so rare that he ever referred to anything regarding his early life that she sometimes thought of him as someone with no past at all. Jem seemed to be doing the same thing, though he recovered first.
"I share Tessa's view. I have never lived in anything but a city. I don't know how I could sleep at night, not knowing I was surrounded by a thousand other sleeping, dreaming souls."
"And filth everywhere, and everyone breathing down one another's necks,"
countered Will. "When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person."
"Some might say you retain that problem," said Tessa, but Will just laughed-a short, nearly surprised sound of amusement-and then stopped, looking ahead of them to Ravenscar Manor.
Jem whistled as Tessa realized why she had been able to see only the tops of the chimneys before. The manor was built in the center of a deep declivity between three hil s; their slanting sides rose about it, cradling it as if in the palm of a hand. Tessa, Jem, and Will were poised on the edge of one of the hil s, looking down at the manor. The building itself was very grand, a great gray stone pile that gave the impression it had been there for centuries.
A large circular drive curved in front of the enormous front doors. Nothing about the place hinted at abandonment or disrepair-no weeds grew over the drive or the paths that led to the stone outbuildings, and no glass was missing from the mul ioned windows.
"Someone's living here," said Jem, echoing Tessa's thoughts. He began to start down the hill. The grass here was longer, waving almost waist-high.
"Perhaps if-"
He broke off as the rattle of wheels became audible; for a moment Tessa thought the carriage driver had come after them, but no, this was quite a different carriage-a sturdy-looking coach that turned into the gate and began rol ing toward the manor. Jem crouched down immediately in the grass, and Will and Tessa dropped beside him. They watched as the carriage came to a stop before the manor, and the driver leaped down to open the carriage door.
A young girl stepped out, fourteen or fifteen years old, Tessa guessed- not old enough to have put her hair up, for it blew around her in a curtain of black silk. She wore a blue dress, plain but fashionable. She nodded to the driver, and then, as she started up the manor steps, she paused-paused and looked toward where Jem, Will, and Tessa crouched, almost as if she could see them, though Tessa was sure that they were well hidden by the grass.
The distance was too great for Tessa to make out her features, real y-just the pale oval of her face below the dark hair. She was about to ask Jem if he had a telescope with him, when Will made a noise-a noise she had never heard anyone make before, a sick, terrible gasp, as if the air had been punched out of him by a tremendous blow.
But it was not just a gasp, she realized. It was a word; and not just a word, a name; and not just a name, but one she had heard him say before.
"Cecily."