I woke up in the middle of the night to the mournful, haunting sound of Jem's violin. The music, as always, sent shivers through me, and I lay awake for what felt like hours, staring at the dark ceiling and letting my mind go blank. His music moved me in a way no other song had done before, and I was sure that I wouldn't have been as affected if it had been any other violinist, even a world-class one. I pictured Jem's slim fingers moving effortlessly across the bow, wringing the melancholy notes out of the instrument, and that slight frown he had as he concentrated on the music. It took me at least ten minutes before I remembered that I wasn't supposed to be thinking about him, and I angrily turned over in bed and pummelled my pillow into a more comfortable position. I'd never been this obsessed with a boy before—I'd never lie awake thinking of them, and I most certainly wouldn't daydream about them when they weren't in the room. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that I'd never been as close with any boy as I was with Jem…but then again, they did say that the sweetest love was the forbidden one.
Almost as soon as I came to this realization, the music abruptly cut off, the note dying away into silence, and I half-sat up in concern, wondering if he was ill or had merely fallen asleep again. But just as I was debating whether or not to go over to him, I heard quiet voices drifting across the hallway. I recognized Jem's at once, and then the answering murmur of the new girl. Tessa. Of course—her room was close to his as well.
Something stirred up inside me then, a hot surge of anger mixed with pain. Get a grip on yourself! I thought as soon as I recognized that it was jealousy. Tessa has the right to speak to whoever she wants. That doesn't mean that they're making out or anything. You're overreacting as usual. Besides, you and Jem are Just Friends. You don't belong in this time and place, and he's going to die soon. This ship is going to sink before it even sets sail.
Blocking out the sound of Jem and Tessa talking, I settled back into bed, still feeling jealous and sick at heart and hating the entire world. Why couldn't I be normal? I'd just realized that I had a crush on Jem twelve hours ago; I wasn't supposed to be insanely jealous just because he was speaking to another girl. Besides, sitting in Jem's room while he played the violin was something I always thought of as my pastime. Perhaps I had been stupid enough to believe that he had done it because of me.
Mom, of course, would go into full psychologist mode and say that I was so insecure about myself that I was secretly afraid that Jem would find Tessa more interesting than me and would become close with her instead. By the Angel, I thought, She's still right even sixty-five years before she was born.
I consoled myself for the rest of the night with the thought that at least I might find another boy like Jem in the future.
Sophie knocked on my door late the next morning; I hadn't managed to fall asleep until dawn and had hoped that Charlotte would permit me to stay in bed that day. Unfortunately, as I groaned and pulled the pillow back over my head, Sophie was already laying my dress on the bed and opening the curtains. "Did you sleep well, miss?" she asked, seeming oblivious to my disheveled state.
For a moment, I wondered if she was joking, before my muddled brain managed to remember those were her first words to me every morning. I made a noncommittal sigh in response but finally admitted defeat, knowing that she would send Charlotte upstairs if I didn't comply. Reluctantly dragging myself out of bed, I went over to the washstand and splashed cold water on my face, deliberately avoiding looking at my face in the mirror. As I turned back to Sophie, I wondered with a slightly guilty twinge if my jealousy at hearing Jem and Tessa talking was the same jealousy she felt whenever she saw Jem and I together. I wanted to give her a sympathetic smile, but knew that she would vehemently deny her feelings for him if word got out.
But honestly, it would have seemed strange to an outsider that both Sophie and I fancied Jem instead of Will, which would admittedly have been more understandable. Will was incredibly good-looking, and his mysterious, brooding charm was surely something that would make any girl fall deeply in love with him. Jem had an ethereal beauty to him in a way that was completely different from Will's, and did not command attention in the same way that his parabatai did. Not for the first time, I wondered whether Tessa had noticed this dichotomy and, if she had, which one she was more drawn towards. She had certainly been staring at Will often enough at dinner…but she'd had a hushed, eager tone of voice when she'd been speaking to Jem.
And there I went again, overanalyzing everything. My distress must have shown plainly on my face, for Sophie stopped lacing up the back of my dress and looked concernedly at me. "Is everything all right, miss?" she asked.
"Yeah, it's fine," I lied. "I just had a bad dream. Look, Sophie, could you please call me Abby? I'm not used to all these formalities."
The other girl smiled at me, and this time I did sense a hint of teasing in her voice when she replied, "As you wish, miss."
