Jem jerked his hands back, a look of horror on his face. Tessa sat up as well, pulling the front of her nightdress together, suddenly self-conscious. Jem was staring over the side of the bed, and she followed his line of sight. The lacquer box that held his drugs had fallen and broken open. A thick layer of shining powder lay across the floor. A faint silvery mist seemed to rise from it, carrying the sweet, spicy smell.
Jem pulled her back, his arm around her, but there was fear in his grip now rather than passion. “Tess,” he said in a low voice. “You can’t touch this stuff. To get it on your skin would be—dangerous. Even to breathe it in—Tessa, you must go.”
She thought of Will, ordering her out of the attic. Was this how it was always going to be—some boy would kiss her, and then order her away as if she were an unwanted servant? “I won’t go,” she flared. “Jem, I can help you clean it up. I am—”
Your friend, she was about to say. But what they had been doing was not what friends did. What was she to him?
“Please,” he said softly. His voice was husky. She recognized the emotion. It was shame. “I do not want you to see me on my knees, grubbing around on the floor for the drug that I need to live. That is not how any man wants the girl he—” He took a shaking breath. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”
The girl he what? But she could not ask; she was over-whelmed—with pity, with sympathy, with shock at what they had done. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He didn’t move as she slipped from the bed, retrieved her dressing gown, and went quietly out of the room.
The corridor was the same as it had been when Tessa had crossed it moments—hours—minutes?—before: dim with lowered witchlight stretching far in either direction. She had just slipped into her own bedroom and was about to shut the door when her eye caught a flicker of movement down at the end of the hall. Some instinct held her in place, the door almost shut, her eye pressed to the barely open crack.
The movement was someone walking down the hall. A fair-haired boy, she thought for a moment, in confusion, but no—it was Jessamine, Jessamine dressed in boys’ clothes. She wore trousers and a jacket open over a waistcoat; a hat was in her hand, and her long fair hair was tied back behind her head. She glanced behind her as she hurried down the hall, as if afraid of being followed. A few moments later she had vanished around the corner, out of sight.
Tessa slid the door shut, her mind racing. What on earth was that about? What was Jessamine doing, wandering the Institute in the dead of night, dressed like a boy? After hanging up her dressing gown, Tessa went to lie down on her bed. She felt tired down in the marrow of her bones, the sort of tired she had felt the night her aunt died, as if she had exhausted her body’s capacity to feel emotion. When she closed her eyes, she saw Jem’s face, and then Will’s, his hand to his bloody mouth. Thoughts of the two of them swirled together in her head until she fell asleep finally, not sure if she was dreaming of kissing one of them, or the other.
10
THE VIRTUE OF ANGELS
The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate;
their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man’s
flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is
that he can improve.
—Hasidic saying
“I suppose you all know by now,” Will remarked at breakfast the next morning, “that I went to an opium den last night.”
It was a subdued morning. It had dawned rainy and gray, and the Institute felt leadenly weighted down, as if the sky were pressing on it. Sophie passed in and out of the kitchen carrying steaming platters of food, her pale face looking pinched and small; Jessamine slumped tiredly over her tea; Charlotte looked weary and unwell from her night spent in the library; and Will’s eyes were red-rimmed, his cheek bruised where Jem had hit him. Only Henry, reading the paper with one hand while he stabbed at his eggs with the other, seemed to have any energy.
Jem was conspicuous mainly by his absence. When Tessa had woken up that morning, she had floated for a moment in a blissful state of forgetfulness, the events of the night before a dim blur. Then she had sat bolt upright, absolute horror crashing over her like a wave of scalding water.
Had she really done all those things with Jem? His bed—his hands on her—the spilled drugs. She had raised her hands and touched her hair. It fell free over her shoulders, where Jem had tugged it out of its plaits. Oh, God, she thought. I really did all that; that was me. She had pressed her hands to her eyes, feeling an overwhelming mix of confusion, terrified happiness—for she could not deny that it had been wonderful in its way—horror at herself, and hideous and total humiliation.
Jem would think she had utterly lost control of herself. No wonder he couldn’t face her at breakfast. She could barely face herself in the mirror.
“Did you hear me?” Will said again, clearly disappointed at the reception of his announcement. “I said I went to an opium den last night.”
Charlotte looked up from her toast. Slowly she folded her newspaper, set it on the table beside her, and pushed her reading glasses down her upturned nose. “No,” she said. “That undoubtedly glorious aspect of your recent activities was unknown to us, in fact.”
“So is that where you’ve been all this time?” Jessamine asked listlessly, taking a sugar cube from the bowl and biting into it. “Are you quite a hopeless addict now? They say it takes only one or two doses.”
“It wasn’t really an opium den,” Tessa protested before she could stop herself. “That is to say—they seemed to have more of a trade in magic powders and things like that.”
“So perhaps not an opium den precisely,” said Will, “but still a den. Of vice!” he added, punctuating this last bit by stabbing his finger into the air.
“Oh, dear, not one of those places that’s run by ifrits,” sighed Charlotte. “Really, Will—”
“Exactly one of those places,” said Jem, coming into the breakfast room and sliding into a chair beside Charlotte—quite as far away from Tessa as it was possible to sit, she noticed, with a pinching feeling in her chest. He didn’t look at her either. “Off Whitechapel High Street.”
“And how do you and Tessa know so much about it?” asked Jessamine, who appeared revitalized by either her sugar intake or the expectation of some good gossip, or both.
“I used a tracking spell to find Will last night,” said Jem. “I was growing concerned at his absence. I thought he might have forgotten the way back to the Institute.”
“You worry too much,” said Jessamine. “It’s silly.”
“You’re quite right. I won’t make that mistake again,” said Jem, reaching for the dish of kedgeree. “As it turned out, Will wasn’t in need of my assistance at all.”
Will looked at Jem thoughtfully. “I seem to have woken up with what they call a Monday mouse,” he said, pointing at the bruised skin under his eye. “Any idea where I got it?”
“None.” Jem helped himself to some tea.
“Eggs,” said Henry dreamily, looking at his plate. “I do love eggs. I could eat them all day.”
“Was there really a need to bring Tessa with you to Whitechapel?” Charlotte asked Jem, sliding her glasses off and placing them on the newspaper. Her brown eyes were reproachful.