City of Bones - Chapter 19

Clary wasn't sure what she'd expected—exclamations of delight, perhaps a smattering of applause. Instead there was
silence, broken only when Jace said, "Somehow, I thought it would be bigger."
Clary looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size, perhaps, of an ordinary wineglass, only much heavier. Power
thrummed through it, like blood through living veins. "It's a perfectly nice size," she said indignantly.
"Oh, it's big enough," he said patronizingly, "but somehow I was expecting something… you know." He gestured with his
hands, indicating something roughly the size of a house cat.
"It's the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl," said Isabelle. "Are we done now? Can we go?"
Dorothea had her head cocked to one side, her beady eyes bright and interested. "But it's damaged!" she exclaimed. "How
did that happen?"
"Damaged?" Clary looked at the Cup in bewilderment. It looked fine to her.
"Here," said the witch, "let me show you," and she took a step toward Clary, holding her long red-nailed hands out for the
Cup. Clary, without knowing why, shrank back. Suddenly Jace was between them, his hand hovering near the sword at his waist.
"No offense," he said calmly, "but nobody touches the Mortal Cup except us."
Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and that same strange blankness returned to her eyes. "Now," she said, "let's not be
hasty. Valentine would be displeased if anything were to happen to the Cup."
With a soft snick, the sword at Jace's waist came free. The point hovered just below Dorothea's chin. Jace's look was
steady. "I don't know what this is about," he said. "But we're leaving."
The old woman's eyes gleamed. "Of course, Shadowhunter," she said, backing up to the curtained wall. "Would you like to
use the Portal?"
The point of Jace's sword wavered as he stared in momentary confusion. Then Clary saw his jaw tighten. "Don't touch
that—"
Dorothea chuckled, and quick as a flash she jerked down the curtains hanging along the wall. They fell with a sound of soft
collapse. The Portal behind them was open.
Clary heard Alec, behind her, suck in his breath. "What is that?" Clary had caught only a glimpse of what was visible
through the door—red roiling clouds shot through with black lightning, and a terrible dark, rushing shape that hurtled toward
them—when Jace shouted for them to get down. He dropped to the floor, yanking Clary down with him. Flat on her stomach on
the carpet, she lifted her head in time to see the rushing dark thing strike Madame Dorothea, who screamed, thrusting her arms
upward. Rather than knocking her down, the dark thing wrapped her like a shroud, its blackness seeming to seep into her like ink
sinking into paper. Her back humped monstrously, her whole shape elongating as she rose and rose into the air, her bulk stretching
and re-forming. A sharp rattle of objects striking the floor made Clary look down: They were Dorothea's bracelets, twisted and
broken. Scattered among the jewels were what looked like small white stones. It took Clary a moment to realize that they were
teeth.
Beside her Jace whispered something. It sounded like an exclamation of disbelief. Next to him, Alec in a choked voice
said, "But you said there wasn't much demonic activity—you said the levels were low!"
"They were low," Jace growled.
"Your version of low must be different from mine!" Alec shouted, as the thing that had once been Dorothea howled and
twisted. It seemed to be spreading, humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen—
Clary tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her after him. Isabelle and Alec stumbled to their feet, gripping their
weapons. The hand holding Isabelle's whip was trembling slightly.
"Move!" Jace shoved Clary toward the apartment door. When she tried to look back over her shoulder, she saw only a
thickly swirling grayness, like storm clouds, a dark shape at its center…
The four of them burst out into the foyer, Isabelle in the lead. She raced toward the front door, tried it, and turned with a
stricken face: "It's resistant. Must be a spell—"
Jace swore and fumbled in his jacket. "Where the hell is my stele—?"
"I have it," Clary said, remembering. As she reached for her pocket, a noise like thunder exploded through the room. The
floor heaved under her feet. She stumbled and nearly fell, catching at the banister for support. When she looked up, she saw a
gaping new hole in the wall separating the foyer from Dorothea's apartment, lined all around its ragged edges with wood and plaster
rubble, through which something was climbing—almost oozing—
"Alec!" It was Jace, shouting: Alec was standing in front of the hole, white-faced and horrified-looking. Swearing, Jace ran
up and grabbed him, dragging him back just as the oozing thing pulled itself free of the wall and into the foyer.
Clary heard her breath catch. The creature's flesh was livid and bruised -looking. Through the seeping skin, bones
protruded—not new white bones, but bones that looked as if they had been in the earth a thousand years, black and cracked and
filthy. Its fingers were stripped and skeletal, its thin-fleshed arms pocked with dripping black sores through which more yellowing
bone was visible. Its face was a skull, its nose and eyes caved-in holes. Its taloned fingers brushed the floor. Tangled around its
wrists and shoulders were bright swatches of cloth: all that remained of Madame Dorothea's silk scarves and turban. It was at least
nine feet tall.
It looked down at the four teenagers with empty eye sockets. "Give me," it said, in a voice like the wind blowing trash
across empty pavement, "the Mortal Cup. Give it to me, and I will let you live."
Panicked, Clary stared at the others. Isabelle looked as if the sight of the thing had hit her like a punch to the stomach. Alec
was motionless. It was Jace, as always, who spoke. "What are you?" he asked, voice steady, though he looked more rattled than
Clary had ever seen him.
The thing inclined its head. "I am Abbadon. I am the Demon of the Abyss. Mine are the empty places between the worlds.
Mine is the wind and the howling darkness. I am as unlike those mewling things you call demons as an eagle is unlike a fly. You
cannot hope to defeat me. Give me the Cup or die."
Isabelle's whip trembled. "It's a Greater Demon," she said. "Jace, if we—"
"What about Dorothea?" Clary's voice came shrilly out of her mouth before she could stop it. "What happened to her?"
The demon's empty eyes swung to regard her. "She was a vessel only," it said. "She opened the Portal and I took
possession of her. Her death was swift." Its gaze moved to the Cup in her hand. "Yours will not be."
It began to move toward her. Jace blocked its way, the glittering sword in one hand, a seraph blade appearing in the other.
Alec was watching him, his expression sick with horror.
"By the Angel," Jace said, looking the demon up and down. "I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one
ever warned me about the smell."
Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth.
"I'm not so sure about this wind and howling darkness business," Jace went on, "smells more like landfill to me. You sure
you're not from Staten Island?"
The demon leaped at him. Jace whipped his blades up and outward with an almost frightening speed; both sank into the
fleshiest part of the demon, its abdomen. It howled and struck at him, knocking him aside the way a cat might bat aside a kitten.
Jace rolled and got to his feet, but Clary could see from the way he was holding his arm that he'd been hurt.
That was enough for Isabelle. Darting forward, she lashed out at the demon with her whip. It struck the demon's gray hide,
and a red weal appeared, welling blood. Abbadon ignored her, moving toward Jace.
With his uninjured hand Jace drew out a second seraph blade. He whispered to it and it sprung free, bright and gleaming.
He raised it as the demon loomed up before him; he looked impossibly small in front of it, a child dwarfed by a monster. And he
was grinning, even as the demon reached for him. Isabelle, screaming, lashed at it, sending blood in a thick spray across the floor—
The demon struck, its razored hand lashing down at Jace. Jace staggered back, but he was unharmed. Something had
thrown itself between him and the demon, a slim black shadow with a gleaming blade in its hand. Alec. The demon shrieked—
Alec's featherstaff had pierced its skin. With a snarl it struck again, bone-talons catching Alec a vicious blow that lifted him off his
feet and hurled him against the far wall. He struck with a sickening crunch and slid to the floor.
Isabelle screamed her brother's name. He didn't move. Lowering the whip, she started to run to him. The demon, turning,
caught her a backhanded blow that sent her spinning to the ground. Coughing blood, Isabelle started to get to her feet; Abbadon
knocked her down again, and this time she lay still.
The demon moved toward Clary.
Jace stood frozen, staring at Alec's crumpled body like someone caught in a dream. Clary screamed as Abbadon neared
her. She began to back up the stairs, stumbling on the broken steps. The stele burned against her skin. If only she had a weapon,
anything—
Isabelle had clawed her way into a sitting position. Pushing her bloody hair back, she screamed at Jace. Clary heard her
own name in Isabelle's screams and saw Jace, blinking as if slapped awake, spin toward her. He began to run. The demon was
close enough now that Clary could see the black sores on its skin, could see that there were things crawling inside them. It reached
for her—
But Jace was there, knocking Abbadon's hand aside. He flung the seraph blade at the demon; it stuck in the creature's
chest, next to the two blades already there. The demon snarled as if the blades were no more than an annoyance. "Shadowhunter,"
it snarled. "I shall take pleasure in killing you, in hearing your bones crunch as your friend's did—"
Springing onto the banister, Jace flung himself at Abbadon. The force of the jump knocked the demon backward; it
staggered, Jace clinging to its back. He seized a seraph blade out of its chest, sending up a spray of ichor, and brought the blade
down, again and again, into the demon's back, its shoulders running with black fluid.
Snarling, Abbadon backed toward the wall. Jace had to drop or be crushed. He fell to the ground, landed lightly, and
raised the blade again. But Abbadon was too swift for him; its hand lashed out, knocking Jace into the stairs. Jace went down, a
circle of talons at his throat.
"Tell them to give me the Cup," Abbadon snarled, talons hovering just above Jace's skin. "Tell them to give it to me and I
will let them live."
Jace swallowed. "Clary—"
But Clary would never know what he would have said, because at that moment the front door flew open. For a moment all
she saw was brightness. Then, blinking away the fiery afterimage, she saw Simon standing in the open doorway. Simon. She had
forgotten he was outside, had almost forgotten he existed.
He saw her, crouched on the stairs, and his gaze moved past her and over Abbadon and Jace. He reached back over his
shoulder. He was holding Alec's bow, she realized, and the quiver was strapped across his back. He drew an arrow from it, fitted it
to the string, and lifted the bow expertly, as if he'd done the same thing a hundred times before.
The arrow sprang free. It made a hot buzzing sound, like a huge bumblebee, as it shot over Abbadon's head, plunged
toward the roof—
And shattered the skylight. Dirty black glass fell like rain, and through the broken pane streamed sunlight, quantities of
sunlight, great golden bars of it stabbing downward and flooding the foyer with light.
Abbadon screamed and staggered back, shielding its misshapen head with its hands. Jace put a hand to his unharmed
throat, staring in disbelief as the demon crumpled, howling, to the floor. Clary half -expected it to burst into flames, but instead it
began to fold in on itself. Its legs collapsed toward its torso, its skull crumpling like burning paper, and within the span of a minute it
had vanished entirely, leaving only scorch marks behind.
Simon lowered the bow. He was blinking behind his glasses, his mouth slightly open. He looked as astonished as Clary felt.
