“Which, fortunately, you did not need to use to Change into Starkweather. He seemed quite happy simply to give us the Shade files.”
“Thank goodness,” said Tessa. “I wasn’t looking forward to it. He seems such an unpleasant, bitter man. But if it ever turns out to be necessary . . .” She took something from her pocket and held it up, something that glinted in the carriage’s dim light. “A button,” she said smugly. “It fell from the cuff of his jacket this morning, and I picked it up.”
Jem smiled. “Very clever, Tessa. I knew we’d be glad we brought you with us—”
He broke off with a cough. Tessa looked at him in alarm, and even Will was roused out of his silent despondency, turning to look at Jem with narrowed eyes. Jem coughed again, his hand pressed to his mouth, but when he took it away, there was no blood visible. Tessa saw Will’s shoulders relax.
“Just some dust in my throat,” Jem reassured them. He looked not ill but very tired, though his exhaustion only served to point up the delicacy of his features. His beauty did not blaze like Will’s did in fierce colors and repressed fire, but it had its own muted perfection, the loveliness of snow falling against a silver-gray sky.
“Your ring!” She started up suddenly as she remembered that she was still wearing it. She put the button back into her pocket, then reached to draw the Carstairs ring off her hand. “I had meant to give it back to you earlier,” she said, placing the silver circlet in his palm. “I forgot . . .”
He curled his fingers around hers. Despite her thoughts of snow and gray skies, his hand was surprisingly warm. “That’s all right,” he said in a low voice. “I like the way it looks on you.”
She felt her cheeks warm. Before she could answer, the train whistle sounded. Voices cried out that they were in London, Kings Cross Station. The train began to slow as the platform came into view. The hubbub of the station rose to assault Tessa’s ears, along with the sound of the train braking. Jem said something, but his words were lost in the noise; it sounded like a warning, but Will was already on his feet, his hand reaching for the compartment door latch. He swung it open and leaped out and down. If he were not a Shadowhunter, Tessa thought, he would have fallen, and badly, but as it was, he simply landed lightly on his feet and began to run, pushing his way among the crowding porters, the commuters, the gentility traveling north for the weekend with their massive trunks and hunting hounds on leashes, the newspaper boys and pickpockets and costermongers and all the other human traffic of the grand station.
Jem was on his feet, hand reaching for the door—but he turned back and looked at Tessa, and she saw an expression cross his face, an expression that said that he realized that if he fled after Will, she could not follow. With another long look at her, he latched the door shut and sank into the seat opposite her as the train came to a stop.
“But Will—,” she began.
“He will be all right,” said Jem with conviction. “You know how he is. Sometimes he just wants to be alone. And I doubt he wishes to take part in recounting today’s experiences to Charlotte and the others.” When she didn’t move her eyes from his, he repeated, gently, “Will can take care of himself, Tessa.”
She thought of the bleak look in Will’s eyes when he had spoken to her, starker than the Yorkshire moors they had just left behind them. She hoped Jem was right.
THE CURSE
An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Magnus heard the sound of the front door opening and the following clatter of raised voices, and thought immediately, Will. And then was amused that he had thought it. The Shadow-hunter boy was becoming like an annoying relative, he thought as he folded down a page of the book he was reading—Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods; Camille would be furious he had dog-eared her volume—someone whose habits you knew well but could not change. Someone whose presence you could recognize by the sound of their boots in the hallway. Someone who felt free to argue with the footman when he’d been given orders to tell everyone that you were not at home.
The parlor door flew open, and Will stood on the threshold, looking half-triumphant and half-wretched—quite a feat. “I knew you were here,” he announced as Magnus sat up straight on the sofa, swinging his boots to the floor. “Now, will you tell this—this overgrown bat to stop hovering over my shoulder?” He indicated Archer, Camille’s subjugate and Magnus’s temporary footman, who was indeed lurking at Will’s side. His face was set in a look of disapproval, but then it was always set in a look of disapproval. “Tell him you want to see me.”
Magnus set his book down on the table beside him. “But maybe I don’t want to see you,” he said reasonably. “I told Archer to let no one in, not to let no one in but you.”
“He threatened me,” Archer said in his hissing not-quite-human voice. “I shall tell my mistress.”
“You do that,” said Will, but his eyes were on Magnus, blue and anxious. “Please. I have to talk to you.”
Drat the boy, Magnus thought. After an exhausting day spent clearing a memory-blocking spell for a member of the Penhallow family, he had wanted only to rest. He had stopped listening for Camille’s step in the hall, or waiting for her message, but he still preferred this room to others—this room, where her personal touch seemed to cling to the thorned roses on the wallpaper, the faint perfume that rose from the draperies. He had looked forward to an evening spent by the fire here—a glass of wine, a book, and being left strictly alone.
But now here was Will Herondale, his expression a study in pain and desperation, wanting Magnus’s help. He was really going to have to do something about this annoying softhearted impulse to assist the desperate, Magnus thought. That, and his weakness for blue eyes.
“Very well,” he said with a martyred sigh. “You may stay and talk to me. But I warn you, I’m not raising a demon. Not before I’ve had my supper. Unless you have turned up some sort of hard proof . . .”
“No.” Will came eagerly into the room, shutting the door in Archer’s face. He reached around and locked it, for good measure, and then strode over to the fire. It was chilly out. The visible bit of window not blocked by drapes showed the square outside darkening to a blackish twilight, leaves blown rattling across the pavement by a brisk-looking wind. Will drew off his gloves, laid them on the mantel, and stretched his hands out to the flames. “I don’t want you to raise a demon.”
“Huh.” Magnus put his booted feet up on the small rosewood table before the sofa, another gesture that would have infuriated Camille, had she been there. “That’s good news, I suppose—”
“I want you to send me through. To the demon realms.”
Magnus choked. “You want me to do what?”
Will’s profile was black against the flickering fire. “Create a portal to the demon worlds and send me through. You can do that, can’t you?”