Clockwork Angel

4 WE ARE SHADOWS

The moment Tessa transformed back to her own shape, she had to suffer a barrage of questions. For people who lived in a shadow world of magic, the assembled Nephilim seemed surprisingly awed by her ability, which only served to underline what Tessa had already begun to suspect—that her shape-changing talent was exceedingly unusual. Even Charlotte, who had known about it before Tessa's demonstration, seemed fascinated.

"So you must be holding something that belongs to the person you're transforming into?" Charlotte asked for the second time. Sophie and the older woman, who Tessa suspected was the cook, had already taken away the dinner plates and had served fancy cake and tea, but none of the diners had touched it yet. "You can't simply look at someone and—"

"I explained that already." Tessa's head was beginning to hurt. "I must be holding something that belongs to them, or a bit of hair or an eyelash. Something that's theirs. Otherwise nothing happens."

"Do you think a vial of blood would do the trick?" Will asked, in a tone of academic interest.

"Probably—I don't know. I've never tried it." Tessa took a sip of her tea, which had grown cold.

"And you're saying that the Dark Sisters knew this was your talent? They knew you had this ability before you did?" Charlotte asked.

"Yes. It's why they wanted me in the first place."

Henry shook his head. "But how did they know? I don't quite understand that part."

"I don't know," Tessa said, not for the first time. "They never explained it to me. All I know is what I told you—that they seemed to know exactly what it was I could do, and how to train me to do it. They spent hours with me, every day ..." Tessa swallowed against the bitterness in her mouth. Memories of how it had been rose up in her mind—the hours and hours in the cellar room at the Dark House, the way they had screamed at her that Nate would die if she couldn't Change as they wanted her to, the agony when she finally learned to do it. "It hurt, at first," she whispered. "As if my bones were snapping, melting inside my body. They would force me to Change two, three, then a dozen times a day, until I would finally lose consciousness. And then, the next day, they'd start at it again. I was locked in that room, so I couldn't try to leave... ." She took a ragged breath. "That last day, they tested me by asking me to Change into a girl who had died. She had memories of being attacked with a dagger, being stabbed. Of some thing chasing her into an alley—"

"Perhaps it was the girl Jem and I found." Will sat up straight, his eyes shining. "Jem and I guessed she must have escaped from an attack and run out into the night. I believe they sent the Shax demon after her to bring her back, but I killed it. They must have wondered what happened."

"The girl I changed into was named Emma Bayliss," Tessa said, in a half whisper. "She had very fair hair—tied in little pink bows—and she was only a little thing."

Will nodded as if the description were familiar to him.

"Then they did wonder what had happened to her. That's why they had me Change into her. When I told them she was dead, they seemed relieved."

"The poor soul," Charlotte murmured. "So you can Change into the dead? Not only the living?"

Tessa nodded. "Their voices speak in my mind when I Change too. The difference is that many of them can remember the moment they died."

"Ugh." Jessamine shuddered. "How morbid."

Tessa looked over at Will. Mr. Herondale, she chided herself silently, but it was hard to think of him that way. She felt somehow as if she knew him better than she really did. But that was foolishness. "You found me because you were looking for the murderer of Emma Bayliss," she said. "But she was only one dead human girl. One dead—what do you call it?—mundane. Why so much time and effort to find out what happened to her?"

For a moment Will's eyes met hers, his own a very dark blue. Then his expression changed—only a slight change, but she saw it, though she could not have said what the change meant. "Oh, I wouldn't have bothered, but Charlotte insisted. She felt there was something larger at work. And once Jem and I infiltrated the Pandemonium Club, and heard rumors of the other murders, we realized there was more going on than the death of one girl. Whether or not we like mundanes particularly, we can't allow them to be systematically slaughtered. It's the reason we exist."

Charlotte leaned forward across the table. "The Dark Sisters never mentioned what use they intended to make of your abilities, did they?"

"You know about the Magister," Tessa said. "They said they were preparing me for him."

"For him to do what?" Will asked. "Eat you for dinner?"

Tessa shook her head. "To—to marry me, they said."