Jace lay on the stairs where the demon had thrown him. He was struggling to sit up as Clary slid down the steps and fell to
her knees beside him. "Jace—"
"I'm all right." He sat up, wiping blood from his mouth. He coughed and spit red. "Alec—"
"Your stele," she interrupted, reaching for her pocket. "Do you need it to fix yourself ?"
He looked at her. The sunlight pouring through the shattered skylight lit his face. He looked as if he were holding himself
back from something with a terrible effort. "I'm all right," he said again, and pushed her aside, none too gently. He got to his feet,
staggered, and nearly fell—the first ungraceful thing she'd ever seen him do. "Alec?"
Clary watched him as he limped across the foyer toward his unconscious friend. Then she zipped the Mortal Cup into the
pocket of her hoodie and got to her feet. Isabelle had crawled to her brother's side and was cradling his head in her lap, stroking
his hair. His chest rose and fell—slowly, but he was breathing. Simon, leaning against the wall watching them, looked utterly
drained. Clary squeezed his hand as she passed him. "Thank you," she whispered. "That was amazing."
"Don't thank me," he said, "thank the archery program at B'nai B'rith summer camp."
"Simon, I don't—"
"Clary!" It was Jace, calling her. "Bring my stele."
Simon let her go reluctantly. She knelt down next to the Shadowhunters, the Mortal Cup thumping heavily against her side.
Alec's face was white, freckled with drops of blood, his eyes unnaturally blue. His grip on Jace's wrist left bloody smears. "Did
I…," he started, then seemed to see Clary, as if for the first time. There was something in his look she hadn't expected. Triumph.
"Did I kill it?"
Jace's face twisted painfully. "You—"
"Yes," Clary said. "It's dead."
Alec looked at her and laughed. Blood bubbled up in his mouth. Jace pulled his wrist free, touched his fingers to either side
of Alec's face. "Don't," he said. "Hold still, just hold still."
Alec closed his eyes. "Do what you have to," he whispered.
Isabelle held her stele out to Jace. "Take it."
He nodded, and drew the tip of the stele down the front of Alec's shirt. The material parted as if he'd sliced it with a knife.
Isabelle watched him through frantic eyes as he yanked the shirt open, leaving Alec's chest bare. His skin was very white, marked
here and there with old translucent scars. There were other injuries there too: a darkening lattice of claw marks, each hole red and
oozing. Jaw set, Jace set the stele to Alec's skin, moving it back and forth with the ease of long practice. But there was something
wrong. Even as he drew the healing marks, they seemed to vanish as if he were writing on water.
Jace threw the stele aside. "Damn it."
Isabelle's voice was shrill. "What's going on?"
"It cut him with its talons," Jace said. "There's demon poison in him. The Marks can't work." He touched Alec's face again,
gently. "Alec," he said. "Can you hear me?"
Alec didn't move. The shadows under his eyes looked blue and as dark as bruises. If it weren't for his breathing, Clary
would have thought he was already dead.
Isabelle bent her head, her hair covering Alec's face. Her arms were around him. "Maybe," she whispered, "we could—"
"Take him to the hospital." It was Simon, standing over them, the bow dangling in his hand. "I'll help you carry him to the
van. There's Methodist down on Seventh Avenue—"
"No hospitals," said Isabelle. "We need to get him to the Institute."
"But—"
"They won't know how to treat him in a hospital," said Jace. "He's been cut by a Greater Demon. No mundane doctor
would know how to heal those wounds."
Simon nodded. "All right. Let's get him to the car."
In a stroke of good luck, the van hadn't been towed. Isabelle draped a dirty blanket across the backseat and they laid Alec
down across it, his head on Isabelle's lap. Jace crouched down on the floor beside his friend. His shirt was stained dark across the
sleeves and chest with blood, demon and human. When he looked at Simon, Clary saw that all the gold seemed washed out of his
eyes by something she had never seen in them before. Panic.
"Drive fast, mundane," he said. "Drive like hell was following you."
Simon drove.
They careened down Flatbush and rocketed onto the bridge, keeping pace with the Q train as it roared over the blue
water. The sun was painfully bright in Clary's eyes, striking hot sparks off the river. She clutched at her seat as Simon took the
curving ramp off the bridge at fifty miles an hour.
She thought about the awful things she'd said to Alec, the way he'd thrown himself at Abbadon, the look of triumph on his
face. When she turned her head now, she saw Jace kneeling next to his friend as blood seeped through the blanket. She thought of
the little boy with the dead falcon. To love is to destroy.
Clary turned back around, a hard lump lodged in the back of her throat. Isabelle was visible in the badly angled rearview
mirror, wrapping the blanket around Alec's throat. She looked up and met Clary's eyes. "How much farther?"
"Maybe ten minutes. Simon's driving as fast as he can."
"I know," Isabelle said. "Simon—what you did, that was incredible. You moved so fast. I wouldn't have thought a mundane
could have thought of something like that."
Simon didn't seem fazed by praise from such an unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. "You mean shooting out
the skylight? It hit me after you guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and how you'd said demons couldn't stand direct
sun. So, actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don't feel bad," he added, "you can't even see that skylight unless you know it's
there."
I knew it was there, Clary thought. I should have acted on it. Even if I didn't have a bow and arrow like Simon, I
could have thrown something at it or told Jace about it. She felt stupid and useless and thick, as though her head were full of
cotton. The truth was that she'd been frightened. Too frightened to think straight. She felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind
her eyelids like a small sun.
Jace spoke then. "It was well done," he said.
Simon's eyes narrowed. "So, if you don't mind telling me—that thing, the demon—where did it come from?"
"It was Madame Dorothea," said Clary. "I mean, it was sort of her."
"She was never exactly a pinup, but I don't remember her looking that bad."
"I think she was possessed," said Clary slowly, trying to piece it together in her own mind. "She wanted me to give her the
Cup. Then she opened the Portal…"
"It was clever," said Jace. "The demon possessed her, then hid the majority of its ethereal form just outside the Portal,
where the Sensor wouldn't register it. So we went in expecting to fight a few Forsaken. Instead we found ourselves facing a
Greater Demon. Abbadon—one of the Ancients. The Lord of the Fallen."
"Well, it looks like the Fallen will just have to learn to get along without him from now on," said Simon, turning onto the
street.
"He's not dead," Isabelle said. "Hardly anyone's ever killed a Greater Demon. You have to kill them in their physical and
ethereal forms before they'll die. We just scared him off."
"Oh." Simon looked disappointed. "What about Madame Dorothea? Will she be all right now that—"
He broke off, because Alec had begun to choke, his breath rattling in his chest. Jace swore under his breath with vicious
precision. "Why aren't we there yet?"
"We are here. I just don't want to crash into a wall." As Simon pulled up carefully at the corner, Clary saw that the door of
the Institute was open, Hodge standing framed in the arch. The van jerked to a halt and Jace leaped out, reaching back to lift Alec
as if he weighed no more than a child. Isabelle followed him up the walk, holding her brother's bloody featherstaff. The Institute
door slammed shut behind them.
Tiredness washing over her, Clary looked at Simon. "I'm sorry. I don't know how you're going to explain all the blood to
Eric."
"Screw Eric," he said with conviction. "Are you all right?"
"Not a scratch. Everyone else got hurt, but not me."
"It's their job, Clary," he said gently. "Fighting demons—it's what they do. Not what you do."
"What do I do, Simon?" she asked, searching his face for an answer. "What do I do?"
"Well—you got the Cup," he said. "Didn't you?"
She nodded, and tapped her pocket. "Yes."
He looked relieved. "I almost didn't want to ask," he said. "That's good, right?"
"It is," she said. She thought of her mother, and her hand tightened on the Cup. "I know it is."
Church met her at the top of the stairs, yowling like a foghorn, and led her to the infirmary. The double doors were open,
and through them she could see Alec's still figure, motionless on one of the white beds. Hodge was bent over him; Isabelle, beside
the older man, held a silver tray in her hands.
Jace was not with them. He was not with them because he was standing outside the infirmary, leaning against the wall, his
bare, bloody hands curled at his sides. When Clary stopped in front of him, his lids flew open, and she saw that the pupils of his
eyes were dilated, all the gold swallowed up in black.
"How is he?" she asked, as gently as she could.
"He's lost a lot of blood. Demon poisonings are common, but since it was a Greater Demon, Hodge isn't sure if the
antidotes he usually employs will be viable."
She reached to touch his arm. "Jace—"
He flinched away. "Don't."
She sucked in her breath. "I never would have wanted anything to happen to Alec. I'm so sorry."
He looked at her as if seeing her there for the first time. "It's not your fault," he said. "It's mine."
"Yours? Jace, no it isn't—"
"Oh, but it is," he said, his voice as fragile as a sliver of ice. "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."
"What does that mean?"
"My fault," he said, "my own fault, my most grievous fault. It's Latin." He brushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead
absently, as if unaware he was doing it. "Part of the Mass."
"I thought you didn't believe in religion."
"I may not believe in sin," he said, "but I do feel guilt. We Shadowhunters live by a code, and that code isn't flexible. Honor,
fault, penance, those are real to us, and they have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with who we are. This is who I
am, Clary," he said desperately. "I am one of the Clave. It's in my blood and bones. So tell me, if you're so sure this wasn't my
fault, why is it that the first thought in my mind when I saw Abbadon wasn't for my fellow warriors but for you?" His other hand
came up; he was holding her face, prisoned between his palms. "I know—I knew—Alec wasn't acting like himself. I knew
something was wrong. But all I could think about was you…"
He bent his head forward, so their foreheads touched. She could feel his breath stir her eyelashes. She closed her eyes,
letting the nearness of him wash over her like a tide. "If he dies, it will be like I killed him," he said. "I let my father die, and now I've
killed the only brother I ever had."
"That's not true," she whispered.
"Yes, it is." They were close enough to kiss. And still he held her tightly, as if nothing could reassure him that she was real.
"Clary," he said. "What's happening to me?"
She searched her mind for an answer—and heard someone clear his throat. She opened her eyes. Hodge stood by the
infirmary door, his neat suit stained with patches of rust. "I have done what I can. He is sedated, not in pain, but…" He shook his
head. "I must contact the Silent Brothers. This is beyond my abilities."
Jace drew slowly away from Clary. "How long will it take them to get here?"
"I don't know." Hodge started down the corridor, shaking his head. "I'll send Hugo immediately, but the Brothers come at
their own discretion."
"But for this—" Even Jace was scrambling to keep up with Hodge's long strides; Clary had fallen hopelessly behind the
two of them and had to strain her ears to hear what he was saying. "He might die otherwise."
"He might," was all Hodge said in response.
The library was dark and smelled like rain: One of the windows had been left open, and a puddle of water had collected
under the curtains. Hugo chirruped and bounced on his perch as Hodge strode over to him, pausing only to light the lamp on his
desk. "It is a pity," Hodge said, reaching for paper and a fountain pen, "that you did not retrieve the Cup. It would, I think, bring
some comfort to Alec and certainly to his—"
"But I did retrieve the Cup," said Clary, amazed. "Didn't you tell him, Jace?"
