“A—message?”
She paused before the fireplace, clasping her hands behind her back. “You need to go somewhere, Gabriel, unless you want me to turn you out of doors with only the key of the streets to your name.”
Turn me out of doors? Was this horrible woman actually throwing him out of the Institute? He thought of what his father had always told him: The Fairchilds don’t care about anyone but themselves and the Law. “I—the house in Pimlico—”
“The Consul will shortly be informed of all that transpired at Lightwood House,” said Charlotte. “Both of your family’s London residences will be confiscated in the name of the Clave, at least until they can be searched and it can be determined that your father left nothing behind that could provide the Council with clues.”
“Clues to what?”
“To your father’s plans,” she said, unfazed. “To his connection to Mortmain, his knowledge of Mortmain’s plans. To the Infernal Devices.”
“I’ve never even heard of the bloody Infernal Devices,” Gabriel protested, and then blushed. He had sworn, and in front of a lady. Not that Charlotte was quite like any other lady.
“I believe you,” she said. “I don’t know if Consul Wayland will, but that is your lookout. If you will give me an address—”
“I haven’t got one,” Gabriel said, in desperation. “Where do you think I could go?”
She just looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
“I want to stay with my brother,” he said finally, aware that he sounded petulant and angry, but not quite sure what to do about it.
“But your brother lives here,” she said. “And you have made your feelings about the Institute and about my claim to it very clear. Jem told me what you believe. That my father drove your uncle to suicide. It isn’t true, you know, but I don’t expect you to believe me. It does leave me wondering, however, why you would wish to remain here.”
“The Institute is a refuge.”
“Was your father planning on running it as a refuge?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what his plans are—what they were!”
“Then why did you go along with them?” Her voice was soft but merciless.
“Because he was my father!” Gabriel shouted. He spun away from Charlotte, his breath becoming ragged in his throat. Only barely aware of what he was doing, he wrapped his arms around himself, hugging his own body tight, as if he could keep himself from coming undone.
Memories of the past few weeks, memories that Gabriel had been doing his best to press back into the very recesses of his mind, threatened to burst out into the light: weeks in the house after the servants had been sent away, hearing the noises coming from the upstairs rooms, screams in the night, blood on the stairs in the morning, Father shouting gibberish from behind the locked library door, as if he could no longer form words in English …
“If you are going to throw me out on the street,” Gabriel said, with a sort of terrible desperation, “then do it now. I do not want to think I have got a home when I have not. I do not want to think I am going to see my brother again if I am not going to.”
“You think he would not go after you? Find you wherever you were?”
“I think he has proved who he cares for most,” said Gabriel, “and it is not me.” He slowly straightened, loosing his grip on himself. “Send me away or let me stay. I will not beg you.”
Charlotte sighed. “You will not have to,” she said. “Never before have I sent away anyone who told me they had nowhere else to go, and I will not start now. I will ask of you only one thing. To allow someone to live in the Institute, in the very heart of the Enclave, is to place my trust in their good intentions. Do not make me regret that I have trusted you, Gabriel Lightwood.”
The shadows had lengthened in the library. Tessa sat in a pool of light by one of the windows, beside a shaded blue lamp. A book had been open on her lap for several hours, but she had not been able to concentrate on it. Her eyes skidded over the words on the pages without absorbing them, and she would often find that she was pausing to try to remember who a character was, or why they were doing what they were doing.
She was in the middle of beginning chapter five yet again when the creak of a floorboard alerted her, and she looked up to find Will standing before her, damp-haired, his gloves in his hands.
“Will.” Tessa set the book down on the windowsill beside her. “You startled me.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said in a low voice. “If you are reading …” He began to turn away.
“I am not,” she said, and he stopped, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I cannot lose myself in words now. I cannot calm the distraction of my mind.”
“Nor I,” he said, turning fully now. He was no longer spattered in blood. His clothes were clean, and his skin mostly unmarked, though she could see the pinkish-white lines of grazes on his neck, disappearing down into the collar of his shirt, healing as the iratzes did their work.
“Is there news of my—is there news of Jem?”
“There is no change,” he said, though she had guessed as much. If there had been a change, Will would not have been here. “The Brothers will still not let anyone into the room, not even Charlotte.
“And why are you here?” he went on. “Sitting in the dark?”
“Benedict wrote on the wall of his study,” she said in a low voice. “Before he turned into that creature, I imagine, or while it was happening. I don’t know. ‘The Infernal Devices are without pity. The Infernal Devices are without regret. The Infernal Devices are without number. The Infernal Devices will never stop coming.’”
“The infernal devices? I assume he means Mortmain’s clockwork creatures. Not that we have seen any of them for months.”
“That does not mean they will not come back,” Tessa said. She looked down at the library table, its scratched veneer. How often Will and Jem must have sat here together, studying, carving their initials, as bored schoolboys did, into the table’s surface. “I am a danger to you here.”
“Tessa, we have talked about this before. You are not the danger. You are the thing Mortmain wants, yes, but if you were not here and protected, he could get you easily, and to what destruction would he turn your powers? We don’t know—only that he wants you for something, and that it is to our advantage to keep you from him. It is not selflessness. We Shadowhunters are not selfless.”
She looked up at that. “I think you are very selfless.” At his noise of disagreement she said: “Surely you must know that what you do is exemplary. There is a coldness to the Clave, it is true. We are dust and shadows. But you are like the heroes of ancient times, like Achilles and Jason.”
“Achilles was murdered with a poisoned arrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes; the Angel knows why anyone would want to be one.”
Tessa looked at him. There were shadows under his blue eyes, she saw, and his fingers were worrying at the material of his cuffs, thoughtlessly, as if he were not aware he was doing it. Months, she thought. Months since they had been alone together for more than a moment. They’d had only accidental encounters in hallways, in the courtyard, awkwardly exchanged pleasantries. She had missed his jokes, the books he had lent her, the flashes of laughter in his gaze. Caught in the memory of the easier Will of an earlier time, she spoke without thinking: