“Nothing. Something I read somewhere once.” Will turned to him. “You would be doing me a mercy, sending me to the demon realms. I might find what I am looking for. It is my only chance—and without that chance my life is worthless to me anyway.”
“Easy enough to say at seventeen,” said Magnus, with no small amount of coldness. “You are in love and you think that is all there is in the world. But the world is bigger than you, Will, and may have need of you. You are a Shadowhunter. You serve a greater cause. Your life is not yours to throw away.”
“Then nothing is mine,” said Will, and pushed himself away from the mantel, staggering a little as if he really were drunk. “If I don’t even own my own life—”
“Who ever said we were owed happiness?” Magnus said softly, and in his mind he saw the house of his childhood, and his mother flinching away from him with frightened eyes, and her husband, who was not his father, burning. “What about what we owe to others?”
“I’ve given them everything I have already,” said Will, seizing his coat off the back of the chair. “They’ve had enough out of me, and if this is what you have to say to me, then so have you—warlock.”
He spat the last word like a curse. Regretting his harshness, Magnus began to rise to his feet, but Will pushed past him toward the door. It slammed behind him. Moments later Magnus saw him pass by the front window, struggling into his coat as he walked, his head bent down against the wind.
Tessa sat before her vanity table, wrapped in her dressing gown and rolling the small button back and forth in her palm. She had asked to be left alone to do what Charlotte had requested of her. It was not the first time she had transformed into a man; the Dark Sisters had forced her to do it, more than once, and while it was a peculiar feeling, it was not what fueled her reluctance. It was the darkness she had seen in Starkweather’s eyes, the slight sheen of madness to his tone when he spoke of the spoils he had taken. It was not a mind she wanted to acquaint herself with further.
She did not have to do it, she thought. She could walk out there and tell them she had tried and it had not worked. But she knew even as the thought flickered through her mind, she could not do that. Somehow she had come to think of herself as bound with loyalty to the Institute’s Shadowhunters. They had protected her, shown her kindness, taught her much of the truth of what she was, and they had the same goal she did—find Mortmain and destroy him. She thought of Jem’s kind eyes on her, steady and silver and full of faith. With a deep breath she closed her fingers around the button.
The darkness came and enveloped her, wrapping her in its cool silence. The faint sound of the fire crackling in the grate, the wind against the panes of the window, vanished. Blackness and silence. She felt her body Change: Her hands felt large and swollen, shot through with the pains of arthritis. Her back ached, her head felt heavy, her feet were throbbing and painful, and there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Rotting teeth, she thought, and felt ill, so ill that she had to force her mind back to the darkness surrounding her, looking for the light, the connection.
It came, but not as the light usually did, as steady as a beacon. It came in shattered fragments, as if she were watching a mirror break into pieces. Each piece held an image that whipped by her, some at terrifying speed. She saw the image of a horse rearing back, a dark hill covered in snow, the black basalt Council room of the Clave, a cracked headstone. She struggled to seize and catch at a single image. Here was one, a memory: Starkweather dancing at a ball with a laughing woman in an empire-waisted ball gown. Tessa discarded it, reaching for another:
The house was small, nestled in the shadows between one hill and another. Starkweather watched from the darkness of a copse of trees as the front door opened and out came a man. Even in memory Tessa felt Starkweather’s heart begin to beat more quickly. The man was tall, broad-shouldered—and as green-skinned as a lizard. His hair was black. The child he held by the hand, by contrast, seemed as normal as a child could be—small, chubby-fisted, pink-skinned.
Tessa knew the man’s name, because Starkweather knew it.
John Shade.
Shade hoisted the child up onto his shoulders as through the door of the house spilled a number of odd-looking metal creatures, like a child’s jointed dolls, but human-size, and with skin made of shining metal. The creatures were featureless. Though, oddly, they wore clothes—the rough workman’s coveralls of a Yorkshire farmer on some, and on others plain muslin dresses. The automatons joined hands and began to sway as if they were at a country dance. The child laughed and clapped his hands.
“Look well on this, my son,” said the green-skinned man, “for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince.”
“John!” came a voice from inside the house; a woman leaned through the window. She had long hair the color of a cloudless sky. “John, come in. Someone will see! And you’ll frighten the boy!”
“He’s not frightened at all, Anne.” The man laughed, and set the boy down on the ground, ruffling his hair. “My little clockwork prince . . .”
A swell of hatred rose in Starkweather’s heart at the memory, so violent that it ripped Tessa free, sending her spinning through the darkness again. She began to realize what was happening. Starkweather was becoming senile, losing the thread that connected thought and memory. What came and went in his mind was seemingly random. With an effort she tried to visualize the Shade family again, and caught the brief edge of a memory—a room torn apart, cogs and cams and gears and ripped metal everywhere, fluid leaking as black as blood, and the green-skinned man and blue-haired woman lying dead among the ruins. Then that, too, was gone, and she saw, again and again, the face of the girl from the portrait on the stairwell—the child with the fair hair and stubborn expression—saw her riding a small pony, her face set determinedly, saw her hair blowing in the wind off the moors—saw her screaming and writhing in pain as a stele was set to her skin and black Marks stained its whiteness. And last, Tessa saw her own face, appearing out of the shadowy gloom of the York Institute’s nave, and she felt the wave of his shock ripple through her, so strong that it threw her out of his body and back into her own.
There was a faint thump as the button fell out of her hand and struck the floor. Tessa raised her head and looked into the mirror over her vanity. She was herself again, and the bitter taste in her mouth now was blood where she had bitten her lip.
She rose to her feet, feeling ill, and went over to the window, throwing it open to feel the cool night air on her sweaty skin. The night outside was heavy with shadow; there was little wind, and the black gates of the Institute seemed to loom before her, their motto speaking more than ever of mortality and death. A glimmer of movement caught her eye. She looked down and saw a white shape gazing up at her from the stony courtyard below. A face, twisted but recognizable. Mrs. Dark.
She gasped and jerked back reflexively, out of sight of the window. A wave of dizziness came over her. She shook it off fiercely, her hands gripping the sill, and pulled herself forward again, gazing down with dread—
But the courtyard was empty, nothing moving inside it but shadows. She closed her eyes, then opened them again slowly, and put her hand to the ticking angel at her throat. There had been nothing there, she told herself, just the rags of her wild imagination. Telling herself she’d better rein in her daydreaming or she’d end up as mad as old Starkweather, she slid the window shut.