City of Bones

10 City of Bones

There was a moment of astonished silence before both Clary and Jace began speaking at once. "Valentine had a wife? He was married? I thought—"

"That's impossible! My mother would never—she was only ever married to my father! She didn't have an ex-husband!"

Hodge raised his hands wearily. "Children—"

"I'm not a child." Clary spun away from the desk. "And I don't want to hear any more."

"Clary," said Hodge. The kindness in his voice hurt; she turned slowly, and looked at him across the room. She thought how odd it was that, with his gray hair and scarred face, he looked so much older than her mother. And yet they had been "young people" together, had joined the Circle together, had known Valentine together. "My mother wouldn't…," she began, and trailed off. She was no longer sure how well she knew Jocelyn. Her mother had become a stranger to her, a liar, a hider of secrets. What wouldn't she have done?

"Your mother left the Circle," said Hodge. He didn't move toward her but watched her across the room with a bird's bright-eyed stillness. "Once we realized how extreme Valentine's views had become—once we knew what he was prepared to do—many of us left. Lucian was the first to leave. That was a blow to Valentine. They had been very close." Hodge shook his head. "Then Michael Wayland. Your father, Jace."

Jace raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

"There were those who stayed loyal. Pangborn. Blackwell. The Lightwoods—"

"The Lightwoods? You mean Robert and Maryse?" Jace looked thunderstruck. "What about you? When did you leave?"

"I didn't," said Hodge softly. "Neither did they. … We were afraid, too afraid of what he might do. After the Uprising the loyalists like Blackwell and Pangborn fled. We stayed and cooperated with the Clave. Gave them names. Helped them track down the ones who had run away. For that we received clemency."

"Clemency?" Jace's look was quick, but Hodge saw it.

He said: "You are thinking of the curse that binds me here, aren't you? You always assumed it was a vengeance spell cast by an angry demon or warlock. I let you think it. But it is not the truth. The curse that binds me was cast by the Clave."

"For being in the Circle?" Jace asked, his face a mask of astonishment.

"For not leaving it before the Uprising."

"But the Lightwoods weren't punished," Clary said. "Why not? They'd done the same thing you'd done."

"There were extenuating circumstances in their case—they were married, they had a child. Although it is not as if they reside in this outpost, far from home, by their own choice. We were banished here, the three of us—the four of us, I should say; Alec was a squalling baby when we left the Glass City. They can return to Idris on official business only, and then only for short times. I can never return. I will never see the Glass City again."

Jace stared. It was as if he were looking at his tutor with new eyes, Clary thought, though it wasn't Jace who had changed. He said, "The Law is hard, but it is the Law."

"I taught you that," said Hodge, dry amusement in his voice. "And now you turn my lessons back at me. Rightly too." He looked as if he wanted to sink down into a nearby chair, but held himself upright nevertheless. In his rigid posture there was something of the soldier he had once been, Clary thought.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" she said. "That my mother was married to Valentine. You knew her name—"

"I knew her as Jocelyn Fairchild, not Jocelyn Fray," said Hodge. "And you were so insistent on her ignorance of the Shadow World, you convinced me it could not be the Jocelyn I knew—and perhaps I did not want to believe it. No one would wish for Valentine's return." He shook his head again. "When I sent for the Brothers of the Bone City this morning, I had no idea just what news we would have for them," he said. "When the Clave finds out Valentine may have returned, that he is seeking the Cup, there will be an uproar. I can only hope it does not disrupt the Accords."

"I bet Valentine would like that," Jace said. "But why does he want the Cup so badly?"

Hodge's face was gray. "Isn't that obvious?" he said. "So he can build himself an army."

Jace looked startled. "But that would never—"

"Dinnertime!" It was Isabelle, standing framed in the door of the library. She still had the spoon in her hand, though her hair had escaped from its bun and was straggling down her neck. "Sorry if I'm interrupting," she added, as an afterthought.

"Dear God," said Jace, "the dread hour is nigh."

Hodge looked alarmed. "I—I—I had a very filling breakfast," he stammered. "I mean lunch. A filling lunch. I couldn't possibly eat—"

"I threw out the soup," Isabelle said. "And ordered Chinese from that place downtown."

Jace unhitched himself from the desk and stretched. "Great. I'm starved."

"I might be able to eat a bite," admitted Hodge meekly.

"You two are terrible liars," said Isabelle darkly. "Look, I know you don't like my cooking—"

"So stop doing it," Jace advised her reasonably. "Did you order mu shu pork? You know I love mu shu pork."

Isabelle cast her eyes skyward. "Yes. It's in the kitchen."

"Awesome." Jace ducked by her with an affectionate ruffle of her hair. Hodge went after him, pausing only to pat Isabelle on the shoulder—then he was gone, with a funny apologetic duck of the head. Had Clary really only a few minutes before been able to see the ghost in him of his old warrior self?

Isabelle was looking after Jace and Hodge, twisting the spoon in her scarred, pale fingers. Clary said, "Is he really?"

Isabelle didn't look at her. "Is who really what?"

"Jace. Is he really a terrible liar?"

Now Isabelle did turn her eyes on Clary, and they were large and dark and unexpectedly thoughtful. "He's not a liar at all. Not about important things. He'll tell you horrible truths, but he won't lie." She paused before she added quietly: "That's why it's generally better not to ask him anything unless you know you can stand to hear the answer."

The kitchen was warm and full of light and the salt-sweet smell of takeout Chinese food. The smell reminded Clary of home; she sat and looked at her glistening plate of noodles, toyed with her fork, and tried not to look at Simon, who was staring at Isabelle with an expression more glazed than the General Tso's Duckling.

"Well, I think it's kind of romantic," said Isabelle, sucking tapioca pearls through an enormous pink straw.

"What is?" asked Simon, instantly alert.

"That whole business about Clary's mother being married to Valentine," said Isabelle. Jace and Hodge had filled her in, though Clary noted that both had left out the part about the Lightwoods having been in the Circle, and the curses the Clave had handed down. "So now he's back from the dead and he's come looking for her. Maybe he wants to get back together."

"I kind of doubt he sent a Ravener demon to her house because he wants to 'get back together,'" said Alec, who had turned up when the food was served. Nobody had asked him where he'd been, and he hadn't offered the information. He was sitting next to Jace, across from Clary, and was avoiding looking at her.

"It wouldn't be my move," Jace agreed. "First the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order."

"He might have sent her candy and flowers," Isabelle said. "We don't know."

"Isabelle," said Hodge patiently, "this is the man who rained down destruction on Idris the like of which it had never seen, who set Shadowhunter against Downworlder and made the streets of the Glass City run with blood."

"That's sort of hot," Isabelle argued, "that evil thing."

Simon tried to look menacing, but gave it up when he saw Clary staring at him. "So why does Valentine want this Cup so bad, and why does he think Clary's mom has it?" he asked.

"You said it was so he could make an army," Clary said, turning to Hodge. "You mean because you can use the Cup to make Shadowhunters?"

"Yes."

"So Valentine could just walk up to any guy on the street and make a Shadowhunter out of him? Just with the Cup?" Simon leaned forward. "Would it work on me?"

Hodge gave him a long and measured look. "Possibly," he said. "But most likely, you're too old. The Cup works on children. An adult would either be unaffected by the process entirely, or killed outright."

"A child army," said Isabelle softly.

"Only for a few years," said Jace. "Kids grow fast. It wouldn't be too long before they were a force to contend with."

"I don't know," said Simon. "Turning a bunch of kids into warriors, I've heard of worse stuff happening. I don't see the big deal about keeping the Cup away from him."

"Leaving out that he would inevitably use this army to launch an attack on the Clave," Hodge said dryly, "the reason that only a few humans are selected to be turned into Nephilim is that most would never survive the transition. It takes special strength and resilience. Before they can be turned, they must be extensively tested—but Valentine would never bother with that. He would use the Cup on any child he could capture, and cull out the twenty percent who survived to be his army."

Alec was looking at Hodge with the same horror Clary felt. "How do you know he'd do that?"

"Because," Hodge said, "when he was in the Circle, that was his plan. He said it was the only way to build the kind of force that was needed to defend our world."

"But that's murder," said Isabelle, who looked a little green. "He was talking about killing children."

"He said that we had made the world safe for humans for a thousand years," said Hodge, "and now was their time to repay us with their own sacrifice."

"Their children?" demanded Jace, his cheeks flushed. "That goes against everything we're supposed to be about. Protecting the helpless, safeguarding humanity—"

Hodge pushed his plate away. "Valentine was insane," he said. "Brilliant, but insane. He cared about nothing but killing demons and Downworlders. Nothing but making the world pure. He would have sacrificed his own son for the cause and could not understand how anyone else would not."

"He had a son?" said Alec.

"I was speaking figuratively," said Hodge, reaching for his handkerchief. He used it to mop his forehead before returning it to his pocket. His hand, Clary saw, was trembling slightly. "When his land burned, when his home was destroyed, it was assumed that he had burned himself and the Cup to ashes rather than relinquish either to the Clave. His bones were found in the ashes, along with the bones of his wife."

"But my mother lived," said Clary. "She didn't die in that fire."

"And neither, it seems now, did Valentine," said Hodge. "The Clave will not be pleased to have been fooled. But more importantly, they will want to secure the Cup. And more importantly than that, they will want to make sure Valentine does not."

"It seems to me that the first thing we'd better do is find Clary's mother," said Jace. "Find her, find the Cup, get it before Valentine does."

This sounded fine to Clary, but Hodge looked at Jace as if he'd proposed juggling nitroglycerine as a solution. "Absolutely not."

"Then what do we do?"

"Nothing," Hodge said. "All this is best left to skilled, experienced Shadowhunters."

"I am skilled," protested Jace. "I am experienced."

Hodge's tone was firm, nearly parental. "I know that you are, but you're still a child, or nearly one."

Jace looked at Hodge through slitted eyes. His lashes were long, casting shadows down over his angular cheekbones. In someone else it would have been a shy look, even an apologetic one, but on Jace it looked narrow and menacing. "I am not a child."

