Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  “I might ask you the same thing.” He stepped out of the elevator, pulling the gate shut behind him. He was wearing a fleece-lined zip-up flannel jacket that Jocelyn had been trying to get him to throw away since they’d first started dating. It was rather nice, Clary thought, that just about nothing seemed to change Luke, no matter what happened in his life. He liked what he liked, and that was that. Even if it was a ratty-looking old coat. “Except I think I can guess. So, is he here?”

  “Jace? No.” Clary shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “It’s fine. I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  Luke hesitated. “Clary—”

  “Lucian.” The cool voice that came from behind them was Maryse’s. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  He turned to nod at her. “Maryse.”

  Maryse Lightwood stood in the doorway, her hand lightly on the frame. She was wearing gloves, pale gray gloves that matched her tailored gray suit. Clary wondered if Maryse ever wore jeans. She had never seen Isabelle and Alec’s mother in anything but power suits or gear. “Clary,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  Clary felt herself flush. Maryse didn’t seem to mind her coming and going, but then, Maryse had never really acknowledged Clary’s relationship with Jace at all. It was hard to blame her. Maryse was still coping with Max’s death, which had been only six weeks ago, and she was doing it alone, with Robert Lightwood still in Idris. She had bigger things on her mind than Jace’s love life.

  “I was just leaving,” Clary said.

  “I’ll give you a ride back home when I’m done here,” Luke said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Maryse, is it a problem if Clary remains while we talk? Because I’d prefer to have her stay.”

  Maryse shook her head. “No problem, I suppose.” She sighed, raking her hands through her hair. “Believe me, I wish I didn’t need to bother you at all. I know you’re getting married in a week—congratulations, by the way. I don’t know if I told you that before.”

  “You didn’t,” said Luke, “but it’s appreciated. Thank you.”

  “Only six weeks.” Maryse smiled faintly. “Quite a whirlwind courtship.”

  Luke’s hand tightened on Clary’s shoulder, the only sign of his annoyance. “I don’t suppose you called me over here to congratulate me on my engagement, did you?”

  Maryse shook her head. She looked very tired, Clary thought, and there were strands of gray in her upswept dark hair that hadn’t been there before. “No. I assume you’ve heard about the bodies we’ve been finding for the past week or so?”

  “The dead Shadowhunters, yes.”

  “We found another one tonight. Stuffed in a Dumpster near Columbus Park. Your pack’s territory.”

  Luke’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, but the others—”

  “The first body was found in Greenpoint. Warlock territory. The second floating in a pond in Central Park. The domain of the fey. Now we have werewolf territory.” She fixed her gaze on Luke. “What does that make you think?”

  “That someone who isn’t very pleased about the new Accords is trying to set Downworlder against Downworlder,” Luke said. “I can assure you my pack didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know who’s behind it, but it’s a very clumsy attempt, if you ask me. I hope the Clave can see through it.”

  “There’s more,” Maryse said. “We’ve identified the first two bodies. It took some time, since the first was burned nearly beyond recognition and the second was badly decomposed. Can you guess who they might have been?”

  “Maryse—”

  “Anson Pangborn,” she said, “and Charles Freeman. Neither of whom, I might note, had been heard from since Valentine’s death—”

  “But that’s not possible,” Clary interrupted. “Luke killed Pangborn, back in August—at Renwick’s.”

  “He killed Emil Pangborn,” said Maryse. “Anson was Emil’s younger brother. They were both in the Circle together.”

  “As was Freeman,” said Luke. “So someone is killing not just Shadowhunters but former Circle members? And leaving their bodies in Downworlder territory?” He shook his head. “It sounds like someone’s trying to shake up some of the more . . . recalcitrant members of the Clave. Get them to rethink the new Accords, perhaps. We should have expected this.”

