Chapter 8
A Shadow on the Soul
Will was still gone the next morning when Tessa had made her way to breakfast. Everyone was surprised, although admittedly, Jessamine and Evan (another shock) weren't as concerned. Or rather, Evan was concerned for another reason.
"Oh, he'll be back for goodness' sake." Jessamine exclaimed, banging her teacup on her saucer. "He always does come crawling home, Look at the two of you - and Evan! Like you've lost a favorite puppy!"
Evan screwed up her face at Jessamine. "I'm allergic to dogs. And if Will was a dog, he'd be a rabid pitbull - hardly a puppy." Then she glanced at Jem as she repeated. "Besides, Will can take care of himself."
"Do you think he might have gone back to Yorkshire?" Tessa asked. "To warn his family?"
"I.... I don't think so." Charlotte looked like she was trying very hard not to look worried - she was failing. "Will has avoided his family for years. And he knows the Law. He knows he cannot speak to them. He knows what he would lose."
"When he saw Cecily, at the manor, he attempted to rush to her -" Jem started.
"In the heat of the moment." Charlotte said surely, but mostly - it sounded - to reassure herself. "But he returned with you to London; I am confident he will return to the Institute as well. He knows you obtained that button, Tessa. He'll want to discover what Starkweather knew."
"Precious little, really." Then Tessa proceeded to explain what she gained from Starkweather's memories about the Shades, though she knew nothing of importance about Ravenscar Manor. Evan had leaned back in her seat, not as if she was disinterested, but as if... well, Tessa was reminded of Will when she looked at Evan. The stony persona, the defection of affection - well, Tessa said, not as if she didn't want the affection. Just as if she couldn't handle it; as if she didn't deserve it. Tessa thought that perhaps it was just because of Evan's loss of her family, but she was beginning to wonder if it ran deeper than that.
Soon after, Sophie entered the dinning hall with a pot of hot water. Charlotte brightened at the sight of her. "Tessa, Sophie, Evan, Jessamine," She said, "Lest you forget, you all have training this morning with Gabriel and Gideon Lightwood."
"I cannot do it." Jessamine said immediately.
"Wouldn't want your headache to come back, would we?" Evan said without looking at anyone.
Jessamine glared at her, but she seemed unfazed. "I'd prefer to help you, Charlotte."
Evan returned Jessamine's glare as she and Charlotte and Jessamine had a quick debate. Finally, Charlotte agreed and said "In the meantime you won't say anything to the Lightwood boys about Yorkshire, or about Will? I could do without having them in the Institute right now myself, but there's no help for it. It's a show of good faith and confidence to continue the training. You must behave in all ways as if nothing is wrong. Can you do that, girls?" Her eyes finally rested on Evan.
"Of course we can, Mrs. Branwell." Sophie smiled brightly.
"You have that look that my mom always gave me," Evan said with a small smile. "But I won't say anything."
"What look that your mother always gave you?" Charlotte said almost incredulously.
Evan shrugged daintily. "You know, the mother look. I think you've mastered it, Mrs. Branwell." Then she got up, following Sophie out of the room. Charlotte looked after her, very confused and very flattered.
"I agree with Evan," Tessa said lightly with a smile, following after Sophie and Evan.
Evan showed up slightly late to training, wearing one of her brother's really big sweatshirt and workout leggings with tennis shoes. She had her notebook, walking in as Tessa set her chin and said "It's quite a common occurrence, nothing to fuss about. Will is a - free spirit. He'll return soon enough."
"I hope not." Gabriel said. "I hope he's dead."
Evan's eyes blazed and she stomped over to the weapons rack. "Perhaps you should find someone else to blame for your sister's childish obsession with Will. To be fair, I'd have done the same thing and so would you - any twelve year old would have, in fact. And let's just be honest here; you did try to strangle him."
Gabriel froze, as did Gideon, though Gideon looked amused. Sophie looked shocked, Tessa was confused. "How do you know that?" Gabriel hissed. "Did William tell you?"
"You know what?" Evan marched up to him, poking his chest. "No, he did not. But it's not so difficult to tell." Then she spun on her heel and threw a dagger which hit the target perfectly. She did it three times in a row and marched out of the room, calling over her shoulder "But Will taught me that, so there!"
That was the start of a very lousy training day.
Evan was pacing in her room. That was not supposed to happen, she thought, I was not supposed to explode. Charlotte was going to march into her room any second now and demand that she leave the Institute for offending Gabriel and Gideon Lightwood. Or her mother was going to appear to her in spirit and yell at her for being so stupid. Either way, she was going to Hell for that, she was sure.
Either way, when someone knocked on her door, she gave a slight shriek of surprise and froze before mentally slapping herself before answering it. She gave one look at a hastily-dressed Tessa and a in-gear Jem and looked out the window, seeing it was pitch black. "What's Will got himself in now?"
"How did you know?" Tessa asked, without actually asking.
"I had a hunch. Give me a minute." Then she closed the door between them. She threw on one of Will's old shirts, grabbed one of his hats and a jacket and opening the door. "Where to now?"
"Will's room," Jem said, nodding that way. "This is Will's room."
"Gracious, I've never been in here. I was starting to imagine he slept upside down, like a bat." Tessa said, earning a laugh from Jem.
"He still does," Evan said, twisting her hair up under the hat, using the hair tie around her wrist to secure it. "He keeps me up at night, cursing as he falls from the bar he keeps balanced from the bed and the wardrobe." Jem laughed harder, digging through Will's things.
Evan nodded fro Tessa to follow her over to the bookshelf. "He let me look through these a few times. I never liked the classics, but Will promised that he'd read one of my future books if I read A Tale of Two Cities." Evan showed Tessa the copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that Will left open almost half-way through on his stack of books. It was as battered as Will's loved books. "I don't think he likes it very much."
Tessa found her letters, just as Evan hoped. She left Tessa to read them, standing by the window to see Cyril bringing the carriage around. "Cyril's here with the carriage." She told Jem, who looked once out the window and searched more fervently. "What are you looking for?"
"Will's father's dagger!" Jem held it up triumphantly. "By the Angel, this place is such a tip, I wasn't sure I'd be able to find it." He walked over to Tessa, who was absorbed in the letters. He turned it over in his hands. "Will didn't bring much from home when he came here, but he did bring this. It's a dagger his father gave him. It has the Herondale bird markings on the blade. It should have a strong enough enough imprint of him for us to track him with it." But he was frowning.
"What's wrong?" Tessa asked, abandoning the letters to meet him.
"I found something else," Jem said. "Will has always been the one to buy my -" He glanced at Evan, "- my medicine for me. He knew I despised the whole transaction, finding Downworlders willing to to sell it, paying for the stuff..." Jem looked as if he were about to be sick. "I would give him money, and off he would go. I found a bill, though, for the last transaction. It appears the drugs - the medicine -" He glanced at Evan again, who was looking out the window again (she seemed to know when she wasn't wanted), "- does not cost what I thought it did."
"You mean Will's been cheating you out of money?" Tessa said, appalled.
"Quite the opposite. The drugs cost much more than he said they did. He must have been making up the difference somehow." Jem lowered his voice so Evan couldn't hear, but she didn't need to hear him to know what he was saying. "I know him better than anyone else in the world. And yet still I find that Will has secrets that surprise me."
"We'd better go," Evan said a few minutes later. "Cyril just threw a rock at the window."
"Yes, ah, I asked him to bring the carriage around. We had better go." Jem said, tearing his eyes from Tessa and nodded for the girls to follow him.