"Hodge is right," said Alec. He was looking at Jace, and Clary thought that he must be one of the few people in the world who looked at Jace not as if he were afraid of him, but as if he were afraid for him. "Valentine is dangerous. I know you're a good Shadowhunter. You're probably the best our age. But Valentine's one of the best there ever was. It took a huge battle to bring him down."

"And he didn't exactly stay down," said Isabelle, examining her fork tines. "Apparently."

"But we're here," said Jace. "We're here and because of the Accords, nobody else is. If we don't do something—"

"We are going to do something," said Hodge. "I'll send the Clave a message tonight. They could have a force of Nephilim here by tomorrow if they wanted. They'll take care of this. You have done more than enough."

Jace subsided, but his eyes were still glittering. "I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it," said Alec. "You just have to shut up and not do anything stupid."

"But what about my mother?" Clary demanded. "She can't wait for some representative from the Clave to show up. Valentine has her right now—Pangborn and Blackwell said so—and he could be …" She couldn't bring herself to say the word torture, but Clary knew she wasn't the only one thinking it. Suddenly no one at the table could meet her eyes.

Except Simon. "Hurting her," he said, finishing her sentence. "Except, Clary, they also said she was unconscious and that Valentine wasn't happy about it. He seems to be waiting for her to wake up."

"I'd stay unconscious if I were her," Isabelle muttered.

"But that could be any time," said Clary, ignoring Isabelle. "I thought the Clave was pledged to protect people. Shouldn't there be Shadowhunters here right now? Shouldn't they already be searching for her?"

"That would be easier," snapped Alec, "if we had the slightest idea where to look."

"But we do," said Jace.

"You do?" Clary looked at him, startled and eager. "Where?"

"Here." Jace leaned forward and touched his fingers to the side of her temple, so gently that a flush crept up her face. "Everything we need to know is locked up in your head, under those pretty red curls."

Clary reached up to touch her hair protectively. "I don't think—"

"So what are you going to do?" Simon asked sharply. "Cut her head open to get at it?"

Jace's eyes sparked, but he said calmly, "Not at all. The Silent Brothers can help her retrieve her memories."

"You hate the Silent Brothers," protested Isabelle.

"I don't hate them," said Jace candidly. "I'm afraid of them. It's not the same thing."

"I thought you said they were librarians," said Clary.

"They are librarians."

Simon whistled. "Those must be some killer late fees."

"The Silent Brothers are archivists, but that is not all they are," interrupted Hodge, sounding as if he were running out of patience. "In order to strengthen their minds, they have chosen to take upon themselves some of the most powerful runes ever created. The power of these runes is so great that the use of them—" He broke off and Clary heard Alec's voice in her head, saying: They mutilate themselves. "Well, it warps and twists their physical forms. They are not warriors in the sense that other Shadowhunters are warriors. Their powers are of the mind, not the body."

"They can read minds?" Clary said in a small voice.

"Among other things. They are among the most feared of all demon hunters."

"I don't know," said Simon, "it doesn't sound so bad to me. I'd rather have someone mess around inside my head than chop it off."

"Then you're a bigger idiot than you look," said Jace, regarding him with scorn.

"Jace is right," said Isabelle, ignoring Simon. "The Silent Brothers are really creepy."

Hodge's hand was clenched on the table. "They are very powerful," he said. "They walk in darkness and do not speak, but they can crack open a man's mind the way you might crack open a walnut—and leave him screaming alone in the dark if that is what they desire."

Clary looked at Jace, appalled. "You want to give me to them?"

"I want them to help you." Jace leaned across the table, so close she could see the darker amber flecks in his light eyes. "Maybe we don't get to look for the Cup," he said softly. "Maybe the Clave will do that. But what's in your mind belongs to you. Someone's hidden secrets there, secrets you can't see. Don't you want to know the truth about your own life?"

"I don't want someone else inside my head," she said weakly. She knew he was right, but the idea of turning herself over to beings that even the Shadowhunters thought were creepy sent a chill through her blood.

"I'll go with you," said Jace. "I'll stay with you while they do it."

"That's enough." Simon had stood up from the table, red with anger. "Leave her alone."

Alec glanced over at Simon as if he'd just noticed him, raking tumbled black hair out of his eyes and blinking. "What are you still doing here, mundane?"

Simon ignored him. "I said, leave her alone."

Jace glanced over at him, a slow, sweetly poisonous glance. "Alec is right," he said. "The Institute is sworn to shelter Shadowhunters, not their mundane friends. Especially when they've worn out their welcome."

Isabelle got up and took Simon's arm. "I'll show him out."

For a moment it looked like he might resist her, but he caught Clary's eye across the table as she shook her head slightly. He subsided. Head up, he let Isabelle lead him from the room.

Clary stood up. "I'm tired," she said. "I want to go to sleep."

"You've hardly eaten anything—," Jace protested.

She brushed aside his reaching hand. "I'm not hungry." It was cooler in the hallway than it had been in the kitchen. Clary leaned against the wall, pulling at her shirt, which was sticking to the cold sweat on her chest. Far down the hall she could see Isabelle's and Simon's retreating figures, swallowed up by shadows. She watched them go silently, a shivery odd feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. When had Simon become Isabelle's responsibility, instead of hers? If there was one thing she was learning from all this, it was how easy it was to lose everything you had always thought you'd have forever.

The room was all gold and white, with high walls that gleamed like enamel, and a roof, high above, clear and glittering like diamonds. Clary wore a green velvet dress and carried a gold fan in her hand. Her hair, twisted into a knot that spilled curls, made her head feel strangely heavy every time she turned to look behind her.

"You see someone more interesting than me?" asked Simon. In the dream he was mysteriously an expert dancer. He steered her through the crowd as if she were a leaf caught in a river current. He was wearing all black, like a Shadowhunter, and it showed his coloring to good advantage: dark hair, lightly browned skin, white teeth. He's handsome, Clary thought, with a jolt of surprise.

"There's no one more interesting than you," Clary said. "It's just this place. I've never seen anything like it." She turned again as they passed a champagne fountain: an enormous silver dish, the centerpiece a mermaid with a jar pouring sparkling wine down her bare back. People were filling their glasses from the dish, laughing and talking. The mermaid turned her head as Clary passed, and smiled. The smile showed white teeth as sharp as a vampire's.

"Welcome to the Glass City," said a voice that wasn't Simon's. Clary found that Simon had disappeared and she was now dancing with Jace, who was wearing white, the material of his shirt a thin cotton; she could see the black Marks through it. There was a bronze chain around his throat, and his hair and eyes looked more gold than ever; she thought about how she would like to paint his portrait with the dull gold paint one sometimes saw in Russian icons.

"Where's Simon?" she asked as they spun again around the champagne fountain. Clary saw Isabelle there, with Alec, both of them in royal blue. They were holding hands like Hansel and Gretel in the dark forest.

"This place is for the living," said Jace. His hands were cool on hers, and she was aware of them in a way she had not been of Simon's.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

He leaned close. She could feel his lips against her ear. They were not cool at all. "Wake up, Clary," he whispered. "Wake up. Wake up."

She bolted upright in bed, gasping, hair plastered to her neck with cold sweat. Her wrists were held in a hard grip; she tried to pull away, then realized who was restraining her. "Jace?"

"Yeah." He was sitting on the edge of the bed—how had she gotten into a bed?—looking tousled and half-awake, with early-morning hair and sleepy eyes.

"Let go of me."

"Sorry." His fingers slipped from her wrists. "You tried to hit me the second I said your name."

"I'm a little jumpy, I guess." She glanced around. She was in a small bedroom furnished in dark wood. By the quality of the faint light coming in through the half-open window, she guessed it was dawn, or just after. Her backpack was propped against one wall. "How did I get here? I don't remember…"

"I found you asleep on the floor in the hallway." Jace sounded amused. "Hodge helped me get you into bed. Thought you'd be more comfortable in a guest room than in the infirmary."

"Wow. I don't remember anything." She ran her hands through her hair, pushing draggled curls out of her eyes. "What time is it, anyway?"

"About five."

"In the morning?" She glared at him. "You'd better have a good reason for waking me up."

"Why, were you having a good dream?"

She could still hear music in her ears, feel the heavy jewels brushing her cheeks. "I don't remember."

He stood up. "One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually, he offered to wake you up himself, but since it's five a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."

"Meaning you?"

"What else?"

"I didn't agree to this, you know," she snapped. "This Silent Brother thing."

"Do you want to find your mother," he said, "or not?"

She stared at him.

"You just have to meet Brother Jeremiah. That's all. You might even like him. He's got a great sense of humor for a guy who never says anything."

She put her head in her hands. "Get out. Get out so I can change."

She swung her legs out of bed the moment the door shut behind him. Though it was barely dawn, humid heat was already beginning to gather in the room. She pushed the window shut and went into the bathroom to wash her face and rinse her mouth, which tasted like old paper.

Five minutes later she was sliding her feet into her green sneakers. She'd changed into cutoffs and a plain black T-shirt. If only her thin freckled legs looked more like Isabelle's lanky smooth limbs. But it couldn't be helped. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and went to join Jace in the hallway.

Church was there with him, muttering and circling restlessly.

"What's with the cat?" Clary asked.

"The Silent Brothers make him nervous."

"Sounds like they make everyone nervous."

Jace smiled thinly. Church meowed as they set off down the hall, but didn't follow them. At least the thick stones of the cathedral walls still held some of the night's chill: The corridors were dark and cool.

When they reached the library, Clary was surprised to see that the lamps were off. The library was lit only by the milky glow that filtered down through the high windows set into the vaulted roof. Hodge sat behind the enormous desk in a suit, his gray-streaked hair silvered by the dawn light. For a moment she thought he was alone in the room: that Jace had been playing a joke on her. Then she saw a figure move out of the dimness, and she realized that what she had thought was a patch of darker shadow was a man. A tall man in a heavy robe that fell from neck to foot, covering him completely. The hood of the robe was raised, hiding his face. The robe itself was the color of parchment, and the intricate runic designs along the hem and sleeves looked as if they had been inked there in drying blood. The hair rose along Clary's arms and on the back of her neck, prickling almost painfully.

