A Deeper Love Read online

  Tessa, he said. The word came out like a question. He writhed as Catarina wound the bandage tightly around the shoulder and arm. A mundane would not have been able to withstand it; Jem was barely able to. Sweat broke out all over his face.

  “It’s going to be rough going, sisters,” Charlie called back. “They’re trying to burn down St. Paul’s, the bastards. I’m going to have to go around the long way. It’s fires everywhere.”

  Charlie did not exaggerate. In front of them was a view of solid orange against the black silhouettes of burning buildings. The fires were so high that it was like there was a sun rising up out of the earth, dragging day out of the ground. As they drove on, it was like they were pressing into a solid wall of heat. The wind had quickened, and now fire was meeting fire, creating walls instead of pockets. The air shimmered and cooked. Several times they turned down streets that no longer seemed to be there anymore.

  “It’s no good this way either,” Charlie said, turning the ambulance again. “I’ll have to try another way.”

  Then came the sharp whistling in the air. This time, the pitch was different. These were not the incendiary bombs—these were the large explosives. After the fires, the idea was to kill. Charlie stopped the ambulance and craned his head to look up to see where the bomb was likely to land. They all froze, listening to the whistle go quiet. The silence meant the bomb was less than a hundred feet above you and coming fast.

  It was a long moment. Then it came. The impact was at the other end of the street, sending the shock wave down the road and a spray of rubble into the air. Charlie started on again.

  “Bastards,” he said under his breath. “Bloody bastards. You all right there, sisters?”

  “We’re fine,” Catarina said. She had both hands on Jem’s shoulder, and there was a low blue glow around the bandages. She was holding it back, whatever it was that was going through Jem’s body.

  They had just made another turn when there was another whistle and another silence. They stopped again. The impact was to their right this time, down at the corner. The ambulance rocked as the corner of a building was blown away. The ground shook. Charlie turned the ambulance away from it.

  “Not going to get through this way,” he said. “I’ll try down Shoe Lane.”

  The ambulance turned once more. On the stretcher, Jem had stopped moving. Tessa could not tell if the pulsing heat was coming from the air or from Jem’s body. There was fire on both sides of the street here, but the path looked almost clear to get through. There were two fire wardens in the road, shooting water into a burning warehouse. Suddenly there was a creaking sound. The fire began to arc over the road.

  “Blimey,” Charlie said. “Hang on tight, sisters.”

  The ambulance ground into reverse and started speeding backwards down the alley. Tessa heard a crackling noise—uncanny, almost merry—a great tinkling. Then, all at once, the bricks of the building exploded and the building tumbled down into a mass of fire and rubble, the flames blowing up in a mighty roar. The men with the hose vanished.

  “God almighty,” Charlie said, grinding the ambulance to a halt. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and started running for the men, two of whom were stumbling out of the flames. Catarina looked up and out the windscreen.

  “Those men,” she said. “The building’s come down on them.”

  You must help them, Jem said.

  Catarina looked between Jem and Tessa for a moment. Tessa felt herself full of an unbearable anxiety. She had to get Jem to safety, and yet, in front of them, men were being consumed in flame.

  “I will be quick,” Catarina said, and Tessa nodded.

  Alone in the ambulance, Tessa looked down at Jem.

  If they need you, then you must go, Jem said.

  “They need Catarina,” Tessa said. “You need me, and I need you. I do not leave you. No matter what happens, I do not leave you.”

  The ambulance was heating up like an oven, trapped as it was between multiple fires. There was no water to cool Jem’s brow, so Tessa mopped it and fanned it with her hand.

  After a minute, Catarina opened the back of the ambulance. She was covered in soot and water.

  “I have done what I can,” she said. “They will live now, as long as they reach the hospital. Charlie will have to take the ambulance.”

  Her eyes reflected her pain.

  Yes, Jem said. Somehow he had found enough strength to rise on his elbows. You must get them to safety. I am a Shadowhunter. I am stronger than those men.

