The Infernal Devices Rewritten

Chapter 7 - The Curse

Chapter 7

The Curse

"And you've absolutely no idea where he is?" Charlotte asked for the third time, raising her head from her hands. "Will is simply - gone?"

"Charlotte." Jem's voice was soothing. "It isn't as if this is unusual. When do we ever know where Will is at nighttime?"

"But this is different. He saw his family, or his sister at least. Oh, poor Will." Charlotte's voice shook the same way Evan's did, Tessa noticed, before what she called an anxiety attack. "I had thought perhaps he was finally beginning to forget about them..."

"No one forgets about their family." Jessamine said sharply, peaking out from under her cool cloth.

"Well, no, of course not." Charlotte hastily added, "But perhaps not to live with the memory constantly, as a sort of dreadful weight on you."

"As if we'd know what to do with Will if he didn't have the morbs every day." Jessamine continued. "Anyway, he can't have cared about his family that much in the first place or he wouldn't have left them."

"How can you say that?" Tessa demanded with a tiny gasp. "You don't know why he left. You didn't see his face at Ravenscar Manor -"

"Ravenscar Manor." Charlotte stared at the fire. "Of all the place I thought they'd go..."

"Evan had said that she'd read about a family that lived at Ravenscar Manor," Jem said. "She'd said that the father lost all his money to gambling after their eldest passed away and their second child ran away in grief -"

"Pish and tosh," Jessamine interrupted. "At least his family's alive. Beside, I'll wager he wasn't sad at all. I'll wager you he was shamming. He always is."

Jem's steady gaze was on Charlotte now. "What do you mean, of all the places you thought they'd go?"

"Jem...."

"It's important, Charlotte."

Charlotte glanced over at the tin on her desk that held her favorite lemon drops. "After Will's parents came here to see him, when he was twelve, and he sent them away... I begged him to speak to them, just for a moment, but he wouldn't. I tried to make him understand that if they left, then he could never see them again, and I could never tell him news of them. He took my hand, and he said, 'Please just promise me you'll tell me if they die, Charlotte. Promise me.' It was such an odd request for a little boy to make. I - I had to say yes."

"So you've been looking into the welfare of Will's family?" Jem confirmed.

"I hired Ragnor Fell to do it. For the first three years. The fourth year he came back to me and told me that the Herondales had moved. Edmund Herondale - that's Will's father - had lost their house gambling. That was all Ragnor was able to glean. The Herondales had been forced to move. He could find no further trace of them."

"Evan knew that." Tessa said. "Not the family name, she'd said, but that the father had lost their home to gambling." Then Tessa asked "Did you ever tell Will?"

"No. He had made me promise to tell him if they died, that was all. Why add to his unhappiness with the knowledge that they had lost their home? He never mentioned them. I had grown to hope he might have forgotten -"

"He has never forgotten." The force in Jem's voice made Charlotte's fingers stop twitching.

"I should not have done it. I should never have made that promise. It was a contravention of the Law -"

"When Will truly wants something," Jem said quietly, "When he feels something, he can break your heart."

"That's terrible," Charlotte's hands were on her mouth. "Oh, poor Evan." She shook her head.

"Well, it's no wonder that they get along so well." Jessamine said indifferently. "Evan and Will. They're both mad."

"She's not mad." Jem said as Tessa looked at Jessamine with a cold glare. "It's anxiety. It overtakes her body at times without warning. She said that she doesn't know what triggers them."

"But it happened twice in the past two days." Charlotte repeated. "When Starkweather showed you the spoils at the York Institute and earlier today when -"

"Will was hacking at the automaton." Jem confirmed. "But afterwards, she explained it."

"They're called panic attacks, you said," Henry looked up from his tinkering.

"She called them anxiety attacks and panic attacks," Tessa nodded. "I don't believe it matters which."

"That poor girl." Charlotte said again. Then she looked to Jem again, "She said -"

"It first started happening after her brother's death, yes." Jem nodded. "But she hadn't had one since the day of her parents and younger brother's death."

"I wonder if we should speak about this without her present." Charlotte fretted.

"Would you like me to fetch her, Mrs. Branwell?" Sophie asked politely.