“Maybe because you can’t ask me about my past without picking a fight about how I’m going to live forever and you’re not,” Magnus snapped. “Maybe because immortality is rapidly becoming the third person in our relationship, Alec.”
“Our relationship isn’t supposed to have a third person.”
“Exactly.”
Alec’s throat tightened. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he had never been good with words like Jace and Magnus were. Instead he grabbed the blue scarf off its peg and wrapped it defiantly around his neck.
“Don’t wait up,” he said. “I might patrol tonight.”
As he slammed out of the apartment, he heard Magnus yell after him, “And that scarf, I’ll have you know, is from the Gap! I got it last year!”
Alec rolled his eyes and jogged down the stairs to the lobby. The single bulb that usually lit the place was out, and the space was so dim that for a moment he didn’t see the hooded figure slipping toward him from the shadows. When he did, he was so startled that he dropped his key chain with a rattling clang.
The figure glided toward him. He could tell nothing about it—not age or gender or even species. The voice that came from beneath the hood was crackling and low. “I have a message for you, Alec Lightwood,” it said. “From Camille Belcourt.”
“Do you want to patrol together tonight?” Jordan asked, somewhat abruptly.
Maia turned to look at him in surprise. He was leaning back against the kitchen counter, his elbows on the surface behind him. There was an unconcern about his posture that was too studied to be sincere. That was the problem with knowing someone so well, she thought. It was very hard to pretend around them, or to ignore it when they were pretending, even when it would be easier.
“Patrol together?” she echoed. Simon was in his room, changing clothes; she’d told him she’d walk to the subway with him, and now she wished she hadn’t. She knew she should have contacted Jordan since the last time she’d seen him, when, rather unwisely, she’d kissed him. But then Jace had vanished and the whole world seemed to have blown into pieces and it had given her just the excuse she’d needed to avoid the whole issue.
Of course, not thinking about the ex-boyfriend who had broken your heart and turned you into a werewolf was a lot easier when he wasn’t standing right in front of you, wearing a green shirt that hugged his leanly muscled body in all the right places and brought out the hazel color of his eyes.
“I thought they were canceling the patrol searches for Jace,” she said, looking away from him.
“Well, not canceling so much as cutting down. But I’m Praetor, not Clave. I can look for Jace on my own time.”
“Right,” she said.
He was playing with something on the counter, arranging it, but his attention was still on her. “Do you, you know . . . You used to want to go to college at Stanford. Do you still?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I haven’t thought about college since . . .” She cleared her throat. “Not since I Changed.”
His cheeks flushed. “You were—I mean, you always wanted to go to California. You were going to study history, and I was going to move out there and surf. Remember?”
Maia shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. She felt as if she ought to be angry, but she wasn’t. For a long time she had blamed Jordan for the fact that she’d stopped dreaming of a human future, with school and a house and a family, maybe, someday. But there were other wolves in the police station pack who still pursued their dreams, their art. Bat, for instance. It had been her own choice to stop her life short. “I remember,” she said.
His cheeks flushed. “About tonight. No one’s searched the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so I thought . . . but it’s never much fun doing it on my own. But if you don’t want to . . .”
“No,” she said, hearing her own voice as if it were someone else’s. “I mean, sure. I’ll go with you.”
“Really?” His hazel eyes lit up, and Maia cursed herself inwardly. She shouldn’t get his hopes up, not when she wasn’t sure how she felt. It was just so hard to believe that he cared that much.
The Praetor Lupus medallion gleamed at his throat as he leaned forward, and she smelled the familiar scent of his soap, and under that—wolf. She flicked her eyes up toward him, just as Simon’s door opened and he came out, shrugging on a hoodie. He stopped dead in his doorway, his eyes moving from Jordan to Maia, his eyebrows slowly rising.
“You know, I can make it to the subway on my own,” he said to Maia, a faint smile tugging the corner of his mouth. “If you want to stay here . . .”
