The other rooms were much the same. Will was trying the window in one when he heard Jem shout that he should come quickly; he was in the last room on the left. Will made haste and found Jem standing in the center of a large square room, his witchlight shining in his hand. He was not alone. There was one piece of furniture remaining here—an upholstered armchair, and seated in it was a woman.
She was young—probably no older than Jessamine—and wore a cheap-looking printed dress, her hair gathered up at the nape of her neck. It was dull-brown mousy hair, and her hands were bare and red. Her eyes were wide open and staring.
“Gah,” said Will, too surprised to say anything else. “Is she—”
“She’s dead,” said Jem.
“Are you certain?” Will could not take his eyes off the woman’s face. She was pale, but not with a corpse’s pallor, and her hands lay folded in her lap, the fingers softly curved, not stiff with the rigor of death. He moved closer to her and placed a hand on her arm. It was rigid and cold beneath his fingers. “Well, she’s not responding to my advances,” he observed more brightly than he felt, “so she must be dead.”
“Or she’s a woman of good taste and sense.” Jem knelt down and looked up into the woman’s face. Her eyes were pale blue and protuberant; they stared past him, as dead-looking as painted eyes. “Miss,” he said, and reached for her wrist, meaning to take a pulse.
She moved, jerking under his hand, and let out a low inhuman moan.
Jem stood up hastily. “What in—”
The woman raised her head. Her eyes were still blank, unfocused, but her lips moved with a grinding sound. “Beware!” she cried. Her voice echoed around the room, and Will, with a yell, jumped back.
The woman’s voice sounded like gears grating against one another. “Beware, Nephilim. As you slay others, so shall you be slain. Your angel cannot protect you against that which neither God nor the devil has made, an army born neither of Heaven nor Hell. Beware the hand of man. Beware.” Her voice rose to a high, grinding shriek, and she jerked back and forth in the chair like a puppet being yanked on invisible strings. “BEWARE BEWAREBEWAREBEWARE—”
“Good God,” muttered Jem.
“BEWARE!” the woman shrieked one last time, and toppled forward to sprawl on the ground, abruptly silenced. Will stared, openmouthed.
“Is she . . . ?” he began.
“Yes,” Jem said. “I think she’s quite dead this time.”
But Will was shaking his head. “Dead. You know, I don’t think so.”
“What do you think, then?”
Instead of answering, Will went and knelt down by the body. He put two fingers to the side of the woman’s cheek and turned her head gently until she faced them. Her mouth was wide, her right eye staring at the ceiling. The left dangled halfway down her cheek, attached to its socket by a coil of copper wire.
“She’s not alive,” said Will, “but not dead, either. She may be . . . like one of Henry’s gadgets, I think.” He touched her face. “Who could have done this?”
“I can hardly guess. But she called us Nephilim. She knew what we are.”
“Or someone did,” said Will. “I don’t imagine she knows anything. I think she’s a machine, like a clock. And she has run down.” He stood up. “Regardless, we had best get her back to the Institute. Henry will want to have a look at her.”
Jem did not reply; he was looking down at the woman on the floor. Her feet were bare beneath the hem of her dress, and dirty. Her mouth was open and he could see the gleam of metal inside her throat. Her eye dangled eerily on its bit of copper wire as somewhere outside the windows a church clock chimed the midday hour.
Once inside the park, Tessa found herself beginning to relax. She hadn’t been in a green, quiet place since she’d come to London, and she found herself almost reluctantly delighted by the sight of grass and trees, though she thought the park nowhere near as fine as Central Park in New York. The air was not as hazy here as it was over the rest of the city, and the sky overhead had achieved a color that was almost blue.
Thomas waited with the carriage while the girls made their promenade. As Tessa walked beside Jessamine, the other girl kept up a constant stream of chatter. They were making their way down a broad thoroughfare that, Jessamine informed her, was inexplicably called Rotten Row. Despite the inauspicious name, it was apparently the place to see and be seen. Down the center of it paraded men and women on horseback, exquisitely attired, the women with their veils flying, their laughter echoing in the summer air. Along the sides of the avenue walked other pedestrians. Chairs and benches were set up under the trees, and women sat twirling colorful parasols and sipping peppermint water; beside them bewhiskered gentlemen smoked, filling the air with the smell of tobacco mixed with cut grass and horses.