  He had always been strong. It was not because he was a Shadowhunter. It was because he had a will fierce as starlight, burning in darkness and refusing to be put out.

  Charlie brought the wounded fire wardens over, carrying one over his shoulder.

  “You’ll be all right, sisters?” he said. “You can ride back with me?”

  “No,” Catarina said, climbing inside to help Tessa get Jem to his feet. Tessa placed herself under Jem’s wounded shoulder. He winced from the movement. It was clear Jem couldn’t really walk but had decided that he would do it anyway. He got his body into a standing position through sheer will. Catarina hurried to prop him up on one side, and Tessa took the other, giving over her full strength to support him completely. It was strange, feeling Jem’s body against hers after so long. They got out of the lane and back onto the road.

  Lovely night for a walk, Jem said, clearly trying to cheer her. He was sweating all over and could no longer hold up his head. His legs had gone limp. He was like a marionette with the strings gone slack.

  The path Charlie had driven had taken them past where they lived, so they had to backtrack down the lane. The buildings all around were on fire as well, but the fire was still contained inside. Tessa was covered in sweat, and the temperature was cooking them. The air was swollen with heat, and every mouthful of air scorched its way down her throat. It felt like when she first learned to change herself: the exquisite, strange pain.

  The street was narrowing now to the point where they could barely walk three abreast. Catarina’s and Tessa’s sides scraped the hot walls. Jem’s feet now dragged along the ground, no longer able to take any steps. When they emerged onto Fleet Street, Tessa gasped in the relatively cool air. The sweat on her face was chilled for a moment.

  “Come,” Catarina said, leading them toward a bench. “Let’s get him down for a moment.”

  They gingerly rested Jem on the empty bench. His skin was slick with sweat. The wound had soaked through his tunic. Catarina pulled the shirt open to expose his chest and cool him, and Tessa could see the runes of the Silent Brothers on his skin and his veins throbbing in his throat.

  “I don’t know how much farther we can get him in this state,” Catarina said. “The effort is too much.”

  Once on the bench, Jem’s limbs began to jerk and twitch as the poison moved through his body once more. Catarina set to work on him again, putting her hands on the wound. Tessa scanned the road. She made out a large shadow coming in their direction, with two dimmed lights like heavily lidded eyes.

  A bus. A great, double-decker red London bus was making its way through the night, because nothing stopped the London buses, not even a war. They were not at a stop, but Tessa jumped into the road and waved it down. The driver opened the door and called out.

  “You sisters all right?” he said. “Your friend, ’e doesn’t look so good.”

  “He’s injured,” Catarina said.

  “Then you get yourselves inside, sisters,” the driver said, shutting the door after they had done so, dragging Jem between them. “You’ve got London’s best private ambulance at your service. Do you want to go to St. Bart’s?”

  “We’ve come from there. It’s full. We’re taking him home to care for him, and we need to go quickly.”

  “Then give me the address, and that’s where we’ll go.”

  Cat
arina shouted their address over the sound of another, slightly more distant explosion, and they got Jem over to a seat. It was instantly clear that he would not be able to hold himself sitting up, as he was too exhausted from the effort of trying to walk. They rested him on the ample floor of the bus and sat next to him on either side.

  Only in London, Jem said, smiling weakly, would a bus keep making its rounds during a massive bombing.

  “Keep calm and carry on,” Catarina said, feeling Jem’s pulse. “There now. We’ll be at the flat in no time.”

  Tessa could tell from the way Catarina was becoming more and more chipper in tone that things were getting worse quickly.

  The bus could not go at a high speed—it was still a London bus on a dark night during an air raid—but it was going faster than any bus she had ever encountered. Tessa had no illusions about the safety of the bus. She had seen one of these flipped over completely after a hit, lying in the road like an elephant on its back. But they were moving, and Jem was resting on the floor, his eyes closed. Tessa looked at the advertisements on the walls—happy images of people using Bisto gravy next to posters telling people to get their children out of London for safety.