  “I suppose,” Maryse said. “I’ve met with the Seelie Queen already, and I have a message out to Magnus. Wherever he is.” She rolled her eyes; Maryse and Robert seemed to have accepted Alec’s relationship with Magnus with surprisingly good grace, but Clary could tell that Maryse, at least, didn’t take it seriously. “I just thought, perhaps—” She sighed. “I’ve been so exhausted lately. I feel like I can hardly think straight. I hoped you might have some idea about who might be doing this, some idea that hadn’t occurred to me.”

  Luke shook his head. “Someone with a grudge against the new system. But that could be anyone. I suppose there’s no evidence on the bodies?”

  Maryse sighed. “Nothing conclusive. If only the dead could talk, eh, Lucian?”

  It was as if Maryse had lifted a hand and yanked a curtain across Clary’s vision; everything went dark, except for a single symbol, hanging like a glowing sign against a blank night sky.

  It seemed her power had not vanished, after all.

  “What if . . .,” she said slowly, raising her eyes to look at Maryse. “What if they could?”

  Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror in Kyle’s small apartment, Simon couldn’t help but wonder where that whole business about vampires not being able to see themselves in mirrors had come from. He was able to see himself perfectly well in the dinged surface—tousled brown hair, wide brown eyes, white, unmarked skin. He had sponged off the blood from his cut lip, though his skin had already healed over.

  He knew, objectively speaking, that becoming a vampire had made him more attractive. Isabelle had explained to him that his movements had become graceful and that, whereas before he had seemed disheveled, somehow now he looked attractively rumpled, as if he had just gotten out of bed. “Someone else’s bed,” she had noted, which, he’d told her, he had already figured out was what she meant, thank you.

  When he looked at himself, though, he didn’t see any of that. The poreless whiteness of his skin, as it always did, disturbed him, as did the dark, spidering veins that showed at his temples, evidence of the fact that he had not fed today. He looked alien and not like himself. Perhaps the whole business about not being able to see yourself in a mirror once you had become a vampire was wishful thinking. Maybe it was just that you no longer recognized the reflection looking back at you.

  Cleaned up, he headed back into the living room, where Jace was sprawled out on the futon couch, reading Kyle’s beaten-up copy of The Lord of the Rings. He dropped it onto the coffee table as Simon came in. His hair looked newly wet, as if he’d splashed water on his face from the kitchen sink.

  “I can see why you like it here,” he said, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed Kyle’s collection of movie posters and science fiction books. “There’s a thin layer of nerd all over everything.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” Simon gave Jace a hard look. Up close, under the bright light of the unshaded overhead bulb, Jace looked—ill. The shadows Simon had noticed under his eyes before were more pronounced than ever, and his skin seemed tight over the bones of his face. His hand shook a little as he pushed his hair away from his forehead in a characteristic gesture.

  Simon shook his head as if to clear it. Since when did he know Jace well enough to be able to identify which gestures of his were characteristic? It wasn’t as if they were friends. “You look lousy,” he said.

  Jace blinked. “Seems an odd time to start an insult contest, but if you insist, I could probably think up something good.”

  “No, I mean it. You don’t look good.”

  “This from a guy who has all the sex appeal of a penguin. Look, I realize you may be jealous that the good Lord didn’t deal you the same chi
seled hand he dealt me, but that’s no reason to—”

  “I am not trying to insult you,” Simon snapped. “I mean you look sick. When was the last time you ate anything?”

  Jace looked thoughtful. “Yesterday?”

  “You ate something yesterday. You’re sure?”

  Jace shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles. I think it was yesterday, though.”

  Simon had investigated the contents of Kyle’s fridge earlier when he’d been searching the place, and there hadn’t been much to find. A withered-up old lime, some soda cans, a pound of ground beef, and, inexplicably, a single Pop-Tart in the freezer. He grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a supermarket on the corner. Let’s get you some food.”

  Jace looked as if he were in the mood to object, then shrugged. “Fine,” he said, in the tone of someone who didn’t much care where they went or what they did there. “Let’s go.”

  Outside on the front steps Simon locked the door behind them with the keys he was still getting used to, while Jace examined the list of names next to the apartment doorbell buzzers. “That one’s yours, huh?” he asked, pointing to 3A. “How come it just says ‘Kyle’? Doesn’t he have a last name?”

