Read Online Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare - Free Book Online

wasn’t sure quite why he was in the Institute’s drawing room, except that his brother had told him to come here and wait, and even after everything that had happened, he was still used to doing what Gideon said. He was surprised at how plain the room was, nothing like the grand drawing rooms in either the Lightwoods’ Pimlico house or the one in Chiswick. The walls were papered with a faded print of cabbage roses, the surface of the desk stained with ink and scarred with the marks of letter openers and pen nibs, and the grate was sooty. Over the fireplace hung a water-blotched mirror, framed in gilt.
    Gabriel glanced at his own reflection. His gear was torn at the neck, and there was a red mark on his jaw where a long graze was in the process of healing. There was blood all over his gear—
Your own blood, or your father’s blood?
    He pushed the thought away quickly. It was odd, he thought, how he was the one who looked like their mother, Barbara. She had been tall and inclined toward slenderness, with curling brown hair and eyes he remembered as the purest green, like the grass that sloped down toward the river behind the house. Gideon looked like their father: broad and stocky, with eyes more gray than green. Which was ironic, because Gabriel was the one who had inherited their father’s temperament: headstrong and quick to anger, slow to forgive. Gideon and Barbara were more peacemakers, quiet and steady, faithful in their beliefs. They were both much more like—
    Charlotte Branwell came in through the open door of the drawing room in a loose dress, her eyes as bright as a small bird’s. Whenever Gabriel saw her, he was struck by how small she was, how he towered over her. What had Consul Wayland been thinking, giving this tiny creature power over the Institute and all the Shadowhunters of London?
    “Gabriel.” She inclined her head. “Your brother says you were not hurt.”
    “I’m quite all right,” he said shortly, and immediately knew he had sounded rude. He had not meant to, precisely. His father had drilled into his head for years now what a fool Charlotte was, how useless and easily influenced, and though he knew his brother disagreed—disagreed enough to come and live in this place and leave his family behind—it was a hard lesson to put aside. “I thought you would be with Carstairs.”
    “Brother Enoch has arrived, with another of the Silent Brothers. They have banned us all from Jem’s room. Will is pacing outside in the corridor like a caged panther. Poor boy.” Charlotte looked at Gabriel briefly before walking to the fireplace. In her glance was a look of keen intelligence, quickly masked by the lowering of her eyelashes. “But enough of that. I understand that your sister has already been delivered to the Blackthorns’ residence in Kensington,” she said. “Is there someone you would like me to send a message to for you?”
    “A—message?”
    She paused before the fireplace, clasping her hands behind her back. “You need to go somewhere, Gabriel, unless you want me to turn you out of doors with only the key of the streets to your name.”
    Turn me out of doors?
Was this horrible woman actually throwing him out of the Institute? He thought of what his father had always told him:
The Fairchilds don’t care about anyone but themselves and the Law
. “I—the house in Pimlico—”
    “The Consul will shortly be informed of all that transpired at Lightwood House,” said Charlotte. “Both of your family’s London residences will be confiscated in the name of the Clave, at least until they can be searched and it can be determined that your father left nothing behind that could provide the Council with clues.”
    “Clues to
what
?”
    “To your father’s plans,” she said, unfazed. “To his connection to Mortmain, his knowledge of Mortmain’s plans. To the Infernal Devices.”
    “I’ve never even heard of the bloody Infernal Devices,” Gabriel protested, and then blushed. He