Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

  “I’m great,” said Jace.

  Lily tapped her foot. “Nobody’s talking about you, Jason. Have you heard the phrase ‘tall, dark, and handsome’?”

  “Sounds like an old-fashioned saying,” said Jace. “Sounds like something people used to say before I was born.”

  He grinned at Lily, who grinned back at him. Jace didn’t just pull the pigtails of people he had crushes on. He pulled the pigtails of everyone in the world he liked. This was something Simon still had not figured out over the years.

  “There are a lot of hot Shadowhunters,” said Elliott. “That’s the point of them, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Alec. “We fight demons.”

  “Oh,” said Elliott. “Right.”

  “I don’t mean to brag. I’m just saying that if they made a book of hot Shadowhunters, my illustration would be on every page,” Jace said serenely.

  “Nope,” said Lily. “It would be filled with pictures of the Carstairs family.”

  Alec said, “Are you talking about Emma?”

  Lily frowned. “Who’s Emma?”

  “Emma Carstairs,” said Jace helpfully. “She’s Clary’s pen pal who lives in L.A. Sometimes I write postscripts to Clary’s letters and tell Emma handy knife tricks. Emma’s very good.”

  Emma was a single-minded force of destruction, which of course Jace liked. Jace fished out his phone and showed Lily a recent picture of Emma that Emma had sent Clary. Emma was holding her sword on a beach and laughing.

  Lily breathed, “Cortana.”

  Alec glanced at her sharply.

  “I don’t know Emma,” Lily said. “But I’d like to. I don’t normally go for blonds, but she’s hot. Bless the Come-and-Stare family. They never fail me. On that note, I’m off to admire the views in Buenos Aires.”

  “Jem is married, you know,” said Alec.

  “Don’t leave me in charge!” Elliott begged. “You can’t trust me! It’s a terrible mistake!”

  Lily ignored them both, but she caught Alec studying her as they left the hotel.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “Elliott probably won’t burn the city down. When I get back, everybody will be so grateful that they’ll do everything I say. Leaving that fool in charge is part of my leadership strategy.”

  Alec nodded and didn’t say that he was worried about her.

  There had been a time when Alec was unsettled by vampires, but Lily had always so clearly needed someone, and Alec had wanted to be there for her. They’d been teammates running the Alliance with Maia for long enough now that Lily felt like Aline Penhallow, a friend close enough to be family.

  The thought of Aline sent a familiar pang through Alec. Aline had gone into exile on Wrangel Island to be with her wife, Helen. They had lived in that stony wasteland for years, just because Helen had faerie blood.

  Whenever Alec thought of Helen and Aline, he wanted to change everything about the way the Clave worked and bring them home.

  It wasn’t only Aline and Helen. He felt that way about all the warlocks and vampires and werewolves and faeries who streamed to New York to talk to the Alliance because they couldn’t go to their Institutes. Every day, he felt the same urge he’d felt on his first mission, when he saw Jace and Isabelle charge into a fight. Protect them, he’d thought desperately, and lunged for his bow.

  Alec squared his shoulders. Worrying wouldn’t help anyone. He couldn’t save everybody, but he could help people, and now he intended to help Jem and Tessa.

  * * *

  Brother Zachariah walked through the Silent City, down corridors lined with bones. The ground was marked with the relentless passage of the Silent Brothers’ feet, of his own feet, moving in their accustomed path day after silent day, year after dark, endless year. He could not get out. Soon he would forget how it had ever been to live and love in the light. Every skull grinning at him from the wall was a thing more human than he.

  Until the darkness he’d thought inescapable was obliterated by consuming fire. The silver fire of yin fen had burned in him once, the worst burning the world had to offer, but this golden fire was remorseless as heaven. He felt as if he were being torn apart, every burning atom of him weighed in the balance by a cruel god, and every piece found wanting.

  Even in the midst of agony, there was some small measure of relief. This was the end, he told himself desperately, and was desperately thankful. At last this was the end, after all that misery and darkness. He would die before his humanity was entirely crushed out. Finally, there might be rest. He might see his parabatai again.

