Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(65)
Author: Cassandra Clare

“There are heavy glamours at work here.” Will scrubbed at his face and neck. “And I would imagine there are quite a few on this street who are not mundanes, who know to mind their own business when Shadowhunters are involved.”

“Well, you are a terrifying lot, that’s true,” Thomas said, so equably that Will suspected he was being made fun of. Thomas pointed at Will’s face. “You’ll have a stunner of a mouse tomorrow, if you don’t get an iratze on there.”

“Maybe I want a black eye,” said Will peevishly. “Did you think of that?”

Thomas just grinned and swung himself up into the driver’s box at the front of the carriage. Will went back to scrubbing dried vampire blood off his hands and arms. The task was absorbing enough that he was able to almost completely ignore Gabriel Lightwood when the other boy appeared out of the shadows and sauntered over to Will, a superior smile plastered on his face.

“Nice work in there, Herondale, setting the place on fire,” Gabriel observed. “Good thing we were there to clean up after you, or the whole plan would have gone down in flames, along with the shreds of your reputation.”

“Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?” Will demanded with mock horror. “Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not doing something wrong, as the case may be.” He banged on the side of the carriage. “Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel! I seek scandal and low companionship.”

Thomas snorted and muttered something that sounded like “bosh,” which Will ignored.

Gabriel’s face darkened. “Is there anything that isn’t a joke to you?”

“Nothing that comes to mind.”

“You know,” Gabriel said, “there was a time I thought we could be friends, Will.”

“There was a time I thought I was a ferret,” Will said, “but that turned out to be the opium haze. Did you know it had that effect? Because I didn’t.”

“I think,” Gabriel said, “that perhaps you might consider whether jokes about opium are either amusing or tasteful, given the … situation of your friend Carstairs.”

Will froze. Still in the same tone of voice, he said, “You mean his disability?”

Gabriel blinked. “What?”

“That’s what you called it. Back at the Institute. His ‘disability.’” Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. “And you wonder why we aren’t friends.”

“I just wondered,” Gabriel said, in a more subdued voice, “if perhaps you have ever had enough.”

“Enough of what?”

“Enough of behaving as you do.”

Will crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes glinted dangerously. “Oh, I can never get enough,” he said. “Which, incidentally, is what your sister said to me when—”

The carriage door flew open. A hand shot out, grabbed Will by the back of the shirt, and hauled him inside. The door banged shut after him, and Thomas, sitting bolt upright, seized the reins of the horses. A moment later the carriage had lurched forth into the night, leaving Gabriel staring, infuriated, after it.

“What were you thinking?” Jem, having deposited Will onto the carriage seat opposite him, shook his head, his silvery eyes shining in the dimness. He held his cane between his knees, his hand resting lightly atop the dragon’s-head carving. The cane had belonged to Jem’s father, Will knew, and had been designed for him by a Shadowhunter weapons maker in Beijing. “Baiting Gabriel Lightwood like that—why do you do it? What’s the point?”

“You heard what he said about you—”

“I don’t care what he says about me. It’s what everyone thinks. He just has the nerve to say it.” Jem leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. “You know, I cannot function as your missing sense of self-preservation forever. Eventually you will have to learn to manage without me.”

Will, as he always did, ignored this. “Gabriel Lightwood is hardly much of a threat.”

“Then forget Gabriel. Is there a particular reason you keep biting vampires?”

Will touched the dried blood on his wrists, and smiled. “They don’t expect it.”

“Of course they don’t. They know what happens when one of us consumes vampire blood. They probably expect you to have more sense.”

“That expectation never seems to serve them very well, does it?”

“It hardly serves you, either.” Jem looked at Will thoughtfully. He was the only one who never fell out of temper with Will. Whatever Will did, the most extreme reaction he seemed to be able to provoke in Jem was mild exasperation. “What happened in there? We were waiting for the signal—”

“Henry’s bloody Phosphor didn’t work. Instead of sending up a flare of light, it set the curtains on fire.”

Jem made a choked noise.

Will glared at him. “It’s not funny. I didn’t know whether the rest of you were going to show up or not.”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t come after you when the whole place went up like a torch?” Jem asked reasonably. “They could have been roasting you over a spit, for all we knew.”

“And Tessa, the silly creature, was supposed to be out the door with Magnus, but she wouldn’t leave—”

“Her brother was manacled to a chair in the room,” Jem pointed out. “I’m not sure I would have left either.”

“I see you’re determined to miss my point.”

“If your point is that there was a pretty girl in the room and it was distracting you, then I think I’ve taken your point handily.”

“You think she’s pretty?” Will was surprised; Jem rarely opined on this sort of thing.

“Yes, and you do too.”

“I hadn’t noticed, really.”

“Yes, you have, and I’ve noticed you noticing.” Jem was smiling. Despite the stress of the battle, he looked healthy tonight. There was color in his cheeks, and his eyes were a dark and steady silver. There were times, when the illness was at its worst, when all the color drained even from his eyes, leaving them horribly pale, nearly white, with that black speck of pupil in the center like a speck of black ash on snow. It was times like that when he also became delirious. Will had held Jem down while he’d thrashed about and cried out in another language and his eyes had rolled back into his head, and every time it happened, Will thought that this was it, and Jem was really going to die this time. He sometimes then thought about what he would do afterward, but he couldn’t imagine it, any more than he could look back and remember his life before he had come to the Institute. Neither bore thinking about for very long.