City of Lost Souls mi-5

by Cassandra Clare

  “‘For this is Hell, nor am I out of it,’” said Magnus, with the air of someone quoting an old saying.

  Azazel showed a metallic smile. “You may not be proud like old Faustus, warlock, but you are impatient. I am sure my willingness to remain in this pentagram will outlast your desire to keep watch over me inside it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Magnus said. “I’ve always been fairly bold where decorating is concerned, and having you here does add that little extra touch of something to the room.”

  “Magnus,” Alec said, clearly not thrilled at the idea of an immortal demon taking up residence in his boyfriend’s loft.

  “Jealous, little Shadowhunter?” Azazel grinned at Alec. “Your warlock is not my type, and besides, I would hardly want to anger his—”

  “Enough,” Magnus said. “Tell us what the ‘little’ thing you want in return for your plan is.”

  Azazel templed his hands — hard workman’s hands, the color of blood, topped with black nails. “One happy memory,” he said. “From each of you. Something to amuse me while I am bound like Prometheus to his rock.”

  “A memory?” said Isabelle in astonishment. “You mean it would vanish out of our heads? We wouldn’t be able to recall it anymore?”

  Azazel squinted at her through the flames. “What are you, little one? A Nephilim? Yes, I would take your memory and it would become mine. You would no longer know that it had happened to you. Although, please do avoid giving me memories of demons you’ve slaughtered under the light of the moon. Not the sort of thing I enjoy. No, I want these memories to be… personal.” He grinned, and his teeth gleamed like an iron portcullis.

  “I’m old,” Magnus said. “I have many memories. I would give one up, if needed. But I cannot speak for the rest of you. No one should be forced to give up something like this.”

  “I’ll do it,” Isabelle said immediately. “For Jace.”

  “I will too, of course,” said Alec, and then it was Simon’s turn. He thought suddenly of Jace, cutting his wrist and giving him his blood in the tiny room on Valentine’s boat. Risking his own life for Simon’s. It might have been for Clary’s sake at its heart, but it was still a debt. “I’m in.”

  “Good,” Magnus said. “All of you, try to think of happy memories. They must be genuinely happy. Something that gives you pleasure in the recollection.” He shot a sour glance at the smug demon in the pentagram.

  “I’m ready,” Isabelle said. She was standing with her eyes closed, her back straight as if braced for pain. Magnus moved toward her and laid his fingers against her forehead, murmuring softly.

  Alec watched Magnus with his sister, his mouth tight, then shut his eyes. Simon shut his own too, hastily, and tried to summon up a happy memory — something to do with Clary? But so many of his memories of her were tinged now with his worry over her well-being. Something from when they were very young? An image swam to the forefront of his mind — a hot summer day at Coney Island, him on his father’s shoulders, Rebecca running behind them, trailing a handful of balloons. Looking up at the sky, trying to find shapes in the clouds, and the sound of his mother’s laughter. No, he thought, not that. I don’t want to lose that—

  There was a cool touch on his forehead. He opened his eyes and saw Magnus lowering his hand. Simon blinked at him, his mind suddenly blank. “But I wasn’t thinking of anything,” he protested.

  Magnus’s cat eyes were sad. “Yes, you were.”

  Simon glanced around the room, feeling a little dizzy. The others looked the same, as if they were awakening from a strange dream; he caught Isabelle’s eye, the dark flutter of her lashes, and wondered what she had thought about, what happiness she had given away.

  A low rumble from the center of the pentagram drew his gaze from Izzy. Azazel stood, as close to the edge of the pattern as he could, a slow growl of hunger coming from his throat. Magnus turned and looked at him, a look of disgust on his face. His hand was closed into a fist, and something seemed to be shining between his fingers as if he held a witchlight rune-stone. He turned and flung it, fast and sideways, into the center of the pentagram. Simon’s vampire vision tracked it. It was a bead of light that expanded as it flew, expanded into a circle holding multiple images. Simon saw a piece of azure ocean, the corner of a satin dress that belled out as its wearer spun, a glimpse of Magnus’s face, a boy with blue eyes — and then Azazel opened his arms and the circle of images vanished into his body, like a stray piece of trash sucked into the fuselage of a jet plane.