Though no one stopped to talk to them, Jessamine seemed to know who everyone was—who was getting married, who was seeking a husband, who was having an affair with so-and-so’s wife and everyone knew all about it. It was a bit dizzying, and Tessa was glad when they stepped off the row and onto a narrower path leading into the park.
Jessamine slid her arm through Tessa’s and gave her hand a companionable squeeze. “You don’t know what a relief it is to finally have another girl around,” she said cheerfully. “I mean, Charlotte’s all right, but she’s boring and married.”
“There’s Sophie.”
Jessamine snorted. “Sophie’s a servant.”
“I’ve known girls who were quite companionable with their ladies’ maids,” Tessa protested. This was not precisely true. She had read about such girls, though she had never known one. Still, according to novels, the main function of a ladies’ maid was to listen to you as you poured your heart out about your tragic love life, and occasionally to dress in your clothes and pretend to be you so you could avoid being captured by a villain. Not that Tessa could picture Sophie participating in anything like that on Jessamine’s behalf.
“You’ve seen what her face looks like. Being hideous has made her bitter. A ladies’ maid is meant to be pretty, and speak French, and Sophie can’t manage either. I told Charlotte as much when she brought the girl home. Charlotte didn’t listen to me. She never does.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Tessa. They had turned onto a narrow path that wound between trees. The glint of the river was visible through them, and the branches above knotted together into a canopy, blocking the brightness of the sun.
“I know! Neither can I!” Jessamine raised her face, letting what sun broke through the canopy dance across her skin. “Charlotte never listens to anyone. She’s always henpecking poor Henry. I don’t know why he married her at all.”
“I assume because he loved her?”
Jessamine snorted. “No one thinks that. Henry wanted access to the Institute so he could work on his little experiments in the cellar and not have to fight. And I don’t think he minded marrying Charlotte—I don’t think there was anyone else he wanted to marry—but if someone else had been running the Institute, he would have married them instead.” She sniffed. “And then there’s the boys—Will and Jem. Jem’s pleasant enough, but you know how foreigners are. Not really trustworthy and basically selfish and lazy. He’s always in his room, pretending to be ill, refusing to do anything to help out,” Jessamine went on blithely, apparently forgetting the fact that Jem and Will were off searching the Dark House right now, while she promenaded in the park with Tessa. “And Will. Handsome enough, but behaves like a lunatic half the time; it’s as if he were brought up by savages. He has no respect for anyone or anything, no concept of the way a gentleman is supposed to behave. I suppose it’s because he’s Welsh.”
Tessa was baffled. “Welsh?” Is that a bad thing to be? she was about to add, but Jessamine, thinking that Tessa was doubting Will’s origins, went on with relish.
“Oh, yes. With that black hair of his, you can absolutely tell. His mother was a Welshwoman. His father fell in love with her, and that was that. He left the Ne
philim. Maybe she cast a spell on him.” Jessamine laughed. “They have all kinds of odd magic and things in Wales, you know.”
Tessa did not know. “Do you know what happened to Will’s parents? Are they dead?”
“I suppose they must be, mustn’t they, or they would have come looking for him?” Jessamine furrowed her brow. “Ugh. Anyway. I don’t want to talk about the Institute anymore.” She swung around to look at Tessa. “You must be wondering why I’ve been being so nice to you.”
“Er . . .” Tessa had been wondering, rather. In novels girls like herself, girls whose families had once had money but who had fallen on hard times, were often taken in by kindly wealthy protectors and were furnished with new clothes and a good education. (Not, Tessa thought, that there had been anything wrong with her education. Aunt Harriet had been as learned as any governess.) Of course, Jessamine did not in any way resemble the saintly older ladies of such tales, whose acts of generosity were totally selfless. “Jessamine, have you ever read The Lamplighter?”
“Certainly not. Girls shouldn’t read novels,” said Jessamine, in the tone of someone reciting something she’d heard somewhere else. “Regardless, Miss Gray, I have a proposition to put to you.”