"To marry you?" Jessamine was openly scornful. "That's ridiculous. They were probably going to blood sacrifice you and didn't want you to panic."

"I don't know about that," Will said. "I looked in several rooms before I found Tessa. I remember one that was done up surprisingly like a wedding chamber. White hangings on an enormous bed. A white dress hanging in the wardrobe. It looked about your size." He eyed Tessa thoughtfully.

"Ceremonial marriage can be a very powerful thing," Charlotte said. "Performed properly, it could allow someone access to your ability, Tessa, even the power to control you." She drummed her fingertips thoughtfully on the tabletop. "As for 'the Magister,' I've researched the term in the archives. It is often used to denote the head of a coven or other group of magicians. The sort of group the Pandemonium Club imagines itself to be. I can't help but feel that the Magister and the Pandemonium Club are connected."

"We've investigated them before and never managed to catch them doing anything dodgy," Henry pointed out. "It isn't against the Law to be an idiot."

"Lucky for you," Jessamine said under her breath.

Henry looked hurt, but said nothing. Charlotte cast Jessamine a freezing look.

"Henry is right," said Will. "It isn't as if Jem and I didn't catch them doing the odd illegal thing—drinking absinthe laced with demon powders, and so forth. As long as they were only hurting themselves, it hardly seemed worth involving ourselves. But if they've graduated to harming others ..."

"Do you know who any of them are?" Henry asked curiously.

"The mundanes, no," Will said dismissively. "There never seemed a reason to find out, and many of them went masked or disguised at club events. But I recognized quite a few of the Downworlders. Magnus Bane, Lady Belcourt, Ragnor Fell, de Quincey—"

"De Quincey? I hope he wasn't breaking any laws. You know how much trouble we've had finding a head vampire we can see eye to eye with," fretted Charlotte.

Will smiled into his tea. "Whenever I saw him, he was being a perfect angel."

After a hard look at him, Charlotte turned to Tessa. "Did the servant girl you mentioned—Miranda—have your ability? Or what about Emma?"

"I don't think so. If Miranda did, they would have been training her as well, wouldn't they, and Emma didn't remember anything like that."

"And they never mentioned the Pandemonium Club? Some larger purpose to what they were doing?"

Tessa racked her brain. What was it the Dark Sisters had talked about when they'd thought she wasn't listening? "I don't think they ever said the name of the club, but they would talk sometimes about meetings they were planning on attending, and how the other members would be pleased to see how they were getting on with me. They did say a name once... ." Tessa screwed her face up, trying to remember. "Someone else who was in the club. I don't remember, though I recall thinking the name sounded foreign... ."

Charlotte leaned forward across the table. "Can you try, Tessa? Try to remember?"

Charlotte meant no harm, Tessa knew, and yet her voice called up other voices in Tessa's head—voices urging her to try, to reach into herself, to draw out the power. Voices that could turn hard and cold at the slightest provocation. Voices that wheedled and threatened and lied.

Tessa drew herself upright. "First, what about my brother?"

Charlotte blinked. "Your brother?"

"You said that if I gave you information about the Dark Sisters, you'd help me find my brother. Well, I told you what I knew. And I still don't have any idea where Nate is."

"Oh." Charlotte sat back, looking almost startled. "Of course. We'll start investigating his whereabouts tomorrow," she reassured Tessa. "We'll start with his workplace—speak to his employer and find out if he knows anything. We have contacts in all sorts of places, Miss Gray. Downworld runs on gossip like the mundane world does. Eventually we'll turn up someone who knows something about your brother."

The meal ended not long after that, and Tessa excused herself from the table with a feeling of relief, declining Charlotte's offer to guide her back to her room. All she wanted was to be alone with her thoughts.

She made her way down the torchlit corridor, remembering the day she had stepped off the boat at Southampton. She had come to England knowing no one but her brother, and had let the Dark Sisters force her into serving them. Now she had fallen in with the Shadowhunters, and who was to say they would treat her any better? Like the Dark Sisters, they wanted to use her—use her for the information she knew—and now that they were all aware of her power, how long would it be before they wanted to use her for that, too?

