Clockwork Princess (11 page)

“Not very heroic,” he said suddenly without opening his eyes, though his voice was steady.

Tessa started, and leaned forward. She had slid her fingers into his earlier, and their linked hands lay beside him on the bed. His fingers were cool in hers, his pulse slow. “What do you mean?”

“Today,” he said in a low voice, and coughed. “Collapsing and coughing up blood all over Lightwood House—”

“It only improved the look of the place,” said Tessa.

“Now you sound like Will.” Jem gave a sleepy smile. “And you’re changing the subject, just like he would.”

“Of course I am. As if I would ever think any less of you for being ill; you know that I don’t. And you were quite heroic today. Though Will was saying earlier,” she added, “that heroes all come to bad ends, and he could not imagine why anyone would want to be one anyway.”

“Ah.” Jem’s hand squeezed hers briefly, and then let it go. “Well, Will is looking at it from the hero’s viewpoint, isn’t he? But as for the rest of us, it’s an easy answer.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. Heroes endure because we need them. Not for their own sakes.”

“You speak of them as though you were not one.” She reached to brush the hair from his forehead. He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing. “Jem—have you ever—” She hesitated. “Have you ever thought of ways to prolong your life that are not a cure for the drug?”

At that his eyelids flew open. “What do you mean?”

She thought of Will, on the floor of the attic, choking on holy water. “Becoming a vampire. You would live forever—”

He scrambled upright against the pillows. “Tessa,
no
. Don’t—you can’t think that way.”

She darted her eyes away from him. “Is the thought of becoming a Downworlder truly so horrible to you?”

“Tessa …” He exhaled. “I am a Shadowhunter. Nephilim. Like my parents before me. It is the heritage I claim, just as I claim my mother’s heritage as part of myself. It does not mean I hate my father. But I honor the gift they gave me, the blood of the Angel, the trust placed in me, the vows I have taken. Nor, I think, would I make a very good vampire. Vampires by and large despise us. Sometimes they Turn a Nephilim, as a joke, but that vampire is scorned by the others. We carry day and the fire of angels in our veins, everything they hate. They would shun me, and the Nephilim would shun me. I would no longer be Will’s
parabatai
, no longer be welcome in the Institute. No, Tessa. I would rather die and be reborn and see the sun again, than live to the end of the world without daylight.”

“A Silent Brother, then,” she said. “The
Codex
says that the runes they put upon themselves are powerful enough to arrest their mortality.”

“Silent Brothers cannot marry, Tessa.” He had lifted his chin. Tessa had known for a long time that beneath Jem’s gentleness lay a stubbornness as strong as Will’s. She could see it now, steel under silk.

“You know I would rather have you alive and not married to me than—” Her throat closed on the word.

His eyes softened slightly. “The path of Silent Brotherhood is not open to me. With the
yin fen
in my blood, contaminating it, I cannot survive the runes they must put upon themselves. I would have to cease the drug until it was purged from my system, and that would most likely kill me.” He must have seen something in her expression, for he gentled his voice. “And it is not much of a life they have, Silent Brothers, shadows and darkness, silence and—no music.” He swallowed. “And besides, I do not wish to live forever.”

“I may live forever,” Tessa said. The enormity of it was something she could still not quite comprehend. It was as hard to comprehend that your life would never end as it was to comprehend that it would.

“I know,” Jem said. “And I am sorry for it, for I think it is a burden no one should have to bear. You know I believe we live again, Tessa. I will return, if not in this body. Souls that love each other are drawn to each other in their next lives. I will see Will, my parents, my uncles, Charlotte and Henry …”

“But you will not see me.” It was not the first time she had thought it, though she often pushed the thought down when it rose.
If I am immortal, then I have only this, this one life. I will not turn and change as you do, James. I will not see you in Heaven, or on the banks of the great river, or in whatever life lies beyond this one
.

“I see you now.” He reached out and put his hand on her cheek, his clear silver-gray eyes searching hers.

“And I see you,” she whispered, and he smiled tiredly, closing his eyes. She put her hand over his, her cheek resting in the hollow of his palm. She sat, wordless, his fingers cool against her skin, until his breathing slowed and his fingers went boneless in hers; he had fallen asleep. With a rueful smile she lowered his hand gently so that it rested on the coverlet, by his side.

The bedroom door opened; Tessa turned round in her chair and saw Will standing on the threshold, still in his coat and gloves. One look at his stark, distraught face had her rising to her feet and following Will out into the corridor.

Will was already striding down the corridor with the haste of a man with the devil at his heels. Tessa closed the bedroom door carefully behind her and hurried after him. “What is it, Will? What’s happened?”

“I just came back from the East End,” Will said. There was pain in his voice, pain she had not heard the likes of since that day in the drawing room when she had told him she was engaged to Jem. “I had gone to look for more
yin fen
. But there is no more.”

