Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(85)
Author: Cassandra Clare

“And do what?” Tessa said as gently as she could. “There’s nothing there for us. Not with Aunt dead. I had to sell all our things to pay for the funeral. The apartment’s gone. There was no rent money. There’s no place for us in New York, Nate.”

“We’ll make a place. A new life.”

Tessa looked at her brother sadly. There was pain in seeing him like this, his face full of hopeless pleading, bruises blossoming on his cheekbones like ugly flowers, his fair hair still matted in places with blood. Nate was not like other people, Aunt Harriet had always said. He had a beautiful innocence about him that had to be protected at all costs.

And Tessa had tried. She and her aunt had hidden Nate’s own weaknesses from him, the consequences of his own flaws and failings. Never telling him of the work Aunt Harriet had had to do to make up the money he had lost gambling, of the taunts Tessa had endured from other children, calling her brother a drunk, a wastrel. They had hidden these things from him to keep him from being hurt. But he had been hurt anyway, Tessa thought. Maybe Jem was right. Maybe the truth was always best.

Sitting down on the ottoman opposite her brother, she looked at him steadily. “It can’t be like that, Nate. Not yet. This mess we’re both in now, it will follow us even if we run. And if we run, we’ll be alone when it does find us. There will be no one to help or protect us. We need the Institute, Nate. We need the Nephilim.”

Nate’s blue eyes were dazed. “I guess so,” he said, and the phrase struck Tessa, who had heard nothing but British voices for nearly two months, as so American that she felt homesick. “It’s because of me that you’re here. De Quincey tortured me. Made me write those letters, send you that ticket. He told me he wouldn’t hurt you once he had you, but then he never let me see you, and I thought—I thought—” He raised his head and looked at her dully. “You ought to hate me.”

Tessa’s voice was firm. “I could never hate you. You’re my brother. You’re my blood.”

“Do you think when all this is over, we can go back home?” Nate asked. “Forget all this ever happened? Live normal lives?”

Live normal lives. The words conjured up an image of herself and Nate in some small, sunny apartment. Nate could get another job, and in the evening she could cook and clean for him, while on weekends they could walk in the park or take the train to Coney Island and ride the carousel, or go to the top of the Iron Tower and watch the fireworks explode at night over the Manhattan Beach Hotel. There would be real sunshine, not like this gray watery version of summer, and Tessa could be an ordinary girl, with her head in a book and her feet planted firmly on the familiar pavement of New York City.

But when she tried to hold this mental picture in her head, the vision seemed to crumble and fall away from her, like a cobweb when you tried to lift it whole in your hands. She saw Will’s face, and Jem’s, and Charlotte’s, and even Magnus’s as he said, Poor thing. Now that you know the truth, you can never go back.

“But we are not normal,” said Tessa. “I am not normal. And you know that, Nate.”

He looked down at the floor. “I know.” He gave a helpless little wave of his hand. “So it’s true. You are what de Quincey said you were. Magical. He said you had the power to change shape, Tessie, to become anything you wanted to be.”

“Did you even believe him? It’s true—well, almost true—but I barely believed it myself at first. It’s so strange—”

“I’ve seen stranger things.” His voice was hollow. “God, it ought to have been me.”

Tessa frowned. “What do you mean?”

But before he could answer, the door swung open. “Miss Gray.” It was Thomas, looking apologetic. “Miss Gray, Master Will is—”

“Master Will is right here.” It was Will, ducking nimbly around Thomas, despite the other boy’s bulk. He was still in the clothes he’d changed into the night before, and they looked rumpled. Tessa wondered if he’d slept in the chair in Jem’s room. There were blue-gray shadows under his eyes, and he looked tired, though his eyes brightened—with relief? amusement? Tessa couldn’t tell—as his gaze fell on Nate.

“Our wanderer, found at last,” he said. “Thomas tells me you were hiding behind the curtains?”

Nate looked at Will dully. “Who are you?”

Quickly Tessa made the introductions, though neither boy seemed all that happy to meet the other. Nate still looked as if he were dying, and Will was regarding Nate as if he were a new scientific discovery, and not a very attractive one at that.

“So you’re a Shadowhunter,” Nate said. “De Quincey told me that you lot were monsters.”

“Was that before or after he tried to eat you?” Will inquired.

Tessa rose quickly to her feet. “Will. Might I speak to you in the corridor for a moment, please?”

If she had expected resistance, she didn’t get it. After a last hostile look at Nate, Will nodded and went with her silently out into the hall, closing the drawing room door behind him.

The illumination in the windowless corridor was variable, the witchlight casting discrete bright pools of light that didn’t quite touch one another. Will and Tessa stood in the shadows between two of the pools, looking at each other—warily, Tessa thought, like angry cats circling in an alley.

It was Will who broke the silence. “Very well. You have me alone in the corridor—”

“Yes, yes,” said Tessa impatiently, “and thousands of women all over England would pay handsomely for the privilege of such an opportunity. Can we put aside the display of your wit for a moment? This is important.”

“You want me to apologize, do you?” Will said. “For what happened in the attic?”

Tessa, caught off guard, blinked. “The attic?”

“You want me to say I’m sorry that I kissed you.”

At the words, the memory rose up again in Tessa with an unexpected clarity—Will’s fingers in her hair, the touch of his hand on her glove, his mouth on hers. She felt herself flush and hoped furiously that it wouldn’t be visible in the dimness. “What—no. No!”

“So you don’t want me to be sorry,” Will said. He was smiling very slightly now, the sort of smile a small child might bend upon the castle he has just built out of toy blocks, before he destroys it with a wave of his arm.