Will turned his head. Charlotte was motionless behind him at the top of the stairs, staring. He raised a hand to gesture her over. “Charlotte, if we can get him downstairs, perhaps the Silent Brothers can do something to help him. If you could—”
But Charlotte, to Will’s surprise, had turned a pale shade of green. She clapped her hand over her mouth and dashed downstairs.
“Charlotte!” Will hissed; he didn’t dare shout. “Oh, bloody hell. All right, Jem. You take his legs, I’ll take his shoulders—”
“There’s no point, Will.” Jem’s voice was soft. “He’s dead.”
Will turned back. Indeed, the silver eyes were wide open, glassy, fixed on the ceiling; the chest had ceased to rise and fall. Jem reached to close his eyelids, but Will caught his friend by the wrist.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to give him the blessing, Will. Just close his eyes.”
“He doesn’t deserve that. He was working with the Magister!” Will’s whisper was rising to a shout.
“He is like me,” said Jem simply. “An addict.”
Will looked at him over their joined hands. “He is not like you. And you will not die like that.”
Jem’s lips parted in surprise. “Will . . .”
They both heard the sound of a door opening, and a voice calling out Jessamine’s name. Will released Jem’s wrist, and both of them dropped flat to the ground, inching to the edge of the gallery to see what was happening on the warehouse floor.
16
MORTAL RAGE
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage
—Shakespeare, “Sonnet 64”
It was a peculiar experience walking the streets of London as a boy, Tessa thought as she made her way along the crowded pavement of Eastcheap. The men who crossed her path spared her barely a glance, just pushed past her toward the doors of public houses or the next turn in the street. As a girl, walking alone through these streets at night in her fine clothes, she would have been the object of stares and jeers. As a boy she was—invisible. She had never realized what it was like to be invisible before. How light and free she felt—or would have felt, had she not felt like an aristocrat from A Tale of Two Cities on his way to the guillotine in a tumbrel.
She caught sight of Cyril only once, slipping between two buildings across the road from 32 Mincing Lane. It was a great stone building, and the black iron fence surrounding it, in the vanishing twilight, looked like rows of jagged black teeth. From the front gates dangled a padlock, but it had been left open; she slipped through, and then up the dusty steps to the front door, which was also unlocked.
Inside she found that the empty offices, their windows looking out onto Mincing Lane, were still and dead; a fly buzzed in one, hurling itself over and over against the plated glass panes until it fell, exhausted, to the sill. Tessa shuddered and hurried on.
In each room she walked into, she tensed, expecting to see Nate; in each room, he was not there. The final room had a door that opened out onto the floor of a warehouse. Dim blue light filtered in through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. She looked around uncertainly. “Nate?” she whispered.
He stepped out of the shadows between two flaking plaster pillars. His blond hair shone in the bluish light, under a silk top hat. He wore a blue tweed frock coat, black trousers, and black boots, but his usually immaculate appearance was disheveled. His hair hung lankly in his eyes, and there was a smear of dirt across his cheek. His clothes were wrinkled and creased as if he had slept in them. “Jessamine,” he said, relief evident in his tone. “My darling.” He opened his arms.
She came forward slowly, her whole body tensed. She did not want Nate touching her, but she could see no way to avoid his embrace. His arms went around her. His hand caught the brim of her hat and pulled it free, letting her fair curls tumble down her back. She thought of Will pulling the pins from her hair, and her stomach involuntarily tightened.
“I need to know where the Magister is,” she began in a shaking voice. “It’s terribly important. I overheard some of the Shadowhunters’ plans, you see. I know you didn’t wish to tell me, but . . .”
He pushed her hair back, ignoring her words. “I see,” he said, and his voice was deep and husky. “But first—” He tipped her head up with a finger under her chin. “Come and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty.”
Tessa wished he wouldn’t quote Shakespeare. She’d never be able to hear that sonnet again without wanting to be sick. Every nerve in her body wanted to leap screaming through her skin in revulsion as he leaned toward her. She prayed for the others to burst in as she let him tilt her head up, up—
Nate began to laugh. With a jerk of his wrist, he sent her hat sailing into the shadows; his fingers tightened on her chin, the nails digging in. “My apologies for my impetuous behavior,” he said. “I couldn’t help but be curious to see how far you’d go to protect your Shadowhunter friends . . . little sister.”
“Nate.” Tessa tried to jerk backward, out of his grasp, but his grip on her was too strong. His other hand shot out like a snake, spinning her around, pinning her against him with his forearm across her throat. His breath was hot against her ear. He smelled sour, like old gin and sweat.
“Did you really think I didn’t know?” he spat. “After that note arrived at Benedict’s ball, sending me off on that wild goose chase to Vauxhall, I realized. It all made sense. I should have known it was you from the beginning. Stupid little girl.”
“Stupid?” she hissed. “I got you to spill your secrets, Nate. You told me everything. Did Mortmain find out? Is that why you look like you haven’t slept in days?”
He jerked his arm tighter around her, making her gasp with pain. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone. You had to pry into my business. Delighted to see me brought low, are you? What kind of sister does that make you, Tessie?”
“You would have killed me if you had the chance. There is no game you can play, nothing you can say to make me think I’ve betrayed you, Nate. You earned every bit of it. Allying yourself with Mortmain—”
He shook her, hard enough to make her teeth rattle. “As if my alliances are any of your business. I was doing well for myself until you and your Nephilim friends came and meddled. Now the Magister wants my head on a block. Your fault. All your fault. I was almost in despair, till I got that ridiculous note from Jessamine. I knew you were behind it, of course. All the trouble you must have gone through too, torturing her to get her to write me that ridiculous missive—”
“We didn’t torture her,” Tessa ground out. She struggled, but Nate only held her more tightly, the buttons on his waistcoat digging into her back. “She wanted to do it. She wanted to save her own skin.”
“I don’t believe you.” The hand that wasn’t across her throat gripped her chin; his nails dug in, and she yelped with pain. “She loves me.”
“No one could love you,” Tessa spat. “You’re my brother—I loved you—and you have killed even that.”