Everyone else was already eating breakfast when I reached the dining-hall—except for Jem, who was again conspicuously absent. Tessa gave me a shy smile when I sat down next to her, and I couldn't help but smile back. There was something about her that was impossible to dislike, an endearing quality to her face. Perhaps it was her wide eyes—they weren't childlike, exactly, but they were open and easy to read. Anyone who was still able to trust again after having been imprisoned for six weeks earned respect in my books, and Tessa had gone through an even worse ordeal than I had.
As I dug into breakfast, Charlotte announced, "Will, today I'd like you to revisit the site of the Dark Sisters' house; it's abandoned now, but it's still worth a final search. And I want you to take Jem with you—"
Will slowly put his fork down; there was no trace of amusement at all in his face. "Is he well enough?" he asked, a question that had immediately come to my mind as well.
"He is quite well enough," said a mild voice from the door, and my heart pounded ridiculously at the sound of Jem's voice. "In fact, he's ready when you are."
Not wanting to appear overeager, I studiously avoided looking at him, although I could tell from the corner of my eye that he was wearing his bright red waistcoat—his favourite colour. Now is not the time, Abby, a voice chided in my head that sounded suspiciously like my mother's.
"You should have some breakfast first," Charlotte encouraged, pushing the plate of bacon toward him. Jem obediently sat down and smiled across the table at Tessa, which sent my insides into another frenzy of jealousy. "Oh, Jem—this is Miss Gray. She's—"
"We've met," Jem replied, and I saw the faintest hint of a blush cross Tessa's face. I was struck with the childish urge to stand up and stalk out of the room, but as it was, I bit my bottom lip as hard as I could and concentrated on pushing my food around with my fork. My eyes briefly met Will's across the table, and in that instant I saw my expression mirrored in his. It was as if we understood each other perfectly for a brief second, and I quickly looked away, inwardly marveling. Could Will possibly be attracted to Tessa? Had something gone on in the Dark Sisters' house that I didn't know about? Well, if that was the case, then I wished her all the luck—she would certainly need it.
I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I barely noticed that the others had stopped talking and were all staring at me. "Abby?" Charlotte asked. "Have you been listening?"
"Well—er—no," I admitted, pushing my plate away from me and blushing slightly. Will let out a not-so-subtle laugh, and I kept my gaze firmly on the tabletop.
"You may choose where you want to go today," Charlotte explained, firmly but kindly. "You can investigate the Dark Sisters' house with Will and Jem, or you can go dress shopping with Tessa and Jessamine."
Neither of those options sounded particularly appealing: I shied away at the thought of spending any length of time with Will, and despite the fact that I would be with Jem and it would be my first "real" mission, so to speak, I feared I would somehow get into danger. But I'd also promised myself that I would never go anywhere with Jessamine ever again…
I glanced around the table: Charlotte looked expectant, Henry looked as if he hadn't even heard the question, Jessamine looked haughty, Will looked indifferent—I imagined Jem looked hopeful, although of course I couldn't tell for sure—and though Tessa's expression was merely curious, I thought she looked imploring. Leaving Tessa to go dress shopping with Jessamine was akin to throwing a lamb into a pit of particularly hungry lions. "I'll go with Tessa and Jessamine," I finally said, giving Jem what I hoped was an apologetic look. His face had fallen slightly, and the disappointment gave me a savage pleasure.
"That's settled, then," Charlotte replied, sitting back in her chair. "I'll send the carriage around with Thomas."
An hour later, I found myself standing in a dressmaker's shop with Jessamine yet again while she paraded around trying on outfits, but at least this time I wasn't forced to endure her haughty remarks alone. Tessa had been quiet for the majority of the carriage ride, and Jessamine boasted enough for all of us, anyway.
To keep my mind off the notion that I'd made the wrong decision, I leaned over and whispered to Tessa, "Shouldn't you be the one trying on dresses?"
She appeared to be struggling to give a diplomatic response before finally giving up and saying, "I suppose I do need to pick one for my funeral."
"Your funeral?" I asked, confused.
"Yes." Grinning in a sly sort of way that inexplicably reminded me of Will, she replied, "I shall run out into the street and throw myself under a carriage to end it all. Surely that will be less painful than this."
I had to clap my hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. "I was considering jumping off a roof. Perhaps I'll land in a cemetery—it'll save on the cost of a hearse."