"This," said Hodge, "is Brother Jeremiah of the Silent City."

The man came toward them, his heavy cloak swirling as he moved, and Clary realized what it was about him that was strange: He made no sound at all as he walked, not the slightest footstep. Even his cloak, which should have rustled, was silent. She would almost have wondered if he were a ghost—but no, she thought as he halted in front of them, there was a strange, sweet smell about him, like incense and blood, the smell of something living.

"And this, Jeremiah," Hodge said, rising from his desk, "is the girl I wrote to you about. Clarissa Fray."

The hooded face turned slowly toward her. Clary felt cold to her fingertips. "Hello," she said.

There was no reply.

"I decided you were right, Jace," said Hodge.

"I was right," said Jace. "I usually am."

Hodge ignored this. "I sent a letter to the Clave about all this last night, but Clary's memories are her own. Only she can decide how she wants to deal with the contents of her own head. If she wants the help of the Silent Brothers, she should have that choice."

Clary said nothing. Dorothea had said there was a block in her mind, hiding something. Of course she wanted to know what it was. But the shadowy figure of the Silent Brother was so—well, silent. Silence itself seemed to flow from him like a dark tide, black and thick as ink. It chilled her bones.

Brother Jeremiah's face was still turned toward her, nothing but darkness visible underneath his hood. This is Jocelyn's daughter?

Clary gave a little gasp, stepping back. The words had echoed inside her head, as if she'd thought them herself—but she hadn't.

"Yes," said Hodge, and added quickly, "but her father was a mundane."

That does not matter, said Jeremiah. The blood of the Clave is dominant.

"Why did you call my mother Jocelyn?" said Clary, searching in vain for some sign of a face beneath the hood. "Did you know her?"

"The Brothers keep records on all members of the Clave," explained Hodge. "Exhaustive records—"

"Not that exhaustive," said Jace, "if they didn't even know she was still alive."

It is likely that she had the assistance of a warlock in her disappearance. Most Shadowhunters cannot so easily escape the Clave. There was no emotion in Jeremiah's voice; he sounded neither approving nor disapproving of Jocelyn's actions.

"There's something I don't understand," Clary said. "Why would Valentine think my mom had the Mortal Cup? If she went through so much trouble to disappear, like you said, then why would she bring it with her?"

"To keep him from getting his hands on it," said Hodge. "She above all people would have known what would happen if Valentine had the Cup. And I imagine she didn't trust the Clave to hold on to it. Not after Valentine got it away from them in the first place."

"I guess." Clary couldn't keep the doubt from her voice. The whole thing seemed so unlikely. She tried to picture her mother fleeing under cover of darkness, with a big gold cup stashed in the pocket of her overalls, and failed.

"Jocelyn turned against her husband when she found out what he intended to do with the Cup," said Hodge. "It's not unreasonable to assume she would do everything in her power to keep the Cup from falling into his hands. The Clave themselves would have looked first to her if they'd thought she was still alive."

"It seems to me," Clary said with an edge to her voice, "that no one the Clave thinks is dead, is ever actually dead. Maybe they should invest in dental records."

"My father's dead," said Jace, the same edge in his voice. "I don't need dental records to tell me that."

Clary turned on him in some exasperation. "Look, I didn't mean—"

That is enough, interrupted Brother Jeremiah. There is truth to be learned here, if you are patient enough to listen to it.

With a quick gesture he raised his hands and drew the hood back from his face. Forgetting Jace, Clary fought the urge to cry out. The archivist's head was bald, smooth and white as an egg, darkly indented where his eyes had once been. They were gone now. His lips were crisscrossed with a pattern of dark lines that resembled surgical stitches. She understood now what Isabelle had meant by mutilation.

The Brothers of the Silent City do not lie, said Jeremiah. If you want the truth from me, you shall have it, but I shall ask of you the same in return.

Clary lifted her chin. "I'm not a liar either."

The mind cannot lie. Jeremiah moved toward her. It is your memories I want.

The smell of blood and ink was stifling. Clary felt a wave of panic. "Wait—"

"Clary." It was Hodge, his tone gentle. "It's entirely possible that there are memories you have buried or repressed, memories formed when you were too young to have a conscious recollection of them, that Brother Jeremiah can reach. It could help us a great deal."

She said nothing, biting the inside of her lip. She hated the idea of someone reaching inside her head, touching memories so private and hidden that even she couldn't reach them.

"She doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do," Jace said suddenly. "Does she?"

Clary interrupted Hodge before he could reply. "It's all right. I'll do it."

Brother Jeremiah nodded curtly, and moved toward her with the soundlessness that sent chills up her spine. "Will it hurt?" she whispered.

He didn't reply, but his narrow white hands came up to touch her face. The skin of his fingers was thin as parchment paper, inked all over with runes. She could feel the power in them, jumping like static electricity to sting her skin. She closed her eyes, but not before she saw the anxious expression that crossed Hodge's face.

Colors swirled up against the darkness behind her eyelids. She felt a pressure, a drawing pull in her head and hands and feet. She clenched her hands, straining against the weight, the blackness. She felt as if she were pressed up against something hard and unyielding, being slowly crushed. She heard herself gasp and went suddenly cold all over, cold as winter. In a flash she saw an icy street, gray buildings looming overhead, an explosion of whiteness stinging her face in freezing particles—

"That's enough." Jace's voice cut through the winter chill, and the falling snow vanished, a shower of white sparks. Clary's eyes sprang open.

Slowly the library came back into focus—the book-lined walls, the anxious faces of Hodge and Jace. Brother Jeremiah stood unmoving, a carved idol of ivory and red ink. Clary became aware of the sharp pains in her hands, and glanced down to see red lines scored across her skin where her nails had dug in.

"Jace," Hodge said reprovingly.

"Look at her hands." Jace gestured toward Clary, who curled her fingers in to cover her injured palms.

Hodge put a broad hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

Slowly she moved her head in a nod. The crushing weight had gone, but she could feel the sweat that drenched her hair, pasted her shirt to her back like sticky tape.

There is a block in your mind, said Brother Jeremiah. Your memories cannot be reached.

"A block?" asked Jace. "You mean she's repressed her memories?"

No. I mean they have been blocked from her conscious mind by a spell. I cannot break it here. She will have to come to the Bone City and stand before the Brotherhood.

"A spell?" said Clary incredulously. "Who would have put a spell on me?"

Nobody answered her. Jace looked at his tutor. He was surprisingly pale, Clary thought, considering that this had been his idea. "Hodge, she shouldn't have to go if she doesn't—"

"It's all right." Clary took a deep breath. Her palms ached where her nails had cut them, and she wanted badly to lie down somewhere dark and rest. "I'll go. I want to know the truth. I want to know what's in my head."

Jace nodded once. "Fine. Then I'll go with you."

Leaving the Institute was like climbing into a wet, hot canvas bag. Humid air pressed down on the city, turning the air to grimy soup. "I don't see why we have to leave separately from Brother Jeremiah," Clary grumbled. They were standing on the corner outside the Institute. The streets were deserted except for a garbage truck trundling slowly down the block. "What, is he embarrassed to be seen with Shadowhunters or something?"

"The Brotherhood are Shadowhunters," Jace pointed out. Somehow he managed to look cool despite the heat. It made Clary want to smack him.

"I suppose he went to get his car?" she inquired sarcastically.

Jace grinned. "Something like that."

She shook her head. "You know, I'd feel a lot better about this if Hodge had come with us."

"What, I'm not protection enough for you?"

"It's not protection I need right now—it's someone who can help me think." Suddenly reminded, she clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh—Simon!"

"No, I'm Jace," said Jace patiently. "Simon is the weaselly little one with the bad haircut and dismal fashion sense."

"Oh, shut up," she replied, but it was more automatic than heartfelt. "I meant to call before I went to sleep. See if he got home okay."

Shaking his head, Jace regarded the heavens as if they were about to open up and reveal the secrets of the universe. "With everything that's going on, you're worried about Weasel Face?"

"Don't call him that. He doesn't look like a weasel."

"You may be right," said Jace. "I've met an attractive weasel or two in my time. He looks more like a rat."

"He does not—"

"He's probably at home lying in a puddle of his own drool. Just wait till Isabelle gets bored with him and you have to pick up the pieces."

"Is Isabelle likely to get bored with him?" Clary asked.

Jace thought about this. "Yes," he said.

Clary wondered if perhaps Isabelle was smarter than Jace gave her credit for. Maybe she would realize what an amazing guy Simon was: how funny, how smart, how cool. Maybe they'd start dating. The idea filled her with a nameless horror.

Lost in thought, it took her several moments to realize that Jace had been saying something to her. When she blinked at him, she saw a wry grin spread across his face. "What?" she asked, ungraciously.

"I wish you'd stop desperately trying to get my attention like this," he said. "It's become embarrassing."

"Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt," she told him.

"I can't help it. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain."

"Your pain will be outer soon if you don't get out of traffic. Are you trying to get run over by a cab?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "We could never get a cab that easily in this neighborhood."

As if on cue, a narrow black car with tinted windows rumbled up to the curb and paused in front of Jace, engine purring. It was long and sleek and low to the ground like a limousine, the windows curved outward.

Jace looked at her sideways; there was amusement in his glance, but also a certain urgency. She glanced at the car again, letting her gaze relax, letting the strength of what was real pierce the veil of glamour.

Now the car looked like Cinderella's carriage, except instead of being pink and gold and blue like an Easter egg, it was black as velvet, its windows darkly tinted. The wheels were black, the leather trimmings all black. On the black metal driver's bench sat Brother Jeremiah, holding a set of reins in his gloved hands. His face was hidden beneath the cowl of his parchment-colored robe. On the other end of the reins were two horses, black as smoke, snarling and pawing at the sky.

"Get in," said Jace. When she continued to stand there gaping, he took her arm and half-pushed her in through the open door of the carriage, swinging himself up after her. The carriage began to move before he had closed the door behind them. He fell back in his seat—plush and glossily upholstered—and looked over at her. "A personal escort to the Bone City is nothing to turn your nose up at."

"I wasn't turning my nose up. I was just surprised. I wasn't expecting … I mean, I thought it was a car."