Still lost in thought, Tessa nearly walked directly into a wall. She brought herself up short—and looked around, frowning. She had been walking for much longer than it had taken her and Charlotte to reach the dining room, and still she hadn't found the room she remembered. In fact, she wasn't even sure she had found the corridor she remembered. She was in a hallway now, lined with torches and hung with tapestries, but was it the same one? Some of the corridors were very bright, some very dim, the torches burning with varying shades of brightness. Sometimes the torches flared up and then faded as she passed, as if responding to some peculiar stimulus she couldn't see. This particular corridor was fairly dim. She picked her way to the end of it carefully, where it branched into two more, each identical to this one.

"Lost?" inquired a voice behind her. A slow, arrogant voice, immediately familiar.

Will.

Tessa turned and saw that he was leaning carelessly against the wall behind her, as if he were lounging in a doorway, his feet in their scuffed boots crossed in front of him. He held something in his hand: his glowing stone. He pocketed it as she looked at him, dousing its light.

"You ought to let me show you around the Institute a bit, Miss Gray," he suggested. "You know, so you don't get lost again."

Tessa narrowed her eyes at him.

"Of course, you can simply continue wandering about on your own if you really wish to," he added. "I ought to warn you, though, that there are at least three or four doors in the Institute that you really shouldn't open. There's the one that leads to the room where we keep trapped demons, for instance. They can get a bit nasty. Then there is the weapons room. Some of the weapons have a mind of their own, and they are sharp. Then there are the rooms that open onto empty air. They're meant to confuse intruders, but when you're as high as the top of a church, you don't want to accidentally slip and—"

"I don't believe you," Tessa said. "You're an awful liar, Mr. Herondale. Still—" She bit her lip. "I don't like wandering about. You can show me around if you promise no tricks."

Will promised. And, to Tessa's surprise, he was true to his word. He guided her down a succession of identical-looking corridors, talking as they walked. He told her how many rooms the Institute had (more than you could count), told her how many Shadowhunters could live in it at once (hundreds), and displayed for her the vast ballroom in which was held an annual Christmas party for the Enclave—which, Will explained, was their term for the group of Shadowhunters who lived in London. (In New York, he added, the term was "Conclave." American Shadowhunters, it seemed, had their own lexicon.)

After the ballroom came the kitchen, where the middle-aged woman Tessa had seen in the dining room was introduced as Agatha, the cook. She sat sewing in front of a massive kitchen range and was, to Tessa's intense mystification, also smoking an enormous pipe. She smiled indulgently around it as Will took several chocolate tarts from the plate where they had been left to cool on the table. Will offered one to Tessa.

She shuddered. "Oh, no. I hate chocolate."

Will looked horrified. "What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?"

"He eats everything," Agatha told Tessa with a placid smile. "Since he was twelve, he has. I suppose it's all the training that keeps him from getting fat."

Tessa, amused at the idea of a fat Will, complimented the pipe-puffing Agatha on her mastery of the enormous kitchen. It looked like a place you could cook for hundreds, with row upon row of jarred preserves and soups, spice tins, and a huge haunch of beef roasting on a hook over the open fireplace.

"Well done," Will said after they'd left the kitchen. "Complimenting Agatha like that. Now she'll like you. It's no good if Agatha doesn't like you. She'll put stones in your porridge."

"Oh, dear," Tessa said, but she couldn't hide the fact that she was entertained. They went from the kitchen to the music room, where there were harps and a great old piano, gathering dust. Down a set of stairs was the drawing room, a pleasant place where the walls, instead of being bare stone, were papered with a bright print of leaves and lilies. A fire was going in a large grate, and several comfortable armchairs were pulled up near it. There was a great wooden desk in the room too, which Will explained was the place where Charlotte did much of the work of running the Institute. Tessa couldn't help wondering what it was that Henry Branwell did, and where he did it.