Tessa looked shocked for a moment before she began to laugh as well, and I was sure we looked like two giggling schoolgirls in that moment. My resolve to dislike her had all but vanished, and I found I couldn't hate her as I thought I would. It was unfair to hold a grudge against her just because she talked to Jem. Besides, I had missed this sort of joking with a girl—it made me feel like I was closer to home.
"What are you laughing about?" Jessamine asked rudely as she walked over toward us, crossing her arms. The dressmaker trailed behind her.
"Nothing," I said lamely, although I might as well not have answered because Jessamine didn't so much as glance at me.
"I'm also looking for a few dresses for my cousin from America," she continued, gesturing toward Tessa and pretending I wasn't there. "The clothes there are simply horrible. She's as plain as a pin, which doesn't help, but I'm sure you can do something with her."
I looked sideways at Tessa, wondering if she was hurt by Jessamine's comment, but she just looked resigned, and even slightly exasperated. I had to give it to her: if Jessamine had called me "plain as a pin", I would be struggling not to cry—mind, she had probably said worse many times when I was out of earshot.
At last now it was Tessa's turn to try on dress after dress, and fortunately I managed to slip out of the shop after half an hour, heading back over to the carriage where Thomas was waiting. I politely inquired about the horses, and he struck up an easy conversation with me. I noticed that his eyes lit up every time he spoke of Sophie, and each time he said her name made me feel even worse. I wanted to stop him, to say that Sophie was in love with Jem, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. By the Angel, this was becoming like a bad soap opera. I tried to work it out in my head: Thomas loved Sophie, who loved Jem, who (possibly) was interested in Tessa, who was definitely attracted to Will, who hated me, and I had feelings for Jem. The only people exempt from the confusing mess were Charlotte, Henry, Jessamine, and Agatha, and I suspected each of them had their own problems to deal with. And I'd only been at the Institute for two weeks.
While I was inwardly despairing at the mess I had been subjected to, the shop door tinkled from behind me and Jessamine and Tessa came back out, each carrying an armful of bags. Jessamine was talking to Tessa with something akin to excitement in her voice. "…It's such a lovely day, and you've hardly seen anything of London!" she exclaimed. "I think a walk in Hyde Park is in order. And after that, we could go to Gunter's and have Thomas get ices for us!"
I wanted to go back to the Institute and see if Jem was back yet, but there was no way I had any authority over Jessamine. Thomas seemed willing enough to drive us wherever we wanted to go, and Tessa's eyes met mine across the road, raising her eyebrows slightly as if silently asking me what to do. I gave a tiny shrug in response, and she turned to Jessamine and said, "I adore parks."
That was the first time I'd seen Jessamine smile, and the sight was almost enough to make the delay to the Institute worth it. Almost.
Alas, my temporary tolerance of dear Jessie was not to last, as she began to rant about the other members of the Institute almost as soon as we entered the park. Tessa and I exchanged yet another conspiratorial glance; I sensed that this would be a friendship based on body language rather than words. "Henry wanted access to the Institute so he could work on his little experiments in the cellar and not have to fight. And I don't think he minded marrying Charlotte—I don't think there was anyone else he wanted to marry—but if someone else had been running the Institute, he would have married them instead."
I wanted to believe that this wasn't true, that Henry and Charlotte were deeply in love and it had just been a bonus that Henry had access to the Institute, but I had to admit that nothing I'd seen of their interactions toward each other gave proof to my belief. Jessamine's words stung, but they were most likely true.
"And then there's the boys—Will and Jem," she continued haughtily; I immediately snapped out of my thoughts about how to bring Henry and Charlotte closer together. "Jem's pleasant enough, but you know how foreigners are. Not really trustworthy and basically selfish and lazy. He's always in his room, pretending to be ill, refusing to do anything to help anyone out."
"That's not true!" I said hotly, startling even myself. "He can't help being ill and you know it. Besides, he does a lot more to help out than you."
I had never spoken so rudely to anyone before, and my hand clapped over my mouth as soon as I realized what I'd said. Both girls were staring at me; Jessamine flipped her hair back, smirked, and said, "Ignore her, Tessa. She's head over heels for Jem—don't believe a word of what she says."
"What?" I spluttered. "How do you know that? I mean—what makes you think that?" I could feel my face turning hot, and I wished Tessa's gaze wasn't so intense.
"Oh, please," Jessamine snorted. "Your little fancy is even more obvious than Sophie's is. Whenever he walks into the room you look at him as if he's the only man in the world. It's been like that since the first day you arrived here."