Jace was blinking, though whether it was because of surprise or the sudden light, Clary couldn't tell. "There wasn't time—I
was bringing Alec upstairs …"
Hodge had gone very still, the pen motionless between his fingers. "You have the Cup?"
"Yes." Clary drew the Cup out of her pocket: It was still cold, as if contact with her body could not warm the metal. The
rubies winked like red eyes. "I have it here."
The pen slipped from Hodge's hand entirely and struck the floor at his feet. The lamplight, thrown upward, was not kind to
his ravaged face: It showed every etched line of harshness and worry and despair. "That is the Angel's Cup?"
"The one," said Jace. "It was—"
"Never mind that now," said Hodge. He set the paper down on the desk and moved toward Jace, catching his student by
the shoulders. "Jace Wayland, do you know what you've done?"
Jace looked up at Hodge, surprised. Clary noted the contrast: the ravaged face of the older man and the boy's unlined one,
the pale locks of hair falling into Jace's eyes making him look even younger. "I'm not sure what you mean," Jace said.
Hodge's breath hissed out through his teeth. "You look so much like him."
"Like who?" said Jace in astonishment; he had clearly never heard Hodge talk this way before.
"Like your father," Hodge said, and raised his eyes to where Hugo, black wings stirring the humid air, hovered just
overhead.
Hodge narrowed his eyes. "Hugin," he said, and with an unearthly caw the bird dived straight for Clary's face, claws
outstretched.
Clary heard Jace shout, and then the world was whirling feathers and slashing beak and claws. Bright pain bloomed along
her cheek and she shrieked, instinctively throwing her hands up to cover her face.
She felt the Mortal Cup yanked from her grasp. "No!" she cried, grabbing for it. An agonizing pain shot up her arm. Her
legs seemed to go out from under her. She slipped and fell, striking her knees painfully against the hard floor. Claws raked her
forehead.
"That's enough, Hugo," said Hodge in his quiet voice.
Obediently the bird spun away from Clary. Gagging, she blinked blood out of her eyes. Her face felt shredded.
Hodge had not moved; he stood where he was, holding the Mortal Cup. Hugo was circling him in wide, agitated rounds,
cawing softly. And Jace—Jace lay on the floor at Hodge's feet, very still, as if he had fallen suddenly asleep.
All other thoughts were driven from her mind. "Jace!" Speaking hurt—the pain in her cheek was startling and she could
taste blood in her mouth. Jace didn't move.
"He's not hurt," said Hodge. Clary started to her feet, meaning to fling herself at him—then reeled back as she struck
something invisible but as hard and strong as glass. Infuriated, she struck against the air with her fist.
"Hodge!" she shouted. She kicked out, nearly bruising her feet on the same invisible wall. "Don't be stupid. When the Clave
finds out what you've done—"
"I'll be long gone by then," he said, kneeling over Jace.
"But—" A shock ran through her, a jolt of electric realization. "You never sent a message to the Clave, did you? That's why
you were so weird when I asked you about it. You wanted the Cup for yourself."
"Not," said Hodge, "for myself."
Clary's throat was dry as dust. "You work for Valentine," she whispered.
"I do not work for Valentine," said Hodge. He lifted Jace's hand and drew something from it. It was the engraved ring Jace
always wore. Hodge slipped it onto his own finger. "But I am Valentine's man, it is true."
With a swift movement he twisted the ring three times around his finger. For a moment nothing happened; then Clary heard
the sound of a door opening and turned instinctively to see who was coming into the library. When she turned back, she saw that
the air beside Hodge was shimmering, like the surface of a lake seen from a distance. The shimmering wall of air parted like a silver
curtain, and then a tall man was standing next to Hodge, as if he had coalesced out of the humid air.
"Starkweather," he said. "You have the Cup?"
Hodge raised the Cup in his hands, but said nothing. He appeared paralyzed, whether with fear or astonishment, it was
impossible to tell. He had always seemed tall to Clary, but now he looked hunched and small. "My Lord Valentine," he said, finally.
"I had not expected you so quickly."
Valentine. He bore little resemblance to the handsome boy in the photograph, though his eyes were still black. His face was
not what she had expected: It was a restrained, closed, interior face, the face of a priest, with sorrowful eyes. Creeping out beneath
the black cuffs of his tailored suit were the ridged white scars that spoke of years of the stele. "I told you I would come to you
through a Portal," he said. His voice was resonant, and strangely familiar. "Didn't you believe me?"
"Yes. It's just—I thought you'd send Pangborn or Blackwell, not come yourself."
"You think I would send them to collect the Cup? I am not a fool. I know its lure." Valentine held out his hand, and Clary
saw, gleaming on his finger, a ring that was the twin of Jace's. "Give it to me."
But Hodge held the Cup fast. "I want what you promised me first."
"First? You don't trust me, Starkweather?" Valentine smiled, a smile not without humor in it. "I'll do as you asked. A
bargain is a bargain. Though I must say I was astonished to get your message. I wouldn't have thought you'd mind a life of hidden
contemplation, so to speak. You never were much for the battlefield."
"You don't know what it's like," Hodge said, letting out his breath with a hissing gasp. "Being afraid all the time—"
"That's true. I don't." Valentine's voice was as sorrowful as his eyes, as if he pitied Hodge. But there was dislike in his eyes
too, a trace of scorn. "If you did not intend to give the Cup to me," he said, "you should not have summoned me here."
Hodge's face worked. "It is not easy to betray what you believe in—those who trust you."
"Do you mean the Lightwoods, or their children?"
"Both," said Hodge.
"Ah, the Lightwoods." Valentine reached out, and with a hand caressed the brass globe that stood on the desk, his long
fingers tracing the outlines of continents and seas. "But what do you owe them, really? Yours is the punishment that should have
been theirs. If they had not had such high connections in the Clave, they would have been cursed along with you. As it is, they are
free to come and go, to walk in the sunlight like ordinary men. They are free to go home." His voice as he said "home" thrilled with
all the meaning of the word. His finger had stopped moving over the globe; Clary was sure he was touching the place where Idris
would be.
Hodge's eyes darted away. "They did what anyone would do."
"You would not have done it. I would not have done it. To let a friend suffer in my place? And surely it must engender
some bitterness in you, Starkweather, to know that they so easily left this fate to you…"
Hodge's shoulders shook. "But it is not the children's fault. They have done nothing—"
"I never knew you to be so fond of children, Starkweather," Valentine said, as if the idea entertained him.
The breath rattled in Hodge's chest. "Jace—"
"You will not speak of Jace." For the first time Valentine sounded angry. He glanced at the still figure on the floor. "He is
bleeding," he observed. "Why?"
Hodge held the Cup against his heart. His knuckles were white. "It's not his blood. He's unconscious, but not injured."
Valentine raised his head with a pleasant smile. "I wonder," he said, "what he will think of you when he wakes. Betrayal is
never pretty, but to betray a child—that's a double betrayal, don't you think?"
"You won't hurt him," whispered Hodge. "You swore you wouldn't hurt him."
"I never did that," said Valentine. "Come, now." He moved away from the desk, toward Hodge, who flinched away like a
small, trapped animal. Clary could see his misery. "And what would you do if I said I did plan to hurt him? Would you fight me?
Keep the Cup from me? Even if you could kill me, the Clave will never lift your curse. You'll hide here till you die, terrified to do so
much as open a window too widely. What wouldn't you trade away, not to be afraid any longer? What wouldn't you give up, to go
home again?"
Clary tore her eyes away. She could no longer bear the look on Hodge's face. In a choked voice he said, "Tell me you
won't hurt him, and I'll give it to you."
"No," said Valentine, even more softly. "You'll give it to me anyway." And he reached out his hand.
Hodge closed his eyes. For a moment his face was the face of one of the marble angels beneath the desk, pained and grave
and crushed beneath a terrible weight. Then he swore, pathetically, under his breath, and held the Mortal Cup out for Valentine to
take, though his hand shook like a leaf in a high wind.
"Thank you," said Valentine. He took the Cup, and eyed it thoughtfully. "I do believe you've dented the rim."
Hodge said nothing. His face was gray. Valentine bent down and gathered up Jace; as he lifted him up lightly, Clary saw the
impeccably cut jacket tighten over his arms and back, and she realized that he was a deceptively massive man, with a torso like the
trunk of an oak tree. Jace, limp in his arms, looked like a child by comparison.
"He'll be with his father soon," said Valentine, looking down at Jace's white face. "Where he belongs."
Hodge flinched. Valentine turned away from him and walked back toward the shimmering curtain of air that he had come
through. He must have left the Portal door open behind him, Clary realized. Looking at it was like looking at sunlight bouncing off
the surface of a mirror.
Hodge reached out an imploring hand. "Wait!" he cried. "What of your promise to me? You swore to end my curse."
"That is true," said Valentine. He paused, and looked hard at Hodge, who gasped and stepped back, his hand flying to his
chest as if something had struck him in the heart. Black fluid seeped out around his splayed fingers and trickled to the floor. Hodge
lifted his scarred face to Valentine. "Is it done?" he asked wildly. "The curse—it is lifted?"
"Yes," said Valentine. "And may your bought freedom bring you joy." And with that he stepped through the curtain of
glowing air. For a moment he himself seemed to shimmer, as if he stood underwater. Then he vanished, taking Jace with him.

Categories: City of Bones

City of Bones - Chapter 20

Hodge, gasping, stared after him, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. His left hand was gloved with the
wet dark fluid that had seeped from his chest. The look on his face was a mixture of exultation and self-loathing.
"Hodge!" Clary slammed her hand into the invisible wall between them. Pain shot up her arm, but it was nothing compared
to the searing pain inside her chest. She felt as if her heart were going to slam its way out of her rib cage. Jace,Jace, Jace—the
words echoed in her mind, wanting to be screamed out loud. She bit them back. "Hodge, let me out!"
Hodge turned, shaking his head. "I can't," he said, using his immaculately folded handkerchief to rub at his stained hand. He
sounded genuinely regretful. "You'll only try to kill me."
"I won't," she said. "I promise."
"But you were not raised a Shadowhunter," he said, "and your promises mean nothing." The edge of his handkerchief was
smoking now, as if he'd dipped it in acid, and his hand was no less blackened. Frowning, he abandoned the project.
"But Hodge," she said desperately, "didn't you hear him? He's going to kill Jace."
"He didn't say that." Hodge was at the desk now, opening a drawer, taking out a piece of paper. He drew a pen from his
pocket, tapping it sharply against the edge of the desk to make the ink flow. Clary stared at him. Was he writing a letter?