  Azazel gasped. His eyes, which had been darting flickers of red flame, blazed like bonfires now, and his voice crackled when he spoke. “Ahhhh. Delicious.”

  Magnus spoke sharply. “Now for your side of the bargain.”

  The demon licked his lips. “The solution to your problem is this. You release me into the world, and I take Valentine’s son and bring him living into Hell. He will not die, and therefore your Jace will live, but he will have left this world behind, and slowly their connection will burn away. You will have your friend back.”

  “And then what?” Magnus said slowly. “We release you into the world, and then you return and let yourself be bound again?”

  Azazel laughed. “Of course not, foolish warlock. The price for the favor is my freedom.”

  “Freedom?” Alec spoke, sounding incredulous. “A Prince of Hell, set free in the world? We already gave you our memories—”

  “The memories were the price you paid to hear my plan,” said Azazel. “My freedom is what you will pay to have my plan enacted.”

  “That is a cheat, and you know it,” said Magnus. “You ask for the impossible.”

  “So do you,” said Azazel. “By all rights your friend is lost to you forever. ‘For if a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word.’ And by the terms of Lilith’s spell, their souls are bound, and both agreed.”

  “Jace would never agree—,” Alec began.

  “He said the words,” said Azazel. “Of his own will or under compunction, it does not matter. You are asking me to sever a bond only Heaven can sever. But Heaven will not help you; you know that as well as I. That is why men summon demons and not angels, is it not? This is the price you pay for my intervention. If you do not want to pay it, you must learn to accept what you’ve lost.”

  Magnus’s face was pale and tight. “We will converse among ourselves and discuss whether your offer is acceptable. In the meantime I banish you.” He waved his hand, and Azazel vanished, leaving behind the smell of charred wood.

  The four people in the room stared at one another incredulously. “What he is asking for,” Alec said finally, “it isn’t possible, is it?”

  “Theoretically anything is possible,” said Magnus, staring ahead as if into an abyss. “But to loose a Greater Demon on the world — not just a Greater Demon, a Prince of Hell, second only to Lucifer himself — the destruction he could wreak—”

  “Isn’t it possible,” Isabelle said, “that Sebastian could wreak just as much destruction?”

  “Like Magnus said,” Simon put in bitterly, “anything’s possible.”

  “There could be almost no greater crime in the eyes of the Clave,” said Magnus. “Whoever loosed Azazel upon the world would be a wanted criminal.”

  “But if it were to destroy Sebastian…” Isabelle began.

  “We don’t have proof Sebastian’s plotting anything,” said Magnus. “For all we know, all he wants is to settle down in a nice country house in Idris.”

  “With Clary and Jace?” Alec said incredulously.

  Magnus shrugged. “Who knows what he wants with them? Maybe he’s just lonely.”

  “No way did he kidnap Jace off that roof because he’s desperately in need of a bromance,” said Isabelle. “He’s planning something.”

  They all looked at Simon. “Clary’s trying to find out what. She needs some time. And don’t say ‘We don’t have time,’” he added. “She knows that.�
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  Alec raked a hand through his dark hair. “Fine, but we just wasted a whole day. A day we didn’t have. No more stupid ideas.” His voice was uncharacteristically sharp.

  “Alec,” Magnus said. He put a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder; Alec was standing still, staring angrily at the floor. “Are you okay?”

  Alec looked at him. “Who are you again?”

  Magnus gave a little gasp; he looked — for the first time Simon could remember — actually unnerved. It lasted only a moment, but it was there. “Alexander,” he said.

  “Too soon to joke about the happy memory thing, I take it,” Alec said.

  “You think?” Magnus’s voice soared. Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and Maia and Jordan came in. Their cheeks were red from the cold, and — Simon saw with a small start — Maia was wearing Jordan’s leather jacket.

  “We just came from the station,” she said excitedly. “Luke hasn’t woken up yet, but it looks like he’s going to be all right—” She broke off, looking around at the still-glimmering pentagram, the clouds of black smoke, and the scorched patches on the floor. “Okay, what have you guys been doing?”