  “Kyle wants to be a rock star,” Simon said, heading down the stairs. “I think he’s working the one-name thing. Like Rihanna.”

  Jace followed him, hunching his shoulders slightly against the wind, though he made no move to zip up the suede jacket he’d retrieved from Clary earlier that day. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sure you don’t.”

  As they rounded the corner onto Avenue B, Simon looked at Jace sideways. “So,” he said. “Were you following me? Or is it just an amazing coincidence that you happened to be on the roof of a building I was walking by when I got attacked?”

  Jace stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to turn. Apparently even Shadowhunters had to obey traffic laws. “I was following you.”

  “Is this the part where you tell me you’re secretly in love with me? Vampire mojo strikes again.”

  “There’s no such thing as vampire mojo,” said Jace, rather eerily echoing Clary’s earlier comment. “And I was following Clary, but then she got into a cab, and I can’t follow a cab. So I doubled back and followed you instead. Mostly for something to do.”

  “You were following Clary?” Simon echoed. “Here’s a hot tip: Most girls don’t like being stalked.”

  “She left her phone in the pocket of my jacket,” Jace said, patting his right side, where, presumably, the phone was stashed. “I thought if I could figure out where she was going, I could leave it where she’d find it.”

  “Or,” Simon said, “you could call her at home and tell her you had her phone, and she could come and get it from you.”

  Jace said nothing. The light changed, and they headed across the street toward the C-Town supermarket. It was still open. Markets in Manhattan never closed, Simon thought, which was a nice change from Brooklyn. Manhattan was a good place to be a vampire. You could do all your shopping at midnight and no one would think it was weird.

  “You’re avoiding Clary,” Simon observed. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me why?”

  “No, I don’t,” Jace said. “Just count yourself lucky I was following you, or—”

  “Or what? Another mugger would be dead?” Simon could hear the bitterness in his own voice. “You saw what happened.”

  “Yes. And I saw the look on your face when it did.” Jace’s tone was neutral. “That wasn’t the first time you’ve seen that happen, was it?”

  Simon found himself telling Jace about the tracksuited figure who had attacked him in Williamsburg, and how he had assumed it was just a mugger. “After he died, he turned into salt,” he finished. “Just like the second guy. I guess it’s a biblical thing. Pillars of salt. Like Lot’s wife.”

  They had reached the supermarket; Jace shoved the door open, and Simon followed him in, grabbing a miniature wheeled silver cart from the line near the front door. He started to push it down one of the aisles, and Jace followed him, clearly lost in thought. “So I guess the question is,” Jace said, “do you have any idea who might want to kill you?”

  Simon shrugged. The sight of all the food around him was making his stomach twist, reminding him how hungry he was, though not for anything they sold here. “Maybe Raphael. He seems to hate me. And he wanted me dead before—”

  “It’s not Raphael,” said Jace.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Raphael knows about your Mark and wouldn’t be stupid enough to strike at you directly like that. He’d know exactly what would happen. Whoever’s after you, it’s someone who knows enough about you to know where you’re likely to be, but they don’t know about the Mark.”

  “But that could be anyone.”

  “Exactly,” said Jace, and grinned. For a moment he almost looked like himself again.

  Simon shook his head. “Look, do you know what you want to eat, or do you just want me to keep pushing this cart up and down aisles because it amuses you?”

  “That,” said Jace, “and I’m not really familiar with what they sell in mundane grocery stores. Maryse usually cooks or we order in food.” He shrugged, and picked up a piece of fruit at random. “What’s this?”

  “That’s a mango.” Simon stared at Jace. Sometimes it really was like Shadowhunters were from an alien planet.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those that wasn’t already cut up,” Jace mused. “I like mangoes.”

  Simon grabbed the mango and tossed it into the cart. “Great. What else do you like?”

  Jace pondered for a moment. “Tomato soup,” he said finally.

  “Tomato soup? You want tomato soup and a mango for dinner?”

