The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare Page B

pictures of angels—tumbling out of the sky, shedding feathers as a star might shed sparks as it fell. There were more images of the Angel Raziel, holding open a book on whose pages runes burned like fire, and there were men kneeling around him, men on whose skin Marks could be seen. Images of men like the one she’d seen in her nightmare, with missing eyes and sewed-shut lips; images of Shadowhunters brandishing flaming swords, like warrior angels out of Heaven. She looked up at Will. “You are, then, aren’t you? Part angel?”
    Will didn’t answer. He was looking out the window, through a clear lower pane. Tessa followed his gaze; the window gave out onto what had to be the front of the Institute, for there was a rounded courtyard below them, surrounded by walls. Through the bars of a high iron gate surmounted by a curved arch, she could glimpse a bit of the street beyond, lit by dim yellow gaslight. There were iron letters worked into the wrought arch atop the gate; when looked at from this direction, they were backward, and Tessa squinted to decipher them.
    “
Pulvis et umbra sumus
. It’s a line from Horace. ‘
We are dust and shadows.
’ Appropriate, don’t you think?” Will said. “It’s not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and thenthey burn your body—dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all.”
    Tessa looked at him. He was wearing that look she found so odd and compelling—that amusement that didn’t seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as if he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time. She wondered what had made him this way, how he had come to find darkness amusing, for it was a quality he didn’t appear to share with any of the other Shadowhunters she had met, however briefly. Perhaps it was something he had learned from his parents—but what parents?
    “Don’t you ever worry?” she said softly. “That what’s out there—might come in here?”
    “Demons and other unpleasantness, you mean?” Will asked, though Tessa wasn’t sure if that was what she had meant, or if she had been speaking of the evils of the world in general. He placed a hand against the wall. “The mortar that made these stones was mixed with the blood of Shadowhunters. Every beam is carved of rowan wood. Every nail used to hammer the beams together is made of silver, iron, or electrum. The place is built on hallowed ground surrounded by wards. The front door can be opened only by one possessing Shadowhunter blood; otherwise it remains locked forever. This place is a fortress. So no, I am
not
worried.”
    “But why live in a fortress?” At his surprised look she elaborated. “You clearly aren’t related to Charlotte and Henry, they’re hardly old enough to have adopted you, and not allShadowhunter children must live here or there would be more than you and Jessamine—”
    “And Jem,” Will reminded her.
    “Yes, but—you see what I mean. Why don’t you live with your family?”
    “None of us
have
parents. Jessamine’s died in a fire, Jem’s—well Jem came from quite a distance away to live here, after his parents were murdered by demons. Under Covenant Law, the Clave is responsible for parentless Shadowhunter children under the age of eighteen.”
    “So you are one another’s family.”
    “If you must romanticize it, I suppose we are—all brothers and sisters under the Institute’s roof. You as well, Miss Gray, however temporarily.”
    “In that case,” Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face, “I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace.”
    Will looked at her, slow and hard, and then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. “Then you must do the same for me,” he said. “Tessa.”
    She had never thought about her name