  London would not give up, and neither would Tessa.

  They had another piece of good luck back at the flat. Tessa and Catarina lived in the upstairs of a small house. Their neighbors, it seemed, had gone to the shelters, so there was no one else in the house to see them dragging a bleeding man up the steps.

  “The bathroom,” Catarina said as they set Jem down on the dark landing. “Fill the tub with water. Lots of it. Cold. I’ll get my supplies.”

  Tessa ran to the bathroom in the hall, praying that the water had not been disrupted by the bombing. Relief washed over her as water flowed from the tap. They were only allowed to have five inches in the bath, which was enforced by a line painted around the inside of the tub. Tessa ignored this. She opened the window wide. There was some cool air coming from the direction away from the fires. She hurried down the hall. Catarina had removed Jem’s tunic, leaving his chest bare. She had taken off the bandages, and the wound was exposed and angry, the black marks tracing along his veins once again.

  “Get his other side,” Catarina said. Together, they lifted Jem up. He was dead weight as they maneuvered him down the hall and carefully put him into the tub. Catarina positioned him so that his wounded arm and shoulder hung over the side, then reached into her apron pocket and removed two vials. She poured the contents of one into the water, turning it a light blue. Tessa knew better than to ask if Catarina thought he was going to survive. He was going to survive, because they would make sure of it. Also, you didn’t ask those sorts of questions if you were concerned about the answers.

  “Keep sponging him,” Catarina said. “We need to keep him cool.”

  Tessa got down on her knees and drenched the sponge, then ran the blue-tinted water over Jem’s head and chest. It smelled of a strange combination of sulfur and jasmine, and it seemed to lower his temperature. Catarina rubbed the contents of the other vial on her hands and began working at the wound and his arm and chest, massaging the spreading darkness back toward the opening. Jem’s head lolled back, his breathing rough. Tessa swabbed his forehead, reassuring him all the while.

  They did this for an hour. Tessa soon forgot the sound of the bombs outside, or the smoke or burning debris that drifted in. Everything was the motion of the water and the sponge, Jem’s skin, his face twisted in pain, then going still and slack. Both Catarina and Tessa were drenched, and there was water pooling on the floor around them.

  Will, Jem said, and the voice in Tessa’s head was lost but seeking. Will, is that you?

  Tessa fought back the lump in her throat as Jem smiled at nothing. If he saw Will, let him see Will. Maybe Will was here, after all, come to help his parabatai.

  Will, Tessa thought to herself, if you are here, you must help. I cannot lose him too, Will. Together, we will save him.

  Perhaps she imagined it, but Tessa felt something guiding her arm as she worked. She was stronger now.

  Jem suddenly lurched in the water and came halfway out of the tub, his back arching into a shape that should not have been possible and sending his head under.

  “Grab him,” Catarina said. “Don’t let him hurt himself! This is the worst of it!”

  Together, and with whatever force was aiding Tessa, they grabbed Jem as he writhed and screamed. Because he was wet, they had to wrap themselves around his limbs to try to prevent him from flailing, from bashing his head against the tiles. He knocked Catarina loose, and she fell to the floor and smashed her head into the wall, but she came back and got her arms around his chest again. Jem’s screams blended with the chaos of the night—the water splashed and the smoke blew in. Jem begged for yin fen. He kicked so hard that Tessa was thrown back against the sink.

  Then, all at once, he stopped moving completely and fell back into the tub. He looked lifeless. Tessa crawled back across the wet floor and reached for him.

  “Jem? Catarina . . .”

  “He’s alive,” Catarina said, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. She had her fingers on his wrist. “We’ve done all we can do here. Let’s get him into bed. We’ll know soon.”

  The All Clear rang out across London just after eleven, but there was nothing clear or safe. The Luftwaffe may have returned home, and the bombs may have stopped falling for a few hours, but the fires only increased. The wind fueled and propelled them. The air was rank with burning soot and flying scraps of debris, and London glowed.

