Gray ↠ Gabriel Lightwood [1]

SEVEN

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T H E   C L O C K W O R K   G I R L

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It had grown dark outside the Institute, and Sophie's lantern cast strange dancing shadows on the walls as she led Elise and Tessa down one flight of stone stairs after another. The steps were old, concave in the centers, where generations of feet had worn them down. The walls were roughly textured stone, the tiny windows set into them at intervals giving way eventually to blankness that seemed to indicate that they had passed belowground.

Elise had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself steady, her mind running wild and continuing to draw her down into the nightmare that had been the torture the Dark Sisters had put her through before the pain of her teeth biting into her skin pulled her back to reality as the cycle began all over again. The blonde could feel the aching of her back all the way down to her spine, the feeling shaking her so bad that she would've slipped down the stairs more than once if it hadn't been for Tessa keeping a slow pace ahead of her.

"Sophie," Tessa spoke up, her voice cutting through the darkness and silence and slightly easing the nervousness settling deep within Elise's bones, "are we going down into the church crypt, by any chance?"

Sophie chuckled, and the lights of the lantern flickered on the walls. "It used to be the crypt, before Mr. Branwell had it fixed up into a laboratory for himself. He's always down there, tinkering with his toys and his experiments. It doesn't half drive Mrs. Branwell wild."

"What's he making?" Elise asked curiously, her lavender eyes gleaming under the light of the lantern like iolite gemstones being licked by fire.

"All sorts of things," Sophie said, her voice echoing strangely off the walls. "Inventing new weapons, protective gear for the Shadowhunters. He loves clockwork and mechanisms and that sort of thing. Mrs. Branwell sometimes says she thinks he'd love her better if she ticked like a clock." She laughed.

"It sounds," Tessa said, "as if you're fond of them. Mr. and Mrs. Branwell, I mean."

Sophie said nothing, but the already proud set of her back seemed to harden slightly.

"Fonder of them than you are of Will, anyway," Tessa said.

"Anyone who is not Mr. Herondale is fonder company," Elise mused, throwing a wicked grin her sister's way to which Tessa merely frowned at.

"Him." The disgust was plain in Sophie's voice. "He's—Well, he's a bad sort, isn't he? Reminds me of the son of my last employer. He was proud just like Mr. Herondale. And whatever he wanted, he got, from the day he was born. And if he didn't get it well. . ." She reached up then, almost unconsciously and touched the side of her face, where the scar ran from mouth to temple.