Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  “The Law is the Law, Izzy,” said Alec, not looking at his sister. “There’s no way around that.”

  At that, Isabelle gave a little gasping cry of rage and astonishment and bolted out the front door, letting it swing open behind her. Maryse made a move as if to follow her, but Robert drew his wife back, saying something in a low voice.

  Magnus got to his feet. “I do believe that’s my cue to leave as well,” he said. Clary noticed he was avoiding looking at Alec. “I’d say it’s been nice meeting you all, but, in fact, it hasn’t. It’s been quite awkward, and frankly, the next time I see a single one of you will be far too soon.”

  Alec stared at the ground as Magnus stalked out of the living room and through the front door. This time it shut behind him with a bang.

  “Two down,” said Jace, with ghastly amusement. “Who’s next?”

  “That’s enough from you,” said the Inquisitor. “Give me your hands.”

  Jace held his hands out as the Inquisitor produced a stele from some hidden pocket and proceeded to trace a Mark around the circumference of his wrists. When she took her hands away, Jace’s wrists were crossed, one over the other, bound together with what looked like a circlet of burning flames.

  Clary cried out. “What are you doing? You’ll hurt him—”

  “I’m fine, little sister.” Jace spoke calmly enough, but she noticed that he couldn’t seem to look at her. “The flames won’t burn me unless I try to get my hands free.”

  “And as for you,” the Inquisitor added, and turned on Clary, much to Clary’s surprise. Up until now the Inquisitor had barely seemed to notice she was alive. “You were lucky enough to be raised by Jocelyn and escape your father’s taint. Nevertheless, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  Luke’s grip tightened on Clary’s shoulder. “Is that a threat?”

  “The Clave does not make threats, Lucian Graymark. The Clave makes promises and keeps them.” The Inquisitor sounded almost cheerful. She was the only one in the room who could be described that way; everyone else looked shell-shocked, except for Jace. His teeth were bared in a snarl Clary doubted he was even aware of. He looked like a lion in a trap.

  “Come, Jonathan,” the Inquisitor said. “Walk in front of me. If you make a single move to flee, I’ll put a blade between your shoulders.”

  Jace had to struggle to turn the front doorknob with his bound hands. Clary set her teeth to keep from screaming, and then the door was open and Jace was gone and so was the Inquisitor. The Lightwoods followed in a line, Alec still staring at the ground. The door shut behind them and Clary and Luke were alone in the living room, silent in shared disbelief.

  15

  THE SERPENT’S TOOTH

  “Luke,” Clary began, the moment the door had shut behind the Lightwoods. “What are we going to do—”

  Luke had his hands pressed to either side of his head as if he were keeping it from splitting in half. “Coffee,” he declared. “I need coffee.”

  “I brought you coffee.”

  He dropped his hands and sighed. “I need more.”

  Clary followed him into the kitchen, where he helped himself to yet more coffee before sitting down at the kitchen table and running his hands distractedly through his hair. “This is bad,” he said. “Very bad.”

  “You think?” Clary couldn’t imagine drinking coffee right now. Her nerves already felt like they were stretched out as thin as wires. “What happens if they take him to Idris?”

  “Trial before the Clave. They’ll probably find him guilty. Then punishment. He’s young, so they might just strip his Marks, not curse him.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Luke didn’t meet her eyes. “It means they’ll take his Marks away, unmake him as a Shadowhunter, and throw him out of the Clave. He’ll be a mundane.”

  “But that would kill him. It really would. He’d rather die.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Luke had finished his coffee and stared morosely at the mug before setting it back down. “But that won’t make any difference to the Clave. They can’t get their hands on Valentine, so they’ll punish his son instead.”

  “What about me? I’m his daughter.”

  “But you’re not of their world. Jace is. Not that I don’t suggest you lie low for a while yourself. I wish we could head up to the farmhouse—”

  “We can’t just leave Jace with them!” Clary was appalled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Luke waved away her protest. “I said I wish we could, not that I thought we should. There’s the question of what Imogen will do now that she knows where Valentine is, of course. We could find ourselves in the middle of a war.”

