The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel (52 page)

His gaze was steady. “If you are not interested in my offer …”

“Stop,” she said. This moment, she thought, was like the edge of a broken bit of glass, clear and sharp and painful. “Jem says you lie to make yourself look bad,” she said. “And perhaps that is true, or perhaps he simply wishes to believe that about you. But there is no reason or excuse for cruelty like this.”

For a moment he looked actually unnerved, as if she had truly startled him. The expression was gone in an instant, like the shifting shape of a cloud. “Then there is nothing more for me to say, is there?”

Without another word she spun on her heel and walked away from him, toward the steps that led back down into the Institute. She did not turn to see him looking after her, a still black silhouette against the last embers of the burning sky.

*   *   *

Lilith’s Children, known also by the name warlocks, are, in the manner of mules and other crossbreeds, sterile. They cannot produce offspring. No exceptions to this rule have been noted… .

Tessa looked up from the
Codex
and stared, unseeing, out the window of the music room, though it was too dark outside for much of a view. She had taken refuge here, not wanting to return to her own room, where she would eventually be discovered moping by Sophie or, worse, Charlotte. The thin layer of dust over everything in this room reassured her that she was much less likely to be found here.

She wondered how she had missed this fact about warlocks before. To be fair, it was not in the
Codex
’s section on warlocks, but rather in the later section on Downworld crossbreeds such as half faeries and half werewolves. There were no half warlocks, apparently. Warlocks could not have children. Will hadn’t been lying to hurt her; he’d been telling the truth. Which seemed worse, in a way. He would have known that his words weren’t a light blow, easily resolved.

Perhaps he had been correct. What else had she really thought would happen? Will was Will, and she should not have expected him to be anything else. Sophie had warned her, and still she hadn’t listened. She knew what Aunt Harriet would have said about girls who didn’t listen to good advice.

A faint rustling sound broke into her brown study. She turned, and at first saw nothing. The only light in the room came from a single witchlight sconce. Its flickering light played over the shape of the piano, the curving dark mass of the harp covered with a heavy drop cloth. As she stared, two
bright points of light resolved themselves, close to the floor, an odd green-yellow color. They were moving toward her, both at the same pace, like twin will-o’-the-wisps.

Tessa expelled her held breath suddenly.
Of course.
She leaned forward. “Here, kitty.” She made a coaxing noise. “Here, kitty, kitty!”

The cat’s answering meow was lost in the noise of the door opening. Light streamed into the room, and for a moment the figure in the doorway was just a shadow. “Tessa? Tessa, is that you?”

Tessa knew the voice immediately—it was so near to the first thing he had ever said to her, the night she had walked into his room:
Will? Will, is that you?

“Jem,” she said resignedly. “Yes, it’s me. Your cat seems to have wandered in here.”

“I can’t say that I’m surprised.” Jem sounded amused. She could see him clearly now as he came into the room; witchlight from the corridor flooded in, and even the cat was clearly visible, sitting on the floor and washing its face with a paw. It looked angry, the way Persian cats always did. “He seems to be a bit of a gadabout. It’s as if he demands to be introduced to everyone—” Jem broke off then, his eyes on Tessa’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Tessa was so taken off guard that she stammered. “W-why would you ask me that?”

“I can see it on your face. Something’s happened.” He sat down on the piano stool opposite her. “Charlotte told me the good news,” he said as the cat rose to its feet and slunk across the room to him. “Or at least, I thought it was good news. Are you not pleased?”

“Of course I’m pleased.”

“Hm.” Jem looked unconvinced. Bending down, he held out his hand to the cat, who rubbed its head against the back of his fingers. “Good cat, Church.”

“Church? Is that the cat’s name?” Tessa was amused despite herself. “Goodness, didn’t it used to be one of Mrs. Dark’s familiars or some such thing? Perhaps Church isn’t the best name for it!”

“
He,
” Jem corrected with mock severity, “was not a familiar but a poor creature she planned to sacrifice as part of her necromantic spell casting. And Charlotte’s been saying that we ought to keep him because it’s good luck to have a cat in a church. So we started calling him “the church cat,” and from that …” He shrugged. “Church. And if the name helps keep him out of trouble, so much the better.”