"Just relax," said Jace. "Enjoy that new-carriage smell."

Clary rolled her eyes and turned to look out the windows. She would have thought that a horse and carriage wouldn't have stood a chance in Manhattan traffic, but they were moving downtown easily, their soundless progression unnoticed by the snarl of taxis, buses, and SUVs that choked the avenue. In front of them a yellow cab switched lanes, cutting off their forward progress. Clary tensed, worried about the horses—then the carriage lurched upward as the horses sprang lightly to the top of the cab. She choked off a gasp. The carriage, rather than dragging along the ground, sailed up behind the horses, rolling lightly and soundlessly up and over the cab's roof and down the other side. Clary glanced backward as the carriage hit the pavement again with a jolt—the cab driver was smoking and staring ahead, utterly oblivious. "I always thought cab drivers didn't pay attention to traffic, but this is ridiculous," she said weakly.

"Just because you can see through glamour now…" Jace let the end of the sentence hang delicately in the air between them.

"I can only see through it when I concentrate," she said. "It hurts my head a little."

"I bet that's because of the block in your mind. The Brothers will take care of that."

"Then what?"

"Then you'll see the world as it is—infinite," said Jace with a dry smile.

"Don't quote Blake at me."

The smile turned less dry. "I didn't think you'd recognize it. You don't strike me as someone who reads a lot of poetry."

"Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors."

Jace looked at her blankly.

"The Doors. They were a band."

"If you say so," he said.

"I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work."

He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned."

Clary looked at him quickly, to see if he was joking, but he was expressionless.

"But you were playing the piano yesterday," she began, "at the Institute. So you must—"

The carriage lurched upward again. Clary grabbed at the edge of her seat and stared—they were rolling along the top of a downtown M1 bus. From this vantage point she could see the upper floors of the old apartment buildings that lined the avenue, elaborately carved with gargoyles and ornamental cornices.

"I was just messing around," said Jace, without looking at her. "My father insisted I learn to play an instrument."

"He sounds strict, your father."

Jace's tone was sharp. "Not at all. He indulged me. He taught me everything—weapons training, demonology, arcane lore, ancient languages. He gave me anything I wanted. Horses, weapons, books, even a hunting falcon."

But weapons and books aren't exactly what most kids want for Christmas, Clary thought as the carriage thunked back down to the pavement. "Why didn't you mention to Hodge that you knew the men that Luke was talking to? That they were the ones who killed your dad?"

Jace looked down at his hands. They were slim and careful hands, the hands of an artist, not a warrior. The ring she had noticed earlier flashed on his finger. She would have thought there would have been something feminine about a boy wearing a ring, but there wasn't. The ring itself was solid and heavy-looking, made of a dark burned-looking silver with a pattern of stars around the band. The letter W was carved into it. "Because if I did," he said, "he'd know I wanted to kill Valentine myself. And he'd never let me try."

"You mean you want to kill him for revenge?"

"For justice," said Jace. "I never knew who killed my father. Now I do. This is my chance to make it right."

Clary didn't see how killing one person could make right the death of another, but she sensed there was no point saying that. "But you knew who killed him," she said. "It was those men. You said…"

Jace wasn't looking at her, so Clary let her voice trail off. They were rolling through Astor Place now, narrowly dodging a purple New York University tram as it cut through traffic. Passing pedestrians looked crushed by the heavy air, like insects pinned under glass. Some groups of homeless kids were crowded around the base of a big brass statue, folded cardboard signs asking for money propped up in front of them. Clary saw a girl about her own age with a smoothly shaved bald head leaning against a brown-skinned boy with dreadlocks, his face adorned with a dozen piercings. He turned his head as the carriage rolled by as if he could see it, and she caught the gleam of his eyes. One of them was clouded, as though it had no pupil.

"I was ten," Jace said. She turned to look at him. He was without expression. It always seemed like some color drained out of him when he talked about his father. "We lived in a manor house, out in the country. My father always said it was safer away from people. I heard them coming up the drive and went to tell him. He told me to hide, so I hid. Under the stairs. I saw those men come in. They had others with them. Not men. Forsaken. They overpowered my father and cut his throat. The blood ran across the floor. It soaked my shoes. I didn't move."

It took a moment for Clary to realize he was done speaking, and another to find her voice. "I'm so sorry, Jace."

His eyes gleamed in the darkness. "I don't understand why mundanes always apologize for things that aren't their fault."

"I'm not apologizing. It's a way of—empathizing. Of saying that I'm sorry you're unhappy."

"I'm not unhappy," he said. "Only people with no purpose are unhappy. I've got a purpose."

"Do you mean killing demons, or getting revenge for your father's death?"

"Both."

"Would your father really want you to kill those men? Just for revenge?"

"A Shadowhunter who kills another of his brothers is worse than a demon and should be put down like one," Jace said, sounding as if he were reciting the words from a textbook.

"But are all demons evil?" she said. "I mean, if all vampires aren't evil, and all werewolves aren't evil, maybe—"

Jace turned on her, looking exasperated. "It's not the same thing at all. Vampires, werewolves, even warlocks, they're part-human. Part of this world, born in it. They belong here. But demons come from other worlds. They're interdimensional parasites. They come to a world and use it up. They can't build, just destroy—they can't make, only use. They drain a place to ashes and when it's dead, they move on to the next one. It's life they want—not just your life or mine, but all the life of this world, its rivers and cities, its oceans, its everything. And the only thing that stands between them and the destruction of all this"—he pointed outside the window of the carriage, waving his hand as if he meant to indicate everything in the city from the skyscrapers uptown to the clog of traffic on Houston Street—"is the Nephilim."

"Oh," Clary said. There didn't seem to be much else to say. "How many other worlds are there?"

"No one knows. Hundreds? Millions, maybe."

"And they're all—dead worlds? Used up?" Clary felt her stomach drop, though it might have been only the jolt as they rolled up and over a purple Mini. "That seems so sad."

"I didn't say that." The dark orangey light of city haze spilled in through the window, outlining his sharp profile. "There are probably other living worlds like ours. But only demons can travel between them. Because they're mostly noncorporeal, partly, but nobody knows exactly why. Plenty of warlocks have tried it, and it's never worked. Nothing from Earth can pass through the wardings between the worlds. If we could," he added, "we might be able to block them from coming here, but nobody's even been able to figure out how to do that. In fact, more and more of them are coming through. There used to be only small demon invasions into this world, easily contained. But even in my lifetime more and more of them have spilled in through the wardings. The Clave is always having to dispatch Shadowhunters, and a lot of times they don't come back."

"But if you had the Mortal Cup, you could make more, right? More demon hunters?" Clary asked tentatively.

"Sure," Jace said. "But we haven't had the Cup for years now, and a lot of us die young. So our numbers slowly dwindle."

"Aren't you, uh…" Clary searched for the right word. "Reproducing?"

Jace burst out laughing just as the carriage made a sudden, sharp left turn. He braced himself, but Clary was thrown against him. He caught her, hands holding her lightly but firmly away from him. She felt the cool impress of his ring like a sliver of ice against her sweaty skin. "Sure," he said. "We love reproducing. It's one of our favorite things."

Clary pulled away from him, her face burning in the darkness, and turned to look out the window. They were rolling toward a heavy wrought iron gate, trellised with dark vines.

"We're here," announced Jace as the smooth roll of wheels over pavement turned to the jounce of cobblestones. Clary glimpsed words across the arch as they rolled under it: new YORK CITY MARBLE CEMETERY.

"But they stopped burying people in Manhattan a century ago because they ran out of room—didn't they?" she said. They were moving down a narrow alley with high stone walls on either side.

"The Bone City has been here longer than that." The carriage came to a shuddering halt. Clary jumped as Jace stretched his arm out, but he was only reaching past her to open the door on her side. His arm was lightly muscled and downed with golden hairs fine as pollen.

"You don't get a choice, do you?" she asked. "About being a Shadowhunter. You can't just opt out."

"No," he said. The door swung open, letting in a blast of muggy air. The carriage had drawn to a stop on a wide square of green grass surrounded by mossy marble walls. "But if I had a choice, this is still what I'd choose."

"Why?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow, which made Clary instantly jealous. She'd always wanted to be able to do that. "Because," he said. "It's what I'm good at."

He jumped down from the carriage. Clary slid to the edge of her seat, dangling her legs. It was a long drop to the cobblestones. She jumped. The impact stung her feet, but she didn't fall. She swung around in triumph to find Jace watching her. "I would have helped you down," he said.

She blinked. "It's okay. You didn't have to."

He glanced behind him. Brother Jeremiah was descending from his perch behind the horses in a silent fall of robes. He cast no shadow on the sun-baked grass.

Come, he said. He glided away from the carriage and the comforting lights of Second Avenue, moving toward the dark center of the garden. It was clear that he expected them to follow.

The grass was dry and crackling underfoot, the marble walls to either side smooth and pearly. There were names carved into the stone of the walls, names and dates. It took Clary a moment to realize that they were grave markers. A chill scraped up her spine. Where were the bodies? In the walls, buried upright as if they'd been walled in alive … ?

She had forgotten to look where she was going. When she collided with something unmistakably alive, she yelped out loud.

It was Jace. "Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead."

She frowned at him. "Why are we stopping?"

He pointed at Brother Jeremiah, who had come to a halt in front of a statue just slightly taller than he was, its base overgrown with moss. The statue was of an angel. The marble of the statue was so smooth it was almost translucent. The face of the angel was fierce and beautiful and sad. In long white hands the angel held a cup, its rim studded with marble jewels. Something about the statue tickled Clary's memory with an uneasy familiarity. There was a date inscribed on the base, 1234, and words inscribed around it: nephilim: facilis descensus averni.

"Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?" she asked.

Jace nodded. "And that's the motto of the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters—there on the base."

"What does it mean?"

Jace's grin was a white flash in the darkness. "It means 'Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.'"

"Jace-"

It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

"Nice and cheery," said Clary, but a shiver passed over her skin despite the heat.

"It's the Brothers' little joke, having that here," said Jace. "You'll see."