  They had moved Jem into the little bedroom. The rest of his wet clothing had to be removed. Tessa had dressed and undressed countless men at this point, and Jem was a Silent Brother, for whom intimacy was impossible. Perhaps she should have been able to do it with calm professionalism, but she could not be a nurse with Jem. She had thought once that she would see him, that they would see each other, naked on their wedding night. This was too intimate and strange—this was not how Jem would want Tessa to see him, like that, for the first time. So she left the task to Catarina, the nurse, who managed it quickly and dried Jem off. They put him in the bed and wrapped him with all the blankets in the flat. The clothes were easy enough to dry—they hung them from the window for the baking hot air of the fires. Then Catarina went into the sitting room, leaving Tessa to stay with Jem and hold his hand. It was so strange to be again in this position of standing by the bed of the man she loved, waiting, hoping. Jem was—Jem. Exactly as he had been all those years ago, except for the marks of the Silent Brothers. He was Jem, the boy with the violin. Her Jem. Age had not consumed him, as it had her Will, but he might be taken from her all the same.

  Tessa reached up to her jade pendant, hidden beneath her collar. She sat and waited and listened to the roar and the wail outside as she held his hand.

  I am here, James, she said in her mind. I am here, and I will always be here.

  Tessa only let go of Jem’s hand to occasionally go to the window to make sure the fires did not come too close. There was a halo of orange all around. The fires were only a few streets away. It was strangely beautiful, this terrible blaze. The city was burning; hundreds of years of history, ancient beams and books were alight.

  “They mean to burn us out this time,” Catarina said, coming up behind her friend. Tessa had not heard her enter. “This ring of fire, it goes around St. Paul’s. They want the cathedral to burn. They want to break our spirits.”

  “Well,” Tessa said, pulling the curtain closed, “they won’t succeed.”

  “Why don’t we go and make a cup of tea?” Catarina said. “He’ll be sleeping for some time.”

  “No. I need to be here when he wakes.”

  Catarina looked at her friend’s face.

  “He means a great deal to you,” she said.

  “Jem—Brother Zachariah—and I have always been clo
se.”

  “You love him,” Catarina said. It was not a question.

  Tessa squeezed a handful of curtain in her fist. They stood in silence for a moment. Catarina rubbed her friend’s arm consolingly.

  “I’ll make the tea,” she said. “I’ll even let you have the last biscuits in the tin.”

  Biscuits?

  Tessa whirled around. Jem was sitting up. She and Catarina hurried to him. Catarina began checking his pulse, his skin. Tessa looked at his face, his dear and familiar face. Jem was back; he was here.

  Her Jem.

  “It is healing,” Catarina said. “You’ll need to rest, but you will live. It was a narrow escape, though.”

  Which is why I came to the best nurses in London, Jem said.

  “Perhaps you can explain that wound you have?” Catarina said. “I know where it comes from. Why were you attacked with a faerie weapon?”

  I was looking for information, Jem said, shifting himself painfully to sit up a bit higher. My inquiries were not appreciated.

  “Clearly, if you were attacked with a cataplasm. That is intended to kill. It does not wound. It is usually not survivable. Your Silent Brother markings gave you some protection, but . . .”

  Catarina felt his pulse again.

  But? Jem said curiously.

  “I did not believe you would make it through the night,” she said simply.

  Tessa blinked. She knew it was serious, but the way Catarina said it hit her physically.

  “You should perhaps avoid making those inquiries again,” Catarina said, putting the blanket back over Jem. “I’ll go and make the tea.”

  She left the room quietly, closing the door behind her, leaving Tessa and Jem together in the darkness.

  The raid seems worse than any before tonight, Jem finally said. Sometimes I think the mundanes will do more harm to each other than any demon could ever do to them.

  Tessa felt a wave of emotion go through her—everything from the night burst to the surface, and she sank her head into the side of Jem’s bed and wept. Jem sat up and pulled her close, and she rested her head on his chest, now warm, his heart beating strong.