“Sophie says she’s married now,” she said. “Tatiana. She’s just getting back from traveling the Continent with her new husband.”
“I am sure she is as dull and stupid now as she was then.” Will sounded as if he might fall asleep. He thumbed the curtain closed, and they were in darkness. Tessa could hear his breath, feel the warmth of him sitting across from her. She could see why a proper young lady would never ride in a carriage with a gentleman not related to her. There was something oddly intimate about it. Of course, she had broken the rules for proper young ladies what felt like long ago, now.
“Will,” she said again.
“The lady has another question. I can hear it in her tone. Will you never have done asking questions, Tess?”
“Not until I get all the answers I want,” she said. “Will, if warlocks are made by having one demon parent and one human parent, what happens if one of those parents is a Shadowhunter?”
“A Shadowhunter would never allow that to happen,” said Will flatly.
“But in the Codex it says that most warlocks are the result of—of a violation,” Tessa said, her voice hitching on the ugly word, “or shape-changer demons taking on the form of a loved one and completing the seduction by a trick. Jem told me Shadowhunter blood is always dominant. The Codex says the off-spring of Shadowhunters and werewolves, or faeries, are always Shadowhunters. So could not the angel blood in a Shadow-hunter cancel out that which was demonic, and produce—”
“What it produces is nothing.” Will tugged at the window curtain. “The child would be born dead. They always are. Stillborn, I mean. The offspring of a demon and a Shadowhunter parent is death.” In the little light he looked at her. “Why do you want to know these things?”
“I want to know what I am,” she said. “I believe I am some . . . combination that has not been seen before. Part faerie, or part—”
“Have you ever thought of transforming yourself into one of your parents?” Will asked. “Your mother, or father? It would give you access to their memories, wouldn’t it?”
“I have thought of it. Of course I have. But I have nothing of my father’s or mother’s. Everything that was packed in my trunks for the voyage here was discarded by the Dark Sisters.”
“What about your angel necklace?” Will asked. “Wasn’t that your mother’s?”
Tessa shook her head. “I tried. I—I could reach nothing of her in it. It has been mine so long, I think, that what made it hers has evaporated, like water.”
Will’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. “Perhaps you are a clockwork girl. Perhaps Mortmain’s warlock father built you, and now Mortmain seeks the secret of how to create such a perfect facsimile of life when all he can build are hideous monstrosities. Perhaps all that beats beneath your chest is a heart made of metal.”
Tessa drew in a breath, feeling momentarily dizzy. His soft voice was so convincing, and yet—“No,” she said sharply. “You forget, I remember my childhood. Mechanical creatures do not change or grow. Nor would that explain my ability.”
“I know,” said Will with a grin that flashed white in the darkness. “I only wanted to see if I could convince you.”
Tessa looked at him steadily. “I am not the one who has no heart.”
It was too dark in the carriage for her to tell, but she sensed that he flushed, darkly. Before he could say anything in response, the wheels came to a jerking halt. They had arrived.
12
MASQUERADE
So now I have sworn to bury
All this dead body of hate,
I feel so free and so clear
By the loss of that dead weight,
That I should grow light-headed, I fear,
Fantastically merry;
But that her brother comes, like a blight
On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Maud”
Cyril had paused the carriage outside the gates of the property, under the shade of a leafy oak tree. The Lightwoods’ country house in Chiswick, just outside London proper, was massive, built in the Palladian style, with soaring pillars and multiple staircases. The radiance of the moon made everything pearles-cent like the inside of an oyster shell. The stone of the house seemed to gleam silver, while the gate that ran around the property had the sheen of black oil. None of the lights in the house seemed to be illuminated—the place was as dark as pitch and grave-silent, the vast grounds stretching all around it, down to the edge of a meander in the Thames River, unlit and deserted. Tessa began to wonder if they had made a mistake in coming here.
As Will left the carriage, helping her down after him, his head turned, his fine mouth hardening. “Do you smell that? Demonic witchcraft. Its stink is on the air.”
Tessa made a face. She could smell nothing unusual—in fact, this far out of the city center, the air seemed cleaner than it had near the Institute. She could smell wet leaves and dirt. She looked over at Will, his face raised to the moonlight, and wondered what weapons lay concealed under his closely fitted frock coat. His hands were sheathed in white gloves, his starched shirtfront immaculate. With the mask, he could have been an illustration of a handsome highwayman in a penny dreadful.
Tessa bit her lip. “Are you certain? The house looks deadly quiet. As if no one were home. Could we be wrong?”
He shook his head. “There is powerful magic at work here. Something stronger than a glamour. A true ward. Someone very much does not want us to know what is happening here tonight.” He glanced down at the invitation in her hand, shrugged, and went up to the gate. There was a bell there, and he rang it, the noise jangling Tessa’s already stretched nerves. She glared at him. He grinned. “Caelum denique, angel,” he said, and melted away into the shadows, just as the gate before her opened.
A hooded figure stood before her. Her first thought was of the Silent Brothers, but their robes were the color of parchment, and the figure that stood before her was robed in the color of black smoke. The hood hid its face completely. Wordlessly she held out her invitation.
The hand that took it from her was gloved. For a moment the hidden face regarded the invitation. Tessa could not help but fidget. In any ordinary circumstance, a young lady attending a ball alone would be so improper as to be scandalous. But this was no ordinary circumstance. At last, a voice issued from beneath the hood:
“Welcome, Miss Lovelace.”
It was a gritty voice, a voice like skin being scraped over a rough, tearing surface. Tessa’s spine prickled, and she was glad she could not see beneath the hood. The figure returned the invitation to her and stepped back, gesturing her inside; she followed, forcing herself not to look around to see if Will was following.
She was led around the side of the house, down a narrow garden path. The gardens extended for a good distance out around the house, silvery-green in the moonlight. There was a circular black ornamental pond, with a white marble bench beside it, and low hedges, carefully clipped, running alongside neat paths. The path she was on ended at a tall and narrow entrance set into the house’s side. A strange symbol was carved into the door. It seemed to shift and change as Tessa looked at it, making her eyes hurt. She looked away as her hooded companion opened the door and gestured for her to go inside.