I opened my mouth, searching for something equally as insulting to say back, but Tessa hurriedly placed herself between us, interrupting with, "What about Will?"
"Will," Jessamine snorted, shaking her head; I was half-annoyed, half-grateful to Tessa for changing the topic. "He's handsome enough, but behaves like a lunatic half the time; it's as if he were brought up by savages. He has no respect for anyone and anything, no concept of the way a gentleman is supposed to behave. I suppose it's because he's Welsh."
The disdain in her voice made it obvious that being Welsh was not a compliment in her opinion, and I dimly remembered my mother telling me once that Dad had ancestors from Wales. I wondered if I should be offended at her condescension, or feel even prouder of my heritage—after all, Wales couldn't be so horrible if Jessamine disliked it.
At any rate, my attention was again caught by a tickling on my foot. I glanced down, my eyes widening in horror when I saw a large brown spider on my shoe. To make matters worse, I could have sworn that it was the exact same spider I'd seen at the Pandemonium Club and in the motel room. There was absolutely no way that spiders this large were native to Britain.
I stuck my foot out and discreetly tried to shake the spider off. It landed in the grass a few feet away and I breathed a sigh of relief, but froze when I saw it scuttling in the grass back toward me. "You two go along without me," I said loudly to Tessa and Jessamine, who hadn't noticed my predicament. "I'm going back to the carriage." With that, I took off down the path, hiking up my dress and dashing past couples going for walks and weaving through benches, on which women looked down their noses at me for behaving in such an unladylike manner. But I couldn't care less what they thought of me.
Several times I turned around, seeing if the spider was still following me; I hoped someone had trampled it with their boots. When I reached the carriage I leapt into it, ignoring Thomas's questions, and slammed the door behind me, feeling as if I was running from the Greater Demon all over again.
The girls arrived back scarcely ten minutes later; Tessa looked shaken and I noticed the tip of Jessamine's parasol was covered in blood. "What happened?" I whispered to Tessa as she slid into the seat next to me, hoping that Jessamine hadn't lost her temper and stabbed her.
"We encountered a goblin and Jessamine was defending us," Tessa answered, although I was sure she was leaving out a large part of the story. "Why did you leave so quickly?"
"I was feeling a bit lightheaded," I lied. "The heat was getting to me."
We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence as the carriage jerked to life and began to head back to the Institute. Jessamine was staring straight ahead, blood dripping from her parasol onto her dress.
"So, what is San Francisco like?" Tessa finally asked, as if trying to make polite conversation. "I have always wanted to visit."
I gulped. "Big. And um…there are a lot of people."
Tessa blinked. "It is very like New York, then."
"Yeah." I flailed, sensing the conversation was already dying. "The Golden Gate Bridge is amazing, though. If you ever get the chance, you should definitely see it." Oh, damn! Had the bridge even been built yet? I didn't think so. Wasn't it built in the nineteen-thirties?
Charlotte had taken me aside after dinner the previous night and told me that she had instructed the others not to breathe a word about my past—or rather, future—and Jem's illness. It would be up to us to tell Tessa when we were ready, she'd said. I had been grateful, although I couldn't help but wonder if Jem had already explained everything about himself to her, since he'd opened up fairly quickly to me.
Tessa frowned. "I have never heard about any such bridge."
I looked, terrified, over at Jessamine to see if she would make some sort of snide remark, but she appeared to be lost in her own unpleasant world. "It's not very well-known," I said lamely, and my reluctance to speak about the matter must have been clear to Tessa, for she did not attempt to start a conversation again.
Jessamine stood up as soon as the carriage halted outside the gates to the Institute, waiting for Thomas to help her down before she exited. Tessa followed right after, and by the time I hopped down the steps, thankful there were no spiders in sight, the girls were already disappearing into the house. Jessamine appeared to have grabbed Tessa's hand and was dragging her inside. Giving a thankful smile to Thomas, I hurried inside after them, where Jessamine had finally turned back to me, turning up her nose slightly, as if she had suddenly remembered I was there. "Come along too, Abby, if you must," she said, setting off down the corridor with Tessa in tow. I looked longingly at the staircase winding upstairs, wondering if Jem was back, but Tessa's pleading look she threw at me over her shoulder was enough to make me reluctantly follow Jessamine instead.