She looked at Brother Jeremiah. He had drawn a stele, faintly glowing, from some inner pocket of his robe, and with the tip he traced the pattern of a rune on the statue's base. The mouth of the stone angel suddenly gaped wide in a silent scream, and a yawning black hole opened in the grassy turf at Jeremiah's feet. It looked like an open grave.

Slowly Clary approached the edge of it and peered inside. A set of granite steps led down into the hole, their edges worn soft by years of use. Torches were set along the steps at intervals, flaring hot green and icy blue. The bottom of the stairs was lost in darkness.

Jace took the stairs with the ease of someone who finds a situation familiar if not exactly comfortable. Halfway to the first torch, he paused and looked up at her. "Come on," he said impatiently.

Clary had barely set her foot on the first step when she felt her arm caught in a cold grip. She looked up in astonishment. Brother Jeremiah was holding her wrist, his icy white fingers digging into the skin. She could see the bony gleam of his scarred face beneath the edge of his cowl.

Do not fear, said his voice inside her head. It would take more than a single human cry to wake these dead.

When he released her arm, she skittered down the stairs after Jace, her heart pounding against her ribs. He was waiting for her at the foot of the steps. He'd taken one of the green burning torches out of its bracket and was holding it at eye level. It lent a pale green cast to his skin. "You all right?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The stairs ended in a shallow landing; ahead of them stretched a tunnel, long and black, ridged with the curling roots of trees. A faint bluish light was visible at the tunnel's end. "It's so… dark," she said lamely.

"You want me to hold your hand?"

Clary put both her hands behind her back like a small child. "Don't talk down to me."

"Well, I could hardly talk up to you. You're too short." Jace glanced past her, the torch showering sparks as he moved. "No need to stand on ceremony, Brother Jeremiah," he drawled. "Lead on. We'll be right behind you."

Clary jumped. She still wasn't used to the archivist's silent comings and goings. He moved noiselessly from where he had been standing behind her and headed into the tunnel. After a moment she followed, knocking Jace's outstretched hand aside as she went.

Clary's first sight of the Silent City was of row upon row of tall marble arches that rose overhead, disappearing into the distance like the orderly rows of trees in an orchard. The marble itself was a pure, ashy ivory, hard and polished-looking, inset in places with narrow strips of onyx, jasper, and jade. As they moved away from the tunnel and toward the forest of arches, Clary saw that the floor was inscribed with the same runes that sometimes decorated Jace's skin with lines and whorls and swirling patterns.

As the three of them passed through the first arch, something large and white loomed up on her left side, like an iceberg off the bow of the Titanic. It was a block of white stone, smooth and square, with a sort of door inset into the front. It reminded her of a child-size playhouse, almost but not quite big enough for her to stand up inside.

"It's a mausoleum," said Jace, directing a flash of torchlight at it. Clary could see that a rune was carved into the door, which was sealed shut with bolts of iron. "A tomb. We bury our dead here."

"All your dead?" she said, half-wanting to ask him if his father was buried here, but he had already moved ahead, out of earshot. She hurried after him, not wanting to be alone with Brother Jeremiah in this spooky place. "I thought you said this was a library."

There are many levels to the Silent City, interjected Jeremiah. And not all the dead are buried here. There is another ossuary in Idris, of course, much larger. But on this level are the mausoleums and the place of burning.

"The place of burning?"

Those who die in battle are burned, their ashes used to make the marble arches that you see here. The blood and bone of demon slayers is itself a powerful protection against evil. Even in death, the Clave serves the cause.

How exhausting, Clary thought, to fight all your life and then be expected to continue that fight even when your life was over. At the edges of her vision she could see the square white vaults rising on either side of her in orderly rows of tombs, each door locked from the outside. She understood now why this was called the Silent City: Its only inhabitants were the mute Brothers and the dead they so zealously guarded.

They had reached another staircase leading down into more twilight; Jace thrust the torch ahead of him, streaking the walls with shadows. "We're going to the second level, where the archives and the council rooms are," he said, as if to reassure her.

"Where are the living quarters?" Clary asked, partly to be polite, partly out of a real curiosity. "Where do the Brothers sleep?”

Sleep?

The silent word hung in the darkness between them. Jace laughed, and the flame of the torch he held flickered. "You had to ask."

At the foot of the stairs was another tunnel, which widened out at the end into a square pavilion, each corner of which was marked by a spire of carved bone. Torches burned in long onyx holders along the sides of the square, and the air smelled of ashes and smoke. In the center of the pavilion was a long table of black basalt veined in white. Behind the table, against the dark wall, hung an enormous silver sword, point down, its hilt carved in the shape of outspread wings. Seated at the table was a row of Silent Brothers, each wrapped and cowled in the same parchment-colored robes as Jeremiah.

Jeremiah wasted no time. We have arrived. Clarissa, stand before the Council.

Clary glanced at Jace, but he was blinking, clearly confused. Brother Jeremiah must have spoken only inside her head. She looked at the table, at the long row of silent figures muffled in their heavy robes. Alternating squares made up the pavilion floor: golden bronze and a darker red. Just in front of the table was a larger square, made of black marble and embossed with a parabolic design of silver stars.

Clary stepped into the center of the black square as if she were stepping in front of a firing squad. She raised her head. "All right," she said. "Now what?"

The Brothers made a sound then, a sound that raised the hairs up all along Clary's neck and the backs of her arms. It was a sound like a sigh or a groan. In unison they raised their hands and pushed their cowls back, baring their scarred faces and the pits of their empty eyes.

Though she had seen Brother Jeremiah's uncovered face already, Clary's stomach knotted. It was like looking at a row of skeletons, like one of those medieval woodcuts where the dead walked and talked and danced on the piled bodies of the living. Their stitched mouths seemed to grin at her.

The Council greets you, Clarissa Fray, she heard, and it was not just one silent voice inside her head but a dozen, some low and rough, some smooth and monotone, but all were demanding, insistent, pushing at the fragile barriers around her mind.

"Stop," she said, and to her astonishment her voice came out firm and strong. The din inside her mind ceased as suddenly as a record that had stopped spinning. "You can go inside my head," she said, "but only when I'm ready."

If you do not want our help, there is no need for this. You are the one who asked for our assistance, after all.

"You want to know what's in my mind, just like I do," she said. "That doesn't mean you can't be careful about it."

The Brother who sat in the center seat templed his thin white fingers beneath his chin, it is an interesting puzzle, admittedly, he said, and the voice inside her mind was dry and neutral. But there is no need for the use of force, if you do not resist.

She gritted her teeth. She wanted to resist them, wanted to pry those intrusive voices out of her head. To stand by and allow such a violation of her most intimate, personal self—

But there was every chance that had already happened, she reminded herself. This was nothing more than the excavation of a past crime, the theft of her memory. If it worked, what had been taken from her would be restored. She closed her eyes.

"Go ahead," she said.

The first contact came as a whisper inside her head, delicate as the brush of a falling leaf. State your name for the Council.

Clarissa Fray.

The first voice was joined by others. Who are you?

I'm Clary. My mother is Jocelyn Fray. I live at 807 Berkeley Place in Brooklyn. I am fifteen years old. My father's name was—

Her mind seemed to snap in on itself, like a rubber band, and she reeled soundlessly into a whirlwind of images cast against the insides of her closed eyelids. Her mother was hurrying her down a night-black street between piles of heaped and dirty snow. Then a lowering sky, gray and leaden, rows of black trees stripped bare. An empty square cut into the earth, a plain coffin lowered into it. Ashes to ashes. Jocelyn wrapped in her patchwork quilt, tears spilling down her cheeks, quickly closing a box and shoving it under a cushion as Clary came into the room. She saw the initials on the box again: J.C.

The images came faster now, like the pages of one of those books where the drawings seemed to move when you flipped them. Clary stood on top of a flight of stairs, looking down a narrow corridor, and there was Luke again, his green duffel bag at his feet. Jocelyn stood in front of him, shaking her head. "Why now, Lucian? I thought that you were dead…" Clary blinked; Luke looked different, almost a stranger, bearded, his hair long and tangled—and branches came down to block her view; she was in the park again, and green faeries, tiny as toothpicks, buzzed among the red flowers. She reached for one in delight, and her mother swung her up into her arms with a cry of terror. Then it was winter on the black street again, and they were hurrying, huddled under an umbrella, Jocelyn half-pushing and half-dragging Clary between the looming banks of snow. A granite doorway loomed up out of the falling whiteness; there were words carved above the door, the magnificent. Then she was standing inside an entryway that smelled of iron and melting snow. Her fingers were numb with cold. A hand under her chin directed her to look up, and she saw a row of words scrawled along the wall. Two words leaped out at her, burning into her eyes: "MAGNUS BANE."

A sudden pain lanced through her right arm. She shrieked as the images fell away and she spun upward, breaking the surface of consciousness like a diver breaking up through a wave. There was something cold pressed against her cheek. She pried her eyes open and saw silver stars. She blinked twice before she realized that she was lying on the marble floor, her knees curled up to her chest. When she moved, hot pain shot up her arm.

She sat up gingerly. The skin over her left elbow was split and bleeding. She must have landed on it when she fell. There was blood on her shirt. She looked around, disoriented, and saw Jace looking at her, unmoving but very tense around the mouth.

Magnus Bane. The words meant something, but what? Before she could ask the question aloud, Brother Jeremiah interrupted her.

The block inside your mind is stronger than we had anticipated, he said. It can be safely undone only by the one who put it there. For us to remove it would be to kill you.

She scrambled to her feet, cradling her injured arm. "But I don't know who put it there. If I knew that, I wouldn't have come here."

The answer to that is woven into the thread of your thoughts, said Brother Jeremiah. In your waking dream you saw it written.

"Magnus Bane? But—that's not even a name!"

It is enough. Brother Jeremiah got to his feet. As if this were a signal, the rest of the Brothers rose alongside him. They inclined their heads toward Jace, a gesture of silent acknowledgment, before they filed away among the pillars and were gone. Only Brother Jeremiah remained. He watched impassively as Jace hurried over to Clary.

"Is your arm all right? Let me see," he demanded, seizing her wrist.

