Free The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

You’ve already met Will; you can meet everyone else. Perhaps you’ll see that we’re to be trusted.”
    And with a brisk nod, Charlotte left the room. As the door closed after her, Tessa shook her head mutely. Aunt Harriet had been bossy, but she’d had nothing on Charlotte Branwell.
    “She has a strict manner, but she’s really very kind,” Sophie said, laying out on the bed the dress Tessa was meant to wear. “I’ve never known anyone with a better heart.”
    Tessa touched the sleeve of the dress with the tip of her finger. It was dark red satin, as Charlotte had said, with black moiré ribbon trim around the waist and hem. She had never worn anything so nice.
    “Would you like me to help you get dressed for dinner, miss?” Sophie asked. Tessa remembered something Aunt Harriet had always said—that you could know a man not by what his friends said about him, but by how he treated his servants. If Sophie thought Charlotte had a good heart, then perhaps she did.
    She raised her head. “Much obliged, Sophie. I believe I would.”
    Tessa had never had anyone assist her in getting dressed before, other than her aunt. Though Tessa was slender, the dress had clearly been made for a smaller girl, and Sophie had to lace Tessa’s stays tightly to make it fit. She clucked under her breath while she did it. “Mrs. Branwell doesn’t believe in tight lacing,” she explained. “She says it causes nervous headaches and weakness, and a Shadowhunter can’t afford to be weak. But Miss Jessamine likes the waists of her dresses
very
small, and she does insist.”
    “Well,” said Tessa, a little breathless, “I’m not a Shadowhunter, anyway.”
    “There is that,” Sophie agreed, doing up the back of the dress with a clever little buttonhook. “There. What do you think?”
    Tessa looked at herself in the mirror, and was taken aback. The dress was too small on her, and had clearly been designed to be fitted closely to the body as it was. It clung almost shockingly to her figure down to the hips, where it swelled into gathers in the back, draped over a modest bustle. The sleeves were turned back, showing frills of champagne lace at the cuffs. She looked—older, she thought, not the tragic scarecrow she had looked in the Dark House, but not someone entirely familiar to herself either.
What if one of the times I Changed, when I turned back into myself, I didn’t do it quite right? What if this isn’t even my true face?
The thought sent such a bolt of panic through her that she felt as if she might faint.
    “You
are
a little pale,” Sophie said, examining Tessa’s reflection with a judicious gaze. She didn’t appear particularly shocked by the dress’s tightness, at least. “You could try pinching your cheeks a bit to bring the color. That’s what Miss Jessamine does.”
    “It was awfully kind of her—Miss Jessamine, I mean—to lend me this dress.”
    Sophie chuckled low in her throat. “Miss Jessamine’s never worn it. Mrs. Branwell gave it to her as a gift, but Miss Jessamine said it made her look sallow and tossed it in the back of her wardrobe. Ungrateful, if you ask me. Now, go on then and pinch your cheeks a bit. You’re pale as milk.”
    Having done so, and having thanked Sophie, Tessa emerged from the bedroom into a long stone corridor. Charlotte was there, waiting for her. She set off immediately, withTessa behind her, limping slightly—the black silk shoes, which did not quite fit, were not kind to her bruised feet.
    Being in the Institute was a bit like being inside a castle—the ceiling disappearing up into gloom, the tapestries hanging on the walls. Or at least it was what Tessa imagined the inside of a castle might look like. The tapestries bore repeating motifs of stars, swords, and the same sort of designs she’d seen inked on Will and Charlotte. There was a single repeating image too, of an angel rising out of a lake, carrying a sword in one hand and a cup in the other. “This place used