She led us through a corridor that I had never taken, despite it looking identical to the hallway outside my room, and into a large bedroom that was at least twice the size of mine. The covers on the bed were painted with flowers, unlike my plain white coverlet, and she had a white vanity table with a bright silver hairbrush and mirror. The window looked out onto the leafy side yard; much more interesting than my view of the coppery sky.
"Your room is lovely," Tessa said as Jessamine shut the door behind us, and I had to reluctantly agree.
But the other girl looked contemptuous. "It's much too small," she replied, causing me to stifle a snort. "But come—over here." She beckoned for us to follow her to the window, where a miniature dollhouse stood on the table. Tessa knelt down so she could see it more clearly, and even I had to admit that it was extraordinary: this was no ordinary dollhouse. Everything was painstakingly detailed, down to the wallpaper and the oil paintings on the walls. I wasn't even sure if the dollhouses in 1978 were built quite like this.
"This was my house," Jessamine was saying, her eyes fixed on it. Her tone was one of reverence and awe.
"You mean this was the dollhouse you had when you were a little girl?" Tessa asked.
"No—this was my house. My father had this made for me when I was six. It's modeled exactly on the house we lived in, on Curzon Street. This was the wallpaper we had in the dining-room, and those are exactly the chairs in my father's study. You see?"
I was beginning to understand where she was going with this, but Tessa still looked baffled. "It's very pretty," she said awkwardly, in a hesitant tone I often found myself using.
"See, here in the parlor is Mama," Jessamine continued, and I wondered if she was feeling all right. "And here in the study, reading a book, is Papa. And upstairs in the nursery is Baby Jessie. Later they'll have dinner here, in the dining room. And then Mama and Papa will sit in the drawing-room by the fire. Some nights they go to the theater, or to a ball or a dinner. And then Mama will kiss Papa good night, and they will go to their rooms, and they will sleep all night long. There will be no calls from the Clave that drive them out in the middle of the night to fight demons in the dark. There will be no one tracking blood into the house. No one will lose an arm or an eye to a werewolf, or have to choke down holy water because a vampire attacked them."
Grudgingly, I found that I could understand Jessamine. I had never wanted this life either, and now I, like her, was being forced into it. But the conundrum was that I found I was actually enjoying it so far—the training part, at least. Had Jessamine even tried to live as a Shadowhunter, or had she dismissed the possibility straight away?
"When our house burned," she continued, her eyes taking on a quality that was almost like despair, "I had nowhere else to go. It wasn't as if there were relations that could take me in; all of Mama and Papa's relations were Shadowhunters and hadn't spoken to them since they'd broken with the Clave. Henry is the one who made me that parasol. Did you know that? I thought it was quite pretty until he told me that the fabric is edged with electrum, as sharp as a razor. It was always meant to be a weapon."
"You saved us," Tessa said in a soft voice. "In the park today. I can't fight at all. If you hadn't done what you did—"
But Jessamine interrupted her. "I shouldn't have done it. I will not have this life, Tessa. I will not have it. I don't care what I have to do. I won't live like this. I'd rather die."
Damn Jessamine for making me feel sorry for her, I thought, but before I could attempt a half-hearted attempt at consoling her, the door opened behind us and Sophie walked in, looking wary. "Miss Tessa, Mr Branwell very much wants to see you in his study," she said. "He says it's important."
Tessa half-glanced over at Jessamine, and the other girl snapped, "Go along, then, if Henry wants you. I'm quite tired of you already, and I think I'm getting a headache. I don't want you here either, Abby, you're even more useless than Tessa. Sophie, when you return, I'll need you to massage my temples with eau de cologne."
"As you like, Miss Jessamine," Sophie said calmly. I scrambled to my feet and left the room without a glance back at Jessamine; her parting comment had certainly done nothing to endear her to me. Tessa was right behind me, and it was with an enormous amount of relief that Sophie finally closed the door behind us.
Now I couldn't help feeling a bit annoyed; what was so important that Henry could possibly want to see Tessa about? Wasn't he supposed to be helping me, not her? I was the one from the future and desperately needed to go back home.
While I sulked, Sophie led us back through the Institute and to the stairs leading down to the crypt. I took a step back, shivering in the cold air that drifted upstairs from the open door. As they prepared to go downstairs, Tessa turned shyly to me and said, "Thank you for coming with me today, Abby. I feel as if I would have had a much less pleasant time without you."
I hesitated before finally saying, "What are friends for?"
And I found that, as Tessa smiled back at me, I was no longer jealous of her.
