The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel (22 page)

“If you do this,” said Camille, “and you succeed—whether or not you find your brother—I can promise you, little shape-shifter, that you won’t regret it.”

Tessa frowned, but Camille was already gone. She moved so fast that it was as though she had vanished between one breath and the next. Tessa turned toward Charlotte. “What
do you think she meant by that? That I won’t regret it?”

Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I’d like to think that she meant that the knowledge of a good deed done would console you, but it’s Camille, so …”

“Are all vampires like that?” Tessa asked. “Cold like that?”

“Many of them have been alive a long time,” Charlotte said diplomatically. “They don’t see things the way we do.”

Tessa put her fingers to her aching temples. “Indeed, they don’t.”

Of all the things that bothered Will about vampires—the way they moved soundlessly, the low and inhuman timbre of their voices—it was the way they smelled that bothered him most. Or rather, the way they didn’t smell. All human beings smelled like
something—
sweat, soap, perfume—but vampires had no scent, like wax mannequins.

Ahead of him, Jem was holding the last of the doors that led from the Sanctuary to the outer foyer of the Institute. All these spaces had been deconsecrated so that vampires and others of their ilk could use them, but Camille could never come any farther into the Institute than that. Escorting her out was more than a courtesy. They were making sure she didn’t accidentally wander onto consecrated ground, which would be dangerous for everyone involved.

Camille brushed by Jem, hardly looking at him, and Will followed, pausing only long enough to mutter “She doesn’t smell like anything” to Jem under his breath.

Jem looked alarmed. “You’ve been
smelling
her?”

Camille, who was waiting by the next doorway for them, turned her head at this and smiled. “I can hear everything you
say, you know,” she said. “It is true, vampires have no scent. It makes us better predators.”

“That, and excellent hearing,” Jem said, and let the door swing shut behind Will. They were standing in the small square entryway with Camille now, her hand on the knob of the front door as if she meant to hurry out, but there was nothing hurried in her expression as she looked them over.

“Look at you both,” she said, “all black and silver. You could be a vampire,” she said to Jem, “with your pallor, and your looks. And you,” she said to Will, “well, I don’t think anyone at de Quincey’s will doubt that you could be my human subjugate.”

Jem was looking at Camille, with that look that Will always thought could cut glass. He said:

“Why are you doing this, Lady Belcourt? This plan of yours, de Quincey, all of it—why?”

Camille smiled. She was beautiful, Will had to admit—but then, a lot of vampires were beautiful. Their beauty had always seemed to him like the beauty of pressed flowers—lovely, but dead. “Because the knowledge of what he was doing weighed on my conscience.”

Jem shook his head. “Perhaps you are the sort who would sacrifice yourself on the altar of principle, but I doubt it. Most of us do things for reasons that are more purely personal. For love, or for hate.”

“Or for revenge,” Will said. “After all, you’ve known about what was going on for a year now, and you only just came to us.”

“That was because of Miss Gray.”

“Yes, but that’s not all it is, is it?” Jem said. “Tessa is your opportunity, but your reason, your motive, is something
else.” He cocked his head to the side. “Why do you hate de Quincey so much?”

“I don’t see what business it is of yours, little silver Shadowhunter,” Camille said, and her lips had drawn back from her teeth, leaving her fangs visible, like bits of ivory against the red of her lips. Will knew that vampires could show their fangs at will, but it was still unnerving. “Why does it matter what my motives are?”

Will filled in the answer for Jem, already knowing what the other boy had been thinking. “Because otherwise we can’t trust you. Perhaps you’re sending us into a trap. Charlotte wouldn’t want to believe it, but that doesn’t make it not possible.”

“Lead you into a trap?” Camille’s tone was mocking. “And incur the terrifying wrath of the Clave? Hardly likely!”

“Lady Belcourt,” said Jem, “whatever Charlotte might have promised you, if you want our help, you will answer the question.”