“Tessa,” Tessa corrected automatically.
“Of course, for we are already the best of friends,” Jessamine said, “and shall soon be even more so.”
Tessa regarded the other girl with bafflement. “What do you mean?”
“As I am sure horrid Will has told you, my parents, my dear papa and mama, are dead. But they left me a not inconsiderable sum of money. It was put aside in trust for me until my eighteenth birthday, which is only in a matter of months. You see the problem, of course.”
Tessa, who did not see the problem, said, “I do?”
“I am not a Shadowhunter, Tessa. I despise everything about the Nephilim. I have never wanted to be one, and my dearest wish is to leave the Institute and never speak to a single soul who resides there ever again.”
“But I thought that your parents were Shadowhunters. . . .”
“One does not have to be a Shadowhunter if one does not wish to,” Jessamine snapped. “My parents did not. They left the Clave when they were young. Mama was always perfectly clear. She never wanted the Shadowhunters near me. She said she would never wish that life on a girl. She wanted other things for me. That I would make my debut, meet the Queen, find a good husband, and have darling little babies. An ordinary life.” She said the words with a savage sort of hunger. “There are other girls in this city right now, Tessa, other girls my age, who aren’t as pretty as me, who are dancing and flirting and laughing and catching husbands. They get lessons in French. I get lessons in horrid demon languages. It’s not fair.”
“You can still get married.” Tessa was puzzled. “Any man would—”
“I could marry a Shadowhunter.” Jessamine spat out the word. “And live like Charlotte, having to dress like a man and fight like a man. It’s disgusting. Women aren’t meant to behave like that. We are meant to graciously preside over lovely homes. To decorate them in a manner that is pleasing to our husbands. To uplift and comfort them with our gentle and angelic presence.”
Jessamine sounded neither gentle nor angelic, but Tessa forbore mentioning this. “I don’t see how I . . .”
Jessamine caught Tessa’s arm fiercely. “Don’t you? I can leave the Institute, Tessa, but I cannot live alone. It wouldn’t be respectable. Perhaps if I were a widow, but I am only a girl. It just isn’t done. But if I had a companion—a sister—”
“You wish me to pretend to be your sister?” Tessa squeaked.
“Why not?” Jessamine said, as if this were the most reasonable suggestion in the world. “Or you could be my cousin from America. Yes, that would work. You do see,” she added, more practically, “that it isn’t as if you have anywhere else to go, is it? I’m quite positive we would catch husbands in no time at all.”
Tessa, whose head had begun to ache, wished Jessamine would cease to speak of “catching” husbands the way one might catch a cold, or a runaway cat.
“I could introduce you to all the best people,” Jessamine continued. “There would be balls, and dinner parties—” She broke off, looking around in sudden confusion. “But—where are we?”
Tessa glanced around. The path had narrowed. It was now a dark trail leading between high twisted trees. Tessa could no longer see the sky, nor hear the sound of voices. Beside her, Jessamine had come to a halt. Her face creased with sudden fear. “We’ve wandered off the path,” she whispered.
“Well, we can find our way back, can’t we?” Tessa spun around, looking for a break in the trees, a patch of sunlight. “I think we came from that way—”
Jessamine caught suddenly at Tessa’s arm, her fingers claw-like. Something—no, someone—had appeared before them on the path.
The figure was small, so small that for a moment Tessa thought they were facing a child. But as the form stepped forward into the light, she saw that it was a man—a hunched, wizened-looking man, dressed like a peddler, in ragged clothes, a battered hat pushed back on his head. His face was wrinkled and white, like a mold-covered old apple, and his eyes were gleaming black between thick folds of skin.
He grinned, showing teeth as sharp as razors. “Pretty girls.”
Tessa glanced at Jessamine; the other girl was rigid and staring, her mouth a white line. “We ought to go,” Tessa whispered, and pulled at Jessamine’s arm. Slowly, as if she were in a dream, Jessamine allowed Tessa to turn her so they faced back the way they had come—
And the man was before them once again, blocking the way back to the park. Far, far in the distance, Tessa thought she could see the park, a sort of clearing, full of light. It looked impossibly far away.