"Hodge," she said carefully, "Valentine said Jace would be with his father soon. Jace's father is dead. What else could he
have meant?"
Hodge didn't look up from the paper he was scribbling on. "It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."
"I understand enough." Her bitterness felt like it might burn through her tongue. "I understand that Jace trusted you and you
traded him away to a man who hated his father and probably hates Jace, too, just because you're too cowardly to live with a curse
you deserved."
Hodge's head jerked up. "Is that what you think?"
"It's what I know."
He laid his pen down, shaking his head. He looked tired, and so old, so much older than Valentine had looked, though they
were the same age. "You only know bits and fragments, Clary. And you're better off that way." He folded the paper he'd been
writing on into a neat square and tossed it into the fire, which flared up a bright acidic green before subsiding.
"What are you doing?" Clary demanded.
"Sending a message." Hodge turned away from the fire. He was standing close to her, separated only by the invisible wall.
She pressed her fingers against it, wishing she could dig them into his eyes—though they were as sad as Valentine's had been angry.
"You are young," he said. "The past is nothing to you, not even another country as it is to the old, or a nightmare as it is to the guilty.
The Clave laid this curse on me because I aided Valentine. But I was hardly the only member of the Circle to serve him—were the
Lightwoods not as guilty as I was? Were not the Waylands? Yet I was the only one cursed to live out my life without being able to
set so much as a foot outdoors, not so much as a hand through the window."
"That's not my fault," said Clary. "It's not Jace's fault. Why punish him for what the Clave did? I can understand giving
Valentine the Cup, but Jace? He'll kill Jace, just like he killed Jace's father—"
"Valentine," said Hodge, "did not kill Jace's father."
A sob broke free from Clary's chest. "I don't believe you! All you do is tell lies! Everything you've ever said was a lie!"
"Ah," he said, "the moral absolutism of the young, which allows for no concessions. Can't you see, Clary, that in my own
way I'm trying to be a good man?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't work that way. The good things you do don't cancel out the bad ones. But—" She bit her
lip. "If you told me where Valentine was—"
"No." He breathed the word. "It is said that the Nephilim are the children of men and angels. All that this angelic heritage
has given to us is a longer distance to fall." He touched the invisible surface of the wall with his fingertips. "You were not raised as
one of us. You have no part of this life of scars and killing. You can still get away. Leave the Institute, Clary, as soon as you can.
Leave, and never come back."
She shook her head. "I can't," she said. "I can't do that."
"Then you have my condolences," he said, and walked out of the room.
The door closed behind Hodge, leaving Clary in silence. There was only her own harsh breathing and the scrabble of her
fingertips against the ungiving transparent barrier between her and the door. She did exactly what she'd told herself she wouldn't do,
and flung herself against it, again and again, until she was exhausted and her sides ached. Then she sank to the floor and tried not to
cry.
Somewhere on the other side of this barrier Alec was dying, while Isabelle waited for Hodge to come and save him.
Somewhere beyond this room Jace was being shaken roughly awake by Valentine. Somewhere her mother's chances were ebbing
away, moment by moment, second by second. And she was trapped here, as useless and helpless as the child she was.
She sat bolt upright then, remembering the moment at Madame Dorothea's when Jace had pressed the stele into her hand.
Had she ever given it back to him? Holding her breath, she felt in her left jacket pocket; it was empty. Slowly her hand crept into
the right pocket, her sweaty fingers picking up lint and then skidding across something hard, smooth, and round—the stele.
She bounded to her feet, her heart pounding, and felt with her left hand for the invisible wall. Finding it, she braced herself,
inching the tip of the stele forward with her other hand until it rested against the smooth, level air. Already an image was forming in
her mind, like a fish rising up through cloudy water, the pattern of its scales growing clearer and clearer as it neared the surface.
Slowly at first, and then more confidently, she moved the stele across the wall, leaving searingly bright ash -white lines hovering in
the air before her.
She felt when the rune was done, and lowered her hand, breathing hard. For a moment everything was motionless and
silent and the rune hung like glowing neon, burning her eyes. Then came a sound like the loudest shattering she had ever heard, as if
she were standing under a waterfall of stones listening to them crash to the ground all around her. The rune she had drawn turned
black and sifted away like ash; the floor trembled under her feet; then it was over, and she knew, without a doubt, that she was
free.
Still holding the stele, she raced to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Twilight was falling and the streets below were
bathed in a reddish purple glow. She caught a clear glimpse of Hodge crossing a street, his gray head bobbing above the crowd.
She dashed out of the library and down the stairs, pausing only to shove the stele back into her jacket pocket. She took the
stairs running and hit the street with a stitch already forming in her side. People walking their dogs in the humid twilight jumped aside
as she barreled down the walkway alongside the East River. She caught sight of herself in the darkened window of an apartment
building as she careened around a corner. Her sweaty hair was plastered to her forehead, her face crusted with dried blood.
She reached the intersection where she had seen Hodge. For a moment she thought she'd lost him. She darted through the
crowd near the subway entrance, shouldering people aside, using her knees and elbows as weapons. Sweaty and bruised, Clary
pulled free of the crowd just in time to see a flash of tweed suit disappear around the corner of a narrow service alley between two
buildings.
She wriggled around a Dumpster and into the mouth of the alley. The back of her throat felt like it was burning every time
she breathed. Though it had been twilight on the street, here in the alley it was as dark as nightfall. She could just see Hodge,
standing at the far end of the alley, where it dead-ended into the back of a fast-food restaurant. Restaurant trash was piled outside:
heaping bags of food, dirty paper plates, and plastic cutlery that crunched unpleasantly under his boots as he turned to look at her.
She remembered a poem she'd read in English class: I think we are in rats' alley/Where the dead men lost their bones. "You
followed me," he said. "You shouldn't have."
"I'll leave you alone if you just tell me where Valentine is."
"I can't do that," he said. "He'll know I told you, and my freedom will be as short as my life."
"It will be anyway when the Clave finds out that you gave the Mortal Cup to Valentine," Clary pointed out. "After tricking
us into finding it for you. How can you live with yourself, knowing what he plans to do with it?"
He cut her off with a short laugh. "I fear Valentine more than the Clave, and so would you, if you were wise," he said. "He
would have found the Cup eventually, whether I helped him or not."
"And you don't care that he's going to use it to kill children?"
A spasm crossed his face as he took a step forward; she saw something shine in his hand. "Does all this really matter to you
this much?"
"I told you before," she said. "I can't just walk away."
"That's too bad," he said, and she saw him raise his arm— and remembered suddenly Jace saying that Hodge's weapon
had been the chakram, the flying disk. She ducked even before she saw the bright circle of metal spin singing toward her head; it
passed, humming, inches from her face and embedded itself in the metal fire escape on her left.
She looked up. Hodge was gazing at her, the second metal disk held lightly in his right hand. "You can still run," he said.
Instinctively she raised her hands, though logic told her the chakram would just slice them to pieces. "Hodge—"
Something hurtled in front of her, something big, gray -black, and alive. She heard Hodge shout in horror. Stumbling
backward, Clary saw the thing more clearly as it paced between her and Hodge. It was a wolf, six feet in length, with a jet -black
coat shot through with a single stripe of gray.
Hodge, the metal disc gripped in his hand, was white as a bone. "You," he breathed, and with a sense of distant
astonishment Clary realized he was talking to the wolf. "I thought that you had fled—"
The wolf's lips drew back from its teeth, and she saw its lolling red tongue. There was hatred in its eyes as it looked at
Hodge, a pure and human hatred.
"Did you come for me, or for the girl?" said Hodge. Sweat streamed from his temples, but his hand was steady.
The wolf paced toward him, growling low in its throat.
"There's still time," said Hodge. "Valentine would take you back—"
With a howl the wolf sprang. Hodge cried out again, then there was a flash of silver, and a sickening noise as the chakram
embedded itself in the wolf's side. The wolf reared back on its hind legs, and Clary saw the disk's edge jutting from the wolf's fur,
blood streaming, just as it struck Hodge.
Hodge screamed once as he went down, the wolf's jaws clamping shut over his shoulder. Blood flew into the air like the
spray of paint from a broken can, splattering the cement wall with red. The wolf lifted its head from the tutor's limp body and turned
its gray, lupine gaze on Clary, teeth dripping scarlet.
She didn't scream. There was no air in her lungs that she could have dragged up to make a sound; she scrambled to her
feet and ran, ran for the mouth of the alley and the familiar neon lights of the street, ran for the safety of the real world. She could
hear the wolf growling behind her, feel its hot breath on the bare backs of her legs. She put on one last burst of speed, flinging
herself toward the street—
The wolf's jaws closed on her leg, jerking her backward. Just before her head struck the hard pavement, plunging her into
blackness, she discovered that she did have enough air to scream, after all.
The sound of dripping water woke her. Slowly Clary peeled her eyes open. There wasn't much to see. She lay on a wide
cot that had been placed on the floor of a small dingy-walled room. There was a rickety table propped against one wall. On it was
a cheap-looking brass candleholder sporting a fat red candle that cast the only light in the room. The ceiling was cracked and
damp, wetness seeping down through the fissures in the stone. Clary felt a vague sense that something was missing from the room,
but this concern was overwhelmed by the strong smell of wet dog.
She sat up and immediately wished she hadn't. Hot pain drove through her head like a spike, followed by a racking wave of
nausea. If there had been anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.
A mirror hung over the cot, dangling from a nail driven between two stones. She glanced in it and was appalled. No
wonder her face hurt—long parallel scratches ran from the corner of her right eye down to the edge of her mouth. Her right cheek
was crusted with blood, and blood was smeared on her neck and all down the front of her shirt and jacket. In a sudden panic she
grabbed for her pocket, then relaxed. The stele was still there.
It was then that she realized what was odd about the room. One wall of it was bars: thick iron floor -to-ceiling bars. She
was in a jail cell.
Veins surging with adrenaline, Clary staggered to her feet. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she caught at the table
to steady herself. I will not faint, she told herself grimly. Then she heard the footsteps.
Someone was coming down the hallway outside the cell. Clary backed up against the table.
It was a man. He was carrying a lamp, its light brighter than the candle, which made her blink and turned him into a back-lit
shadow. She saw height, square shoulders, ragged hair; it was only when he pushed the door of the cell open and came inside that
she realized who he was.
He looked the same: worn jeans, denim shirt, work boots, same uneven hair, same glasses pushed down to the bridge of
his nose. The scars she'd noticed along the side of his throat last time she'd seen him were healing patches of shiny skin now.
Luke.
It was all too much for Clary. Exhaustion, lack of sleep and food, terror and blood -loss, caught up with her in a rushing
wave. She felt her knees buckle as she slid toward the ground.