“Very well,” she said. “I can see you will not be satisfied unless I give you an explanation. You,” she said, nodding toward Will, “are correct. And you seem to know a curious amount about love and revenge for one so young; we must discuss them someday, together.” She smiled again, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “I had a lover, you see,” she said. “He was a shape-changer, a lycanthrope. It is forbidden for the Night Children to love or to lie with the Moon’s Children. We were careful, but de Quincey found us out. Found us out and murdered him, in much the way he will be murdering some poor mundane prisoner at his next party.” Her eyes shone like green lamps as she looked at them both. “I loved him, and de
Quincey murdered him, and the others of my kind helped and abetted him. I will not forgive them for it. Kill them all.”

Tessa jerked awake at the sound of a knock on her door; she had been half-drowsing on the pillow, her finger still keeping a place in
The Shadowhunter’s Codex
. After setting the book down, she barely had time to sit up and draw the covers about herself before the door opened.

In came lamplight, and Charlotte with it. Tessa felt an odd twinge, almost disappointment—but who else had she been expecting? Despite the late hour, Charlotte was dressed as if she planned to go out. Her face was very serious, and there were lines of tiredness below her dark eyes. “You’re awake?”

Tessa nodded, and lifted the book she had been reading. “Reading.”

Charlotte said nothing, but crossed the room and sat down at the foot of Tessa’s bed. She held out her hand. Something gleamed in her palm; it was Tessa’s angel pendant. “You left this with Henry.”

Tessa set her book down and took the pendant. She slipped the chain over her head, and felt reassured as the familiar
weight settled against the hollow of her throat. “Did he learn anything from it?”

“I’m not sure. He said it was all clogged up on the inside with years of rust, that it was a wonder it was working at all. He cleaned out the mechanism, though it doesn’t seem to have resulted in much of a change. Perhaps it ticks more regularly now?”

“Perhaps.” Tessa didn’t care; she was just happy to have the angel, the symbol of her mother and her life in New York, back in her possession.

Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “Tessa, there is something I haven’t told you.”

Tessa’s heart began to beat faster. “What is it?”

“Mortmain …” Charlotte hesitated. “When I said that Mortmain introduced your brother to the Pandemonium Club, that was true, but not the whole truth. Your brother already knew about the Shadow World, before Mortmain ever told him. It seems he learned about it from your father.”

Stunned, Tessa was silent.

“How old were you when your parents died?” Charlotte asked.

“It was an accident,” Tessa said, a little dazed. “I was three. Nate was six.”

Charlotte frowned. “So young for your father to confide in your brother, but … I suppose it’s possible.”

“No,” Tessa said. “No, you don’t understand. I had the most ordinary, the most human, upbringing imaginable. Aunt Harriet, she was the most practical woman in the world. And she would have known, wouldn’t she? She was mother’s younger sister; they brought her with them from London when they came to America.”

“People keep secrets, Tessa, sometimes even from the ones they love.” Charlotte brushed her fingers across the cover of the
Codex
, with its embossed seal. “And you must admit, it does make sense.”

“Sense? It doesn’t make any kind of sense!”

“Tessa …” Charlotte sighed. “We don’t know why you have the ability that you do. But if one of your parents was connected in some way to the magical world, doesn’t it make sense that that connection might have something to do with it? If your father was a member of the Pandemonium Club, isn’t that how de Quincey might have known about you?”

“I suppose.” Tessa spoke grudgingly. “It’s only … I believed so strongly when I first came to London that everything that was happening to me was a dream. That my life before had been real and this was a dreadful nightmare. I thought that if only I could find Nate, we could go back to the life we had before.” She raised her eyes to Charlotte’s. “But now I cannot help but wonder if perhaps the life I had before was the dream and all this was the truth. If my parents knew of the Pandemonium Club—if they were part of the Shadow World too—then there is no world I can go back to that will be clean of all this.”

Charlotte, her hands still folded in her lap, looked at Tessa steadily. “Have you ever wondered why Sophie’s face is scarred?”

Caught off guard, Tessa could only stammer. “I—I wondered, but I—didn’t like to ask.”

