Consul Wayland sighed gustily. “I wish you had come to this conclusion a fortnight ago, Benedict, and saved us all this trouble.”
Benedict shrugged elegantly. “I thought she needed to be tested,” he said. “Fortunately, she has passed that test.”
Wayland shook his head. “Very well. Let us vote on it.” He handed what looked like a cloudy glass vessel to the Inquisitor, who stepped down among the crowd and handed the vial to the woman sitting in the first chair of the first row. Tessa watched in fascination as she bent her head and whispered into the vial, then passed it to the man on her left.
As the vial made its way around the room, Tessa felt Jem slip his hands into hers. She jumped, though her voluminous skirts, she suspected, largely hid their hands. She laced her fingers through his slim, delicate ones and closed her eyes. I love him. I love him. I love him. And indeed, his touch made her shiver, though it also made her want to weep—with love, with confusion, with heartbreak, remembering the look on Will’s face when she had told him she and Jem were engaged, the happiness going out of him like a fire doused by rain.
Jem drew his hand out of hers to take the vial from Gideon on his other side. She heard him whisper, “Charlotte Branwell,” before he passed the vial over her, to Henry on her other side. She looked at him, and he must have misconstrued the unhappiness in her eyes, because he smiled at her encouragingly. “It will be all right,” he said. “They’ll choose Charlotte.”
When the vial finished its travels, it was handed back to the Inquisitor, who presented it with a flourish to the Consul. The Consul took the vial and, placing it on the lectern before him, drew a rune on the glass with his stele.
The vial trembled, like a kettle on the boil. White smoke poured from its open neck—the collected whispers of hundreds of Shadowhunters. They spelled words out across the air.
CHARLOTTE BRANWELL.
Charlotte dropped her hands from the Mortal Sword, almost sagging in relief. Henry made a whooping noise and threw his hat into the air. The room was filled with chatter and confusion. Tessa couldn’t stop herself from glancing down the row at Will. He had slumped down in his seat, his head back, his eyes closed. He looked white and drained, as if this last bit of business had taken the remainder of his energy.
A scream pierced the hubbub. Tessa was on her feet in moments, whirling around. It was Charlotte’s aunt Callida screaming, her elegant gray head thrown back and her finger pointing Heavenward. Gasps ran around the room as the other Shadowhunters followed her gaze. The air above them was filled with dozens—scores, even—of buzzing black metal creatures, like enormous steel black beetles with coppery wings, zipping back and forth through the air, filling the room with the ugly sound of metallic buzzing.
One of the metal beetles dipped down and hovered in front of Tessa, just at eye level, making a clicking sound. It was eyeless, though there was a circular plate of glass in the flat front of its head. She felt Jem reach for her arm, trying to pull her away from it, but she jerked away impatiently, seized her hat off her head, and slammed it down on top of the thing, trapping it between her hat and the seat of her chair. It immediately set up an enraged, high-pitched buzzing. “Henry!” she called. “Henry, I’ve got one of the things—”
Henry appeared behind her, pink-faced, and stared down at the hat. A small hole was opening in the side of the elegant gray velvet where the mechanical creature was tearing at it. With a curse Henry brought his fist down hard, crushing the hat and the thing inside it against the seat. It buzzed and went still.
Jem reached around and lifted the smashed hat gingerly. What was left under it was a scatter of parts—a metal wing, a shattered chassis, and broken-off stumps of copper legs. “Ugh,” said Tessa. “It’s so very—buglike.” She glanced up as another cry went through the room. The insectile creatures had come together in a black swirl in the center of the room; as she stared, they swirled faster and faster and then vanished, like black beetles sucked down a drain.
“Sorry about the hat,” said Henry. “I’ll get you another.”
“Bother the hat,” said Tessa as the cries of the angry Council echoed through the room. She looked toward the center of the room; the Consul stood with the glowing Mortal Sword in his hand, and behind him was Benedict, stone-faced, with eyes like ice. “Clearly, we have bigger things to worry about.”
“It’s a sort of camera,” Henry said, holding the bits of the smashed metal beetle creature on his lap as the carriage clopped toward home. “Without Jessamine, Nate, or Benedict, Mortmain must be out of reliable human spies who can report to him. So he sent these things.” He poked at a shard; the bits were gathered together in the wreckage of Tessa’s hat, held on his lap as they jounced along.
“Benedict didn’t look any too pleased to see those things,” said Will. “He must realize Mortmain already knows about his defection.”
“It was a matter of time,” said Charlotte. “Henry, can those things record sound, like a phonautograph, or simply pictures? They were flying around so quickly—”
“I’m not sure.” Henry frowned. “I shall have to examine the parts more closely in the crypt. I can find no shutter mechanism, but that does not mean—” He looked up at the uncomprehending faces focused on him, and shrugged. “In any case,” he said, “perhaps it is not the worst thing for the Council to get a look at Mortmain’s inventions. It is one thing to hear about them, another to see what he is doing. Don’t you think, Lottie?”
Charlotte murmured an answer, but Tessa didn’t hear it. Her mind was caught up in going over a peculiar thing that had occurred just after she’d left the Council chambers and was waiting for the Branwells’ carriage. Jem had just turned away from her to speak to Will, when the flap of a black cloak caught her eye, and Aloysius Starkweather stalked up to her, his grizzled face fierce. “Miss Gray,” he’d barked. “That clockwork creature—the way it approached you . . .”
Tessa had stood silently, staring—waiting for him to accuse her of something, though she could not imagine what.
“Thee’s all right?” he’d said, abruptly and at last, his Yorkshire accent seeming suddenly very pronounced. “It dinna harm thee?”
Slowly Tessa had shaken her head. “No, Mr. Starkweather. Thank you kindly for your inquiry into my welfare, but no.”
By then Jem and Will had turned and were staring. As if aware he was drawing attention, Starkweather had nodded once, sharply, turned, and walked off, his ragged cloak blowing behind him.
Tessa could make neither head nor tail of the whole business. She was just thinking of her brief time in Starkweather’s head, and the astonishment he’d felt when he’d first seen her, when the carriage came to a jerking halt before the Institute. Relieved to be free of their cramped quarters, the Shadowhunters and Tessa spilled out, onto the drive.
There was a gap in the gray cloud cover over the city, and lemon yellow sunlight poured down, making the front steps glisten. Charlotte started toward them, but Henry stopped her, pulling her close with the arm that wasn’t holding Tessa’s destroyed hat. Tessa watched them with the first glimmer of happiness she’d felt since yesterday. She had truly come to care for Charlotte and Henry, she realized, and she wanted to see them happy. “What we should remember is that everything went as well as we could have hoped,” Henry said, holding her tightly. “I’m so proud of you, darling.”