  With the help of a glamour and Jace’s ability to swing himself one-armed up onto a curving old bridge, Clary and Jace escaped the Italian police without being arrested. Once they had stopped running, they collapsed against the side of a building, laughing, side by side, their hands interlinked. Clary felt a moment of pure sharp happiness and had to bury her head against Jace’s shoulder, reminding herself, in a hard internal voice, that this wasn’t him, before her laughter trailed off into silence.

  Jace seemed to take her sudden quiet as a sign that she was tired. He held her hand lightly as they made their way back to the street they’d started out from, the narrow canal with bridges on both ends. In between them Clary recognized the blank, featureless townhouse they’d left. A shudder ran over her.

  “Cold?” Jace pulled her toward him and kissed her; he was so much taller than she was that he either had to bend down or pick her up; in this case he did the latter, and she suppressed a gasp as he swung her up and through the wall of the house. Setting her down, he kicked a door — which had appeared suddenly behind them — shut with a bang, and was about to shuck off his jacket when there was the sound of a stifled chuckle.

  Clary pulled away from Jace as lights blazed up around them. Sebastian sat on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table. His fair hair was tousled; his eyes were glossy black. He wasn’t alone, either. There were two girls there, one on either side of him. One was fair, a little scantily dressed, in a glittering short skirt and spangled top. She had her hand splayed out across Sebastian’s chest. The other was younger, softer-looking, with black hair cut short, a red velvet band around her head, and a lacy black dress.

  Clary felt her nerves tighten. Vampire, she thought. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did — whether it was the waxy white sheen of the dark-haired girl’s skin or the bottomlessness of her eyes, or perhaps Clary was just learning to sense these things, the way Shadowhunters were supposed to. The girl knew she knew; Clary could tell. The girl grinned, showing her little pointed teeth, and then bent to run them over Sebastian’s collarbone. His lids fluttered, fair eyelashes lowering over dark eyes. He looked up at Clary through them, ignoring Jace.

  “Did you enjoy your little date?”

  Clary wished she could say something rude, but instead she just nodded.

  “Well, then, would you like to join us?” he said, indicating himself and the two girls. “For a drink?”

  The dark-haired girl laughed and said something in Italian to Sebastian, her voice questioning.

  “No,” said Sebastian. “Lei è mia sorella.”

  The girl sat back, looking disappointed. Clary’s mouth was dry. Suddenly she felt Jace’s hand against hers, his callused fingertips rough. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re going upstairs. We’ll see you in the morning.”

  Sebastian wiggled his fingers, and the Morgenstern ring on his hand caught the light, sparking like a signal fire. “Ci vediamo.”

  Jace led Clary out of the room and up the glass stairs; only when they were in the corridor did she feel like she had gotten her breath back. This different Jace was one thing. Sebastian was something else. The sense of menace that rose off him was like smoke off a fire. “What did he say?” she asked. “In Italian?”

  “He said, ‘No, she is my sister,’” said Jace. He did not say what the girl had asked Sebastian.

  “Does he do this much?” she asked. They had stopped in front of Jace’s room, on the threshold. “Bring girls back?”

  Jace touched her face. “He does what he wants, and I don’t ask,” he said. “He could bring a six-foot tall pink rabbit in a bikini back home with him if he wanted to. It’s not my business. But if you’re asking me if I’ve brought any girls back here, the answer is no. I don’t want anybody but you.”

  It hadn’t been what she was asking, but she nodded anyway, as if reassured. “I don’t want to go back downstairs.”

  “You can sleep in my room with me tonight.” His gold eyes were luminous in the dark. “Or you can sleep in the master bedroom. You know I wouldn’t ever ask you—”

  “I want to be with you,” she said, surprising herself with her own vehemence. Maybe it was just that the idea of sleeping in that bedroom, where Valentine had once slept, where he had hoped to live again with her mother, was too much. Or maybe it was that she was tired, and she had only ever spent one night in the same bed as Jace, and they had slept with only their hands touching, as if an unsheathed sword had lain between them.

