Jem’s meeting with Tessa from his
viewpoint.
Jem’s father’s violin had been made
for him by the luthier Guarnerni, who had made violins for musicians as famous
as Paganini. In fact Jem sometimes thought his father might have been a sort of
Paganini himself, famous all over the world for his playing, if he had not been
a Shadowhunter. Shadowhunters might dabble in music or painting or poetry,
especially after retirement from active duty, but they were always
Shadowhunters first and foremost.
Jem knew his talent for the violin
was not as great as his father’s—who had taught him how to play when he was
still young enough to have trouble balancing the heavy instrument—but he played
it for reasons that went far beyond art alone.
This evening he had felt too unwell
to join the others at dinner—pain in his bones and a creeping lassitude in his
limbs—until he had finally given in and taken just enough yin fen to
quell the pain and spark a bit of energy. Then had come the annoyance at his
own dependence, and when he had gone looking for Will, always his first line of
defense against the addiction, his parabatai had—of course—not been
there. Out again, Jem thought, walking the streets like Diogenes, though with a
less noble purpose.
So Jem had retreated to his room and
to his violin. He was playing Chopin now, a piece originally for piano that his
father had adapted for violin. The music began with softness and built to a
crescendo, one that would wring every ounce of energy, sweat and concentration
out of him, leaving him too exhausted to feel the yearning for the drug that
plucked at his nerve endings like fire.
It was in fact, one of the pieces
his father had wooed his mother with, before they were married. Jem’s father
was the romantic, his mother more practical, but the music had moved her
nonetheless. His father had insisted Jem learn it—“I played it for my bride,
and one day, you will play it for yours.”
But I will never have a bride. He did not think
it in a self-pitying way. Jem was like his mother: practical about most things,
even his own death. He was able to hold the fact of it at arm’s length and
examine it. Every one of the children of the Institute was peculiar, he thought:
Jessamine with her bitterness and her dollhouse, Will with his lies and
secrets, and Jem—his dying was only another sort of peculiarity.
He paused for a moment, gasping for
breath. He was playing by the window, where it was cooler: he had cracked it
slightly open, and the bitter London air touched his cheeks and hair like
fingertips as the bow in his hand stilled. He stood in a patch of moonlight,
silver as yin fen powder . . .
He clamped his eyes shut and threw
himself, again, into the music, the bow sawing against the strings like a cry.
Sometimes the desire for the drug was almost overpowering, stronger than the
desire for food, for water or air, for love . . .
I played it for my bride, and one
day, you will play it for yours. Jem held to that thought resolutely.
Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to look at girls as Will did, with
his dark blue eyes raking them, offering insults and compliments loud enough to
get him slapped at nearly every Christmas party. He wanted casual companionship,
sometimes, when a pretty girl flirted with him, or when he was especially
lonely.
But Jem did not, could not, think of
girls that casually: he supposed an affair might be possible, but it was not
what he wanted. He wanted what his father had had—the sort of love poets wrote
about. The way his parents had looked at each other, the peace that had wrapped
them when they were together. The facsimile of love would not bring him that,
and were he to waste time on it, he might miss his opportunity for the real
thing—and he would not have many.
A twinge went through him as his
need for the drug increased, and he sped up his playing. He tried not to look
at the box on his nightstand. It was times like this when he asked himself why
he did not just take handfuls of the stuff at a time. Most who were addicted to
yin fen took it unceasingly until they died for the euphoric feeling of being
untiring and indomitable, of having the force and power of a star. It was that
euphoria that killed them in the end, burning out their nerves, crushing their
lungs and exhausting their hearts.
Sometimes Jem felt as if he wanted
to burn. Sometimes he did not know why he struggled against it, why he valued a
longer life of suffering over a shorter life without pain. But then he reminded
himself that the lack of pain would only be another illusion: like Jessamine’s
dollhouse, like Will’s stories of brothels and gin palaces.
And, if he were truly honest, he
knew it would end his chances to find the kind of love his parents had once
had. For that was what love was, wasn’t it—to burn bright in someone else’s
eyes?
He continued to play. The music had
risen to a crescendo. He was breathing hard, sweat standing out on his forehead
and collarbones despite the chill of the evening air. He heard the click of his
bedroom door as it opened behind him and relief spilled through him, though he
did not stop playing. “Will,” he said, after a moment. “Will, is that you?”
There was only silence,
uncharacteristic of Will. Perhaps Will was annoyed about something. Jem lowered
his bow and turned, frowning. “Will—” he began.
But it wasn’t Will at all. A girl
stood hesitantly in the doorway of his room. A girl in a white nightgown with a
dressing-gown thrown over it. Her gray eyes were pale in the moonlight, but
calm, as if nothing about his appearance startled her. She was the warlock
girl, he realized suddenly; the one Will had told him about earlier, but Will
had not mentioned the quality of stillness about her that made Jem feel calm
despite his longing for the drug, or the small smile on her lips that lit her
face. She must have been there for quite a few moments, listening to him play:
the evidence that she had enjoyed it was in her expression, in the dreamy tilt
of her head.
“You’re not Will,” he said, and
immediately realized that this was a terrifically stupid thing to say. As she
began to smile, he felt an answering smile beginning on his own lips—for such a
long time Will had always been the person he wanted most to see when he was
like this, and now, for the first time, he found himself glad not to see his parabatai,
but someone else instead.