  Jace shrugged. “I don’t really care about food.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Shadowhunters. Simon seethed quietly to himself as he rounded the corner of an aisle lined with soup cans. They were a sort of bizarre amalgam of millionaires—people who never had to consider the petty parts of life, like how to shop for food, or use MetroCard machines in the subway—and soldiers, with their rigid self-discipline and constant training. Maybe it was easier for them, going through life with blinders on, he thought as he grabbed a soup can off the shelf. Maybe it helped you keep your focus on the big picture—which, when your job was basically keeping the world safe from evil, was a pretty big picture indeed.

  He was feeling nearly sympathetic toward Jace as he neared the aisle where he’d left him—then paused. Jace was leaning against the cart, turning something over in his hands. From this distance Simon couldn’t see what it was, and he couldn’t get closer, either, because two teenage girls were blocking his way, standing in the middle of the aisle giggling and crowding up against each other to whisper the way girls did. They were obviously dressed to pass for twenty-one, in high heels and short skirts, push-up bras and no jackets to keep the chill away.

  They smelled like lip gloss. Lip gloss and baby powder and blood.

  He could hear them, of course, despite the whispering. They were talking about Jace, how hot he was, each daring the other to go up and talk to him. There was a great deal of discussion of his hair and also his abs, although how they could really see his abs though his T-shirt, Simon wasn’t sure. Blech, he thought. This is ridiculous. He was about to say “Excuse me” when one of them, the taller and darker-haired of the two, broke away and sauntered over to Jace, wobbling a little on her platform heels. Jace looked up as she approached him, his eyes wary, and Simon had the sudden panicked thought that maybe Jace would mistake her for a vampire or some kind of succubus and whip out one of his seraph blades on the spot, and then they’d both be arrested.

  He needn’t have worried. Jace just arched an eyebrow. The girl said something to him breathlessly; he shrugged; she pressed something into his hand, and then das
hed back to her friend. They wobbled out of the store, giggling together.

  Simon went over to Jace and dropped the soup can into the cart. “So what was all that about?”

  “I think,” Jace said, “that she asked if she could touch my mango.”

  “She said that?”

  Jace shrugged. “Yeah, then she gave me her number.” He showed Simon the piece of paper with an expression of bland indifference, then tossed it into the cart. “Can we go now?”

  “You’re not going to call her, are you?”

  Jace looked at him as if he were insane.

  “Forget I said that,” said Simon. “This sort of thing happens to you all the time, doesn’t it? Girls just coming up to you?”

  “Only when I’m not glamoured.”

  “Yes, because when you are, girls can’t see you, because you’re invisible.” Simon shook his head. “You’re a public menace. You shouldn’t be allowed out on your own.”

  “Jealousy is such an ugly emotion, Lewis.” Jace grinned a crooked grin that normally would have made Simon want to hit him. Not this time, though. He had just realized what it was that Jace had been playing with, turning over and over in his fingers as if it were something precious or dangerous or both. It was Clary’s phone.

  “I’m still not sure that this is a good idea,” said Luke.

  Clary, her arms crossed over her chest to ward off the chill of the Silent City, looked sideways at him. “Maybe you should have said that before we got here.”

  “I’m fairly sure I did. Several times.” Luke’s voice echoed off the stone pillars that rose overhead, striped with bands of semiprecious stone—black onyx, green jade, rose carnelian, and blue lapis. Silvery witchlight burned in torches attached to the pillars, lighting the mausoleums that lined each wall to a bright white that was almost painful to look at.

  Little had changed in the Silent City since the last time Clary had been here. It still felt alien and strange, though now the sweeping runes that stretched across the floors in carved whorls and etched patterns teased her mind with the edges of their meanings, instead of being totally incomprehensible. Maryse had left her and Luke here in this entry chamber the moment they had arrived, preferring to go and confer with the Silent Brothers herself. There was no guarantee they’d let the three of them in to see the bodies, she’d warned Clary. Nephilim dead were the province of the Bone City’s guardians, and no one else had jurisdiction over them.