In seconds Luke was across the room. He moved so fast, she didn't have time to hit the floor before he caught her,
swinging her up the way he'd done when she was a little girl. He set her down on the cot and stepped back, eyes anxious. "Clary?"
he said, reaching for her. "Are you all right?"
She flinched away, throwing up her hands to ward him off. "Don't touch me."
An expression of profound hurt crossed his face. Wearily he drew a hand across his forehead. "I guess I deserve that."
"Yeah. You do."
The look on his face was troubled. "I don't expect you to trust me—"
"That's good. Because I don't."
"Clary…" He began to pace the length of the cell. "What I did … I don't expect you to understand. I know you feel that I
abandoned you—"
"You did abandon me," she said. "You told me never to call you again. You never cared about me. You never cared about
my mother. You lied about everything."
"Not," he said, "about everything."
"So your name really is Luke Garroway?"
His shoulders drooped perceptibly. "No," he said, then glanced down. A dark red patch was spreading across the front of
his blue denim shirt.
Clary sat up straight. "Is that blood?" she demanded. She forgot for a moment to be furious.
"Yes," said Luke, his hand against his side. "The wound must have torn open when I lifted you."
"What wound?" Clary couldn't help asking.
He said with deliberation: "Hodge's discs are still sharp, though his throwing arm is not what it once was. I think he may
have nicked a rib."
"Hodge?" Clary said. "When did you… ?"
He looked at her, not saying anything, and she remembered suddenly the wolf in the alley, all black except for that one gray
streak down its side, and she remembered the disc hitting it, and she realized.
"You're a werewolf."
He took his hand away from his shirt; his fingers were stained red. "Yep," he said laconically. He moved to the wall and
rapped sharply on it: once, twice, three times. Then he turned back to her. "I am."
"You killed Hodge," she said, remembering.
"No." He shook his head. "I hurt him pretty badly, I think, but when I went back for the body, it was gone. He must have
dragged himself away."
"You tore at his shoulder," she said. "I saw you."
"Yes. Though it's worth noting that he was trying to kill you at the time. Did he hurt anyone else?"
Clary sank her teeth into her lip. She tasted blood, but it was old blood from where Hugo had attacked her. "Jace," she
said in a whisper. "Hodge knocked him out and handed him over to… to Valentine."
"To Valentine?" Luke said, looking astonished. "I knew Hodge had given Valentine the Mortal Cup, but I hadn't
realized—"
"How did you know that?" Clary began, before remembering. "You heard me talking to Hodge in the alley," she said.
"Before you jumped him."
"I jumped him, as you put it, because he was about to slice your head off," Luke said, then looked up as the cell door
opened again and a tall man came in, followed by a tiny woman, so short she looked like a child. Both of them wore plain, casual
clothes: jeans and cotton shirts, and both had the same untidy, flyaway hair, though the woman's was fair and the man's was a
badgery gray and black. Both had the same young-old faces, unlined but with tired eyes. "Clary," said Luke, "meet my second and
third, Gretel and Alaric."
Alaric inclined his massive head to her. "We have met."
Clary stared, alarmed. "Have we?"
"At the Hotel Dumort," he said. "You put your knife in my ribs."
She shrank against the wall. "I, ah… I'm sorry?"
"Don't be," he said. "It was an excellent throw." He slid a hand into his breast pocket and removed Jace's dagger, with its
winking red eye. He held it out to her. "I think this is yours?"
Clary stared. "But—"
"Don't worry," he assured her. "I cleaned the blade."
Wordlessly, she took it. Luke was chuckling under his breath. "In retrospect," he said, "perhaps the raid on the Dumort was
not as well-planned as it might have been. I had set a group of my wolves to watch you, and go after you if you seemed to be in
any danger. When you went into the Dumort…"
"Jace and I could have handled it." Clary slid the dagger into her belt.
Gretel aimed a tolerant smile at her. "Is that what you summoned us for, sir?"
"No," said Luke. He touched his side. "My wound's opened up, and Clary here has some injuries of her own that could use
a bit of tending. If you wouldn't mind getting the supplies …"
Gretel inclined her head. "I will return with the healing kit," she said, and left, Alaric trailing her like an outsize shadow.
"She called you 'sir,'" said Clary, the moment the cell door closed behind them. "And what do you mean by your second
and your third? Second and third what?"
"In command," said Luke slowly. "I am the leader of this particular wolf pack. That's why Gretel called me 'sir.' Believe me,
it took a fair bit of work to break her of the habit of calling me 'master.'"
"Did my mother know?"
"Know what?"
"That you're a werewolf."
"Yes. She's known since it happened."
"Neither of you, of course, thought to mention this to me."
"I would have told you," said Luke. "But your mother was adamant that you know nothing of Shadowhunters or the
Shadow World. I couldn't explain away my being a werewolf as some kind of isolated incident, Clary. It's all part of the larger
pattern that your mother didn't want you to see. I don't know what you've learned—"
"A lot," Clary said flatly. "I know my mother was a Shadowhunter. I know she was married to Valentine and that she stole
the Mortal Cup from him and went into hiding. I know that after she had me, she took me to Magnus Bane every two years to have
my Sight taken away. I know that when Valentine tried to get you to tell him where the Cup was in exchange for my mom's life, you
told him she didn't matter to you."
Luke stared at the wall. "I didn't know where the Cup was," he said. "She'd never told me."
"You could have tried to bargain—"
"Valentine doesn't bargain. He never has. If the advantage isn't his, he won't even come to the table. He's entirely single -
minded and totally without compassion, and though he may have loved your mother once, he wouldn't hesitate to kill her. No, I
wasn't going to bargain with Valentine."
"So you just decided to abandon her?" Clary demanded furiously. "You're the leader of a whole pack of werewolves and
you just decided she didn't even really need your help? You know, it was bad enough when I thought you were another
Shadowhunter and you'd turned your back on her because of some stupid Shadowhunter vow or something, but now I know
you're just a slimy Downworlder who didn't even care that all those years she treated you like a friend—like an equal—and this is
how you paid her back!"
"Listen to you," Luke said quietly. "You sound like a Lightwood."
She narrowed her eyes. "Don't talk about Alec and Isabelle like you know them."
"I meant their parents," said Luke. "Whom I did know, very well in fact, when we were all Shadowhunters together."
She felt her lips part in surprise. "I know you were in the Circle, but how did you keep them from finding out you were a
werewolf? Didn't they know?"
"No," said Luke. "Because I wasn't born a werewolf. I was made one. And I can already see that if you're going to be
persuaded to listen to anything I have to say, you're going to have to hear the whole story. It's a long tale, but I think we have the
time for it."

Categories: City of Bones

City of Bones - Chapter 21

The truth is, I've known your mother since we were children. We grew up in Idris. It's a beautiful place, and I've
always regretted that you've never seen it: You would love the glossy pines in winter, the dark earth and cold crystal rivers. There's
a small network of towns and a single city, Alicante, where the Clave meets. They call it the Glass City because its towers are
shaped from the same demon-repelling substance as our steles; in the sunlight they sparkle like glass.
When Jocelyn and I were old enough, we were sent to Alicante to school. It was there that I met Valentine.
He was older than I was by a year. By far the most popular boy in school. He was handsome, clever, rich, dedicated, an
incredible warrior. I was nothing—neither rich nor brilliant, from an unremarkable country family. And I struggled in my studies.
Jocelyn was a natural Shadowhunter; I was not. I could not bear the lightest Marks or learn the simplest techniques. I thought
sometimes about running away, returning home in shame. Even becoming a mundane. I was that miserable.
It was Valentine who saved me. He came to my room—I'd never even thought he knew my name. He offered to train me.
He said he knew that I was struggling, but he saw in me the seeds of a great Shadowhunter. And under his tutelage I did improve. I
passed my exams, bore my first Marks, killed my first demon.
I worshipped him. I thought the sun rose and set on Valentine Morgenstern. I wasn't the only misfit he'd rescued, of course.
There were others. Hodge Starkweather, who got along better with books than he did with people; Maryse Trueblood, whose
brother had married a mundane; Robert Lightwood, who was terrified of the Marks—Valentine brought them all under his wing. I
thought it was kindness, then; now I am not so sure. Now I think he was building himself a cult.
Valentine was obsessed with the idea that in every generation there were fewer and fewer Shadowhunters—that we were a
dying breed. He was sure that if only the Clave would more freely use Raziel's Cup, more Shadowhunters could be made. To the
teachers this idea was sacrilege—it is not for just anyone to choose who can and cannot become a Shadowhunter. Flippantly,
Valentine would ask, Why not make all men Shadowhunters, then? Why not gift them all with the ability to see the Shadow World?
Why keep that power selfishly to ourselves?
When the teachers answered that most humans cannot survive the transition, Valentine claimed they were lying, trying to
keep the power of the Nephilim limited to an elite few. That was his claim, at the time—now I think he probably felt the collateral
damage was worth the end result. In any case, he convinced our little group of his rightness. We formed the Circle, with our stated
intent being to save the race of Shadowhunters from extinction. Of course, being seventeen, we weren't quite sure how we would
do it, but we were sure we'd eventually accomplish something significant.
Then came the night that Valentine's father was killed in a routine raid on a werewolf encampment. When Valentine
returned to school, after the funeral, he wore the red Marks of mourning. He was different in other ways. His kindness was now
interspersed with flashes of rage that bordered on cruelty. I put this new behavior down to grief and tried harder than ever to please
him. I never answered his anger with anger of my own. I felt only the sick sense that I had disappointed him.
The only one that could calm his rages was your mother. She had always stood a little apart from our group, sometimes
mockingly calling us Valentine's fan club. That changed when his father died. His pain awakened her sympathy. They fell in love.
I loved him too: He was my closest friend, and I was happy to see Jocelyn with him. When we left school, they married and
went to live on her family's estate. I also returned home, but the Circle continued. It had started as a sort of school adventure, but it
grew in scale and power, and Valentine grew with it. Its ideals had changed as well. The Circle still clamored for the Mortal Cup,
but since the death of his father, Valentine had become an outspoken proponent of war against all Downworlders, not just those
who broke the Accords. This world was for humans, he argued, not part-demons. Demons could never be fully trusted.
I was uncomfortable with the Circle's new direction, but I stuck with it—partly because I still couldn't bear to let Valentine
down, partly because Jocelyn had asked me to continue. She had some hope that I would be able to bring moderation to the
Circle, but that was impossible. There was no moderating Valentine, and Robert and Maryse Lightwood—now married— were
almost as bad. Only Michael Wayland was unsure, as I was, but despite our reluctance we followed still; as a group we hunted
Downworlders tirelessly, seeking those who had committed even the slightest infraction. Valentine never killed a creature who had
not broken the Accords, but he did other things. I saw him fasten silver coins to the eyelids of a werewolf child, blinding her, in an
attempt to get the girl to tell him where her brother was. … I saw him—but you don't need to hear this. No. I'm sorry.