“No.” Maia hastily took her hands out of her pockets, where they had been balled into nervous fists. “No, I’ll come with you. Jordan, I’ll—I’ll see you later.”
“Tonight,” he called after her, but she didn’t turn around to look at him; she was already hurrying after Simon.
Simon trudged alone up the low rise of the hill, hearing the shouts of the Frisbee players in the Sheep Meadow behind him, like distant music. It was a bright November day, crisp and windy, the sun lighting what remained of the leaves on the trees to brilliant shades of scarlet, gold, and amber.
The top of the hill was strewn with boulders. You could see how the park had been hacked out of what had once been a wilderness of trees and stone. Isabelle sat atop one of the boulders, wearing a long dress of bottle-green silk with an embroidered black and silver coat over it. She looked up as Simon strode toward her, pushing her long, dark hair out of her face. “I thought you’d be with Clary,” she said as he drew closer. “Where is she?”
“Leaving the Institute,” he said, sitting down next to Isabelle on the rock and shoving his hands into his Windbreaker pockets. “She texted. She’ll be here soon.”
“Alec’s on his way—,” she began, and broke off as his pocket buzzed. Or, more accurately, the phone in his pocket buzzed. “I think someone’s messaging you.”
He shrugged. “I’ll check it later.”
She gave him a look from under her long eyelashes. “Anyway, I was saying, Alec’s on his way too. He had to come all the way from Brooklyn, so—”
Simon’s phone buzzed again.
“All right, that’s it. If you’re not getting it, I will.” Isabelle leaned forward, against Simon’s protests, and slipped her hand into his pocket. The top of her head brushed his chin. He smelled her perfume—vanilla—and the scent of her skin underneath. When she pulled the phone out and drew back, he was both relieved and disappointed.
She squinted at the screen. “Rebecca? Who’s Rebecca?”
“My sister.”
Isabelle’s body relaxed. “She wants to meet you. She says she hasn’t seen you since—”
Simon swiped the phone out of her hand and flipped it off before shoving it back into his pocket. “I know, I know.”
“Don’t you want to see her?”
“More than—more than almost anything else. But I don’t want her to know. About me.” Simon picked up a stick and threw it. “Look what happened when my mom found out.”
“So set up a meeting with her somewhere public. Where she can’t freak out. Far from your house.”
“Even if she can’t freak out, she can still look at me like my mother did,” Simon said in a low voice. “Like I’m a monster.”
Isabelle touched his wrist lightly. “My mom tossed out Jace when she thought he was Valentine’s son and a spy—then she regretted it horribly. My mom and dad are coming around to Alec’s being with Magnus. Your mom will come around too. Get your sister on your side. That’ll help.” She tilted her head a little. “I think sometimes siblings understand more than parents. There’s not the same weight of expectations. I could never, ever cut Alec off. No matter what he did. Never. Or Jace.” She squeezed his arm, then dropped her hand. “My little brother died. I won’t ever see him again. Don’t put your sister through that.”
“Through what?” It was Alec, coming up the side of the hill, kicking dried lea
ves out of his path. He was wearing his usual ratty sweater and jeans, but a dark blue scarf that matched his eyes was wrapped around his throat. Now, that had to have been a gift from Magnus, Simon thought. No way would Alec have thought to buy something like that himself. The concept of matching seemed to be beyond him.
Isabelle cleared her throat. “Simon’s sister—”
She got no further than that. There was a blast of cold air, bringing with it a swirl of dead leaves. Isabelle put her hand up to shield her face from the dust as the air began to shimmer with the unmistakeable translucence of an opening Portal, and Clary appeared before them, her stele in one hand and her face wet with tears.
4
AND IMMORTALITY
“And you’re totally sure it was Jace?” Isabelle asked, for what seemed to Clary like the forty-seventh time.
Clary bit down on her already sore lip and counted to ten. “It’s me, Isabelle,” she said. “You honestly think I wouldn’t recognize Jace?” She looked up at Alec standing over them, his blue scarf fluttering like a pennant in the wind. “Could you mistake someone else for Magnus?”
