Jem talked as they went, not saying much of import but keeping up a soothing chatter, telling her what he had thought of London when he had first come here, how everything had seemed to him a uniform shade of gray—even the people! He had been unable to believe it could rain so much in one place, and so unceasingly. The damp had seemed to come up from the floors and into his bones, so that he’d thought he would eventually sprout mold, in the manner of a tree. “You do get used to it,” he said as they came out from the narrow passage and into the broadness of Fleet Street. “Even if sometimes you feel as if you ought to be able to be wrung out like a washrag.”
Remembering the chaos of the street during the day, Tessa was comforted to see how much quieter it was in the evening, the thronging crowds reduced to the occasional figure striding along the pavement, head down, keeping to the shadows. There were still carriages and even single riders in the road, though none seemed to notice Tessa and Jem. A glamour at work? Tessa wondered, but didn’t ask. She was enjoying just listening to Jem talk. This was the oldest part of the city, he told her, where London had been born. The shops that lined the street were closed, their blinds drawn, but advertisements still blared from every surface, advertisements for everything from Pears soap to hair tonic to announcements urging people to attend a lecture on spiritualism. As Tessa walked, she caught glimpses of the spires of the Institute between the buildings, and couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else could see them. She remembered the parrot woman with the green skin and feathers. Was the Institute really hidden in plain sight? Curiosity getting the better of her, she asked Jem as much.
“Let me show you something,” he said. “Stop here.” He took Tessa by the elbow and turned her so that she was facing across the street. He pointed. “What do you see there?”
She squinted across the street; they were near the intersection of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane. There seemed nothing remarkable about where they stood. “The front of a bank. What else is there to see?”
“Now let your mind wander a bit,” he said, still in the same soft voice. “Look at something else, the way you might avoid looking directly at a cat so as not to frighten it. Glance at the bank again, out of the corner of your eye. Now look at it, directly, and very fast!”
Tessa did as directed—and stared. The bank was gone; in its place was a half-timbered tavern, with great diamond-paned windows. The light within the windows was tinted with a reddish glow, and through the open front door more red light poured out onto the pavement. Through the glass dark shadows moved—not the familiar shadows of men and women, but shapes too tall and thin, too oddly elongated or many-limbed to be human. Bursts of laughter interrupted a high, sweet, thin music, haunting and seductive. A sign hanging over the door showed a man reaching to tweak the nose of a horned demon. Lettered below the image were the words THE DEVIL TAVERN.
This is where Will was the other night. Tessa looked toward Jem. He was staring at the tavern, his hand light on her arm, his breathing slow and soft. She could see the red light of the pub reflected in his silvery eyes like sunset on water. “Is this your favorite place?” she asked.
The intensity went out of his gaze; he looked at her, and laughed. “Lord, no,” he said. “Just something I wanted you to see.”
Someone came out the tavern door then, a man in a long black overcoat, an elegant watered silk hat placed firmly on his head. As he glanced up the street, Tessa saw that his skin was an inky dark blue, his hair and beard as white as ice. He moved east toward the Strand as Tessa watched, wondering if he would garner curious stares, but his passage was no more noted by passersby than that of a ghost would be. In fact, the mundanes who passed in front of the Devil Tavern seemed barely to notice it at all, even when several spindly, chittering figures exited and nearly knocked over a tired-looking man wheeling an empty cart. He paused to look around for a moment, puzzled, then shrugged and went on.
“There was a very ordinary tavern there once,” said Jem. “As it grew more and more infested with Downworlders, the Nephilim became concerned about the intertwining of the Shadow World with the mundane world. They barred mundanes from the place by the simple expedient of using a glamour to convince them that the tavern had been knocked down and a bank erected in its place. The Devil is a nearly exclusively Downworlder haunt now.” Jem glanced up at the moon, a frown crossing his face. “It’s growing late. We’d better move on.”
After a single glance back at the Devil, Tessa moved after Jem, who continued to chat easily as they went, pointing out things of interest—the Temple Church, where the law courts were now, and where once the Knights Templar had sustained pilgrims on their route to the Holy Land. “They were friends of the Nephilim, the knights. Mundanes, but not without their own knowledge of the Shadow World. And of course,” he added, as they came out from the network of streets and onto Blackfriars Bridge itself, “many think that the Silent Brothers are the original Black Friars, though no one can prove it. This is it,” he added, gesturing before him. “My favorite place in London.”
Looking out over the bridge, Tessa couldn’t help but wonder what Jem liked so much about the place. It stretched from one bank of the Thames to the other, a low granite bridge with multiple arches, the parapets painted dark red and gilded with gold and scarlet paint that gleamed in the moonlight. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the railway bridge that ran along the east side of it, silent in the shadows but still an ugly latticework of iron railings stretching away to the river’s opposite bank.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jem said again, just as he had outside the Institute. “The railway bridge, it’s hideous. But it means people rarely come here to admire the view. I enjoy the solitude, and just the look of the river, silent under the moon.”
They walked to the center of the bridge, where Tessa leaned against a granite parapet and looked down. The Thames was black in the moonlight. The expanse of London stretched away on either bank, the great dome of St. Paul’s looming up behind them like a white ghost, and everything shrouded in the softening fog that laid a gently blurring veil over the harsh lines of the city.
Tessa glanced down at the river. The smell of salt and dirt and rot came off the water, mixing with the fog. Still there was something portentous about London’s river, as if it carried the weight of the past in its currents. A bit of old poetry came into her head. “‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,’” she said, half under her breath. Normally she would never have quoted poetry aloud in front of anyone, but there was something about Jem that made her feel that whatever she did, he wouldn’t pass judgment on her.
“I’ve heard that bit of rhyme before,” was all he said. “Will’s quoted it at me. What is it?”
“Spenser. ‘Prothalamion.’” Tessa frowned. “Will does seem to have an odd affinity for poetry for someone so . . . so . . .”
“Will reads constantly, and has an excellent memory,” said Jem. “There is very little he does not remember.” There was something in his voice that lent weight to his assertion beyond the mere statement of fact.
“You like Will, don’t you?” said Tessa. “I mean, you’re fond of him.”