“I do believe he’s looking at me in a superior manner.”

“Probably. Cats think they’re superior to everyone.” Jem scratched Church behind the ears. “What are you reading?”

Tessa showed him the
Codex
. “Will gave it to me… .”

Jem reached out and took it from her, with such deftness that Tessa had no time to draw her hand back. It was still open to the page she’d been studying. Jem glanced down at it, and then back up at her, his expression changing. “Did you not know this?”

She shook her head. “It is not so much that I dreamed of having children,” she said. “I had not thought so far ahead in my life. It’s more that this seems yet another thing that separates me from humanity. That makes me a monster. Something set apart.”

Jem was silent for a long moment, his long fingers stroking
the gray cat’s fur. “Perhaps,” he said, “it is not such a bad thing to be set apart.” He leaned forward. “Tessa, you know that although it seems you are a warlock, you have an ability we have never seen before. You carry no warlock’s mark. With so much about you uncertain, you cannot allow this one piece of information to drive you to despair.”

“I am not despairing,” Tessa said. “It’s just— I have been lying awake these past few nights. Thinking about my parents. I barely remember them, you see. And yet I cannot help but wonder. Mortmain said my mother did not know that my father was a demon, but was he lying? He said she did not know what
she
was, but what does that mean? Did she ever know what I was, that I was not human? Is that why they left London as they did, so secretively, under cover of darkness? If I am the result of something—something hideous—that was done to my mother without her knowing, then how could she ever have loved me?”

“They hid you from Mortmain,” said Jem. “They must have known he wanted you. All those years he searched for you, and they kept you safe—first your parents, then your aunt. That is not the act of an unloving family.” His gaze was intent on her face. “Tessa, I do not want to make you promises I cannot keep, but if you truly wish to know the truth about your past, we can seek it out. After all you have done for us, we owe you that much. If there are secrets to be learned about how you came to be what you are, we can learn them, if that is what you desire.”

“Yes. That is what I want.”

“You may not,” said Jem, “like what you discover.”

“It is better to know the truth.” Tessa was surprised by the conviction in her own voice. “I know the truth about Nate,
now, and painful as it is, it is better than being lied to. It is better than going on loving someone who cannot love me back. Better than wasting all that feeling.” Her voice shook.

“I think he did,” said Jem, “and does love you, in his way, but you cannot concern yourself with that. It is as great a thing to love as it is to be loved. Love is not something that can be wasted.”

“It is hard. That is all.” Tessa knew she was being self-pitying, but she could not seem to shake it off. “To be so alone.”

Jem leaned forward and looked at her. The red Marks stood out like fire on his pale skin, making her think of the patterns that traced the edges of the Silent Brothers’ robes. “My parents, like yours, are dead. So are Will’s, and Jessie’s, and even Henry’s and Charlotte’s. I am not sure there is anyone in the Institute who is not an orphan. Otherwise we would not be here.”

Tessa opened her mouth, and then closed it again. “I know,” she said. “I am sorry. I was being perfectly selfish not to think—”

He held up a slender hand. “I am not blaming you,” he said. “Perhaps you are here because you are otherwise alone, but so am I. So is Will. So is Jessamine. And even, to an extent, Charlotte and Henry. Where else could Henry have his laboratory? Where else would Charlotte be allowed to put her brilliant mind to work the way she can here? And though Jessamine pretends to hate everything, and Will would never admit to needing anything, they have both made homes for themselves here. In a way, we are not here just because we have nowhere else; we need nowhere else, because we have the Institute, and those who are in it are our family.”

“But not
my
family.”

“They could be,” said Jem.
“When I first came here, I was twelve years old. It most decidedly did not feel like home to me then. I saw only how London was not like Shanghai, and I was homesick. So Will went down to a shop in the East End and bought me this.” He drew out the chain that hung around his neck, and Tessa saw that the flash of green she’d noticed before was a green stone pendant in the shape of a closed hand. “I think he liked it because it reminded him of a fist. But it was jade, and he knew jade came from China, so he brought it back to me and I hung it on a chain to wear it. I still wear it.”