What happened next was that Jocelyn became pregnant. The day she told me that, she also confessed that she had grown
afraid of her husband. His behavior had turned weird, erratic. He would disappear into their cellars for nights at a time. Sometimes
she would hear screams through the walls….
I went to him. He laughed, dismissing her fears as the jitters of a woman carrying her first child. He invited me to hunt with
him that night. We were still trying to clean out the nest of werewolves who had killed his father years before. We were parabatai,
a perfect hunting team of two, warriors who would die for each other. So when Valentine told me he would guard my back that
night, I believed him. I didn't see the wolf until it was on me. I remember its teeth fastened in my shoulder, and nothing else of that
night. When I awoke, I was lying in Valentine's house, my shoulder bandaged, and Jocelyn was there.
Not all werewolf bites result in lycanthropy. I healed of the injury and passed the next weeks in a torment of waiting.
Waiting for the full moon. The Clave would have locked me in an observation cell, had they known. But Valentine and Jocelyn kept
silent. Three weeks later the moon rose full and bright, and I began to change. The first Change is always the hardest. I remember a
bewilderment of agony, a blackness, and waking up hours later in a meadow miles from the city. I was covered in blood, the torn
body of some small woodland animal at my feet.
I made my way back to the manor, and they met me at the door. Jocelyn fell on me, weeping, but Valentine pulled her
away. I stood, bloody and shaking on my feet. I could scarcely think, and the taste of raw meat was still in my mouth. I don't know
what I had expected, but I suppose I should have known.
Valentine dragged me down the steps and into the woods with him. He told me that he ought to kill me himself, but seeing
me then, he could not bring himself to do it. He gave me a dagger that had once belonged to his father. He said I should do the
honorable thing and end my own life. He kissed the dagger when he handed it to me, and went back inside the manor house, and
barred the door.
I ran through the night, sometimes as a man, sometimes as a wolf, until I crossed the border. I burst into the midst of the
werewolf encampment, brandishing my dagger, and demanded to meet in combat the lycanthrope who had bitten me and turned
me into one of them. Laughing, they pointed me toward the clan leader. Hands and teeth still bloody from the hunt, he rose to face
me.
I had never been much for single combat. The crossbow was my weapon; I had excellent sight and aim. But I had never
been very good at close range; it was Valentine who was skilled in fighting hand to hand. But I wanted only to die, and to take with
me the creature who had ruined me. I suppose I thought if I could avenge myself, and kill the wolves who had murdered his father,
Valentine would mourn me. As we grappled, sometimes as men, sometimes as wolves, I saw that he was surprised by my
fierceness. As the night faded into day, he began to tire, but my rage never abated. And as the sun began to set again, I sank my
dagger into his neck and he died, soaking me with his blood.
I expected the pack to set on me and tear me apart. But they knelt at my feet and bared their throats in submission. The
wolves have a law: Whoever kills the clan leader takes his place. I had come to the place of the wolves, and instead of finding
death and vengeance there, I found a new life.
I left my old self behind and almost forgot what it was like to be a Shadowhunter. But I did not forget Jocelyn. The thought
of her was a constant companion. I feared for her in the company of Valentine, but knew that if I came near the manor house, the
Circle would hunt me down and kill me.
In the end she came to me. I was asleep in the camp when my second in command came to tell me that there was a young
Shadowhunter woman waiting to see me. I knew immediately who it must be. I could see the disapproval in his eyes as I raced to
meet her. They all knew I had once been a Shadowhunter, of course, but it was considered a shameful secret, never spoken of.
Valentine would have laughed.
She was waiting for me just outside the encampment. She was no longer pregnant, and looked drawn and pale. She had
had her child, she said, a boy, and had named him Jonathan Christopher. She cried when she saw me. She was angry that I had not
let her know I was still alive. Valentine had told the Circle I had taken my own life, but she had not believed it. She knew that I
would never do such a thing. I felt her faith in me was unwarranted, but I was so relieved to see her again that I didn't contradict
her.
I asked how she had found me. She said that there were rumors in Alicante of a werewolf who had once been a
Shadowhunter. Valentine had heard the rumors too, and she had ridden to warn me. He came soon after, but I hid from him, as
werewolves can, and he left without bloodshed.
After that I began to meet Jocelyn in secret. It was the year of the Accords, and all of Downworld was abuzz about them
and Valentine's probable plans for disrupting them. I heard that he had argued passionately in the Clave against the Accords, but
with no success. So the Circle made a new plan, steeped in secrecy. They allied themselves with demons—the greatest enemies of
Shadowhunters—in order to procure weapons that could be smuggled undetected into the Great Hall of the Angel, where the
Accords would be signed. And with the aid of a demon, Valentine stole the Mortal Cup. He left in its place a facsimile. It was
months before the Clave realized the Cup was missing, and by then it was too late.
Jocelyn tried to learn what Valentine intended to do with the Cup, but could not. But she knew that the Circle planned to
fall upon the unarmed Downworlders and murder them in the Hall. After such wholesale slaughter, the Accords would fail.
Despite the chaos, in a strange way those were happy days. Jocelyn and I sent messages covertly to the faeries, the
warlocks, and even to those age-old enemies of wolfkind, the vampires, warning them of Valentine's plans and bidding them
prepare for battle. We worked together, werewolf and Nephilim.
On the day of the Accords, I watched from a hidden place as Jocelyn and Valentine left the manor house. I remember how
she bent to kiss the white-blond head of her son. I remember the way the sun shone on her hair; I remember her smile.
They rode into Alicante by carriage; I followed running on four feet, and my pack ran with me. The Great Hall of the Angel
was crowded with all the assembled Clave and score upon score of Downworlders. When the Accords were presented for signing,
Valentine rose to his feet, and the Circle rose with him, sweeping back their cloaks to lift their weapons. As the Hall exploded into
chaos, Jocelyn ran to the great double doors of the Hall and flung them open.
My pack were the first at the door. We burst into the Hall, tearing the night with our howls, and were followed by faerie
knights with weapons of glass and twisted thorns. After them came the Night Children with bared fangs, and warlocks wielding
flame and iron. As the panicked masses fled the Hall, we fell upon the members of the Circle.
Never had the Hall of the Angel seen such bloodshed. We tried not to harm those Shadowhunters who were not of the
Circle; Jocelyn marked them out, one by one, with a warlock's spell. But many died, and I fear we were responsible for some.
Certainly, afterward, we were blamed for many. As for the Circle, there were far more of them than we had imagined, and they
clashed fiercely with the Downworlders. I fought through the crowd to Valentine. My only thought had been of him—that I might
be the one to kill him, that I might have that honor. I found him at last by the great statue of the Angel, dispatching a faerie knight
with a broad stroke of his bloodstained dagger. When he saw me, he smiled, fierce and feral. "A werewolf who fights with sword
and dagger," he said, "is as unnatural as a dog who eats with a fork and a knife."
"You know the sword, you know the dagger," I said. "And you know who I am. If you must address me, use my name."
"I do not know the names of half men," said Valentine. "Once I had a friend, a man of honor who would have died before
he let his blood be polluted. Now a nameless monster with his face stands before me." He raised his blade. "I should have killed
you while I had the chance," he cried, and lunged for me.
I parried the blow, and we fought up and down the dais, while the battle raged around us and one by one the members of
the Circle fell. I saw the Lightwoods drop their weapons and flee; Hodge was already gone, having fled at the outset. And then I
saw Jocelyn racing up the stairs toward me, her face a mask of fear. "Valentine, stop!" she cried out. "This is Luke, your friend,
almost your brother—"
With a snarl Valentine seized her and dragged her in front of him, his dagger to her throat. I dropped my blade. I would not
risk his harming her. He saw what was in my eyes. "You always wanted her," he hissed. "And now the two of you have plotted my
betrayal together. You will regret what you have done, all the rest of your lives."
With that, he snatched the locket from Jocelyn's throat and hurled it at me. The silver cord burned me like a lash. I
screamed and fell back, and in that moment he vanished into the melee, dragging her with him. I followed, burned and bleeding, but
he was too fast, cutting a path through the thick of the crowd and over the dead.
I staggered out into the moonlight. The Hall was burning and the sky was lit with fire. I could see all down the green lawns
of the capital to the dark river, and the road along the riverbank where people were fleeing into the night. I found Jocelyn by the
banks of the river, at last. Valentine was gone and she was terrified for Jonathan, desperate to get home. We found a horse, and
she plunged away. Dropping into wolf form, I followed at her heels.
Wolves are fast, but a rested horse is faster. I fell far behind, and she arrived at the manor house before I did.
I knew even as I neared the house that something was terribly wrong. Here too the smell of fire hung heavy in the air, and
there was something overlaying it, something thick and sweet—the stench of demonic witchcraft. I became a man again as I limped
up the long drive, white in the moonlight, like a river of silver leading … to ruins. For the manor house had been reduced to ashes,
layer upon layer of sifting whiteness, strewn across the lawns by the night wind. Only the foundations, like burned bones, were still
visible: here a window, there a leaning chimney—but the substance of the house, the bricks and the mortar, the priceless books and
ancient tapestries handed down through generations of Shadowhunters, was dust blowing across the face of the moon.
Valentine had destroyed the house with demon fire. He must have. No fire of this world burns so hot, nor leaves so little
behind.
I made my way into the still-smoldering ruins. I found Jocelyn kneeling on what had perhaps once been the front doorsteps.
They were blackened by fire. And, there were bones. Charred to blackness, but recognizably human, with scraps of cloth here and
there, and bits of jewelry the fire had not taken. Red and gold threads still clung to the bones of Jocelyn's mother, and the heat had
melted her father's dagger to his skeletal hand. Among another pile of bones gleamed Valentine's silver amulet, with the insignia of
the Circle still burning white-hot upon its face…and among the remains, scattered as if they were too fragile to hold together, were
the bones of a child.
You will regret what you have done, Valentine had said. And as I knelt with Jocelyn on the burned paving stones, I knew
that he was right. I did regret it and have regretted it every day since.
We rode back through the city that night, among the still-burning fires and shrieking people, and then out into the darkness
of the country. It was a week before Jocelyn spoke again. I took her out of Idris. We fled to Paris. We had no money, but she
refused to go to the Institute there and ask for help. She was done with Shadowhunters, she told me, done with the Shadow
World.
I sat in the tiny, cheap hotel room we had rented and tried to reason with her, but it did no good. She was obstinate. At last
she told me why: She was carrying another child, and had known it for weeks. She would make a new life for herself and her baby,
and she wanted no whisper of Clave or Covenant ever to taint her future. She showed me the amulet she had taken from the pile of
bones; in the flea market at Clignancourt she sold it, and with that money purchased an airplane ticket. She wouldn't tell me where
she was going. The farther away she could get from Idris, she said, the better.