  “I don’t care if she wants to kill Valentine. She’s welcome to Valentine. I just want to get Jace back.”

  “That may not be so easy,” said Luke, “considering that in this case, he actually did what he’s accused of doing.”

  Clary was outraged. “What, you think he killed the Silent Brothers? You think—”

  “No. I don’t think he killed the Silent Brothers. I think he did exactly what Imogen saw him do: He went to see his father.”

  Remembering something, Clary asked: “What did you mean when you said we’d failed him, not the other way around? You mean you don’t blame him?”

  “I do and I don’t.” Luke looked weary. “It was a stupid thing to do. Valentine isn’t to be trusted. But when the Lightwoods turned their backs on him, what did they expect him to do? He’s still just a child, he still needs parents. If they won’t have him, he’ll go looking for someone who will.”

  “I thought maybe,” said Clary, “maybe he was looking to you for that.”

  Luke looked unutterably sad. “I thought so too, Clary. I thought so too.”

  Very faintly, Maia could hear the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. They were done with all their shouting in the living room. Time to get out. She folded up the note she’d scribbled hastily, left it on Luke’s bed, and crossed the room to the window she’d spent the past twenty minutes forcing open. Cool air spilled through it—it was one of those early fall days when the sky seemed impossibly blue and distant and the air was faintly tinged with the smell of smoke.

  She scooted onto the windowsill and looked down. It would have been a worrying jump for her before she’d been Changed; now she spared only a moment’s thought for her injured shoulder before leaping. She landed in a crouch on the cracked concrete of Luke’s backyard. Straightening up, she glanced back at the house, but no one threw a door open or called out to her to come back.

  She fought down an errant stab of disappointment. It wasn’t as if they’d paid that much attention to her when she was in the house, she thought, scrambling up the high chain-link fence that separated Luke’s backyard from the alley, so why would they notice that she’d left it? She was clearly an afterthought, just as she’d always been. The only one of them who’d treated her as if she were of any importance was Simon.

  The thought of Simon made her wince as she dropped down onto the other side of the fence and jogged up the alley to Kent Avenue. She’d said to Clary that she didn’t remember the previous night, but it wasn’t true. She remembered the look on his face when she’d recoiled from him—as if it were imprinted on the backs of her eyelids. The strangest thing was that in that moment he had still looked human to her, more human than almost anyone she’d ever known.

  She crossed the street to avoid passing right in front of Luke’s house. The street was nearly deserted, Brooklyners sleeping their late Sunday-morning sleep. She headed toward the Bedford Avenue subway, her mind still on Simon. There was a hollow place in the pit of her stomach that ached when she thought of him. He was the first person she’d wanted to trust in years, and he’d made trusting him impossible.

  Of course, if trusting him is impossible, then why are you on your way to see him right now? came the whisper in the back of her mind that always spoke to her in Daniel’s
voice. Shut up, she told it firmly. Even if we can’t be friends, I owe him an apology at least.

  Someone laughed. The sound echoed off the high factory walls on her left. Her heart contracting with sudden fear, Maia whirled around, but the street behind her was empty. There was an old woman walking her dogs along the riverside, but Maia doubted she was within shouting distance.

  She sped up her pace anyway. She could outwalk most humans, she reminded herself, not to mention outrun them. Even in her present state, with her arm aching like someone had slammed a sledgehammer into her shoulder, it wasn’t as if she had anything to fear from a mugger or rapist. Two teenage boys armed with knives had tried to grab her while she was walking through Central Park one night after she’d first come to the city, and only Bat had kept her from killing them both.

  So why was she so panicked?

  She glanced behind her. The old woman was gone; Kent was empty. The old abandoned Domino sugar factory rose up in front of her. Seized by a sudden urge to get off the street, she ducked down the alley beside it.

