Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(74)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Tessa saw Charlotte whiten and sit back. She felt a sharp twinge in her chest. It wasn’t Charlotte she had meant to hurt. Still, she went on. She couldn’t help herself, the words coming out in a flood, “All your talk about Downworlders and how you don’t hate them. That’s all nothing, isn’t it? Just words. You don’t mean them. And as for mundanes, have you ever thought maybe you’d be better at protecting them if you didn’t despise them all so much?” She looked at Will. He was pale, his eyes blazing. He looked—she wasn’t sure she could describe his expression. Horrified, she thought, but not at her; the horror ran deeper than that.

“Tessa,” Charlotte protested, but Tessa was already fumbling for the door. She turned at the last moment, on the threshold, to see them all staring at her.

“Stay away from my brother,” she snapped. “And don’t follow me.”

* * *

Anger, Tessa thought, was satisfying in its own way, when you gave in to it. There was something peculiarly gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.

Of course, the aftermath was less pleasant. Once you’d told everyone you hated them and not to come after you, where exactly did you go? If she went back to her own room, it was as much as saying she was just having a tantrum that would wear off. She couldn’t go to Nate and bring her black mood into his sickroom, and lurking anywhere else meant risking being found sulking by Sophie or Agatha.

In the end she took the narrow, winding stairs that led down through the Institute. She made her way through the witch-lit nave and came out onto the broad front steps of the church, where she sank down on the top stair and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the unexpectedly cold breeze. It must have rained sometime during the day, for the steps were damp, and the black stone of the courtyard shone like a mirror. The moon was out, darting in between racing scuds of cloud, and the huge iron gate gleamed blackly in the fitful light. We are dust and shadows.

“I know what you’re thinking.” The voice that came from the doorway behind Tessa was soft enough that it could almost have been part of the wind that rattled the leaves on the tree branches.

Tessa turned. Jem stood in the arch of the doorway, the white witchlight behind him lighting his hair so that it shone like metal. His face, though, was hidden in shadow. He held his cane in his right hand; the dragon’s eyes gleamed watchfully at Tessa.

“I don’t think you do.”

“You’re thinking, If they call this damp nastiness summer, what must winter be like? You’d be surprised. Winter’s actually much the same.” He moved away from the door and sat down on the step beside Tessa, though not too close. “It’s spring that’s really lovely.”

“Is it?” Tessa said, without much real interest.

“No. It’s actually quite foggy and wet as well.” He looked sideways at her. “I know you said not to follow you. But I was rather hoping you just meant Will.”

“I did.” Tessa twisted round to look up at him. “I shouldn’t have shouted like that.”

“No, you were quite right to say what you did,” said Jem. “We Shadowhunters have been what we are for so long, and are so insular, that we often forget to look at any situation from someone else’s point of view. It is only ever about whether something is good for the Nephilim or bad for the Nephilim. Sometimes I think we forget to ask whether it is good or bad for the world.”

“I never meant to hurt Charlotte.”

“Charlotte is very sensitive about the way the Institute is run. As a woman, she must fight to be heard, and even then her decisions are second-guessed. You heard Benedict Lightwood at the Enclave meeting. She feels she has no freedom to make a mistake.”

“Do any of us? Do any of you? Everything is life and death to you.” Tessa took a long breath of the foggy air. It tasted of city, metal and ashes and horses and river water. “I just—I feel sometimes as if I can’t bear it. Any of it. I wish I’d never learned what I was. I wish Nate had stayed home and none of this had ever happened!”

“Sometimes,” Jem said, “our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It’s those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered—that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can’t imagine, or even really remember, how things were before.”

“You’re saying I’ll get used to being a warlock, or whatever it is that I am.”

“You’ve always been what you are. That’s not new. What you’ll get used to is knowing it.”

Tessa took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I didn’t mean what I said upstairs,” she said. “I don’t think the Nephilim are as dreadful as all that.”

“I know you didn’t mean it. If you had, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be at your brother’s side, guarding him against our dire intentions.”

“Will didn’t really mean what he said, either, did he,” Tessa said after a moment. “He wouldn’t hurt Nate.”

“Ah.” Jem looked out toward the gate, his gray eyes thoughtful. “You’re correct. But I’m surprised you know it. I know it. But I have had years to understand Will. To know when he means what he says and when he doesn’t.”

“So you don’t ever get angry at him?”

Jem laughed out loud. “I would hardly say that. Sometimes I want to strangle him.”

“How on earth do you prevent yourself?”

“I go to my favorite place in London,” said Jem, “and I stand and look at the water, and I think about the continuity of life, and how the river rolls on, oblivious of the petty upsets in our lives.”

Tessa was fascinated. “Does that work?”

“Not really, but after that I think about how I could kill him while he slept if I really wanted to, and then I feel better.”

Tessa giggled. “So where is it, then? This favorite place of yours?”

For a moment Jem looked pensive. Then he bounded to his feet, and held out the hand that did not clasp the cane. “Come along, and I’ll show you.”

“Is it far?”

“Not at all.” He smiled. He had a lovely smile, Tessa thought—and a contagious one. She couldn’t help smiling back, for what felt like the first time in ages.