"Ouch! It's fine. Don't do that, you're making it worse," Clary said, trying to pull away.

"You bled on the Speaking Stars," he said. Clary looked and saw that he was right: There was a smear of her blood on the white and silver marble. "I bet there's a law somewhere about that." He turned her arm over, more gently than she would have thought he was capable of. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and whistled; she glanced down and saw that a glove of blood covered her lower arm from the elbow to the wrist. The arm was throbbing, stiff, and painful.

"Is this when you start tearing strips off your T-shirt to bind up my wound?" she joked. She hated the sight of blood, especially her own.

"If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked." He dug into his pocket and brought out his stele. "It would have been a lot less painful."

Remembering the stinging sensation when the stele had touched her wrist, she braced herself, but all she felt as the glowing instrument glided lightly over her injury was a faint warmth. "There," he said, straightening up. Clary flexed her arm in wonder—though the blood was still there, the wound was gone, as were the pain and stiffness. "And next time you're planning to injure yourself to get my attention, just remember that a little sweet talk works wonders."

Clary felt her mouth twitch into a smile. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, and as he turned away, she added, "And thanks."

He slid the stele into his back pocket without turning to look at her, but she thought she saw a certain gratification in the set of his shoulders. "Brother Jeremiah," he said, rubbing his hands together, "you've been very quiet all this time. Surely you have some thoughts you'd like to share?"

I am charged with leading you from the Silent City, and that is all, said the archivist. Clary wondered if she were imagining it, or if there was actually a faintly affronted tone to his "voice."

"We could always show ourselves out," Jace suggested hopefully. "I'm sure I remember the way—"

The marvels of the Silent City are not for the eyes of the uninitiated, said Jeremiah, and he turned his back on them with a soundless swish of robes. This way.

When they emerged into the open, Clary took deep breaths of the thick morning air, relishing the city stench of smog, dirt, and humanity. Jace looked around thoughtfully. "It's going to rain," he said.

He was right, Clary thought, looking up at the iron-gray sky. "Are we taking a carriage back to the Institute?"

Jace looked from Brother Jeremiah, still as a statue, to the carriage, looming like a black shadow in the archway that led to the street. Then he broke into a grin.

"No way," he said. "I hate those things. Let's hail a cab."

11 Magnus Bane

Jace leaned forward and banged his hand against the partition separating them from the cab driver. "Turn left! Left! I said to take Broadway, you brain-dead moron!"

The taxi driver responded by jerking the wheel so hard to the left that Clary was thrown against Jace. She let out a yelp of resentment. "Why are we taking Broadway, anyway?"

"I'm starving," Jace said. "And there's nothing at home except leftover Chinese." He took his phone out of his pocket and started dialing. "Alec! Wake up!" he shouted. Clary could hear an irritated buzzing on the other end. "Meet us at Taki's. Breakfast. Yeah, you heard me. Breakfast. What? It's only a few blocks away. Get going."

He clicked off and shoved the phone into one of his many pockets as they pulled up to a curb. Handing the driver a wad of bills, Jace elbowed Clary out of the car. When he landed on the pavement behind her, he stretched like a cat and spread his arms wide. "Welcome to the greatest restaurant in New York."

It didn't look like much—a low brick building that sagged in the middle like a collapsed souffle. A battered neon sign proclaiming the restaurant's name hung sideways and was sputtering. Two men in long coats and tipped-forward felt hats slouched in front of the narrow doorway. There were no windows.

"It looks like a prison," said Clary.

He pointed at her. "But in prison could you order a spaghetti fra diavolo that makes you want to kiss your fingers? I don't think so."

"I don't want spaghetti. I want to know what a Magnus Bane is."

"It's not a what. It's a who," said Jace. "It's a name."

"Do you know who he is?"

"He's a warlock," said Jace in his most reasonable voice. "Only a warlock could have put a block in your mind like that. Or maybe one of the Silent Brothers, but clearly it wasn't them."

"Is he a warlock you've heard of?" demanded Clary, who was rapidly tiring of Jace's reasonable voice.

"The name does sound familiar—"

"Hey!" It was Alec, looking like he'd rolled out of bed and pulled jeans on over his pajamas. His hair, unbrushed, stuck out wildly around his head. He loped toward them, eyes on Jace, ignoring Clary as usual. "Izzy's on her way," he said. "She's bringing the mundane."

"Simon? Where did he come from?" Jace asked.

"He showed up first thing this morning. Couldn't stay away from Izzy, I guess. Pathetic." Alec sounded amused. Clary wanted to kick him. "Anyway, are we going in or what? I'm starving."

"Me too," said Jace. "I could really go for some fried mouse tails."

"Some what?" asked Clary, sure that she'd heard wrong.

Jace grinned at her. "Relax," he said. "It's just a diner."

They were stopped at the front door by one of the slouching men. As he straightened, Clary caught a glimpse of his face under the hat. His skin was dark red, his squared-off hands ending in blue-black nails. Clary felt herself stiffen, but Jace and Alec seemed unconcerned. They said something to the man, who nodded and stepped back, allowing them to pass.

"Jace," Clary hissed as the door shut behind them. "Who was that?"

"You mean Clancy?" Jace asked, glancing around the brightly lit restaurant. It was pleasant inside, despite the lack of windows. Cozy wooden booths nestled up against each other, each one lined with brightly colored cushions. Endearingly mismatched crockery lined the counter, behind which stood a blond girl in a waitress's pink-and-white apron, nimbly counting out change to a stocky man in a flannel shirt. She saw Jace, waved, and gestured that they should sit wherever they wanted. "Clancy keeps out undesirables," said Jace, herding her to one of the booths.

"He's a demon," she hissed. Several customers turned to look at her—a boy with spiky blue dreads was sitting next to a beautiful Indian girl with long black hair and gauzelike golden wings sprouting from her back. The boy frowned darkly. Clary was glad the restaurant was almost empty.

"No, he isn't," said Jace, sliding into a booth. Clary moved to sit beside him, but Alec was already there. She settled gingerly onto the booth seat opposite them, her arm still stiff despite Jace's ministrations. She felt hollow inside, as if the Silent Brothers had reached into her and scooped out her insides, leaving her light and dizzy. "He's an ifrit," Jace explained. "They're warlocks with no magic. Half demons who can't cast spells for whatever reason."

"Poor bastards," said Alec, picking up his menu. Clary picked hers up too, and stared. Locusts and honey were featured as a special, as were plates of raw meat, whole raw fish, and something called a toasted bat sandwich. A page of the beverage section was devoted to the different types of blood they had on tap—to Clary's relief, they were different kinds of animal blood, rather than type A, type O, or type B-negative. "Who eats whole raw fish?" she inquired aloud.

"Kelpies," said Alec. "Selkies. Maybe the occasional nixie."

"Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me."

Alec laughed. "Do you remember—," he began, and launched into a story that contained so many mysterious names and proper nouns that Clary didn't even bother trying to follow it. She was looking at Alec instead, watching him as he talked to Jace. There was a kinetic, almost feverish energy to him that hadn't been there before. Something about Jace sharpened him, brought him into focus. If she were going to draw them together, she thought, she would make Jace a little blurry, while Alec stood out, all sharp, clear planes and angles.

Jace was looking down as Alec spoke, smiling a little and tapping his water glass with a fingernail. She sensed he was thinking of other things. She felt a sudden flash of sympathy for Alec. Jace couldn't be an easy person to care about. I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited.

Jace looked up as the waitress passed. "Are we ever going to get any coffee?" he said aloud, interrupting Alec midsentence.

Alec subsided, his energy fading. "I…"

Clary spoke up hastily. "What's all the raw meat for?" she asked, indicating the third page of her menu.

"Werewolves," said Jace. "Though I don't mind a bloody steak myself every once in a while." He reached across the table and flipped Clary's menu over. "Human food is on the back."

She perused the perfectly ordinary menu selections with a feeling of stupefaction. It was all too much. "They have smoothies here?"

"There's this apricot-plum smoothie with wildflower honey that's simply divine," said Isabelle, who had appeared with Simon at her side. "Shove over," she said to Clary, who scooted so close to the wall that she could feel the cold bricks pressing into her arm. Simon, sliding in next to Isabelle, offered her a half-embarrassed smile that she didn't return. "You should have one."

Clary wasn't sure if Isabelle was talking to her or to Simon, so she said nothing. Isabella's hair tickled her face, smelling of some kind of vanilla perfume. Clary fought the urge to sneeze. She hated vanilla perfume. She'd never understood why some girls felt the need to smell like dessert.

"So how did it go at the Bone City?" Isabelle asked, flipping her menu open. "Did you find out what's in Clary's head?"

"We got a name," said Jace. "Magnus—"

"Shut up," Alec hissed, thwacking Jace with his closed menu.

Jace looked injured. "Jesus." He rubbed his arm. "What's your problem?"

"This place is full of Downworlders. You know that. I think you should try to keep the details of our investigation secret."

"Investigation?" Isabelle laughed. "Now we're detectives? Maybe we should all have code names."

"Good idea," said Jace. "I shall be Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein."

Alec spit his water back into his glass. At that moment the waitress arrived to take their order. Up close she was still a pretty blond girl, but her eyes were unnerving—entirely blue, with no white or pupil at all. She smiled with sharp little teeth. "Know what you're having?"

Jace grinned. "The usual," he said, and got a smile from the waitress in return.

"Me too," Alec chimed in, though he didn't get the smile. Isabelle fastidiously ordered a fruit smoothie, Simon asked for coffee, and Clary, after a moment's hesitation, chose a large coffee and coconut pancakes. The waitress winked a blue eye at her and flounced off.

"Is she an ifrit too?" Clary asked, watching her go.

"Kaelie? No. Part-fey, I think," said Jace.

"She's got nixie eyes," said Isabelle thoughtfully.

"You really don't know what she is?" asked Simon.

Jace shook his head. "I respect her privacy." He nudged Alec. "Hey, let me out for a second."

Scowling, Alec moved aside. Clary watched Jace as he strode over to Kaelie, who was leaning against the bar, talking to the cook through the pass-through to the kitchen. All Clary could see of the cook was a bent head in a white chef's hat. Tall furry ears poked through holes cut into either side of the hat.