  She found herself in a narrow space between two buildings, full of garbage, discarded bottles, the skittering of rats. The roofs above her touched, blocking out the sun and making her feel as if she had ducked into a tunnel. The walls were brick, set with small, dirty windows, many of which had been smashed in by vandals. Through them she could see the abandoned factory floor and row after row of metal boilers, furnaces, and vats. The air smelled of burned sugar. She leaned against one of the walls, trying to still the pounding of her heart. She had almost succeeded in calming herself down when an impossibly familiar voice spoke to her out of the shadows:

  “Maia?”

  She whirled around. He was standing at the entrance to the alley, his hair lit from behind, shining like a halo around his beautiful face. Dark eyes fringed with long lashes regarded her curiously. He was wearing jeans and, despite the chill in the air, a short-sleeved T-shirt. He still looked fifteen.

  “Daniel,” she whispered.

  He moved toward her, his steps making no sound. “It’s been a long time, little sister.”

  She wanted to run, but her legs felt like bags of water. She pressed herself back against the wall as if she could disappear into it. “But—you’re dead.”

  “And you didn’t cry at my funeral, did you, Maia? No tears for your big brother?”

  “You were a monster,” she whispered. “You tried to kill me—”

  “Not hard enough.” There was something long and sharp in his hand now, something that gleamed like silver fire in the dimness. Maia wasn’t sure what it was; her vision was blurred by terror. She slid to the ground as he moved toward her, her legs no longer able to hold her up.

  Daniel knelt down beside her. She could see what it was in his hand now: a snapped-off jagged edge of glass from one of the broken windows. Terror rose and broke over her like a wave, but it wasn’t fear of the weapon in her brother’s hand that was crushing her, it was the emptiness in his eyes. She could look into them and through them and see only darkness. “Do you remember,” he said, “when I told you I’d cut out your tongue before I’d let you tattle on me to Mom and Dad?”

  Paralyzed with fear, she could only stare at him. Already she could feel the glass cutting into her skin, the choking taste of blood filling her mouth, and she wished she were dead, already dead, anything was better than this horror and this dread—

  “Enough, Agramon.” A man’s voice cut through the fog in her head. Not Daniel’s voice—it was soft, cultured, undeniably human. It reminded her of someone—but who?

  “As you wish, Lord Valentine.” Daniel breathed outward, a soft sigh of disappointment—and then his face began to fade and crumble. In a moment he was gone, and with him the sense of paralyzing, bone-crushing terror that had threatened to choke the life out of her. She sucked in a desperate breath.

  “Good. She’s breathing.” The man’s voice again, irritable now. “Really, Agramon. A few more seconds and she’d have been dead.”

  Maia looked up. The man—Valentine—was standing over her, very tall, dressed all in black, even the gloves on his hands and the thick-soled boots on his feet. He used the tip of a boot now to force her chin up. His voice when he spoke was cool, perfunctory. “How old are you?”

  The face gazing down at hers was narrow, sharp-boned, leached of all color, his eyes black and his hair so white he looked like a photograph in negative. On the left side of his throat, just above the collar of his coat, was a spiraling Mark.

  “You’re Valentine?” she whispered. “But I thought that you—”

  The boot came down on her hand, sending a stab of pain shooting up her arm. She screamed.

  “I asked you a question,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “How old am I?” The pain in her hand, mixed with the acrid stench of garbage all around, made her stomach turn. “Screw you.”

  A bar of light seemed to leap between his fingers; he slashed it down and across her face so quickly that she didn’t have time to jerk back. A hot line of pain burned its way across her cheek; she slapped a hand to her face and felt blood slick her fingers.

  “Now,” Valentine said, in the same precise and cultured voice. “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen. I’m fifteen.”

  She sensed, rather than saw, him smile. “Perfect.”

