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 the other side, and Tessa used 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 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 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. Catarina pulled his 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 red double-decker 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.”
Catarina 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. 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 allowed to have only 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 ordinarily calm 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, his strange, inward screams filling their heads. 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.