Her heart hurt. He was so beautiful. She had always thought so. Most people went on about Will, how handsome he was, but she thought that Jem was a thousand times better-looking. He had the ethereal look of angels in paintings, and though she knew that the silvery color of his hair and skin was a result of the medicine he took for his illness, she couldn’t help finding it lovely too. And he was gentle, firm, and kind. The thought of his hands in her hair, stroking it back from her face, made her feel comforted, whereas usually the thought of a man, even a boy, touching her made her feel vulnerable and ill. He had the most careful, beautifully constructed hands. . . .
“I can’t quite believe they’re coming tomorrow,” Tessa was saying, turning her gaze back to Jem. “I feel as if Sophie and I are being tossed to Benedict Lightwood to appease him, like a dog with a bone. He can’t really mind if we’re trained or not. He just wants his sons in the house to bother Charlotte.”
“That’s true,” Jem acknowledged. “But why not take advantage of the training when it’s offered? That’s why Charlotte is trying to encourage Jessamine to take part. As for you, given your talent, even if—I should say, when—Mortmain is no longer a threat, there will be others attracted to your power. You might do well to learn how to fend them off.”
Tessa’s hand went to the angel necklace at her throat, a habitual gesture Sophie suspected she was not even aware of. “I know what Jessie will say. She’ll say the only thing she needs assistance fending off is handsome suitors.”
“Wouldn’t she rather have help fending off the unattractive ones?”
“Not if they’re mundanes.” Tessa grinned. “She’d rather an ugly mundane than a handsome Shadowhunter any day.”
“That does put me right out of the running, doesn’t it?” said Jem with mock chagrin, and Tessa laughed again.
“It is too bad,” she said. “Someone as pretty as Jessamine ought to have her pick, but she’s so determined that a Shadowhunter won’t do—”
“You are much prettier,” said Jem.
Tessa looked at him in surprise, her cheeks coloring. Sophie felt the twist of jealousy in her chest again, though she agreed with Jem. Jessamine was quite traditionally pretty, a pocket Venus if ever there was one, but her habitual sour expression spoiled her charms. Tessa, though, had a warm appeal, with her rich, dark, waving hair and sea gray eyes, that grew on you the longer you knew her. There was intelligence in her face, and humor, which Jessamine did not have, or at least did not display.
Jem paused in front of Miss Jessamine’s door, and knocked upon it. When there was no answer, he shrugged, bent down, and placed a stack of dark fabric—gear—in front of the door.
“She’ll never wear it.” Tessa’s face dimpled.
Jem straightened up. “I never agreed to wrestle her into the clothes, just deliver them.”
He started off down the hallway again, Tessa beside him. “I don’t know how Charlotte can bear to talk to Brother Enoch so often. He gives me the horrors,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know. I prefer to think that when they’re at home, the Silent Brothers are much like us. Playing practical jokes in the Silent City, making toasted cheese—”
“I hope they play charades,” said Tessa dryly. “It would seem to take advantage of their natural talents.”
Jem burst out laughing, and then they were around the corner and out of sight. Sophie sagged against the door frame. She did not think she had ever made Jem laugh like that; she didn’t think anyone had, except for Will. You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?
With a sigh of resignation she made ready to depart her hiding place—when the door to Miss Jessamine’s room opened, and its resident emerged. Sophie shrank bank into the dimness. Miss Jessamine was dressed in a long velvet traveling cloak that concealed most of her body, from her neck to her feet. Her hair was bound tightly behind her head, and she carried a gentleman’s hat in one hand. Sophie froze in surprise as Jessamine looked down, saw the gear at her feet, and made a face. She kicked it swiftly into the room—giving Sophie a view of her foot, which seemed to be clad in a man’s boot—and closed the door soundlessly behind her. Glancing up and down the corridor, she placed the hat on her head, dropped her chin low into the cloak, and slunk off into the shadows, leaving Sophie staring, mystified, after her.
3
UNJUSTIFIABLE DEATH
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel”
After breakfast the next day Charlotte instructed Tessa and Sophie to return to their rooms, dress in their newly acquired gear, and meet Jem in the training room, where they would wait for the Lightwood brothers. Jessamine had not come to breakfast, claiming a headache, and Will, likewise, was nowhere to be found. Tessa suspected he was hiding, in an attempt to avoid being forced to be polite to Gabriel Lightwood and his brother. She could only partly blame him.
Back in her room, picking up the gear, she felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach; it was so very much unlike anything she’d ever worn before. Sophie was not there to help her with the new clothes. Part of the training, of course, was being able to dress and to familiarize oneself with the gear: flat-soled shoes; a loose pair of trousers made of thick black material; and a long, belted tunic that reached nearly to her knees. They were the same clothes she had seen Charlotte fight in before, and had seen illustrated in the Codex; she had thought them strange then, but the act of actually wearing them was even stranger. If Aunt Harriet could have seen her now, Tessa thought, she would likely have fainted.
She met Sophie at the foot of the steps that led up to the Institute’s training room. Neither she nor the other girl exchanged a word, just encouraging smiles. After a moment Tessa went first up the steps, a narrow wooden flight with banisters so old that the wood had begun to splinter. It was strange, Tessa thought, going up a flight of stairs and not having to worry about pulling in your skirts or tripping on the hem. Though her body was completely covered, she felt peculiarly naked in her training gear.
It helped to have Sophie with her, obviously equally uncomfortable in her own Shadowhunter gear. When they reached the top of the stairs, Sophie swung the door open and they made their way into the training room in silence, together.
They were obviously at the top of the Institute, in a room adjacent to the attic, Tessa thought, and nearly twice the size. The floor was polished wood with various patterns drawn here and there in black ink—circles and squares, some of them numbered. Long, flexible ropes hung from great raftered beams overhead, half-invisible in the shadows. Witchlight torches burned along the walls, interspersed with hanging weapons—maces and axes and all sorts of other deadly-looking objects.
“Ugh,” said Sophie, looking at them with a shudder. “Don’t they look too horrible by half?”