“But I don’t know myself.” Tessa shook her head. “I’m sorry. After the way you fought at de Quincey’s, you must think I’m a terrible coward, crying because my brother isn’t a monster and I don’t have the courage to be a monster all by myself.”
“You’re not a monster,” said Jem. “Or a coward. On the contrary, I was quite impressed by the way you shot at de Quincey. You would almost certainly have killed him if there’d been any more bullets in the gun.”
“Yes, I think I would have. I wanted to kill them all.”
“That’s what Camille asked us to do, you know. Kill them all. Perhaps it was her emotions you were feeling?”
“But Camille has no reason to care about Nate, or what happens to him, and that was when I felt most murderous. When I saw Nate there, when I realized what they were planning to do—” She took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know how much of that was me and how much was Camille. And I don’t even know if it’s right to have those sort of feelings—”
“You mean,” asked Jem, “for a girl to have those feelings?”
“For anyone to have them, maybe—I don’t know. Maybe I mean for a girl to have them.”
Jem seemed to look through her then, as if he were seeing something beyond her, beyond the corridor, beyond the Institute itself. “Whatever you are physically,” he said, “male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy—all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.” He smiled then, seeming to have come back to himself, slightly embarrassed. “That’s what I believe.”
Before Tessa could reply, Nate’s door opened, and Charlotte came out. She responded to Tessa’s questioning look with an exhausted-looking nod. “Brother Enoch has helped your brother a great deal,” she said, “but there is much left to be done, and it will be morning before we know more. I suggest you go to sleep, Tessa. Exhausting yourself won’t help Nathaniel.”
With an effort of will Tessa forced herself simply to nod, and not to fling herself at Charlotte with a barrage of questions she knew she wouldn’t get answers to.
“And Jem.” Charlotte turned to him. “If I could talk to you for a few moments? Will you walk with me to the library?”
Jem nodded. “Of course.” He smiled at Tessa, inclining his head. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and followed Charlotte down the corridor.
The moment they vanished around the corner, Tessa tried the door of Nate’s room. It was locked. With a sigh she turned and headed the other way down the corridor. Perhaps Charlotte was right. Perhaps she ought to get some sleep.
Halfway down the corridor she heard a commotion. Sophie, a metal pail in each of her hands, suddenly appeared in the hallway, banging a door shut behind her. She looked livid. “His Highness is in a particularly fine temper this evening,” she announced as Tessa approached. “He threw a pail at my head, he did.”
“Who?” Tessa asked, and then realized. “Oh, you mean Will. Is he all right?”
“Well enough to throw pails,” Sophie said crossly. “And to call me a nasty name. I don’t know what it meant. I think it was in French, and that usually means someone’s calling you a whore.” She tightened her lips. “I’d best run and get Mrs. Branwell. Maybe she can get him to take the cure, if I can’t.”
“The cure?”
“He must drink this.” Sophie thrust a pail toward Tessa; Tessa couldn’t quite see what was in it, but it looked like ordinary water. “He has to. Or I wouldn’t like to say as what’ll happen.”
A mad impulse took hold of Tessa. “I’ll get him to do it. Where is he?”
“Upstairs, in the attic.” Sophie’s eyes were large. “But I wouldn’t if I was you, miss. He’s downright nasty when he’s like this.”
“I don’t care,” Tessa said, reaching for the pail. Sophie handed it to her with a look of relief and apprehension. It was surprisingly heavy, filled to the brim with water and slopping over. “Will Herondale needs to learn to take his medicine like a man,” Tessa added, and pushed open the door to the attic, Sophie looking after her with an expression that clearly said she thought Tessa had gone out of her head.
Beyond the door was a narrow flight of stairs going up. She held the pail in front of her as she went; it slopped water onto the bodice of her dress, raising goose bumps on her skin. By the time she had reached the top of the steps, she was damp and breathless.
There was no door at the head of the stairs; they ended abruptly at the attic, a huge room whose roof was so steeply gabled that it gave the impression of being low-ceilinged. Rafters just above Tessa’s head ran the length of the room, and there were very low square windows set at intervals in the walls, through which Tessa could see the gray dawn light. The floor was bare polished boards. There was no furniture at all, and no light beyond the pale illumination that came from the windows. A set of even narrower stairs led to a closed trapdoor in the ceiling.
In the center of the room lay Will, barefoot, flat on his back on the floor. A number of pails surrounded him—and the floor around him, Tessa saw as she approached, was soaked with water. Water ran in rivulets down the boards and pooled in the uneven hollows of the floor. Some of the water was tinged reddish, as if it had been mixed with blood.
Will had an arm thrown over his face, hiding his eyes. He was not lying still, but moving restlessly, as if he were in some pain. As Tessa neared, he said something in a low voice, something that sounded like a name. Cecily, Tessa thought. Yes, it sounded very much as if he had said the name Cecily.
“Will?” she said. “Who are you talking to?”
“Back, are you, Sophie?” Will replied without raising his head. “I told you if you brought me another one of those infernal pails, I’d—”
“It’s not Sophie,” Tessa said. “It’s me. Tessa.”
For a moment Will was silent—and motionless, save for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He wore only a pair of dark trousers and a white shirt, and like the floor around him, he was soaking wet. The fabric of his clothes clung to him, and his black hair was pasted to his head like wet cloth. He must have been freezing cold.
“They sent you?” he said finally. He sounded incredulous, and something else, too.
“Yes,” answered Tessa, though this was not strictly true.
Will opened his eyes and turned his head toward her. Even in the dimness she could see the intensity of his eye color. “Very well, then. Leave the water and go.”
Tessa glanced down at the pail. For some reason her hands did not seem to want to let go of the metal handle. “What is it, then? I mean to say—what am I bringing you, exactly?”
“They didn’t tell you?” He blinked at her in surprise. “It’s holy water. To burn out what’s in me.”
It was Tessa’s turn to blink. “You mean—”
“I keep forgetting everything you don’t know,” Will said. “Do you recall earlier this evening when I bit de Quincey? Well, I swallowed some of his blood. Not much, but it doesn’t take much to do it.”