“No. Not ever,” he said without missing a beat. His blue eyes were troubled, dark with worry. “I just—I mean, of course we’re asking. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He could be a hostage,” said Simon, leaning back against a boulder. The autumn sunlight turned his eyes the color of coffee grounds. “Like, Sebastian is threatening him that if Jace doesn’t go along with his plans, Sebastian will hurt someone he cares about.”
All eyes went to Clary, but she shook her head in frustration. “You didn’t see them together. Nobody acts like that when they’re a hostage. He seemed totally happy to be there.”
“Then he’s possessed,” Alec said. “Like he was by Lilith.”
“That was what I thought at first. But when he was possessed by Lilith, he was like a robot. He just kept saying the same things over and over. But this was Jace. He was making jokes like Jace does. Smiling like him.”
“Maybe he has Stockholm syndrome,” Simon suggested. “You know, when you get brainwashed and start sympathizing with your captor.”
“It takes months to develop Stockholm syndrome,” Alec objected. “How did he look? Hurt, or sick in any way? Can you describe them both?”
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked. The wind blew dry leaves around their feet as Clary told them again how Jace had looked—vibrant and healthy. Sebastian, too. They had seemed completely calm. Jace’s clothes had been clean, stylish, ordinary. Sebastian had been wearing a long black wool trench coat that had looked expensive.
“Like an evil Burberry ad,” Simon said when she was done.
Isabelle shot him a look. “Maybe Jace has a plan,” she said. “Maybe he’s tricking Sebastian. Trying to get into his good graces, figure out what his plans are.”
“You’d think that if he were doing that, he’d have figured out a way to tell us about it,” Alec said. “Not to leave us panicking. That’s too cruel.”
“Unless he couldn’t risk sending a message. He’d believe we would trust him. We do trust him.” Isabelle’s voice rose, and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. The trees lining the gravel path they stood on rattled their bare branches.
“Maybe we should tell the Clave,” Clary said, hearing her own voice as if from a distance. “This is—I don’t see how we can handle this on our own.”
“We can’t tell the Clave.” Isabelle’s voice was hard.
“Why not?”
“If they think he’s cooperating with Sebastian, the mandate will be to kill him on sight,” Alec said. “That’s the Law.”
“Even if Isabelle’s right? Even if he’s just playing along with Sebastian?” Simon said, a note of doubt in his voice. “Trying to get on his side to get information?”
“There’s no way to prove it. And if we claimed it was what he’s doing, and that got back to Sebastian, he’d probably kill Jace,” said Alec. “If Jace is possessed, the Clave will kill him themselves. We can’t tell them anything.” His voice was hard. Clary looked at him in surprise; Alec was normally the most rule-abiding of them all.
“This is Sebastian we’re talking about,” said Izzy. “There’s no one the Clave hates more, except Valentine, and he’s dead. But practically everyone knows someone who died in the Mortal War, and Sebastian’s the one who took the wards down.”
Clary scuffed at the gravel underfoot with her sneaker. The whole situation seemed like a dream, like she might wake up at any moment. “Then, what next?”
“We talk to Magnus. See if he has any insight.” Alec tugged on the corner of his scarf. “He won’t go to the Council. Not if I ask him not to.”
“He’d better not,” said Isabelle indignantly. “Otherwise, worst boyfriend ever.”
“I said he wouldn’t—”
“Is there any point now?” Simon said. “In seeing the Seelie Queen? Now that we know Jace is possessed, or maybe hiding out on purpose—”
“You don’t miss an appointment with the Seelie Queen,” Isabelle said firmly. “Not if you value your skin the way it is.”
“But she’ll just take away the rings from Clary and we won’t learn anything,” Simon argued. “We know more now. We have different questions for her now. She won’t answer them, though. She’ll just answer the old ones. That’s how faeries work. They don’t do favors. It’s not like she’s going to let us go talk to Magnus and then come back.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Clary rubbed her hands across her face. They came away dry. At some point her tears had stopped coming, thank God. She hadn’t wanted to face the Queen looking like she’d just been bawling her eyes out. “I never got the rings.”