I knew that leaving her old life behind meant leaving me behind as well, and I argued with her, but to no avail. I knew that if
not for the child she carried, she would have taken her own life, and since to lose her to the mundane world was better than to lose
her to death, I at last reluctantly agreed to her plan. And so it was that I bid her good -bye at the airport. The last words Jocelyn
spoke to me in that dreary departure hall chilled me to the bone: "Valentine is not dead."
After she was gone, I returned to my pack, but I found no peace there. Always there was a hollow aching inside me, and
always I woke with her name unspoken on my lips. I was not the leader I had once been; I knew that much. I was just and fair, but
remote; I could not find friends among the wolf -people, nor a mate. I was, in the end, too much human—too much
Shadowhunter—to be at rest among the lycanthropes. I hunted, but the hunt brought no satisfaction; and when it came time for the
Accords to be signed at last, I went into the city to sign them.
In the Hall of the Angel, scrubbed free of blood, the Shadowhunters and the four branches of half humans sat down again
to sign the papers that would bring peace among us. I was astonished to see the Lightwoods, who seemed equally astonished that I
wasn't dead. They themselves, they said, along with Hodge Starkweather and Michael Wayland, were the only members of the
former Circle to have escaped death that night in the Hall. Michael, wracked with grief over the loss of his wife, had hidden himself
away at his country estate with his young son. The Clave had punished the other three with exile: They were leaving for New York,
to run the Institute there. The Lightwoods, who had connections to the highest families in the Clave, got off with a far lighter
sentence than Hodge. A curse had been laid on him: He would go with them, but if ever he were to leave the hallowed ground of
the Institute, he would be instantly slain. He was devoting himself to his studies, they said, and would make a fine tutor for their
children.
When we had signed the Accords, I rose from my chair and went from the hall, down to the river where I had found
Jocelyn on the night of the Uprising. Watching the dark waters flow, I knew I could never find peace in my homeland: I had to be
with her or nowhere at all. I determined to look for her.
I left my pack, naming another in my stead; I think they were relieved to see me go. I traveled as the wolf without a pack
travels: alone, at night, keeping to the byways and country roads. I went back to Paris, but found no clue there. Then I went to
London. From London I took a boat to Boston.
I stayed awhile in the cities, then in the White Mountains of the frozen north. I traveled a good deal, but more and more I
found myself thinking of New York, and the exiled Shadowhunters there. Jocelyn, in a way, was an exile too. At length I arrived in
New York with a single duffel bag and no idea where to look for your mother. It would have been easy enough for me to find a
wolf pack and join it, but I resisted. As I had done in other cities, I sent out messages through Downworld, searching for any sign
of Jocelyn, but there was nothing, no word at all, as if she had simply disappeared into the mundane world without a trace. I began
to despair.
In the end I found her by chance. I was prowling the streets of SoHo, randomly. As I stood on the cobblestones of
Broome Street, a painting hanging in a gallery window caught my eye.
It was the study of a landscape I recognized immediately: the view from the windows of her family's manor house, the green
lawns sweeping down to the line of trees that hid the road beyond. I recognized her style, her brushwork, everything. I banged on
the door of the gallery, but it was closed and locked. I returned to the painting, and this time saw the signature. It was the first time I
had seen her new name: Jocelyn Fray.
By that evening, I had found her, living in a fifth -floor walk-up in that artists' haven, the East Village. I walked up the grimy
half-lit stairs with my heart in my throat, and knocked on her door. It was opened by a little girl with dark red braids and inquisitive
eyes. And then, behind her, I saw Jocelyn walking toward me, her hands stained with paint and her face just the same as it had
been when we were children…
The rest you know.

Categories: City of Bones

City of Bones - Chapter 17

In the half-light the big empty rooms they passed through on their way to the roof looked as deserted as stage sets,
the white-draped furniture looming up out of the dimness like icebergs through fog.
When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat's paw: the rich dark smell of
earth and the stronger, soapy scent of night-blooming flowers—moonflowers, white angel's trumpet, four-o'clocks—and some she
didn't recognize, like a plant bearing a star-shaped yellow blossom whose petals were medallioned with golden pollen. Through the
glass walls of the enclosure she could see the lights of Manhattan burning like cold jewels.
"Wow." She turned slowly, taking it in. "It's so beautiful here at night."
Jace grinned. "And we have the place to ourselves. Alec and Isabelle hate it up here. They have allergies."
Clary shivered, though she wasn't at all cold. "What kind of flowers are these?"
Jace shrugged and sat down, carefully, next to a glossy green shrub dotted all over with tightly closed flower buds. "No
idea. You think I pay attention in botany class? I'm not going to be an archivist. I don't need to know about that stuff."
"You just need to know how to kill things?"
He looked up at her and smiled. He looked like a fair -haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish
mouth. "That's right." He took a napkin-wrapped package out of the bag and offered it to her. "Also," he added, "I make a mean
cheese sandwich. Try one."
Clary smiled reluctantly and sat down across from him. The stone floor of the greenhouse was cold against her bare legs,
but it was pleasant after so many days of relentless heat. Out of the paper bag Jace drew some apples, a bar of fruit and nut
chocolate, and a bottle of water. "Not a bad haul," she said admiringly.
The cheese sandwich was warm and a little limp, but it tasted fine. From one of the innumerable pockets inside his jacket,
Jace produced a bone-handled knife that looked capable of disemboweling a grizzly. He set to work on the apples, carving them
into meticulous eighths. "Well, it's not birthday cake," he said, handing her a section, "but hopefully it's better than nothing."
"Nothing is what I was expecting, so thanks." She took a bite. The apple tasted green and cool.
"Nobody should get nothing on their birthday." He was peeling the second apple, the skin coming away in long curling
strips. "Birthdays should be special. My birthday was always the one day my father said I could do or have anything I wanted."
"Anything?" She laughed. "Like what kind of anything did you want?"
"Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti."
"But he didn't let you, right?"
"No, that's the thing. He did. He said it wasn't expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a
bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down …" He shrugged. "I took a bath in it."
Servants? Clary thought. Out loud she said, "How was it?"
"Slippery."
"I'll bet." She tried to picture him as a little boy, giggling, up to his ears in pasta. The image wouldn't form. Surely Jace never
giggled, not even at the age of five. "What else did you ask for?"
"Weapons, mostly," he said, "which I'm sure doesn't surprise you. Books. I read a lot on my own."
"You didn't go to school?"
"No," he said, and now he spoke slowly, almost as if they were approaching a topic he didn't want to discuss.
"But your friends—"
"I didn't have friends," he said. "Besides my father. He was all I needed."
She stared at him. "No friends at all?"
He met her look steadily. "The first time I saw Alec," he said, "when I was ten years old, that was the first time I'd ever met
another child my own age. The first time I had a friend."
She dropped her gaze. Now an image was forming, unwelcome, in her head: She thought of Alec, the way he had looked
at her. He wouldn't say that.
"Don't feel sorry for me," Jace said, as if guessing her thoughts, though it hadn't been him she'd been feeling sorry for. "He
gave me the best education, the best training. He took me all over the world. London. Saint Petersburg. Egypt. We used to love to
travel." His eyes were dark. "I haven't been anywhere since he died. Nowhere but New York."
"You're lucky," Clary said. "I've never been outside this state in my life. My mom wouldn't even let me go on field trips to
D.C. I guess I know why now," she added ruefully.
"She was afraid you'd freak out? Start seeing demons in the White House?"
She nibbled a piece of chocolate. "There are demons in the White House?"
"I was kidding," said Jace. "I think." He shrugged philosophically. "I'm sure someone would have mentioned it."
"I think she just didn't want me to get too far away from her. My mom, I mean. After my dad died, she changed a lot."
Luke's voice echoed in her mind. You've never been the same since it happened, but Clary isn't Jonathan.
Jace cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do you remember your father?"
She shook her head. "No. He died before I was born."
"You're lucky," he said. "That way you don't miss him."
From anyone else it would have been an appalling thing to say, but there was no bitterness in his voice for a change, only an
ache of loneliness for his own father. "Does it go away?" she asked. "Missing him, I mean?"
He looked at her obliquely, but didn't answer. "Are you thinking of your mother?"
No. She wouldn't think of her mother that way. "Of Luke, actually."
"Not that that's actually his name." He took a thoughtful bite of apple and said, "I've been thinking about him. Something
about his behavior doesn't add up—"
"He's a coward." Clary's voice was bitter. "You heard him. He won't go against Valentine. Not even for my mother."
"But that's exactly—" A long clanging reverberation interrupted him. Somewhere, a bell was tolling. "Midnight," said Jace,
setting the knife down. He got to his feet, holding his hand out to pull her up beside him. His fingers were slightly sticky with apple
juice. "Now, watch."
His gaze was fixed on the green shrub they'd been sitting beside, with its dozens of shiny closed buds. She started to ask
him what she was supposed to be looking at, but he held up a hand to forestall her. His eyes were shining. "Wait," he said.
The leaves on the shrub hung still and motionless. Suddenly one of the tightly closed buds began to quiver and tremble. It
swelled to twice its size and burst open. It was like watching a speeded -up film of a flower blooming: the delicate green sepals
opening outward, releasing the clustered petals inside. They were dusted with pale gold pollen as light as talcum.
"Oh!" said Clary, and looked up to find Jace watching her. "Do they bloom every night?"
"Only at midnight," he said. "Happy birthday, Clarissa Fray."
She was oddly touched. "Thank you."
"I have something for you," he said. He dug into his pocket and brought out something, which he pressed into her hand. It
was a gray stone, slightly uneven, worn to smoothness in spots.
"Huh," said Clary, turning it over in her fingers. "You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you
know, literally a big rock."
"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone."
"Oh." She looked at it with renewed interest, closing her fingers around it as she'd seen Jace do in the cellar. She wasn't
sure, but she thought she could see a glint of light peeking out through her fingers.
"It will bring you light," said Jace, "even among the darkest shadows of this world and others."
She slipped it into her pocket. "Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." The tension between them seemed to
press down on her like humid air. "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day."
He said darkly, "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you."
"Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes," Clary said.
"The difference is, she didn't let me."
"Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace pointed out, "whereas pasta is rarely fatal.
Unless Isabelle makes it."
The midnight flower was already shedding petals. They drifted toward the floor, glimmering like slivers of starlight. "When I
was twelve, I wanted a tattoo," Clary said. "My mom wouldn't let me have that, either."
Jace didn't laugh. "Most Shadowhunters get their first Marks at twelve. It must have been in your blood."
"Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their
left shoulder."
Jace looked baffled. "You wanted a turtle on your shoulder?"
"I wanted to cover my chicken pox scar." She pulled the strap of the tank top aside slightly, showing the star-shaped white
mark at the top of her shoulder. "See?"
He looked away. "It's getting late," he said. "We should go back downstairs."