After that there was the weapons room, finer than anything Tessa imagined you might see in a museum. Hundreds of maces, axes, daggers, swords, knives, and even a few pistols hung on the walls, as well as a collection of different kinds of armor, from greaves worn to protect the shins to full suits of chain mail. A solid-looking young man with dark brown hair sat at a high table, polishing a set of short daggers. He grinned when they came in. "Evenin', Master Will."

"Good evening, Thomas. You know Miss Gray." He indicated Tessa.

"You were at the Dark House!" Tessa exclaimed, looking more closely at Thomas. "You came in with Mr. Branwell. I thought—"

"That I was a Shadowhunter?" Thomas grinned. He had a sweet, pleasant, open sort of face, and a lot of curling hair. His shirt was open at the neck, showing a strong throat. Despite his obvious youth, he was extremely tall and muscular, the width of his arms straining against his sleeves. "I'm not, miss—only trained like one."

Will leaned back against the wall. "Did that order of misericord blades come in, Thomas? I've been running into a certain amount of Shax demons lately, and I need something narrow that can pierce armored carapaces."

Thomas started to say something to Will about shipping being delayed due to weather in Idris, but Tessa's attention had been distracted by something else. It was a tall box of golden wood, polished to a high shine, with a pattern burned into the front—a snake, swallowing its own tail.

"Isn't that the Dark Sisters' symbol?" she demanded. "What's it doing here?"

"Not quite," said Will. "The box is a Pyxis. Demons don't have souls; their consciousness comes from a sort of energy, which can sometimes be trapped and stored. The Pyxis contains them safely—oh, and the design is an ouroboros—the 'tail devourer.' It's an ancient alchemical symbol meant to represent the different dimensions—our world, inside the serpent, and the rest of existence, outside." He shrugged. "The Sisters' symbol is the first time I've seen anyone draw an ouroboros with two snakes— Oh, no you don't," he added as Tessa reached for the box. He deftly stepped in front of her. "The Pyxis can't be touched by anyone who isn't a Shadowhunter. Nasty things will happen. Now let's go. We've taken up enough of Thomas's time."

"I don't mind," Thomas protested, but Will was already on his way out. Tessa glanced back at Thomas from the doorway. He'd gone back to polishing the weaponry, but there was something about the set of his shoulders that made Tessa think he seemed a little bit lonely.

"I didn't realize you let mundanes fight with you," she said to Will after they'd left the weapons room behind. "Is Thomas a servant, or—"

"Thomas has been with the Institute for almost his entire life," Will said, guiding Tessa around a sharp turn in the corridor. "There are families who have the Sight in their veins, families who have always served Shadowhunters. Thomas's parents served Charlotte's parents in the Institute, and now Thomas serves Charlotte and Henry. And his children will serve theirs. Thomas does everything—drives, cares for Balios and Xanthos—those are our horses—and helps with the weapons. Sophie and Agatha manage the rest, though Thomas assists them on occasion. I suspect he's sweet on Sophie and doesn't like to see her work too hard."

Tessa was glad to hear it. She'd felt awful about her reaction to Sophie's scar, and the thought that Sophie had a male admirer—and a handsome one at that—eased her conscience slightly. "Perhaps he's in love with Agatha," she said.

"I hope not. I intend to marry Agatha myself. She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart. Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal." He paused in front of a door—big and oak, with thick brass hinges. "Here we are, now," he said, and the door swung open at his touch.

The room they entered was bigger even than the ballroom she had seen before. It was longer than it was wide, with rectangular oak tables set down the middle of it, vanishing up to the far wall, which was painted with an image of an angel. Each table was illuminated by a glass lamp that flickered white. Halfway up the walls was an interior gallery with a wooden railing running around it that could be reached by means of spiral staircases on either side of the room. Rows upon rows of bookshelves stood at intervals, like sentries forming alcoves on either side of the room. There were more bookshelves upstairs as well; the books inside were hidden behind screens of fretted metal, each screen stamped with a pattern of four Cs. Huge, outward-curving stained-glass windows, lined with worn stone benches, were set at intervals between the shelves.

A vast tome had been left out on a stand, its pages open and inviting; Tessa moved toward it, thinking it must be a dictionary, only to find that its pages were scrawled with illegible, illuminated script and etched with unfamiliar-looking maps.