Isabelle blinked. “What?”
“After I saw Jace and Sebastian, I was too shaken to get them. I just raced out of the Institute and Portaled here.”
“Well, we can’t see the Queen, then,” said Alec. “If you didn’t do what she asked you to, she’ll be furious.”
“She’ll be more than furious,” said Isabelle. “You saw what she did to Alec last time we went to the Court. And that was just a glamour. She’ll probably turn Clary into a lobster or something.”
“She knew,” Clary said. “She said, ‘When you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him.’” The Seelie Queen’s voice drifted through Clary’s head. She shivered. She could understand why Simon hated faeries so much. They always knew exactly the right words that would lodge like a splinter in your brain, painful and impossible to ignore or remove. “She’s just playing around with us. She wants those rings, but I don’t think there’s any chance she’ll really help us.”
“Okay,” Isabelle said doubtfully. “But if she knew that much, she might know more. And who else is going to be able to help us, since we can’t go to the Clave?”
“Magnus,” Clary said. “He’s been trying to decode Lilith’s spell all this time. Maybe if I tell him what I saw, it’ll help.”
Simon rolled his eyes. “It’s a good thing we know the person who’s dating Magnus,” he said. “Otherwise, I get the feeling we’d all just lie around all the time wondering what the hell to do next. Or try to raise the money to hire Magnus by selling lemonade.”
Alec looked merely irritated by this comment. “The only way you could raise enough money to hire Magnus by selling lemonade is if you put meth in it.”
“It’s an expression. We are all aware that your boyfriend is expensive. I just wish we didn’t have to go running to him with every problem.”
“So does he,” said Alec. “Magnus has another job today, but I’ll talk to him tonight and we can all meet at his loft tomorrow morning.”
Clary nodded. She couldn’t even imagine getting up the next morning. She knew the sooner they talked to Magnus the better, but she felt drained and exhausted, as if she’d left pints of her blood on the library floor in the Institute.
Isabelle had moved closer to Simon. “I guess
that leaves us the rest of the afternoon,” she said. “Should we go to Taki’s? They’ll serve you blood.”
Simon glanced over at Clary, clearly worried. “Do you want to come?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll grab a cab back to Williamsburg. I should spend some time with my mom. All of this stuff with Sebastian has her falling apart already, and now . . .”
Isabelle’s black hair flew in the wind as she whipped her head back and forth. “You can’t tell her what you saw. Luke’s on the Council. He can’t keep it from them, and you can’t ask her to keep it from him.”
“I know.” Clary looked at the three anxious gazes fixed on her. How had this happened? she thought. She, who had never kept secrets from Jocelyn—not real ones, anyway—was about to go home and hide something enormous from both her mother and Luke. Something she could talk about only with people like Alec and Isabelle Lightwood and Magnus Bane, people that six months ago she hadn’t known existed. It was strange how your world could shift on its axis and everything you trusted could invert itself in what seemed like no time at all.
At least she still had Simon. Constant, permanent Simon. She kissed him on the cheek, waved her good-bye to the others, and turned away, aware that all three of them were watching her worriedly as she strode away across the park, the last of the dead fall leaves crunching under her sneakers as if they were tiny bones.
Alec had lied. It wasn’t Magnus who had something to do that afternoon. It was himself.
He knew what he was doing was a mistake, but he couldn’t help himself: it was like a drug, this needing to know more. And now, here he was, underground, holding his witchlight and wondering just what the hell he was doing.
Like all New York subway stations, this one smelled of rust and water, metal and decay. But unlike any other station Alec had ever been in, it was eerily quiet. Aside from the marks of water damage, the walls and platform were clean. Vaulted ceilings, punctuated by the occasional chandelier, rose above him, the arches patterned in green tile. The nameplate tiles on the wall read CITY HALL in block lettering.
Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series Page 169