✓ | Hushed Whispers ⋆ Will Herondale [2]

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE: PREPARING

◤You know, if the marriage were valid, she'd be your sister-in-law.◢

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CHAPTER THIRTY NINE: PREPARING

"THIS is what I have been working on," Henry stated proudly, allowing his eyes to glance at everyone who stood around the table in the drawing room. Jem, Will, Marie, Tessa and Charlotte listened carefully. "For just this occasion. It is specifically calibrated to function as a weapon against clockwork assassins."

"As dull as Nate Gray is," Will stated, "his head is not actually filled with gears, Henry. He's a human."

"He may bring one of those creatures with him. We don't know he'll be there unaccompanied. If nothing else, that clockwork coachman of Mortmain's-"

"I think Henry is right," Tessa offered her opinion, making everyone look at her. Once again, Jem's cheeks became flushed with color.

Will, on the other hand, shrugged his shoulders. "You don't look like a boy at all. You look like a girl in boys' clothes."

"That's because she is a girl in boys' clothes," Marie rose her eyebrows at Will. "Besides, she's not trying to fool anyone but a casual observer."

Tessa nodded firmly. "Nate knows Jessamine's a girl. And the clothes will fit me better once I've Changed into her."

"Maybe you should do it now," Will suggested, glancing at his parabatai and smirking. "I reckon some of us have trouble focusing."

Both Jem and Tessa glared at the Herondale boy, but it only made him dwell more. Nevertheless, Tessa obeyed and in a matter of seconds, before them stood Jessamine.

"Uncanny," Henry sounded fascinated, gripping the object in his hand.

"So, Henry," Tessa decided to get back to the topic. "What is that?"

"It's a sort of... infernal device that Henry's created," Jem informed. "Meant to disrupt the internal mechanisms that keep the clockwork creatures running."

"You twist it, like this," Henry showed everyone how the device worked, twisting its bottom and upper part in different directions, "and then throw it. Try to lodge it into the creature's gears or somewhere that it will stick. It is meant to disrupt the mechanical currents that run through the creature's body, causing them to wrench apart. It could do you some damage too, even if you aren't clockwork, so don't hang on to it once it's activated. I've only two, so..."

The red-haired man landed one to Jem and one to Charlotte who let it hang on their weapons belt.

"The message has been sent?" Tessa asked.

"Yes," Marie nodded. "We're only waiting for a reply from your brother now."

"That would be correct," Charlotte said, unrolling a piece of paper across the table. "Here is a map that shows where Jessamine claims she and Nate usually meet. It's a warehouse on Mincing Lane, down by Lower Thames Street. It used to be a tea merchant's packing factory until the business went bankrupt."

"Mincing Lane," Jem's eyes squinched slightly. "Center of the tea trade. Also the opium trade. Makes sense Mortmain might keep a warehouse there."

His finger ran over the mentioned locations, tracing the path. "Such an odd place for Jessamine, though," Jem added. "She always dreamed of such glamour - of being introduced at Court and putting her hair up for dances. Not of clandestine meetings in some sooty warehouse near the wharves."