  “Give me a second to clean up the room. It’s a mess.”

  “Yeah, when I was in there before, I think I might actually have seen a fleck of dust on the windowsill. You’d better get on that.”

  He tugged a lock of her hair, running it through his fingers. “Not to actively work against my own interests, but do you need something to sleep in? Pajamas, or…”

  She thought of the wardrobe full of clothes in the master bedroom. She was going to have to get used to the idea. Might as well start now. “I’ll get a nightgown.”

  Of course, she thought several moments later, standing over an open drawer, the sort of nightgowns men bought because they wanted the women in their lives to wear them were not necessarily the kind of thing you might buy for yourself. Clary usually slept in a tank top and pajama shorts, but everything here was silky or lacy or barely there, or all three. She settled finally on a pale green silk shift that hit her midthigh. She thought of the red nails of the girl downstairs, the one with her hand on Sebastian’s chest. Her own nails were bitten, her toenails never decorated with much more than clear polish. She wondered what it would be like to be more like Isabelle, so aware of your own feminine power you could wield it as a weapon instead of gazing at it mystified, like someone presented with a housewarming gift they had no idea where to display.

  She touched the gold ring on her finger for luck before heading into Jace’s bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, shirtless in black pajama bottoms, reading a book in the small pool of yellow light from the bedside lamp. She stood for a moment, watching him. She could see the delicate play of muscles under his skin as he turned the pages — and could see Lilith’s Mark, just over his heart. It didn’t look like the black lacework of the rest of his Marks; it was silvery-red, like blood-tinged mercury. It seemed not to belong on him.

  The door slipped closed behind her with a click, and Jace looked up. Clary saw his face change. She might not have been such a big fan of the nightgown, but he definitely was. The look on his face made a shiver run over her skin.

  “Are you cold?” He threw the covers back; she crawled in with him as he tossed the book onto the nightstand, and they slid together under the blanket, until they were facing each other. They had lain in the boat for what had seemed like hours, kissing, but this was different. That had been out in public, under t
he gaze of the city and the stars. This was a sudden intimacy, just the two of them under the blanket, their breath and the heat of their bodies mingling. There was no one to watch them, no one to stop them, no reason to stop. When he reached out and laid his hand against her cheek, she thought the thunder of her own blood in her ears might deafen her.

  Their eyes were so close together, she could see the pattern of gold and darker gold in his irises, like a mosaic opal. She had been cold for so long, and now she felt as if she were burning and melting at the same time, dissolving into him — and they were barely touching. She found her gaze drawn to the places he was most vulnerable — his temples, his eyes, the pulse at the base of his throat, wanting to kiss him there, to feel his heartbeat against her lips.

  His scarred right hand moved down her cheek, across her shoulder and side, stroking her in a single long caress that ended at her hip. She could see why men liked silk nightclothes so much. There was no friction; it was like sliding your hands across glass. “Tell me what you want,” he said in a whisper that couldn’t quite disguise the hoarseness in his voice.

  “I just want you to hold me,” she said. “While I sleep. That’s all I want right now.”

  His fingers, which had been stroking slow circles on her hip, stilled. “That’s all?”

  It wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to kiss him until she lost track of space and time and location, as she had in the boat — to kiss him until she forgot who she was and why she was here. She wanted to use him like a drug.

  But that was a very bad idea.

  He watched her, restless, and she remembered the first time she had seen him and how she had thought he seemed deadly as well as beautiful, like a lion. This is a test, she thought. And maybe a dangerous one. “That’s all.”

  His chest rose and fell. Lilith’s Mark seemed to pulse against the skin just over his heart. His hand tightened on her hip. She could hear her own breathing, as shallow as low tide.

  He pulled her toward him, rolling her over until they lay tucked together like spoons, her back to him. She swallowed a gasp. His skin was hot against hers, as if he were slightly feverish. But his arms as they went around her were familiar. The two of them fit together, as always, her head under his chin, her spine against the hard muscles of his chest and stomach, her legs bent around his. “All right,” he whispered, and the feel of his breath against the back of her neck raised goose bumps over her body. “So we’ll sleep.”