Clockwork Prince (18 page)

“Cecily?”

“Ella. My elder sister. She had something blazing in her hand. I know what it was now—a seraph blade. I had no idea then. I screamed for her to get out, but she put herself between the creature and me. She had absolutely no fear, my sister. She never had. She was not afraid to climb the tallest tree, to ride the wildest horse—and she had no fear there, in the library. She told the thing to get out. It was hovering there like a great, ugly insect. She said, ‘I banish you.’ Then it laughed.”

It would. Magnus felt a strange stirring of both pity and liking for the girl, brought up to know nothing about demons, their summoning or their banishment, yet standing her ground regardless.

“It laughed, and it swung out with its tail, knocking her to the ground. Then it fixed its eyes on me. They were all red, no whites at all. It said, ‘It is your father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you will have to do.’ I was so shocked, all I could do was stare. Ella was crawling over the carpet, grabbing for the fallen seraph blade. ‘I curse you,’ it said. ‘All who love you will die. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin it with
her
.’ It snarled in Ella’s direction, and vanished.”

Magnus was fascinated despite himself. “And did she fall dead?”

“No.” Will was still pacing. He took off his jacket, slung it over a chair. His longish dark hair had begun to curl with the heat coming off his body, mixing with the heat of the fire; it stuck to the back of his neck. “She was unharmed. She took me in her arms.
She
comforted
me
. She told me the demon’s words meant nothing. She admitted she had read some of the forbidden books in the library, and that was how she knew what a seraph blade was, and how to use it, and that the thing I had opened was called a Pyxis, though she could not imagine why my father would have kept one. She made me promise not to touch anything of my parents’ again unless she was there, and then she led me up to bed, and sat reading while I fell asleep. I was exhausted with the shock of it all, I think. I remember hearing her murmur to my mother, something about how I had been taken ill while they had been out, some childish fever. By that point I was enjoying the fuss that was being made over me, and the demon was beginning to seem a rather exciting memory. I recall planning how to tell Cecily about it—without admitting, of course, that Ella had saved me while I had screamed like a child—”

“You
were
a child,” Magnus noted.

“I was old enough,” said Will. “Old enough to know what it meant when I was woken up the next morning by my mother howling with grief. She was in Ella’s room, and Ella was dead in her bed. They did their best to keep me out, but I saw what I needed to see. She was swelled up, greenish-black like something had rotted her from inside. She didn’t look like my sister anymore. She didn’t look
human
anymore.

“I knew what had happened, even if they didn’t. ‘
All who love you will die. And I shall begin it with her.
’ It was my curse at work. I knew then that I had to get away from them—from all my family—before I brought the same horror down on them. I left that night, following the roads to London.”

Magnus opened his mouth, then closed it again. For once he didn’t know what to say.

“So, you see,” said Will, “my curse can hardly be called nonsense. I have seen it at work. And since that day I have striven to be sure that what happened to Ella will happen to no one else in my life. Can you imagine it? Can you?” He raked his hands through his black hair, letting the tangled strands fall back into his eyes. “Never letting anyone near you. Making everyone who might otherwise love you, hate you. I left my family to distance myself from them, and that they might forget me. Each day I must show cruelty to those I have chosen to make my home with, lest they let themselves feel too much affection for me.”

“Tessa . . .” Magnus’s mind was suddenly full of the serious-faced gray-eyed girl who had looked at Will as if he were a new sun dawning on the horizon. “You think she does not love you?”

“I do not think so. I have been foul enough to her.” Will’s voice was wretchedness and misery and self-loathing all combined. “I think there was a time when she almost—I thought she was dead, you see, and I showed her—I let her see what I felt. I think she might have returned my feelings after that. But I crushed her, as brutally as I could. I imagine she simply hates me now.”

“And Jem,” said Magnus, dreading the answer, knowing it.