Kaelie turned to smile at Jace, who put an arm around her. She snuggled in. Clary wondered if this was what Jace meant by respecting her privacy.

Isabelle rolled her eyes. "He really shouldn't tease the wait-staff like that."

Alec looked at her. "You don't think he means it? That he likes her, I mean."

Isabelle shrugged. "She's a Downworlder," she said, as if that explained everything.

"I don't get it," said Clary.

Isabelle glanced at her without interest. "Get what?"

"This whole Downworlder thing. You don't hunt them, because they aren't exactly demons, but they're not exactly people, either. Vampires kill, they drink blood—"

"Only rogue vampires drink human blood from living people," interjected Alec. "And those, we're allowed to kill."

"And werewolves are what? Just overgrown puppies?"

"They kill demons," said Isabelle. "So if they don't bother us, we don't bother them."

Like letting spiders live because they eat mosquitoes, Clary thought. "So they're good enough to let live, good enough to make your food for you, good enough to flirt with—but not really good enough? I mean, not as good as people."

Isabelle and Alec looked at her as if she were speaking Urdu. "Different from people," said Alec finally.

"Better than mundanes?" said Simon.

"No," Isabelle said decidedly. "You could turn a mundane into a Shadowhunter. I mean, we came from mundanes. But you could never turn a Downworlder into one of the Clave. They can't withstand the runes."

"So they're weak?" asked Clary.

"I wouldn't say that," said Jace, sliding back into his seat next to Alec. His hair was mussed and there was a lipstick mark on his cheek. "At least not with a peri, a djinn, an ifrit, and God knows what else listening in." He grinned as Kaelie appeared and distributed their food. Clary regarded her pancakes consideringly. They looked fantastic: golden brown, drenched with honey. She took a bite as Kaelie wobbled off on her high heels.

They were delicious.

"I told you it was the greatest restaurant in Manhattan," said Jace, eating fries with his fingers.

She glanced at Simon, who was stirring his coffee, head down.

"Mmmf," said Alec, whose mouth was full.

"Right," said Jace. He looked at Clary. "It's not one-way," he said. "We may not always like Downworlders, but they don't always like us, either. A few hundred years of the Accords can't wipe out a thousand years of hostility."

"I'm sure she doesn't know what the Accords are, Jace," said Isabelle around her spoon.

"I do, actually," said Clary.

"I don't," said Simon.

"Yes, but nobody cares what you know." Jace examined a fry before biting into it. "I enjoy the company of certain Downworlders at certain times and places. But we don't really get invited to the same parties."

"Wait." Isabelle suddenly sat up straight. "What did you say that name was?" she demanded, turning to Jace. "The name in Clary's head."

"I didn't," said Jace. "At least, I didn't finish it. It's Magnus Bane." He grinned at Alec mockingly. "Rhymes with 'overcareful pain in the ass.'"

Alec muttered a retort into his coffee. It rhymed with something that sounded a lot more like "ducking glass mole." Clary smiled inwardly.

"It can't be—but I'm almost totally sure—" Isabelle dug into her purse and pulled out a folded piece of blue paper. She wiggled it between her fingers. "Look at this."

Alec held out his hand for the paper, glanced at it with a shrug, and handed it to Jace. "It's a party invitation. For somewhere in Brooklyn," he said. "I hate Brooklyn."

"Don't be such a snob," said Jace. Then, just as Isabelle had, he sat up straight and stared. "Where did you get this, Izzy?"

She fluttered her hand airily. "From that kelpie in Pandemonium. He said it would be awesome. He had a whole stack of them."

"What is it?" Clary demanded impatiently. "Are you going to show the rest of us, or not?"

Jace turned it around so they could all read it. It was printed on thin paper, nearly parchment, in a thin, elegant, spidery hand. It announced a gathering at the humble home of Magnus the Magnificent Warlock, and promised attendees "a rapturous evening of delights beyond your wildest imaginings."

"Magnus," said Simon. "Magnus like Magnus Bane?"

"I doubt there are that many warlocks named Magnus in the Tristate Area," said Jace.

Alec blinked at it. "Does that mean we have to go to the party?" he inquired of no one in particular.

"We don't have to do anything," said Jace, who was reading the fine print on the invitation. "But according to this, Magnus Bane is the High Warlock of Brooklyn." He looked at Clary. "I, for one, am a little curious as to what the High Warlock of Brooklyn's name is doing inside your head."

The party didn't start until midnight, so with a whole day to kill, Jace and Alec disappeared to the weapons room and Isabelle and Simon announced their intention of going for a walk in Central Park so that she could show him the faerie circles. Simon asked Clary if she wanted to come along. Stifling a murderous rage, she refused on the grounds of exhaustion.

It wasn't exactly a lie—she was exhausted, her body still weakened from the aftereffects of the poison and the too-early rising. She lay on her bed in the Institute, shoes kicked off, willing herself to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. The caffeine in her veins fizzed like carbonated water, and her mind was full of darting images. She kept seeing her mother's face looking down at her, her expression panicked. Kept seeing the Speaking Stars, hearing the voices of the Silent Brothers in her head. Why would there be a block in her mind? Why would a powerful warlock have put it there, and to what purpose? She wondered what memories she might have lost, what experiences she'd had that she couldn't now recall. Or maybe everything she thought she did remember was a lie … ?

She sat up, no longer able to bear where her thoughts were taking her. Barefoot, she padded out into the corridor and toward the library. Maybe Hodge could help her.

But the library was empty. Afternoon light slanted in through the parted curtains, laying bars of gold across the floor. On the desk lay the book Hodge had read out of earlier, its worn leather cover gleaming. Beside it Hugo slept on his perch, beak tucked under wing.

My mother knew that book, Clary thought. She touched it, read out of it. The ache to hold something that was a part of her mother's life felt like a gnawing at the pit of her stomach. She crossed the room hastily and laid her hands on the book. It felt warm, the leather heated by sunlight. She raised the cover.

Something folded slid out from between the pages and fluttered to the floor at her feet. She bent to retrieve it, smoothing it open reflexively.

It was the photograph of a group of young people, none much older than Clary herself. She knew it had been taken at least twenty years ago, not because of the clothes they were wearing—which, like most Shadowhunter gear, were nondescript and black—but because she recognized her mother instantly: Jocelyn, no more than seventeen or eighteen, her hair halfway down her back and her face a little rounder, the chin and mouth less defined. She looks like me, Clary thought dazedly.

Jocelyn's arm was around a boy Clary didn't recognize. It gave her a jolt. She'd never thought of her mother being involved with anyone other than her father, since Jocelyn had never dated or seemed interested in romance. She wasn't like most single mothers, who trolled PTA meetings for likely-looking dads, or Simon's mom, who was always checking her profile on JDate. The boy was good-looking, with hair so fair it was nearly white, and black eyes.

"That's Valentine," said a voice at her elbow. "When he was seventeen."

She leaped back, almost dropping the photo. Hugo gave a startled and unhappy caw before settling back down on his perch, feathers ruffled.

It was Hodge, looking at her with curious eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she said, setting the photograph down on the desk and backing hastily away. "I didn't mean to pry into your things."

"It's all right." He touched the photograph with a scarred and weathered hand—a strange contrast to the neat spotlessness of his tweed cuffs. "It's a piece of your past, after all."

Clary drifted back toward the desk as if the photo exerted a magnetic pull. The white-haired boy in the photo was smiling at Jocelyn, his eyes crinkled in that way that boys' eyes crinkled when they really liked you. Nobody, Clary thought, had ever looked at her that way. Valentine, with his cold, fine-featured face, looked absolutely unlike her own father, with his open smile and the bright hair she'd inherited. "Valentine looks … sort of nice."

"Nice he wasn't," said Hodge, with a twisted smile, "but he was charming and clever and very persuasive. Do you recognize anyone else?"

She looked again. Standing behind Valentine, a little to the left, was a thin boy with a shock of light brown hair. He had the big shoulders and gawky wrists of someone who hadn't grown into his height yet. "Is that you?"

Hodge nodded. "And… ?"

She had to look twice before she identified someone else she knew: so young as to be nearly unrecognizable. In the end his glasses gave him away, and the eyes behind them, light blue as seawater. "Luke," she said.

"Lucian. And here." Leaning over the photo, Hodge indicated an elegant-looking teenage couple, both dark-haired, the girl half a head taller than the boy. Her features were narrow and predatory, almost cruel. "The Lightwoods," he said. "And there"—he indicated a very handsome boy with curling dark hair, high color in his square-jawed face—"is Michael Wayland."

"He doesn't look anything like Jace."

"Jace resembles his mother."

"Is this, like, a class photo?" Clary asked.

"Not quite. This is a picture of the Circle, taken in the year it was formed. That's why Valentine, the leader, is in the front, and Luke is on his right side—he was Valentine's second in command."

Clary turned her gaze away. "I still don't understand why my mother would join something like that."

"You must understand—"

"You keep saying that," Clary said crossly. "I don't see why I must understand anything. You tell me the truth, and I'll either understand it or I won't."

The corner of Hodge's mouth twitched. "As you say." He paused to reach out a hand and stroke Hugo, who was strutting along the edge of the desk importantly. "The Accords have never had the support of the whole Clave. The more venerable families, especially, cling to the old times, when Downworlders were for killing. Not just out of hatred but because it made them feel safer. It is easier to confront a threat as a mass, a group, not individuals who must be evaluated one by one…and most of us knew someone who had been injured or killed by a Downworlder. There is nothing," he added, "quite like the moral absolutism of the young. It's easy, as a child, to believe in good and evil, in light and dark. Valentine never lost that— neither his destructive idealism nor his passionate loathing of anything he considered 'nonhuman.'"

"But he loved my mother," said Clary.

"Yes," said Hodge. "He loved your mother. And he loved Idris…."

"What was so great about Idris?" Clary asked, hearing the grumpiness in her own voice.

"It was," Hodge began, and corrected himself, "it is, home—for the Nephilim, where they can be their true selves, a place where there is no need for hiding or glamour. A place blessed by the Angel. You have never seen a city until you have seen Alicante of the glass towers. It is more beautiful than you can imagine." There was raw pain in his voice.