Clary pulled her strap back up awkwardly. As if he wanted to see her stupid scars.
The next words tumbled out of her mouth without any volition on her part. "Have you and Isabelle ever—dated?"
Now he did look at her. The moonlight leached the color out of his eyes. They were more silver than gold now. "Isabelle?"
he said blankly.
"I thought—" Now she felt even more awkward. "Simon was wondering."
"Maybe he should ask her."
"I'm not sure he wants to," Clary said. "Anyway, never mind. It's none of my business."
He smiled unnervingly. "The answer is no. I mean, there may have been a time when one or the other of us considered it,
but she's almost a sister to me. It would be strange."
"You mean Isabelle and you never—"
"Never," said Jace.
"She hates me," observed Clary.
"No, she doesn't," he said, to her surprise. "You just make her nervous, because she's always been the only girl in a crowd
of adoring boys, and now she isn't anymore."
"But she's so beautiful."
"So are you," said Jace, "and very different from how she is, and she can't help but notice that. She's always wanted to be
small and delicate, you know. She hates being taller than most boys."
Clary said nothing to this, because she had nothing to say. Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her
that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful. She stared at him.
"We should probably go downstairs," he said again. She was sure she was making him uncomfortable with the staring, but
she didn't seem to be able to stop.
"All right," she said finally. To her relief, her voice sounded normal. It was a further relief to look away from him as she
turned around. The moon, directly overhead now, lit everything nearly to daylight brightness. In between one step and another she
saw a white spark struck off something on the floor: It was the knife Jace had been using to cut apples, lying on its side. She jerked
hastily back to avoid stepping on it, and her shoulder bumped his—he put a hand out to steady her, just as she turned to apologize,
and then she was somehow in the circle of his arm and he was kissing her.
It was at first almost as if he hadn't wanted to kiss her: His mouth was hard on hers, unyielding; then he put both arms
around her and pulled her against him. His lips softened. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart, taste the sweetness of apples still
on his mouth. She wound her hands into his hair, as she'd wanted to do since the first time she'd seen him. His hair curled around
her fingers, silky and fine. Her heart was hammering, and there was a rushing sound in her ears, like beating wings—
Jace drew away from her with a muffled exclamation, though his arms were still around her. "Don't panic, but we've got an
audience."
Clary turned her head. Perched on a nearby tree branch was Hugo, watching them beadily from bright black eyes. So the
sound she'd heard had been wings rather than demented passion. That was disappointing.
"If he's here, Hodge won't be far behind," said Jace under his breath. "We should go."
"Is he spying on you?" Clary hissed. "Hodge, I mean."
"No. He just likes to come up here to think. Too bad—we were having such a scintillating conversation." He laughed
soundlessly.
They made their way back downstairs the way they had come, but it felt like a different journey entirely to Clary. Jace kept
her hand in his, sending tiny electrical shocks traveling up and down her veins from every point where he touched her: her fingers,
her wrist, the palm of her hand. Her mind was buzzing with questions, but she was too afraid of breaking the mood to ask him any
of them. He'd said "too bad," so she guessed their evening was over, at least the kissing part.
They reached her door. She leaned against the wall beside it, looking up at him. "Thanks for the birthday picnic," she said,
trying to keep her tone neutral.
He seemed reluctant to let go of her hand. "Are you going to sleep?"
He's just being polite, she told herself. Then again, this was Jace. He was never polite. She decided to answer the
question with a question. "Aren't you tired?"
His voice was low. "I've never been more awake."
He bent to kiss her, cupping her face with his free hand. Their lips touched, lightly at first, and then with a stronger pressure.
It was at precisely that moment that Simon threw open the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.
He was blinking and tousle-haired and without his glasses, but he could see well enough. "What the hell?" he demanded,
so loudly that Clary leaped away from Jace as if his touch burned her.
"Simon! What are you—I mean, I thought you were—"
"Asleep? I was," he said. The tops of his cheekbones had flushed dark red through his tan, the way they always did when
he was embarrassed or upset. "Then I woke up and you weren't there, so I thought…"
Clary couldn't think of a thing to say. Why hadn't it occurred to her that this might happen? Why hadn't she said they should
go to Jace's room? The answer was as simple as it was awful: She had forgotten about Simon completely.
"I'm sorry," she said, not sure who she was even speaking to. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot
her a look of white rage—but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored.
"In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious
situations."
"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken.
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit."
"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing."
"Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love."
"Jace…"
She saw the bright malice in his eyes and trailed off. There was no point. Her stomach felt suddenly heavy. "Simon, it's
late," she said tiredly. "I'm sorry we woke you up."
"So am I." He stalked back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Jace's smile was as bland as buttered toast. "Go on, go after him. Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little
guy. Isn't that what you want to do?"
"Stop it," she said. "Stop being like that."
His smile widened. "Like what?"
"If you're angry, just say it. Don't act like nothing ever touches you. It's like you never feel anything at all."
"Maybe you should have thought about that before you kissed me," he said.
She looked at him incredulously. "I kissed you?"
He looked at her with glittering malice. "Don't worry," he said, "it wasn't that memorable for me, either."
She watched him walk away, and felt the mingled urge to burst into tears and to run after him for the express purpose of
kicking him in the ankle. Knowing either action would fill him with satisfaction, she did neither, but went warily back into the
bedroom.
Simon was standing in the middle of the room, looking lost. He'd put his glasses back on. She heard Jace's voice in her
head, saying nastily: Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little guy.
She took a step toward him, then stopped when she realized what he was holding in his hand. Her sketchpad, open to the
drawing she'd been doing, the one of Jace with angel wings. "Nice," he said. "All those Tisch classes must be paying off."
Normally, Clary would have told him off for looking into her sketchpad, but now wasn't the time. "Simon, look—"
"I recognize that stalking off to sulk in your bedroom might not have been the smoothest move," he interrupted stiffly,
tossing the sketchpad back onto the bed. "But I had to get my stuff."
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Home. I've been here too long, I think. Mundanes like me don't belong in a place like this."
She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I wasn't intending to kiss him; it just happened. I know you don't like him."
"No," Simon said even more stiffly. "I don't like flat soda. I don't like crappy boy band pop. I don't like being stuck in
traffic. I don't like math homework. I hate Jace. See the difference?"
"He saved your life," Clary pointed out, feeling like a fraud— after all, Jace had come along to the Dumort only because
he'd been worried he'd get in trouble if she got herself killed.
"Details," said Simon dismissively. "He's an asshole. I thought you were better than that."
Clary's temper flared. "Oh, and now you're pulling a high-and-mighty trip on me?" she snapped. "You're the one who was
going to ask the girl with the most 'rockin' bod' to the Fall Fling." She mimicked Eric's lazy tone. Simon's mouth thinned out angrily.
"So what if Jace is a jerk sometimes? You're not my brother, you're not my dad, you don't have to like him. I've never liked any of
your girlfriends, but at least I've had the decency to keep it to myself."
"This," said Simon, between his teeth, "is different."
"How? How is it different?"
"Because I see the way you look at him!" he shouted. "And I never looked at any of those girls like that! It was just
something to do, a way to practice, until—"
"Until what?" Clary knew dimly that she was being horrible, the whole thing was horrible; they'd never even had a fight
before that was more serious than an argument about who'd eaten the last Pop-Tart from the box in the tree house, but she didn't
seem able to stop. "Until Isabelle came along? I can't believe you're lecturing me about Jace when you made a complete fool of
yourself over her!" Her voice rose to a scream.
"I was trying to make you jealous!" Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fists at his sides. "You're so stupid,
Clary. You're so stupid, can't you see anything?"
She stared at him in bewilderment. What on earth did he mean? "Trying to make me jealous? Why would you try to do
that?"
She saw immediately that this was the worst thing she could have asked him.
"Because," he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, "I've been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time
to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess, you don't."
He might as well have kicked her in the stomach. She couldn't speak; the air had been sucked out of her lungs. She stared
at him, trying to frame a response, any response.
He cut her off sharply. "Don't. There's nothing you can say." She watched him walk to the door as if paralyzed; she couldn't
move to hold him back, much as she wanted to. What could she say? "I love you, too"? But she didn't—did she?
He paused at the door, hand on the knob, and turned to look at her. His eyes, behind the glasses, looked more tired than
angry now. "You really want to know what else it was my mom said about you?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He didn't seem to notice. "She said you'd break my heart," he told her, and left. The door closed behind him with a decided
click, and Clary was alone.
After he was gone, she sank down onto the bed and picked up her sketchbook. She cradled it to her chest, not wanting to
draw in it, just craving the feel and smell of familiar things: ink, paper, chalk.
She thought about running after Simon, trying to catch him. But what would she say? What could she possibly say? You're
so stupid, Clary, he'd said to her. Can't you see anything?
She thought of a hundred things he'd said or done, jokes Eric and the others had made about them, conversations hushed
when she'd walked into the room. Jace had known from the beginning. I was laughing at you because declarations of love
amuse me, especially when unrequited. She hadn't stopped to wonder what he was talking about, but now she knew.
She had told Simon earlier that she'd only ever loved three people: her mother, Luke, and him. She wondered if it was
actually possible, within the space of a week, to lose everyone that you loved. She wondered if it was the sort of thing you survived
or not. And yet—for those brief moments, up on the roof with Jace, she'd forgotten her mother. She'd forgotten Luke. She'd
forgotten Simon. And she'd been happy. That was the worst part, that she'd been happy.
Maybe this, she thought, losing Simon, maybe this is my punishment for the selfishness of being happy, even for just
a moment, when my mother is still missing. None of it had been real, anyway. Jace might be an exceptional kisser, but he didn't
care about her at all. He'd said as much.
She lowered the sketchbook slowly into her lap. Simon had been right; it was a good picture of Jace. She'd caught the hard
line of his mouth, the incongruously vulnerable eyes. The wings looked so real she imagined that if she brushed her fingers across
them, they'd be soft. She let her hand trail across the page, her mind wandering …
And jerked her hand back, staring. Her fingers had touched not dry paper but the soft down of feathers. Her eyes flashed
up to the runes she'd scrawled in the corner of the page. They were shining, the way she'd seen the runes Jace drew with his stele
shine.
Her heart had begun to beat with a rapid, steady sharpness. If a rune could bring a painting to life, then maybe—
Not taking her eyes off the drawing, she fumbled for her pencils. Breathless, she flipped to a new, clean page and hastily
began to draw the first thing that came to mind. It was the coffee mug sitting on the nightstand next to her bed. Drawing on her
memories of still life class, she drew it in every detail: the smudged rim, the crack in the handle. When she was done, it was as exact
as she could make it. Driven by some instinct she didn't quite understand, she reached for the cup and set it down on top of the
paper. Then, very carefully, she began to sketch the runes beside it.

Categories: City of Bones