"This is the Great Library," said Will. "Every Institute has a library, but this one is the largest of them all—the largest in the West, at any rate." He leaned against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. "I said I would get you more books, didn't I?"

Tessa was so startled that he remembered what he had said, that it took her several seconds to respond. "But the books are all behind bars!" she said. "Like a literary sort of prison!"

Will grinned. "Some of these books are dangerous," he said. "It's wise to be careful."

"One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

"I'm not sure a book has ever changed me," said Will. "Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—"

"Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry," said Tessa, determined not to let him run wildly off with the conversation.

"Of course, why one would want to be an entire flock of sheep is another matter entirely," Will finished. "Is there something you want to read here, Miss Gray, or is there not? Name it, and I shall attempt to free it from its prison for you."

"Do you think the library has The Wide, Wide World? Or Little Women?"

"Never heard of either of them," said Will. "We haven't many novels."

"Well, I want novels," said Tessa. "Or poetry. Books are for reading, not for turning oneself into livestock."

Will's eyes glittered. "I think we may have a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland about somewhere."

Tessa wrinkled her nose. "Oh, that's for little children, isn't it?" she said. "I never liked it much—seemed like so much nonsense."

Will's eyes were very blue. "There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it."

But Tessa had already spied a familiar volume on a shelf and went over to greet it like an old friend. "Oliver Twist!" she cried. "Have you any other of Mr. Dickens's novels?" She clasped her hands together. "Oh! Do you have A Tale of Two Cities?"

"That silly thing? Men going around getting their heads chopped off for love? Ridiculous." Will unpeeled himself from the door and made his way toward Tessa where she stood by the bookshelves. He gestured expansively at the vast number of volumes all around him. "No, here you'll find all sorts of advice about how to chop off someone's else's head if you need to; much more useful."

"I don't!" Tessa protested. "Need to chop off anyone's head, that is. And what's the point of a lot of books no one actually wants to read? Haven't you really any other novels?"

"Not unless Lady Audley's Secret is that she slays demons in her spare time." Will bounded up onto one of the ladders and yanked a book off the shelf. "I'll find you something else to read. Catch." He let it fall without looking, and Tessa had to dart forward to seize it before it hit the floor.

It was a large squarish volume bound in dark blue velvet. There was a pattern cut into the velvet, a swirling symbol reminiscent of the marks that decorated Will's skin. The title was stamped on the front in silver: The Shadowhunter's Codex. Tessa glanced up at Will. "What is this?"

"I assumed you'd have questions about Shadowhunters, given that you're currently inhabiting our sanctum sanctorum, so to speak. That book ought to tell you anything you want to know—about us, about our history, even about Downworlders like you." Will's face turned grave. "Be careful with it, though. It's six hundred years old and the only copy of its kind. Losing or damaging it is punishable by death under the Law."

Tessa thrust the book away from her as if it were on fire. "You can't be serious."

"You're right. I'm not." Will leaped down from the ladder and landed lightly in front of her. "You do believe everything I say, though, don't you? Do I seem unusually trustworthy to you, or are you just a naive sort?"

Instead of replying, Tessa scowled at him and stalked across the room toward one of the stone benches inside a window alcove. Throwing herself down onto the seat, she opened the Codex and began to read, studiously ignoring Will even as he moved to sit beside her. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her as she read.

The first page of the Nephilim book showed the same image she'd grown used to seeing on the tapestries in the corridors: the angel rising out of the lake, holding a sword in one hand and a cup in the other. Underneath the illustration was a note: The Angel Raziel and the Mortal Instruments.

"That's how it all began," Will said cheerfully, as if oblivious to the fact that she was ignoring him. "A summoning spell here, a bit of angel blood there, and you've a recipe for indestructible human warriors. You'll never understand us from reading a book, mind you, but it's a start."