“You wandered off the path,” said the stranger. His voice was singsong, rhythmic. “Pretty girls, you wandered off the path. You know what happens to girls like you.”
He took a step forward.
Jessamine, still rigid, was clutching her parasol as though it were a lifeline. “Goblin,” she said, “hobgoblin, whatever you are—we have no quarrel with any of the Fair Folk. But if you touch us—”
“You wandered from the path,” sang the little man, coming closer, and as he did, Tessa saw that his shining shoes were not shoes after all but gleaming hooves. “Foolish Nephilim, to come to this place un-Marked. Here is land more ancient than any Accords. Here there is strange earth. If your angel blood should fall upon it, golden vines will grow from the spot, with diamonds at their tips. And I claim it. I claim your blood.”
Tessa tugged at Jessamine’s arm. “Jessamine, we should—”
“Tessa, be quiet.” Shaking her arm free, Jessamine pointed her parasol at the goblin. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want—”
The creature sprang. As he hurtled toward them, his mouth seemed to peel wide, his skin splitting, and Tessa saw the face beneath—fanged and vicious. She screamed and stumbled backward, her shoe catching on a tree root. She thumped to the ground as Jessamine raised her parasol, and with a flick of Jessamine’s wrist, the parasol burst open like a flower.
The goblin screamed. He screamed and fell back and rolled on the ground, still screaming. Blood streamed from a wound in his cheek, staining his ragged gray jacket.
“I told you,” Jessamine said. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling as if she had been racing through the park. “I told you to leave us alone, you filthy creature—” She struck at the goblin again, and now Tessa could see that the edges of Jessamine’s parasol gleamed an odd gold-white, and were as sharp as razors. Blood was splattered across the flowered material.
The goblin howled, throwing up his arms to protect himself. He looked like a little old hunched man now, and though Tessa knew it was an illusion, she couldn’t help feeling a pang of pity. “Mercy, mistress, mercy—”
“Mercy?” Jessamine spat. “You wanted to grow flowers out of my blood! Filthy gob
lin! Disgusting creature!” She slashed at him again with the parasol, and again, and the goblin screamed and thrashed. Tessa sat up, shaking the dirt out of her hair, and staggered to her feet. Jessamine was still screaming, the parasol flying, the creature on the ground spasming with each blow. “I hate you!” Jessamine shrieked, her voice thin and trembling. “I hate you, and everything like you—Downworlders—disgusting, disgusting—”
“Jessamine!” Tessa ran to the other girl and threw her arms around her, pinning Jessamine’s arms against her body. For a moment Jessamine struggled, and Tessa realized there was no way she could hold her. She was strong, the muscles under her soft feminine skin coiled and as tense as a whip. And then Jessamine went suddenly limp, sagging back against Tessa, her breath hitching as the parasol drooped in her hand. “No,” she wailed. “No. I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to. No—”
Tessa glanced down. The goblin’s body was humped and motionless at their feet. Blood spread across the ground from the place where he lay, running across the earth like dark vines. Holding Jessamine as she sobbed, Tessa could not help but wonder what would grow there now.
It was, unsurprisingly, Charlotte who recovered from her astonishment first. “Mr. Mortmain, I’m not sure what you could possibly mean—”
“Of course you are.” He was smiling, his lean face split from ear to ear by an impish grin. “Shadowhunters. The Nephilim. That’s what you call yourselves, isn’t it? The by-blows of men and angels. Strange, since the Nephilim in the Bible were hideous monsters, weren’t they?”
“You know, that’s not necessarily true,” Henry said, unable to restrain his inner pedant. “There’s an issue of translation from the original Aramaic—”
“Henry,” Charlotte said warningly.
“Do you really trap the souls of the demons you kill in a gigantic crystal?” Mortmain went on, wide eyed. “How magnificent!”
“D’you mean the Pyxis?” Henry looked baffled. “It’s not a crystal, more like a wooden box. And they aren’t so much souls—demons don’t have souls. They have energy—”
The Infernal Devices Series Page 12
