“He felt only sorrow for you,” she said immediately. “I know he did; he told me as much.”
“Sorrow but not pity,” said Will. “Jem has always given me exactly what I needed in the way that I needed it, even when I did not know myself what I required. All parabatai are devoted. We must be, to give so much of ourselves to each other, even if we gain in strength by doing so. But with Jem it is different. For so many years I needed him to live, and he kept me alive. I thought he did not know that he was doing it, but maybe he did.”
“Perhaps,” Tessa said. “He would never have counted a moment of such effort as wasted.”
“He has never said anything to you of it?”
She shook her head. Her small hands, in their white gloves, were in fists in her lap. “He speaks of you only with the greatest pride, Will,” she said. “He admires you more than you could ever know. When he learned of the curse, he was heartbroken for you, but there was also, almost, a sort of …”
“Vindication?”
She nodded. “He had always believed you were good,” she said. “And then it was proven.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “To be good and to be cursed, it is not the same thing.”
She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin, only the cloth of the gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer. “You are good, Will,” she said. “There is no one better placed than I am to be able to say with perfect confidence how good you really are.”
He said slowly, not wanting her to move her hands away, “You know, when we were fifteen years old, Yanluo, the demon who murdered Jem’s parents, was finally slain. Jem’s uncle determined to relocate himself from China to Idris and invited Jem to come and live with him there. Jem refused—for me. He said you do not leave your parabatai. That it was part of the words of the oath. ‘Thy people shall be my people.’ I wonder, if I had had the chance to return to my family, would I have done the same for him?”
“You are doing it,” Tessa said. “Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem’s sake.”
“And yours,” he said before he could stop himself. She withdrew her hands from his, and he cursed himself silently and savagely: How could you have been so foolish? How could you, after two months? You’ve been so careful. Your love for her is only a burden she endures out of politeness. Remember that.
But Tessa was only pulling aside the curtain as the carriage came to a stop. They were rolling into a mews, from whose entry hung a sign: all drivers of vehicles are directed to walk their horses while passing under this archway. “We are here,” she said, as if he had not said a word. Perhaps he had not, Will thought. Perhaps he had not spoken aloud. Perhaps he was only losing his mind. Certainly it was not unimaginable, under the circumstances.
When the carriage door opened, it brought with it a blast of cool Chelsea air. He saw Tessa raise her head as Cyril helped her down. He joined Tessa on the cobblestones. The place smelled of the Thames. Before the Embankment had been built, the river had come much closer to these rows of houses, their edges softened by gaslight in the darkness. Now the river was separated by a greater distance, but one could still smell the salt-dirt-iron tang of water.
The front of No. 16 was Georgian, made of plain red brickwork, with a bay window that jutted out over the front door. There was a small paved court and a garden behind an elegant fence with a great deal of delicate scrolling ironwork. The gate was already open. Tessa pushed through and marched up the front steps to knock upon the door, Will only a few steps behind her.
The door was opened by Woolsey Scott, wearing a canary-yellow brocaded silk dressing gown over trousers and a shirt. He had a gold monocle perched in one eye socket, and regarded them both through it with some distaste. “Bother,” he said. “I would have had the footman answer and send you away, but I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who?” Tessa inquired, which did not seem to Will to be germane to the issue, but it was Tessa’s way—she was forever asking questions; leave her alone in a room, and she’d begin asking questions of the furniture and plants.
“Someone with absinthe.”
“Swallow enough of that stuff and you’ll think you’re somebody else,” said Will. “We’re seeking Magnus Bane; if he isn’t here, just tell us and we’ll not take up more of your time.”
Woolsey sighed as if greatly prevailed upon. “Magnus,” he called. “It’s your blue-eyed boy.”
There were footsteps in the corridor behind Woolsey, and Magnus appeared in full evening dress, as if he had just come from a ball. Starched white shirtfront and cuffs, swallowtail black coat, and hair like a ragged fringe of dark silk. His eyes flicked from Will to Tessa. “And to what do I owe the honor, at such a late hour?”
“A favor,” Will said, and amended himself when Magnus’s eyebrows went up. “A question.”
Woolsey sighed and stepped back from the door. “Very well. Come into the drawing room.”
No one offered to take their hats or coats, and once they reached the drawing room, Tessa stripped off her gloves and stood with her hands close to the fire, shivering slightly. Her hair was a damp mass of curls at the back of her neck, and Will looked away from her before he could remember what it felt like to put his hands through that hair and feel the strands wind about his fingers. It was easier at the Institute, with Jem and the others to distract him, to remember that Tessa was not his to recall that way. Here, feeling as if he were facing the world with her by his side—feeling that she was here for him instead of, quite sensibly, for the health of her own fiancé—it was nearly impossible.
Woolsey threw himself into a flower-patterned armchair. He had plucked the monocle from his eye and was swinging it around his fingers on its long gold chain. “I simply cannot wait to hear what this is about.”
Magnus moved toward the fireplace and leaned against the mantel, the very picture of a young gentleman at leisure. The room was painted a pale blue, and decorated with paintings that featured vast fields of granite, gleaming blue seas, and men and women in classical dress. Will thought he recognized a reproduction of an Alma-Tadema—or at least it must have been a reproduction, mustn’t it?
“Don’t gape at the walls, Will,” said Magnus. “You have been all but absent for months. What brings you here now?”
“I did not want to trouble you,” Will muttered. It was only partly the truth. Once the curse Will had believed he was under had been proved, by Magnus, to be false, he had avoided Magnus—not because he was angry with the warlock, or had no more need of him, but because the sight of Magnus caused him pain. He had written him a short letter, telling him what had happened and that his secret was a secret no more. He had spoken of Jem’s engagement to Tessa. He had asked that Magnus not reply. “But this—this is a crisis.”