"Hardly human—more like avenging angels," Tessa said softly, turning the pages. There were dozens of pictures of angels—tumbling out of the sky, shedding feathers as a star might shed sparks as it fell. There were more images of the Angel Raziel, holding open a book on whose pages runes burned like fire, and there were men kneeling around him, men on whose skin Marks could be seen. Images of men like the one she'd seen in her nightmare, with missing eyes and sewed-shut lips; images of Shadowhunters brandishing flaming swords, like warrior angels out of Heaven. She looked up at Will. "You are, then, aren't you? Part angel?"

Will didn't answer. He was looking out the window, through a clear lower pane. Tessa followed his gaze; the window gave out onto what had to be the front of the Institute, for there was a rounded courtyard below them, surrounded by walls. Through the bars of a high iron gate surmounted by a curved arch, she could glimpse a bit of the street beyond, lit by dim yellow gaslight. There were iron letters worked into the wrought arch atop the gate; when looked at from this direction, they were backward, and Tessa squinted to decipher them.

"Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. ' We are dust and shadows.' Appropriate, don't you think?" Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body—dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all."

Tessa looked at him. He was wearing that look she found so odd and compelling—that amusement that didn't seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as if he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time. She wondered what had made him this way, how he had come to find darkness amusing, for it was a quality he didn't appear to share with any of the other Shadowhunters she had met, however briefly. Perhaps it was something he had learned from his parents—but what parents?

"Don't you ever worry?" she said softly. "That what's out there—might come in here?"

"Demons and other unpleasantness, you mean?" Will asked, though Tessa wasn't sure if that was what she had meant, or if she had been speaking of the evils of the world in general. He placed a hand against the wall. "The mortar that made these stones was mixed with the blood of Shadowhunters. Every beam is carved of rowan wood. Every nail used to hammer the beams together is made of silver, iron, or electrum. The place is built on hallowed ground surrounded by wards. The front door can be opened only by one possessing Shadowhunter blood; otherwise it remains locked forever. This place is a fortress. So no, I am not worried."

"But why live in a fortress?" At his surprised look she elaborated. "You clearly aren't related to Charlotte and Henry, they're hardly old enough to have adopted you, and not all Shadowhunter children must live here or there would be more than you and Jessamine—"

"And Jem," Will reminded her.

"Yes, but—you see what I mean. Why don't you live with your family?"

"None of us have parents. Jessamine's died in a fire, Jem's—well Jem came from quite a distance away to live here, after his parents were murdered by demons. Under Covenant Law, the Clave is responsible for parentless Shadowhunter children under the age of eighteen."

"So you are one another's family."

"If you must romanticize it, I suppose we are—all brothers and sisters under the Institute's roof. You as well, Miss Gray, however temporarily."

"In that case," Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face, "I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace."

Will looked at her, slow and hard, and then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa."

She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing it for the first time—the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when she said, softly, "Will."

"Yes?" Amusement glittered in his eyes.

With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question. Hastily she said, "How do you learn—to fight like you do? To draw those magical symbols, and the rest of it?"

Will smiled. "We had a tutor who provided our schooling and physical training—though he's left for Idris, and Charlotte's looking for a replacement—along with Charlotte, who takes care of teaching us history and ancient languages."

"So she's your governess?"

A look of dark mirth passed across Will's features. "You could say that. But I wouldn't call Charlotte a governess if I were you, not if you want to preserve your limbs intact. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she's quite skilled with a variety of weapons, our Charlotte."

Tessa blinked in surprise. "You don't mean—Charlotte doesn't fight, does she? Not the way you and Henry do."

"Certainly she does. Why wouldn't she?"

"Because she's a woman," Tessa said.

"So was Boadicea."

"Who?"

"'So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,/Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like—'" Will broke off at Tessa's look of incomprehension, and grinned. "Nothing? If you were English, you'd know. Remind me to find a book about her for you. Regardless, she was a powerful warrior queen. When she was finally defeated, she took poison rather than let herself be captured by the Romans. She was braver than any man. I like to think Charlotte is much in the same mold, if somewhat smaller."

"But she can't be any good at it, can she? I mean, women don't have those sort of feelings."

"What kind of feelings are those?"