“Jem is dying anyway,” Will said in a choked voice. “Jem is what I have allowed myself. I tell myself, if he dies, it is not my fault. He is dying anyway, and in pain. Ella’s death at least was swift. Perhaps through me he can be given a good death.” He looked up miserably, met Magnus’s accusing eyes. “No one can live with nothing,” he whispered. “Jem is all I have.”

“You should have told him,” said Magnus. “He would have chosen to be your
parabatai
anyway, even knowing the risks.”

“I cannot burden him with that knowledge! He would keep it secret if I asked him to, but it would pain him to know it—and the pain I cause others would only hurt him more. Yet if I were to tell Charlotte, to tell Henry and the rest, that my behavior is a sham—that every cruel thing I have said to them is a lie, that I wander the streets only to give the impression that I have been out drinking and whoring when in reality I have no desire to do either—then I have ceased to push them away.”

“And thus you have never told anyone of this curse? No one but myself, since you were twelve years old?”

“I could not,” Will said. “How could I be sure they would form no attachment to me, once they knew the truth? A story like that might engender pity, pity could become attachment, and then . . .”

Magnus raised his eyebrows. “Are you not concerned about me?”

“That you might
love
me?” Will sounded genuinely startled. “No, for you hate Nephilim, do you not? And besides, I imagine you warlocks have ways to guard against unwanted emotions. But for those like Charlotte, like Henry, if they knew the persona I presented to them was false, if they knew of my true heart . . . they might come to care for me.”

“And then they would die,” said Magnus.

*   *   *

Charlotte raised her face slowly from her hands. “And you’ve absolutely no idea where he is?” she asked for the third time. “Will is simply—gone?”

“Charlotte.” Jem’s voice was soothing. They were in the drawing room, with its wallpaper of flowers and vines. Sophie was by the fire, using the poker to coax more flames from the coal. Henry sat behind the desk, fiddling with a set of copper instruments; Jessamine was on the chaise, and Charlotte was in an armchair by the fire. Tessa and Jem sat somewhat primly side by side on the sofa, which made Tessa feel peculiarly like a guest. She was full of sandwiches that Bridget had brought in on a tray, and tea, its warmth slowly thawing her insides. “It isn’t as if this is unusual. When do we ever know where Will is at nighttime?”

“But this is different. He saw his family, or his sister at least. Oh, poor Will.” Charlotte’s voice shook with anxiety. “I had thought perhaps he was finally beginning to forget about them . . .”

“No one forgets about their family,” said Jessamine sharply. She sat on the chaise longue with a watercolor easel and papers propped before her; she had recently made the decision that she had fallen behind in pursuing the maidenly arts, and had begun painting, cutting silhouettes, pressing flowers, and playing on the spinet in the music room, though Will said her singing voice made him think of Church when he was in a particularly complaining mood.

“Well, no, of course not,” said Charlotte hastily, “but perhaps not to live with the memory constantly, as a sort of dreadful weight on you.”

“As if we’d know what to do with Will if he didn’t have the morbs every day,” said Jessamine. “Anyway, he can’t have cared about his family that much in the first place or he wouldn’t have left them.”

Tessa gave a little gasp. “How can you say that? You don’t know why he left. You didn’t see his face at Ravenscar Manor—”

“Ravenscar Manor.” Charlotte was staring blindly at the fireplace. “Of all the places I thought they’d go . . .”

“Pish and tosh,” said Jessamine, looking angrily at Tessa. “At least his family’s alive. Besides, I’ll wager he wasn’t sad at all; I’ll wager you he was shamming. He always is.”

Tessa glanced toward Jem for support, but he was looking at Charlotte, and his look was as hard as a silver coin. “What do you mean,” he said, “of all the places you thought they’d go? Did you know that Will’s family had moved?”

Charlotte started, and sighed. “Jem . . .”

“It’s important, Charlotte.”

Charlotte glanced over at the tin on her desk that held her favorite lemon drops. “After Will’s parents came here to see him, when he was twelve, and he sent them away . . . I begged him to speak to them, just for a moment, but he wouldn’t. I tried to make him understand that if they left, then he could never see them again, and I could never tell him news of them. He took my hand, and he said, ‘Please just promise me you’ll tell me if they die, Charlotte. Promise me.’” She looked down, her fingers knotting in the material of her dress. “It was such an odd request for a little boy to make. I—I had to say yes.”

“So you’ve been looking into the welfare of Will’s family?” Jem asked.

“I hired Ragnor Fell to do it,” Charlotte said. “For the first three years. The fourth year he came back to me and told me that the Herondales had moved. Edmund Herondale—that’s Will’s father—had lost their house gambling. That was all Ragnor was able to glean. The Herondales had been forced to move. He could find no further trace of them.”

“Did you ever tell Will?” Tessa said.

“No.” Charlotte shook her head. “He had made me promise to tell him if they died, that was all. Why add to his unhappiness with the knowledge that they had lost their home? He never mentioned them. I had grown to hope he might have forgotten—”

“He has never forgotten.” There was a force in Jem’s words that stopped the nervous movement of Charlotte’s fingers.

“I should not have done it,” Charlotte said. “I should never have made that promise. It was a contravention of the Law—”

“When Will truly wants something,” said Jem quietly, “when he
feels
something, he can break your heart.”

There was a silence. Charlotte’s lips were tight, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Did he say anything about where he was going when he left Kings Cross?”

“No,” said Tessa. “We arrived, and he just up and dusted—sorry, got up and ran,” she corrected herself, their blank looks alerting her to the fact that she was using American slang.

“‘Up and dusted,’” said Jem. “I like that. Makes it sound like he left a cloud of dust spinning in his wake. He didn’t say anything, no—just elbowed his way through the crowd and was gone. Nearly knocked down Cyril coming to get us.”

“None of it makes any sense,” Charlotte moaned. “Why on earth would Will’s family be living in a house that used to belong to Mortmain? In Yorkshire of all places? This is not where I thought this road would lead. We sought Mortmain and we found the Shades; we sought him again and found Will’s family. He encircles us, like that cursed
ouroboros
that is his symbol.”

“You had Ragnor Fell look into Will’s family’s welfare before,” said Jem. “Can you do it again? If Mortmain is somehow entangled with them . . . for whatever reason . . .”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Charlotte. “I will write to him immediately.”

“There is a part of this I do not understand,” Tessa said. “The reparations demand was filed in 1825, and the complain-ant’s age was listed as twenty-two. If he was twenty-two then, he’d be seventy-five now, and he doesn’t look that old. Maybe forty . . .”

“There are ways,” Charlotte said slowly, “for mundanes who dabble in dark magic to prolong their lives. Just the sort of spell, by the way, that one might find in the Book of the White. Which is why possession of the Book by anyone other than the Clave is considered a crime.”

“All that newspaper business about Mortmain inheriting a shipping company from his father,” Jem said. “Do you think he pulled the vampire trick?”

“The vampire trick?” echoed Tessa, trying in vain to remember such a thing from the
Codex
.

“It’s a way vampires have of keeping their money over time,” said Charlotte. “When they have been too long in one place, long enough that people have started to notice that they never age, they fake their own death and leave their inheritance to a long-lost son or nephew. Voila—the nephew shows up, bears an uncanny resemblance to his father or uncle, but there he is and he gets the money. And they go on like that for generations sometimes. Mortmain could easily have left the company to himself to disguise the fact that he wasn’t aging.”

“So he pretended to be his own son,” said Tessa. “Which would also have given him a reason to be seen changing the direction of the company—to return to Britain and begin interesting himself in mechanisms, that sort of thing.”

“And is probably also why he left the house in Yorkshire,” said Henry.

“Though that does not explain why it is being inhabited by Will’s family,” mused Jem.

“Or where Will is,” added Tessa.

“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 all, why we sent you to Yorkshire, and we must leave no stone unturned. You still have the button from Starkweather’s coat?”