  Once back at the Institute, the Inquisitor herded Jace away from the Lightwoods and up the stairs to the training room. Catching sight of himself in the long mirrors that ran along the walls, he stiffened in shock. He hadn’t really looked at himself in days, and last night had been a bad one. His eyes were surrounded by black shadows, his shirt smeared with dried blood and filthy mud from the East River. His face looked hollow and drawn.

  “Admiring yourself?” The Inquisitor’s voice cut through his reverie. “You won’t look so pretty when the Clave gets through with you.”

  “You do seem obsessed with my looks.” Jace turned away from the mirror with some relief. “Could it be that all this is because you’re attracted to me?”

  “Don’t be revolting.” The Inquisitor had taken four long strips of metal from the gray pouch that hung at her waist. Angel blades. “You could be my son.”

  “Stephen.” Jace remembered what Luke had said back at the house. “That’s what he’s called, right?”

  The Inquisitor whirled on him. The blades she gripped were vibrating with her rage. “Don’t you ever say his name.”

  For a moment Jace wondered if she might really try to kill him. He said nothing as she got herself under control. Without looking at him, she pointed with one of the blades. “Stand there in the center of the room, please.”

  Jace obeyed. Though he tried not to look at the mirrors, he could see his reflection—and the Inquisitor’s—out of the corner of his eye, the mirrors reflecting back at each other until an infinite number of Inquisitors stood there, threatening an infinite number of Jaces.

  He glanced down at his bound hands. His wrists and shoulders had gone from aching to a hard, stabbing pain, but he didn’t wince as the Inquisitor regarded one of the blades, named it Jophiel, and plunged it into the polished wooden floorboards at her feet. He waited, but nothing happened.

  “Boom?” he said eventually. “Was something supposed to happen there?”

  “Shut up.” The Inquisitor’s tone was final. “And stay where you are.”

  Jace stayed, watching with growing curiosity as she moved to his other side, named a second blade Harahel, and proceeded to drive that one into the floorboards as well.

  With the third blade—Sandalphon—he realized what she was doing. The first blade had been driven into the floor just south of him, the next to the east, and the next to the north. She was marking out the points of a compass. He struggled to remember what this might mean, came up with nothing. This was clearly Clave ritual, beyond anything he’d been taught. By the time she reached the last blade, Taharial, his palms were sweating, chafing where
they rubbed against each other.

  The Inquisitor straightened, looking pleased with herself. “There.”

  “There what?” Jace demanded, but she held a hand up.

  “Not quite yet, Jonathan. There’s one more thing.” She moved to the southernmost blade and knelt in front of it. With a quick movement she produced a stele and marked a single dark rune into the floor just below the knife. As she rose to her feet, a high sharp sweet chime sounded through the room, the sound of a delicate bell being struck. Light poured from the four angel blades, so blinding that Jace turned his face away, half-closing his eyes. When he turned back, a moment later, he saw that he was standing inside a cage whose walls looked as if they had been woven out of filaments of light. They were not static, but moving, like sheets of illuminated rain.

  The Inquisitor was now a blurred figure behind a glowing wall. When Jace called out to her, even his voice sounded wavering and hollow, as if he were calling to her through water. “What is this? What have you done?”

  She laughed.

  Jace took an angry step forward, and then another; his shoulder brushed a glowing wall. As if he’d touched an electrified fence, the shock that pulsed through him was like a blow, knocking him off his feet. He tumbled awkwardly to the floor, unable to use his hands to break his fall.

  The Inquisitor laughed again. “If you try to walk through the wall, you’ll get more than a shock. The Clave calls this particular punishment the Malachi Configuration. These walls can’t be broken as long as the seraph blades remain where they are. I wouldn’t,” she added, as Jace, kneeling, made a move toward the blade closest to him. “Touch the blades and you’ll die.”

  “But you can touch them,” he said, unable to keep the loathing out of his voice.

  “I can, but I won’t.”

  “But what about food? Water?”

  “All in good time, Jonathan.”

  He got to his feet. Through the blurred wall, he saw her turn as if to go.