“It is all I can tell you,” said Will. “It would hardly benefit me to hold anything back unnecessarily, when I know what I’m asking. For you to find a needle in—God, not even a haystack. A needle in a tower full of other needles.”
“Plunge your hand into a tower of needles,” said Magnus, “and you are likely to cut yourself badly. Are you really sure this is what you want?”
“I am sure that the alternative is worse,” said Will, staring at the blackened place on the floor where the demon had crouched. He was exhausted. The energy rune he’d given himself that morning before leaving for the Council meeting had worn off by noon, and his head throbbed. “I have had five years to live with it. The idea of living with it for even one more frightens me more than the idea of death.”
“You are a Shadowhunter; you are not afraid of death.”
“Of course I am,” said Will. “Everyone is afraid of death. We may be born of angels, but we have no more knowledge of what comes after death than you do.”
Magnus moved closer to him and sat down on the opposite side of the divan. His green-gold eyes shone like a cat’s in the dimness. “You don’t know that there is only oblivion after death.”
“You don’t know that there isn’t, do you? Jem believes we are all reborn, that life is a wheel. We die, we turn, we are reborn as we deserve to be reborn, based on our doings in this world.” Will looked down at his bitten nails. “I will probably be reborn as a slug that someone salts.”
“The Wheel of Transmigration,” said Magnus. His lips twitched into a smile. “Well, think of it this way. You must have done something right in your last life, to be reborn as you were. Nephilim.”
“Oh, yes,” said Will in a dead tone. “I’ve been very lucky.” He leaned his head back against the divan, exhausted. “I take it you’ll be needing more . . . ingredients? I think Old Mol over at Cross Bones is getting sick of the sight of me.”
“I have other connections,” said Magnus, clearly taking pity on him, “and I need to do more research first. If you could tell me the nature of the curse—”
“No.” Will sat up. “I can’t. I told you before, I took a great risk even in telling you of its existence. If I told you any more—”
“Then what? Let me guess. You don’t know, but you’re sure it would be bad.”
“Don’t start making me think coming to you was a mistake—”
“This has something to do with Tessa, doesn’t it?”
Over the past five years Will had trained himself well not to show emotion—surprise, affection, hopefulness, joy. He was fairly sure his expression didn’t change, but he heard the strain in his voice when he said, “Tessa?”
“It’s been five years,” said Magnus. “Yet somehow you have managed all this time, telling no one. What desperation drove you to me, in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm? What has changed at the Institute? I can think of only one thing—and quite a pretty one, with big gray eyes—”
Will got to his feet so abruptly, he nearly tipped the divan over. “There are other things,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “Jem is dying.”
Magnus looked at him, a cool, even stare. “He has been dying for years,” he said. “No curse laid on you could cause or repair his condition.”
Will realized his hands were shaking; he tightened them into fists. “You don’t understand—”
“I know you are parabatai,” said Magnus. “I know that his death will be a great loss for you. But what I don’t know—”
“You know what you need to know.” Will felt cold all over, though the room was warm and he still wore his coat. “I can pay you more, if it will make you stop asking me questions.”
Magnus put his feet up on the divan. “Nothing will make me stop asking you questions,” he said. “But I will do my best to respect your reticence.”
Relief loosened Will’s hands. “Then, you will still help me.”
“I will still help you.” Magnus put his hands behind his head and leaned back, looking at Will through half-lowered lids. “Though I could help you better if you told me the truth, I will do what I can. You interest me oddly, Will Herondale.”
Will shrugged. “That will do well enough as a reason. When do you plan to try again?”
Magnus yawned. “Probably this weekend. I shall send you a message by Saturday if there are . . . developments.”
Developments. Curse. Truth. Jem. Dying. Tessa. Tessa, Tessa, Tessa. Her name rang in Will’s mind like the chime of a bell; he wondered if any other name on earth had such an inescapable resonance to it. She couldn’t have been named something awful, could she, like Mildred. He couldn’t imagine lying awake at night, staring up at the ceiling while invisible voices whispered “Mildred” in his ears. But Tessa—
“Thank you,” he said abruptly. He had gone from being too cold to being too warm; it was stifling in the room, still smelling of burned candle wax. “I will look forward to hearing from you, then.”
“Yes, do,” said Magnus, and he closed his eyes. Will couldn’t tell whether he was actually asleep or simply waiting for Will to leave; either way, it was clearly a hint that he expected Will to depart. Will, not entirely without relief, took it.
Sophie was on her way to Miss Jessamine’s room, to sweep the ashes and clean the grate of the fireplace, when she heard voices in the hall. In her old place of employment she had been taught to “give room”—to turn and look at the walls while her employers passed by, and do her best to resemble a piece of furniture, something inanimate that they could ignore.
She had been shocked on coming to the Institute to find that things were not managed that way here. First, for such a large house to have so few servants had surprised her. She had not realized at first that the Shadowhunters did much for themselves that a typical family of good breeding would find beneath them—started their own fires, did some of their own shopping, kept rooms like the training area and the weapons room cleaned and neat. She had been shocked at the familiarity with which Agatha and Thomas had treated their employers, not realizing that her fellow servants had come from families that had served Shadowhunters through the generations—or that they’d had magic of their own.
She herself had come from a poor family, and had been called “stupid” and been slapped often when she’d first begun working as a maid—because she hadn’t been used to delicate furniture or real silver, or china so thin you could see the darkness of the tea through the sides. But she had learned, and when it had become clear that she was going to be very pretty, she had been promoted to parlor maid. A parlor maid’s lot was a precarious one. She was meant to look beautiful for the household, and therefore her salary had begun to go down each year that she’d aged, once she had turned eighteen.
It had been such a relief, coming to work at the Institute—where no one minded that she was nearly twenty, or demanded that she stare at the walls, or cared whether she spoke before she was spoken to—that she had almost thought it worth the mutilation of her pretty face at the hands of her last employer. She still avoided looking at herself in mirrors if she could, but the dreadful horror of loss had faded. Jessamine mocked her for the long scar that disfigured her cheek, but the others seemed not to notice, save Will, who occasionally said something unpleasant, but in an almost perfunctory way, as if it were expected of him but his heart were not in it.