  Except with the thought of Will came the thought of another. He thought of soft cool air drifting from the river, and her sweet serious face, unchanging as his own heart. With the thought of Will, he knew what Will would say. He could hear him, as if even the veil of death were burning between them and Will was shouting in his ear. Jem, Jem. James Carstairs. You can’t leave Tessa on her own. I know you better than you know yourself. I always did. I know you would never give up. Jem, hold on.

  He would not dishonor love by letting go. In the end, he chose to endure any pain rather than do that. Through the fire, as through the darkness, he held on.

  And impossibly, through fire and darkness and time, he survived.

  Jem woke gasping. He was in a warm bed, with his wife in his arms.

  Tessa was still sleeping, on white sheets in the small whitewashed room they were renting in the small lodging house. She murmured as Jem watched her, a soft string of incomprehensible words. She talked in her sleep, and every sound was a comfort. More than a century ago, he’d wondered how it would be to wake up with Tessa. He’d dreamed of it.

  Now he knew.

  Jem listened to her sweet sleepy murmurs, and watched the rise and fall of the white sheet with her breathing, and his body eased.

  Tessa’s curling lashes stirred on her cheeks.

  “Jem?” she asked, and her hand found his arm, palm sliding down his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” Jem said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” Tessa smiled sleepily.

  Jem leaned over to the pillow beside his and kissed his wife’s eyes closed, then watched them open again, clear and cool as river water. He kissed her cheek, the eloquent curve of her mouth, her chin, and trailed his open mouth hungrily down the line of her throat.

  “Tessa, Tessa,” he murmured. “Wŏ yào nĭ.”

  I want you.

  Tessa said, “Yes.”

  Jem lifted the sheet and kissed the line of her collarbone, loving the taste of her soft sleep-warm skin, loving every atom of her. He laid a trail of kisses for himself to follow all the way down her body. When he drew his mouth down the tender skin of her stomach, her hands slipped into his hair and fastened tightly there, anchoring him, encouraging him on. Her voice, no longer soft, made the walls ring with his name.

  She was all around him. All horror and pain was washed away.

  Jem and Tessa lay facing one another on the bed, their hands entwined, their voices hushed. They could whisper and laugh all night together, and often had: it was one of Jem’s great joys, just to lie with Tessa and talk for hours.

  But that required quiet and peace, which was not to be had tonight. Light exploded through their dim room, and Jem bolted upright, shielding Tessa from any possible threat.

  Words of shimmering blue and silver had appeared on the wall. Tessa sat up, tucking the sheet around her. “Message from Magnus,” she said, twisting her hair up into a knot at the back of her head.

  The message said that Alec and Lily Chen were on their way to help. Once they had stowed their belongings at the Buenos Aires Institute, they would meet Tessa and Jem outside the walls of the Shadow Market.

  Jem met Tessa’s gaze and read his own alarm in her eyes.

  “Oh no,” said Tessa. Jem was already scrambling off the bed, searching for their clothes. “We have to find them. We have to stop them. They can’t go to the Institute.”

>   * * *

  The Buenos Aires Institute was located in the town of San Andrés de Giles. To mundane eyes, the Institute looked like a large crypt standing in an abandoned cemetery, in a profusion of ghost-pale wildflowers.

  To Alec’s eyes, it looked worse. It was a tall edifice, painted a dull rust color, but one wing of the building was a charred ruin. Alec had known the Institute was damaged during the Dark War, but he’d thought it would have been repaired long before.

  Lily sniffed the air. “They mixed blood in the paint.”

  The Institute looked abandoned, except for the fact there was a guard at the door. Even that made Alec’s eyes narrow. Shadowhunters didn’t typically keep watch on their own Institutes, unless it was a time of war.

  He nodded to Lily, and they moved forward to meet the Shadowhunters of Buenos Aires. The guard at the door looked a few years younger than Alec. His face was hard, his black eyebrows drawn sharply together, and he was squinting at them suspiciously.

  “Um,” said Alec. “Bonjour? Wait, that’s French.”

  Lily smiled a sunny fanged smile at the guard. “Let me handle this.”

