#theresagray

—

His beard was long and white, his eyes crested with thick white eyebrows. He reached out and laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Nephilim?” He said, his voice gruff and thickly accented. “Is it you?”

“Dear God,” said Will, putting his hand over his heart in a theatrical gesture. “It’s the Ancient Mariner who stoppeth one of three.”

“Ah’m ‘here at t’bequest of Aloysius Starkweather. Art t’lads he wants or not? Ah’ve not got all night to stand about.”

”Important appointment with an albatross?” Will inquired. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“What my mad friend means to say,” said Jem, “is that we are indeed Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Charlotte Branwell sent us. And you are...?”

—

“Young Herondale, are you?” he barked as Will stepped forward to introduce himself. “Half-mundane, half-Welsh, and the worst traits of both, I’ve heard.”

Will smiled politely. “Diolch.” (Diolch means thanks in Welsh)

—

“What is this?” he went on now, spearing an unfortunate object on a fork and raising it to eye level. “This...this...thing?”

“A parsnip?” Jem suggested.

“A parsnip planted in Satan’s own garden,” said Will. He glanced about. “I don’t suppose there’s a dog I could feed it to.”

“There don’t seem to be any pets about,” Jem—who loved all animals, even the inglorious and ill-tempered Church—observed.

“Probably all poisoned by parsnips,” said Will.

—

“Stand up straight,” Gabriel was saying to Tessa meanwhile, impatiently. “No, straight. Like this.” He demonstrated. She wanted to snap at him that she, unlike him, had not had a lifetime of being taught how to stand and move; that Shadowhunters were natural acrobats, and she was nothing of the sort.

“Hmph,” she said. “I’d like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot’s worth of train!”

“So would I,” said Gideon from across the room.

—

“You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” he said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say.”

Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. “No. No mark.”

He grinned around his fork. “I do suppose they’ve looked everywhere?”

“I’m sure Will’s tried,” said Jessamine in a bored tone. Tessa’s silverware clattered to her plate.

Jessamine, who had been mashing her peas with the side of her knife, looked up when Charlotte let out an aghast, “Jessamine!”

Jessamine shrugged. “Well, he’s like that.”

—

Jem would think she had utterly lost control of herself. No wonder he couldn’t face her at breakfast. She could barely face herself in the mirror.

“Did you hear me?” Will said again, clearly disappointed at the reception of his announcement. “I said I went to an opium den last night.”

Charlotte looked up from her toast. Slowly folded her newspaper, set it on the table beside her, and pushed her reading glasses down her upturned nose. “No,” she said. “That undoubtedly glorious aspect of your recent activities was unknown to us, in fact.”

“So is that where you’ve been all this time?” Jessamine asked listlessly, taking a sugar cube from the bowl and biting into it. “Are you quite a hopeless addict now? They say it takes only one or two doses.”

“It wasn’t really an opium den,” Tessa protested before she could stop herself. “That is to say—they seemed to have more of a trade in magic powders and things like that.”

“So perhaps not an opium den precisely,” said Will, “but still a den. Of vice!” He added, punctuating this last bit by stabbing his finger into the air.

—

Will looked at Jem thoughtfully. “I seem to have woken up with what they call a Monday mouse,” he said, pointing at the bruised skin under his eye. “Any idea where I got it?”

“None.” Jem helped himself to some tea.

“Eggs,” said Henry dreamily, looking at his plate. “I do love eggs. I could eat them all day.”

— 

“You might be surprised to know,” said Will, “that I saw something rather interesting in the opium den.”

“I’m sure you did,” said Charlotte with asperity.

“Was it an egg?” Henry inquired.

—

“Perhaps you should be there when I speak with him,” said Charlotte. “Nominally, you are the head of the Institute—”

“Oh, no,” said Henry with a look of horror.

—

“No, you’re still weighting the point too much—and what do you mean, you don’t like me?” Gabriel demanded, handing her another knife as if by reflex, but his expression was very surprised indeed.

“Well,” Tessa said, sighting along the line of the knife, “you behave as if you dislike me. In fact, you behave as if you dislike us all.”

“I don’t,” Gabriel said. “I just dislike him.” He pointed at Will.