Tessa nearly stumbled as they reached the steps. “What do you mean, there’s no more? Jem has a supply, does he not?”

Will turned to face her, walking backward down the stairs. “It’s gone,” he said curtly. “He did not want you to know, but there is no way to hide it. It is gone, and I cannot find more. I have always been the one to buy it. I had suppliers—but they have either vanished or come up empty-handed. I went first to that place—that place where you came and found me, you and Jem, together. They had no
yin fen
.”

“Then another place—”

“I went
everywhere
,” Will said, spinning back around. They emerged into the corridor on the second level of the Institute; the library and the drawing room were here. Both their doors were open, spilling yellow light into the hall. “Everywhere. In the last place I went, someone told me that it had all been deliberately bought up in the last few weeks. There is nothing.”

“But Jem,” Tessa said, shock buzzing through her like fire. “Without the
yin fen
…”

“He’ll die.” Will paused for a moment in front of the library door; his eyes met hers. “Just this afternoon he gave me permission to seek a cure for him. To search. And now he will die because I cannot keep him alive long enough to find it.”

“No,” Tessa said. “He will not die; we will not let him.”

Will moved into the library, Tessa beside him, his gaze roaming over the familiar room, the lamplit tables, the shelves of old volumes. “There were books,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Books I was consulting, volumes about rare poisons.” He moved away from her, toward a nearby shelf, his gloved hands running feverishly over the tomes that rested there. “It was years ago, before Jem forbade any more research. I have forgotten—”

Tessa moved to join him, her skirts swishing about her ankles. “Will, stop.”

“But I have to
remember
.” He moved to another shelf, and then another, his long, slender body casting an angled shadow across the floor. “I have to find—”

“Will, you can’t read every book in the library in time. Stop.” She had moved behind him, close enough to see where the collar of his jacket was damp from the rain. “This will not help Jem.”

“Then what will?
What will?
” He reached for another book, stared at it, and threw it to the floor; Tessa jumped.

“Stop,” she said again, and caught at his sleeve, turning him to face her. He was flushed, breathless, his arm as tense as iron beneath her grip. “When you searched for the cure before, you did not know what you know now. You did not have the allies you have now. We will go and we will ask Magnus Bane. He has eyes and ears in Downworld; he knows of all kinds of magic. He helped you with your curse; he can help us with this as well.”

“There was no curse,” said Will, as if he were reciting the lines of a play; his eyes were glassy.

“Will—listen to me. Please. Let us go to Magnus. He can help.”

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Tessa stared. She could not help watching him when she knew he could not see her—the fine spidering dark lashes against his cheekbones, the faint blue tint to his eyelids. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes. Of course. Tessa—thank you. I did not think.”

“You were grieved,” she said, suddenly aware that she was still holding his arm, and that they were close enough that she could have pressed a kiss to his cheek, or wrapped her arms about his neck to comfort him. She stepped back, releasing him. His eyes opened. “And you had thought he would always forbid you from searching for a cure. You know I have never been at peace with that. I had thought of Magnus before.”

His eyes searched her face. “But you have never asked him?”

She shook her head. “Jem did not wish it. But now— All is changed now.”

“Yes.” He drew back from her, his eyes lingering on her face. “I will go down and call Cyril to fetch the carriage. Meet me in the courtyard.”

Will remembered.

Another day, months ago, in Jem’s bedroom. Rain pounding against the windows of the Institute, streaking the glass with clear lines.

“And that is all?” Jem had asked. “That is the whole of it? The truth?” He’d been sitting at his desk, one of his legs bent up on the chair beneath him; he’d looked very young. His violin had been propped against the side of the chair. He had been playing it when Will had come in and, without preamble, announced that it was the end of pretense—he had a confession to make, and he meant to make it now.

That had ended the Bach. Jem had put the violin away, his eyes on Will’s face the whole time, anxiety blooming behind his silver eyes as Will had paced and spoken, paced and spoken, until he had run out of words.

“That is all of it,” Will had said finally when he was done. “And I do not blame you if you hate me. I could understand it.”

There’d been a long pause. Jem’s gaze had been steady on his face, steady and silver in the wavering light of the fire. “I could never hate you, William.”

Will’s guts contracted now as he saw another face, a pair of steady blue-gray eyes looking up at his. “I tried to hate you, Will, but I could never manage it,” she had said. In that moment Will had been painfully aware that what he had told Jem was not “the whole of it.” There was more truth. There was his love for Tessa. But it was his burden to bear, not Jem’s. It was something that must be hidden for Jem to be happy. “I deserve your hatred,” Will had said to Jem, his voice cracking. “I put you in danger. I believed I was cursed and that all who cared for me would die; I let myself care for you, and let you be a brother to me, risking the danger to you—”