  “I can speak English,” the guard told Alec hastily.

  “Great,” said Alec. “I’m from the New York Institute. My name is—”

  The guard’s dark eyes went wide. “You’re Alexander Lightwood!”

  Alec blinked. “That’s me.”

  “I was in the Inquisitor’s office once,” the guard confided shyly. “He has a tapestry of you hanging up in there.”

  “Yeah,” said Alec. “I know.”

  “That’s how I know what you look like. I’m so thrilled to meet you. I mean, it’s such an honor. Oh no, what am I doing? I’m Joaquín Acosta Romero. It’s a pleasure.”

  Joaquín held out his hand for Alec to shake. When Alec shook it, he felt the younger man vibrating slightly with excitement. He cast a panicked glance toward Lily, who grinned and mouthed “cute” at him.

  “This is Lily, who is no help,” said Alec.

  “Oh yes, oh, pleased to meet you, too,” said Joaquín. “Wow, come in.”

  Lily smiled sweetly, showing her fangs. “I can’t.”

  “Oh, right! I’m sorry. I’ll show you around to the back entrance. There’s a door to the Sanctuary there.”

  Magnus had enchanted the New York Institute so Downworlders could walk in certain places there, but most Institutes still kept them out of all but the Sanctuary rooms. Alec was pleased to see Joaquín flash a smile at Lily that seemed genuine and welcoming.

  “Thanks,” said Alec. “We’re meeting friends on a mission, but I hoped we could stow our bags now so we can come back to sleep later. We can set up cots in the Sanctuary.”

  Joaquín led them down a dark cobwebbed alley. Alec thought of the wing that was rubble. Possibly this Institute wouldn’t have cots.

  “Um, will your friend—will she need a coffin?” asked Joaquín. “I don’t think we have coffins. I mean, I’m sure I could find one somewhere! The head of our Institute is, um, very careful about visitors, but I’m certain he can’t object to a guest who is coming with Alec Lightwood.”

  “I don’t need a coffin,” said Lily. “Just a windowless room. It’s no problem.”

  “You can address her when you’re talking about her,” said Alec mildly.

  Joaquín cast an anxious look at Alec, then an even more anxious look at Lily. “Of course! I’m sorry. I don’t have much experience talking to—”

  “Vampires?” asked Lily sweetly.

  “Women,” said Joaquín.

  “It’s true I’m five fabulous feet of pure woman,” Lily mused.

  Joaquín coughed. “Well, I don’t know any vampires, either. My mother died in the Dark War. A lot of us did. And afterward, most of the women left. Mr. Breakspear says that women aren’t suited to the rigor of a tightly run Institute.”

  He peered anxiously at Alec, as if checking in on Alec’s opinion on this.

  “Clary Fairchild is one of the heads of my Institute,” said Alec curtly. “Jia Penhallow is the leader of all Shadowhunters. Anyone who says women are weak is afraid they’re too strong.”

  Joaquín nodded several times in rapid succession, though Alec wasn’t sure if it was agreement or pure nerves.

  “I haven’t been to any other Institutes. I was born in the Institute when it was located in the city of Buenos Aires, near the Casa Rosada.”

  “I was wondering why the Buenos Aires Institute was here, and not in the city,” said Alec.

  “Our old Institute was leveled in the Dark War,” Joaquín explained. “Not many of us got out, and we took refuge in the nearest remaining Institute. Together, we were able to defend this place, though you can see the building was damaged by the Endarkened. I still remember the old Institute, and its red arched roof against the blue sky, how beautiful it was, when my parents were alive and the world was different. Now this is the only Institute Buenos Aires has. We used to talk about going back, but . . . we don’t anymore. The head of our Institute says we’re not ready and corruption is everywhere, but I still want to try. When I turned eighteen, I was hoping I could go to another Institute on my travel year and see how other Institutes worked, maybe even meet a girl, but the head of our Institute said I couldn’t be spared. Not when the Downworlders in our Shadow Market are so dangerous.”

