The inside of the abbey smelled of cold stone and metal. Tessa looked up and around, marveling at the size of the place. It made the Institute look like a village church.
“Notice the triple division of the nave,” a guide droned, going on to explain that smaller chapels lined the eastern and western aisles of the Abbey. There was a hush over the place even though no services were going on. As Tessa let Jem lead her toward the eastern side of the church, she realized she was stepping over stones carved with dates and names. She had known that famous kings, queens, soldiers, and poets were buried in Westminster Abbey, but she hadn’t quite expected she’d be standing on top of them.
She and Jem slowed finally at the southeastern corner of the church. Watery daylight poured through the rose window overhead. “I know we are in a hurry to get to the Council meeting,” said Jem, “but I wanted you to see this.” He gestured around them. “Poets’ Corner.”
Tessa had read of the place, of course, where the great writers of England were buried. There was the gray stone tomb of Chaucer, with its canopy, and other familiar names: “Edmund Spenser, oh, and Samuel Johnson,” she gasped, “and Coleridge, and Robert Burns, and Shakespeare—”
“He isn’t really buried here,” said Jem quickly. “It’s just a monument. Like Milton’s.”
“Oh, I know, but—” She looked at him, and felt herself flush. “I can’t explain it. It’s like being among friends, being among these names. Silly, I know . . .”
“Not silly at all.”
She smiled at him. “How did you know just what I’d want to see?”
“How could I not?” he said. “When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind’s eye always with a book in your hand.” He looked away from her as he said it, but not before she caught the slight flush on his cheekbones. He was so pale, he could never hide even the least blush, she thought—and was surprised how affectionate the thought was.
She had become very fond of Jem over the past fortnight; Will had been studiously avoiding her, Charlotte and Henry were caught up in issues of Clave and Council and the running of the Institute—and even Jessamine seemed preoccupied. But Jem was always there. He seemed to take his role as her guide to London seriously. They had been to Hyde Park and Kew Gardens, the National Gallery and the British Museum, the Tower of London and Traitors’ Gate. They had gone to see the cows being milked in St. James’s Park, and the fruit and vegetable sellers hawking their wares in Covent Garden. They had watched the boats sailing on the sun-sparked Thames from the Embankment, and had eaten things called “doorstops,” which sounded horrible but turned out to be butter, sugar, and bread. And as the days went on, Tessa felt herself unfolding slowly out of her quiet, huddled unhappiness over Nate and Will and the loss of her old life, like a flower climbing out of frozen ground. She had even found herself laughing. And she had Jem to thank for it.
“You are a good friend,” she exclaimed. And when to her surprise he said nothing to that, she said, “At least, I hope we are good friends. You do think so too, don’t you, Jem?”
He turned to look at her, but before he could reply, a sepulchral voice spoke out of the shadows,
“‘Mortality, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here:
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones.’”
A dark shape stepped out from between two monuments. As Tessa blinked in surprise, Jem said, in a tone of resigned amusement, “Will. Decided to grace us with your presence after all?”
“I never said I wasn’t coming.” Will moved forward, and the light from the rose windows fell on him, illuminating his face. Even now, Tessa never could look at him without a tightening in her chest, a painful stutter of her heart. Black hair, blue eyes, graceful cheekbones, thick dark lashes, full mouth—he would have been pretty if he had not been so tall and so muscular. She had run her hands over those arms. She knew what they felt like—iron, corded with hard muscles; his hands, when they cupped the back of her head, slim and flexible but rough with calluses . . .
She tore her mind away from the memories. Memories did one no good, not when one knew the truth in the present. Will was beautiful, but he was not hers; he was not anybody’s. Something in him was broken, and through that break spilled a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away.
“You’re late for the Council meeting,” said Jem good-naturedly. He was the only one Will’s puckish malice never seemed to touch.
“I had an errand,” said Will. Up close Tessa could see that he looked tired. His eyes were rimmed with red, the shadows beneath them nearly purple. His clothes looked crumpled, as if he had slept in them, and his hair wanted cutting. But that has nothing to do with you, she told herself sternly, looking away from the soft dark waves that curled around his ears, the back of his neck. It does not matter what you think of how he looks or how he chooses to spend his time. He has made that very clear. “And you are not exactly on the dot of the hour yourselves.”
“I wanted to show Tessa Poets’ Corner,” said Jem. “I thought she would like it.” He spoke so simply and plainly, no one could ever doubt him or imagine he said anything but the truth. In the face of his simple desire to please, even Will didn’t seem to be able to think of anything unpleasant to say; he merely shrugged, and moved on ahead of them at a rapid pace through the abbey and out into the East Cloister.
There was a square garden here surrounded by cloister walls, and people were walking around the edges of it, murmuring in low voices as if they were still in the church. None of them took notice of Tessa and her companions as they approached a set of double oak doors set into one of the walls. Will, after glancing around, took his stele from his pocket and drew the tip across the wood. The door sparked with a brief blue light and swung open. Will stepped inside, Jem and Tessa following just behind. The door was heavy, and closed with a resounding bang behind Tessa, nearly trapping her skirts; she pulled them away only just in time, and stepped backward quickly, turning around in what was a near pitch-darkness. “Jem?”
Light blazed up; it was Will, holding his witchlight stone. They were in a large stone-bound room with vaulted ceilings. The floor appeared to be brick, and there was an altar at one end of the room. “We’re in the Pyx Chamber,” he said. “Used to be a treasury. Boxes of gold and silver all along the walls.”
“A Shadowhunter treasury?” Tessa was thoroughly puzzled.
“No, the British royal treasury—thus the thick walls and doors,” said Jem. “But we Shadowhunters have always had access.” He smiled at her expression. “Monarchies down through the ages have tithed to the Nephilim, in secret, to keep their kingdoms safe from demons.”
“Not in America,” said Tessa with spirit. “We haven’t got a monarchy—”
“You’ve got a branch of government that deals with Nephilim, never fear,” said Will, crossing the floor to the altar. “It used to be the Department of War, but now there’s a branch of the Department of Justice—”
He was cut off as the altar moved sideways with a groan, revealing a dark, empty hole behind it. Tessa could see faint flickers of light in among the shadows. Will ducked into the hole, his witchlight illuminating the darkness.