The mention of Will made Tessa’s heart contract. “I suppose it is good to know he can be kind sometimes.”

Jem looked at her with keen silver eyes. “When I came in—that look on your face—it wasn’t just because of what you read in the
Codex
, was it? It was about Will. What did he say to you?”

Tessa hesitated. “He made it very clear that he didn’t want me here,” she said at last. “That my remaining at the Institute is not the happy chance I thought it was. Not in his view.”

“And after I just finished telling you why you should consider him family,” Jem said, a bit ruefully. “No wonder you looked as if I’d just told you something awful had happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa whispered.

“Don’t be. It’s Will who ought to be sorry.” Jem’s eyes darkened. “We shall throw him out onto the streets,” he proclaimed. “I promise you he’ll be gone by morning.”

Tessa started and sat upright. “Oh—no, you can’t mean that—”

He grinned. “Of course I don’t. But you felt better for a moment there, didn’t you?”

“It was like a beautiful dream,” Tessa said gravely, but she smiled when she said it, which surprised her.

“Will is … difficult,” Jem said. “But family is difficult. If I didn’t think the Institute was the best place for you, Tessa, I would not say that it was. And one can build one’s own family. I know you feel inhuman, and as if you are set apart, away from life and love, but …” His voice cracked a little, the first time Tessa had heard him sound unsure. He cleared his throat. “I promise you, the right man won’t care.”

Before Tessa could reply, there was a sharp tapping against the glass of the window. She looked toward Jem, who shrugged. He heard it too. Crossing the room, she saw that indeed there was something outside—a dark winged shape, like a small bird struggling to get inside. She tried to lift the window sash, but it seemed stuck.

She turned, but Jem had already appeared at her side, and he pushed the window open. As the dark shape fluttered inside, it flew straight for Tessa. She raised her hands and caught it out of the air, feeling the sharp metal wings flutter against her palms. As she held it, they closed, and its eyes closed too. Once more it held its metal sword quietly, as if waiting to be wakened again.
Tick-tick
went its clockwork heart against her fingers.

Jem turned from the open window, the wind ruffling his hair. In the yellow light, it shone like white gold. “What is it?”

Tessa smiled. “My angel,” she said.

It had grown late, and Magnus Bane’s eyelids were drooping with exhaustion. He set Horace’s
Odes
down upon the end table and gazed thoughtfully at the rain-streaked windows that looked out onto the square.

This was Camille’s house, but tonight she was not in it; it seemed to Magnus unlikely that she would be home again for many more nights, if not for longer. She had left the city after that disastrous night at de Quincey’s, and though he had sent her a message telling her it was safe to return, he doubted she would. He could not help but wonder if, now that she had exacted revenge on her vampire clan, she would still desire his company. Perhaps he had only ever been something to throw in de Quincey’s face.

He could always depart—pack up and go, leave all this borrowed luxury behind him. This house, the servants, the books,
even his clothes, were hers; he had come to London with nothing. It wasn’t as if Magnus couldn’t earn his own money. He had been quite wealthy in the past, on occasion, though having too much money usually bored him. But remaining here, however annoying, was still the most likely path to seeing Camille again.

A knock on the door broke him out of his reverie, and he turned to see Archer, the footman, standing in the doorway. Archer had been Camille’s subjugate for years, and regarded Magnus with loathing, likely because he felt that a liaison with a warlock wasn’t the right sort of attachment for his beloved mistress.

“There’s someone to see you, sir.” Archer lingered over the word “sir” just long enough for it to be insulting.

“At this hour? Who is it?”

“One of the Nephilim.” A faint distaste colored Archer’s words. “He says his business with you is urgent.”

So it wasn’t Charlotte, the only one of the London Nephilim that Magnus might have expected to see. For several days now he had been assisting the Enclave, watching while they questioned terrified mundanes who had been members of the Pandemonium Club, and using magic to remove the mundanes’ memories of the ordeal when it was over. An unpleasant job, but the Clave always paid well, and it was wise to remain in their favor.