"Bloodlust, I suppose," Tessa said after a moment. "Fierceness. Warrior feelings."

"I saw you waving that hacksaw at the Dark Sisters," Will pointed out. "And if I recall correctly, Lady Audley's secret was, in fact, that she was a murderer."

"So you've read it!" Tessa couldn't hide her delight.

He looked amused. "I prefer The Trail of the Serpent. More adventure, less domestic drama. Neither is as good as The Moonstone, though. Have you read Collins?"

"I adore Wilkie Collins," Tessa cried. "Oh— Armadale! And The Woman in White ... Are you laughing at me?"

"Not at you," said Will, grinning, "more because of you. I've never seen anyone get so excited over books before. You'd think they were diamonds."

"Well, they are, aren't they? Isn't there anything you love like that? And don't say 'spats' or 'lawn tennis' or something silly."

"Good Lord," he said with mock horror, "it's like she knows me already."

"Everyone has something they can't live without. I'll find out what it is for you, never you fear." She meant to speak lightly, but at the look on his face, her voice trailed off into uncertainty. He was looking at her with an odd steadiness; his eyes were the same dark blue as the velvet binding of the book she held. His gaze passed over her face, down her throat, to her waist, before rising back up to her face, where it lingered on her mouth. Tessa's heart was pounding as if she had been running up stairs. Something in her chest ached, as if she were hungry or thirsty. There was something she wanted, but she didn't know what—

"It's late," Will said abruptly, looking away from her. "I should show you back to your room."

"I—" Tessa wanted to protest, but there was no reason to do so. He was right. It was late, the pinprick light of stars visible through the clear panes of the window. She rose to her feet, cradling the book to her chest, and went with Will out into the corridor.

"There are a few tricks to learning your way around the Institute that I ought to teach you," he said, still not looking at her. There was something oddly diffident in his attitude now that hadn't been there moments before, as if Tessa had done something to offend him. But what could she have done? "Ways to identify the different doors and turn—"

He broke off, and Tessa saw that someone was coming down the corridor toward them. It was Sophie, a basket of laundry tucked under one of her arms. Seeing Will and Tessa, she paused, her expression growing more guarded.

"Sophie!" Will's diffidence turned to mischief. "Have you finished putting my room in order yet?"

"It's done." Sophie didn't return his smile. "It was filthy. I hope that in future you can refrain from tracking bits of dead demon through the house."

Tessa's mouth fell open. How could Sophie talk to Will like that? She was a servant, and he—even if he was younger than she was—was a gentleman.

And yet Will seemed to take it in stride. "All part of the job, young Sophie."

"Mr. Branwell and Mr. Carstairs seem to have no problem cleaning their boots," Sophie said, looking darkly from Will to Tessa. "Perhaps you could learn from their example."

"Perhaps," said Will. "But I doubt it."

Sophie scowled, and started off along the corridor again, her shoulders tightly set with indignation.

Tessa looked at Will in amazement. "What was that?"

Will shrugged lazily. "Sophie enjoys pretending she doesn't like me."

"Doesn't like you? She hates you!" Under other circumstances, she might have asked if Will and Sophie had had a falling out, but one didn't fall out with servants. If they were unsatisfactory, one ceased to employ them. "Did—did something happen between you?"

"Tessa," Will said with exaggerated patience. "Enough. There are things you can't hope to understand."

If there was one thing Tessa hated, it was being told that there were things she couldn't understand. Because she was young, because she was a girl—for any of a thousand reasons that never seemed to make any real sense. She set her chin stubbornly. "Well, not if you won't tell me. But then I'd have to say that it looks a great deal like she hates you because you did something awful to her."

Will's expression darkened. "You can think what you like. It's not as if you know anything about me."

"I know you don't like giving straightforward answers to questions. I know you're probably around seventeen. I know you like Tennyson—you quoted him at the Dark House, and again just now. I know you're an orphan, as I am—"

"I never said I was an orphan." Will spoke with unexpected savagery. "And I loathe poetry. So, as it happens, you really don't know anything about me at all, do you?"

And with that, he spun on his heel and walked away.