“Nor should you,” said Charlotte. Her voice was cool and firm. “When I first saw Sophie, she was crouched in a doorway, filthy, with a bloody rag clutched to her cheek. She
saw
me as I went by, even though I was glamoured at the time.
That’s what drew my attention to her. She has a touch of the Sight, as do Thomas and Agatha. I offered her money, but she wouldn’t take it. I wheedled her into accompanying me to a tea shop, and she told me what had happened to her. She had been a parlor maid, in a fine house in St. John’s Wood. Parlor maids, of course, are chosen for their looks, and Sophie was beautiful—which turned out to be both a great advantage and a great disadvantage for her. As you might imagine, the son of the house took an interest in seducing her. She turned him away repeatedly. In a rage, he took a knife and cut open her face, saying that if he couldn’t have her, he’d make sure no one ever wanted her again.”

“How awful,” Tessa whispered.

“She went to her mistress, the boy’s mother, but he claimed that she’d tried to seduce
him
, and he’d taken up the knife to fight her off and protect
his
virtue. Of course, they threw her out on the street. By the time I found her, her cheek was badly infected. I brought her here and had the Silent Brothers see to her, but while they cured the infection, they couldn’t heal the scar.”

Tessa put her hand to her own face in a gesture of unconscious sympathy. “Poor Sophie.”

Charlotte cocked her head to the side and looked at Tessa out of her bright brown eyes. She had such a strong presence, Tessa thought, that it was hard to remember sometimes how physically small she was, how birdlike and tiny. “Sophie has a gift,” she said. “She has the Sight. She can see what others do not. In her old life she often wondered if she was mad. Now she knows that she is not mad but special. There, she was only a parlor maid, who would likely have lost her position once her looks had faded. Now she is a valued member of our
household, a gifted girl with much to contribute.” Charlotte leaned forward. “You look back on the life you had, Tessa, and it seems safe to you in comparison to this one. But you and your aunt were very poor, if I am not mistaken. If you had not come to London, where would you have gone once she died? What would you have done? Would you have found yourself weeping in an alley like our Sophie?” Charlotte shook her head. “You have a power of incalculable value. You need ask nothing of anyone. You need depend on no one. You are free, and that freedom is a gift.”

“It is hard to think of something as a gift when you have been tormented and imprisoned for it.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face. This is your true self, Tessa. This power is who you are. Whoever loves you now—and you must also love yourself—will love the truth of you.”

Tessa picked up the
Codex
and hugged it against her chest. “So you are saying I am right. This is what is real, and the life I had before was the dream.”

“That is correct.” Gently Charlotte patted Tessa’s shoulder; Tessa almost jumped at the contact. It had been a long time, she thought, since anyone had touched her in such a motherly fashion; she thought of Aunt Harriet, and her throat hurt. “And now it is time to wake up.”

May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,

Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Maud”

“Try it again,” Will suggested. “Simply walk from one end of the room to the other. We’ll tell you if you look convincing.”

Tessa sighed. Her head throbbed, as did the backs of her eyes. It was exhausting learning how to pretend to be a vampire.

It had been two days since Lady Belcourt’s visit, and Tessa had spent almost every moment since then attempting to convincingly transform herself into the vampire woman, without enormous success. She still felt as if she were sliding around on the surface of Camille’s mind, unable to reach through and grasp hold of thoughts or personality. It made it difficult to
know how to walk, how to talk, and what sort of expressions she ought to be wearing when she met the vampires at de Quincey’s party—whom, no doubt, Camille knew very well, and whom Tessa would be expected to know too.

She was in the library now, and had spent the last few hours since lunch practicing walking with Camille’s odd gliding walk, and speaking with her careful drawling voice. Pinned at her shoulder was a jeweled brooch that one of Camille’s human subjugates, a wrinkled little creature called Archer, had brought over in a trunk. There had been a dress, too, for Tessa to wear to de Quincey’s, but it was much too heavy and elaborate for daytime. Tessa made do with her own new blue and white dress, which was bothersomely too tight in the bosom and too loose in the waist whenever she changed into Camille.