  Joaquín hung his head. Alec was trying to phrase a question that wouldn’t shock the boy further, about why this was such a harsh posting. About what exactly was going on with the Buenos Aires Institute. But before he could, they reached the end of the alley and passed through the battered door to the Sanctuary of the Institute. Inside it looked like a church that had suffered a blast, the long windows boarded up, the floor blackened.

  There was a man in the center of the charred floor, holding forth to a group of silent Shadowhunter men. He looked about forty, his fair hair already turning silver, and he was the only one in the room wearing gear that was not patched or worn.

  “That’s Clive Breakspear, the head of our Institute,” said Joaquín. “Sir, we have a visitor. It’s Alexander Lightwood.”

  He said something in Spanish, which judging by the repetition of Alec’s name, Alec thought was the same thing, then glanced around as if expecting an enthusiastic response. He didn’t receive one. Several of the men in the circle seemed immediately wary.

  Clive Breakspear did not look wary at all.

  “So you’re Alec Lightwood,” said the head of the Buenos Aires Institute slowly. “Then this must be your Downworlder whore.”

  There was a terrible silence.

  It was broken by Lily, who blinked and said, “Excuse me? Have you been living in a hole? Are you not aware Alec is dating famous warlock Magnus Bane and is not interested in ladies of any persuasion?”

  There was a rush of whispers. Alec didn’t think everyone was stunned by this information. They were stunned that Lily would say it, as if they expected him to be ashamed.

  “Let’s be clear on this matter. This is my friend Lily, the head of the New York vampire clan.” Alec put his hand on his seraph blade, and the whispers hushed. “Think very carefully,” said Alec, “about how you wish to speak of her. Or of Magnus Bane.”

  He almost said “my fiancé,” but it was an awkward word. Once he’d said “my betrothed” and felt like a total idiot. He longed sometimes, with an almost physical ache, just to say “my husband” and have it be true.

  “I’m here on a mission,” Alec continued. “I thought I could rely on the hospitality of the Institute and my fellow Shadowhunters. I see I was wrong.”

  He cast a look around the room. Several of the men could not meet his eyes.

  “What mission?” demanded Clive Breakspear.

  “One that requires discretion.”

  Alec regarded him steadily, until Clive Breakspear flushed and looked away.

  “You can stay here,” he agreed grudgingly. “The Downworlder cannot.”

  “L
ike I want to,” Lily sneered. “I don’t stay in places where the decor isn’t ten out of ten, and this place is a minus fourteen thousand. Okay, Alec, let’s make a plan for where we will meet up after I find a nice windowless hotel room. Do you want to—”

  “What are you talking about?” Alec demanded. “If they won’t have you, I won’t stay here. To hell with this place. I’m going with you.”

  Lily’s face went soft, for the space of time it took to blink. Then she patted his arm and said, “Of course you are.”

  She sniffed disdainfully and spun on her heel. Clive Breakspear barreled toward her.

  “I have some questions for you, Downworlder.”

  Alec caught his arm and stepped in front of Lily. “Are you sure about that?”

  They were outnumbered, but Alec was the Inquisitor’s son, Jace Herondale’s parabatai. He was protected in a way many others were not. That meant he had to use whatever he had, for those who had no protection.

  After a long moment, Breakspear stepped back.

  Alec wished he could’ve thought of a really scathing exit line, but those weren’t his specialty. He and Lily just left, Joaquín chasing after them.

  “By the Angel,” Joaquín said. “I didn’t expect that—I didn’t think—I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not the first Institute I haven’t been welcome in,” said Alec.

  Especially if he was with Magnus. It didn’t happen often, but a couple of Institutes before now had tried to separate them or suggested that they shouldn’t have come together. Alec always made clear what he thought of that.

  “I’m so sorry,” Joaquín repeated helplessly.

  Alec nodded to him; then Alec and Lily went out into the night. Alec stood with the blasted building at their backs and breathed in one long, deep breath.

  “Shadowhunters are trash,” Lily announced.

  Alec gave her a look.

  “Present company excepted. And Jem,” said Lily. “I’m having a terrible time in Buenos Aires, and I don’t eat, but I’m in the mood for a delicious bowl of Jembalaya.”

  “He’s married!” Alec pointed out once again.