Clary thought suddenly of her dream. "Were there ever … dances in the Glass City?"

Hodge blinked at her as if waking up from a dream. "Every week. I never attended, but your mother did. And Valentine." He chuckled softly. "I was more of a scholar. I spent my days in the library in Alicante. The books you see here are only a fraction of the treasures it holds. I thought perhaps I might join the Brotherhood someday, but after what I did, of course, they would not have me."

"I'm sorry," Clary said awkwardly. Her mind was still full of the memory of her dream. Was there a mermaid fountain where they danced? Did Valentine wear white, so that my mother could see the Marks on his skin even through his shirt?

"Can I keep this?" she asked, indicating the photograph.

A flicker of hesitation passed over Hodge's face. "I would prefer you not show it to Jace," he said. "He has enough to contend with, without photos of his dead father turning up."

"Of course." She hugged it to her chest. "Thank you."

"It's nothing." He looked at her quizzically. "Did you come to the library to see me, or for some other purpose?"

"I was wondering if you'd heard from the Clave. About the Cup. And—my mom."

"I got a short reply this morning."

She could hear the eagerness in her own voice. "Have they sent people? Shadowhunters?"

Hodge looked away from her. "Yes, they have."

"Why aren't they staying here?" she asked.

"There is some concern that the Institute is being watched by Valentine. The less he knows, the better." He saw her miserable expression, and sighed. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more, Clarissa. I am not much trusted by the Clave, even now. They told me very little. I wish I could help you."

There was something about the sadness in his voice that made her reluctant to push him for more information. "You can," she said. "I can't sleep. I keep thinking too much. Could you…"

"Ah, the unquiet mind." His voice was full of sympathy. "I can give you something for that. Wait here."

The potion Hodge gave her smelled pleasantly of juniper and leaves. Clary kept opening the vial and smelling it on her way back down the corridor. It was unfortunately still open when she entered her bedroom and found Jace sprawled out on the bed, looking at her sketchbook. With a little shriek of astonishment, she dropped the vial; it bounced across the floor, spilling pale-green liquid onto the hardwood.

"Oh, dear," said Jace, sitting up, the sketchbook abandoned. "I hope that wasn't anything important."

"It was a sleeping potion," she said angrily, toeing the vial with the tip of a sneaker. "And now it's gone."

"If only Simon were here. He could probably bore you to sleep."

Clary was in no mood to defend Simon. Instead she sat down on the bed, picking up the sketchbook. "I don't usually let people look at this."

"Why not?" Jace looked tousled, as if he'd been asleep himself. "You're a pretty good artist. Sometimes even excellent."

"Well, because—it's like a diary. Except I don't think in words, I think in pictures, so it's all drawings. But it's still private." She wondered if she sounded as crazy as she suspected.

Jace looked wounded. "A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance novel covers? The—"

"Do all the girls you meet fall in love with you?" Clary asked quietly.

The question seemed to deflate him, like a pin popping a balloon. "It's not love," he said, after a pause. "At least—"

"You could try not being charming all the time," Clary said. "It might be a relief for everyone."

He looked down at his hands. They were like Hodge's hands already, snowflaked with tiny white scars, though the skin was young and unlined. "If you're really tired, I could put you to sleep," he said. "Tell you a bedtime story."

She looked at him. "Are you serious?"

"I'm always serious."

She wondered if being tired had made them both a little crazy. But Jace didn't look tired. He looked almost sad. She set the sketchbook down on the night table, and lay down, curling sideways on the pillow. "Okay."

"Close your eyes."

She closed them. She could see the afterimage of lamplight reflected against her inner lids, like tiny starbursts.

"Once there was a boy," said Jace.

Clary interrupted immediately. "A Shadowhunter boy?"

"Of course." For a moment a bleak amusement colored his voice. Then it was gone. "When the boy was six years old, his father gave him a falcon to train. Falcons are raptors—killing birds, his father told him, the Shadowhunters of the sky.

"The falcon didn't like the boy, and the boy didn't like it, either. Its sharp beak made him nervous, and its bright eyes always seemed to be watching him. It would slash at him with beak and talons when he came near: For weeks his wrists and hands were always bleeding. He didn't know it, but his father had selected a falcon that had lived in the wild for over a year, and thus was nearly impossible to tame. But the boy tried, because his father had told him to make the falcon obedient, and he wanted to please his father.

"He stayed with the falcon constantly, keeping it awake by talking to it and even playing music to it, because a tired bird was meant to be easier to tame. He learned the equipment: the jesses, the hood, the brail, the leash that bound the bird to his wrist. He was meant to keep the falcon blind, but he couldn't bring himself to do it—instead he tried to sit where the bird could see him as he touched and stroked its wings, willing it to trust him. He fed it from his hand, and at first it would not eat. Later it ate so savagely that its beak cut the skin of his palm. But the boy was glad, because it was progress, and because he wanted the bird to know him, even if the bird had to consume his blood to make that happen.

"He began to see that the falcon was beautiful, that its slim wings were built for the speed of flight, that it was strong and swift, fierce and gentle. When it dived to the ground, it moved like light. When it learned to circle and come to his wrist, he nearly shouted with delight. Sometimes the bird would hop to his shoulder and put its beak in his hair. He knew his falcon loved him, and when he was certain it was not just tamed but perfectly tamed, he went to his father and showed him what he had done, expecting him to be proud.

"Instead his father took the bird, now tame and trusting, in his hands and broke its neck. 'I told you to make it obedient,' his father said, and dropped the falcon's lifeless body to the ground. 'Instead, you taught it to love you. Falcons are not meant to be loving pets: They are fierce and wild, savage and cruel. This bird was not tamed; it was broken.'

"Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed."

Clary, who had been lying still, hardly breathing, rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. "That's an awful story," she said indignantly.

Jace had his legs pulled up, his chin on his knees. "Is it?" he said ruminatively.

"The boy's father is horrible. It's a story about child abuse. I should have known that's what Shadowhunters think a bedtime story is like. Anything that gives you screaming nightmares—"

"Sometimes the Marks can give you screaming nightmares," said Jace. "If you get them when you're too young." He looked at her thoughtfully. The late afternoon light came in through the curtains and made his face a study in contrasts. Chiaroscuro, she thought. The art of shadows and light. "It's a good story if you think about it," he said. "The boy's father is just trying to make him stronger. Inflexible."

"But you have to learn to bend a little," said Clary with a yawn. Despite the story's content, the rhythm of Jace's voice had made her sleepy. "Or you'll break."

"Not if you're strong enough," said Jace firmly. He reached out, and she felt the back of his hand brush her cheek; she realized her eyes were slipping shut. Exhaustion made her bones liquid; she felt as if she might wash away and vanish. As she fell into sleep, she heard the echo of words in her mind. He gave me anything I wanted. Horses, weapons, books, even a hunting falcon.

"Jace," she tried to say. But sleep had her in its claws; it drew her down, and she was silent.

She was woken by an urgent voice. "Get up!"

Clary opened her eyes slowly. They felt gluey, stuck together. Something was tickling her face. It was someone's hair. She sat up quickly, and her head struck something hard.

"Ow! You hit me in the head!" It was a girl's voice. Isabelle. She flicked on the light next to the bed and regarded Clary resentfully, rubbing at her scalp. She seemed to shimmer in the lamplight—she was wearing a long silvery skirt and a sequined top, and her nails were painted like glittering coins. Strands of silver beads were caught in her dark hair. She looked like a moon goddess. Clary hated her.

"Well, nobody told you to lean over me like that. You practically scared me to death." Clary rubbed at her own head. There was a sore spot just above her eyebrow. "What do you want, anyway?"

Isabelle indicated the dark night sky outside. "It's almost midnight. We've got to leave for the party, and you're still not dressed."

"I was just going to wear this," Clary said, indicating her jeans and T-shirt ensemble. "Is that a problem?"

"Is that a problem?" Isabelle looked like she might faint. "Of course it's a problem! No Downworlder would wear those clothes. And it's a party. You'll stick out like a sore thumb if you dress that…casually," she finished, looking as if the word she'd wanted to use was a lot worse than "casually."

"I didn't know we were dressing up," Clary said sourly. "I don't have any party clothes with me."

"You'll just have to borrow mine."

"Oh no." Clary thought of the too-big T-shirt and jeans. "I mean, I couldn't. Really."

Isabelle's smile was as glittering as her nails. "I insist."

"I'd really rather wear my own clothes," Clary protested, squirming uncomfortably as Isabelle positioned her in front of the floor-length mirror in her bedroom.

"Well, you can't," Isabelle said. "You look about eight years old, and worse, you look like a mundane."

Clary set her jaw rebelliously. "None of your clothes are going to fit me."

"We'll see about that."

Clary watched Isabelle in the mirror as she rifled through her closet. Her room looked as if a disco ball had exploded inside it. The walls were black and shimmered with swirls of sponged-on golden paint. Clothes were strewn everywhere: on the rumpled black bed, hung over the backs of the wooden chairs, spilling out of the closet and the tall wardrobe propped against one wall. Her vanity table, its mirror rimmed with spangled pink fur, was covered in glitter, sequins, and pots of blush and powder.

"Nice room," Clary said, thinking longingly of her orange walls at home.

"Thanks. I painted it myself." Isabelle emerged from the closet, holding something black and slinky. She tossed it at Clary.

Clary held the cloth up, letting it unfold. "It looks awfully small."

"It's stretchy," said Isabelle. "Now go put it on."

Hastily, Clary retreated to the small bathroom, which was painted bright blue. She wriggled the dress on over her head— it was tight, with tiny spaghetti straps. Trying not to inhale too deeply, she returned to the bedroom, where Isabelle was sitting on the bed, sliding a set of jeweled toe rings onto her sandaled feet. "You're so lucky to have such a flat chest," Isabelle said. "I could never wear that without a bra."

Clary scowled. "It's too short."

"It's not short. It's fine," Isabelle said, toeing around under the bed. She kicked out a pair of boots and some black fishnet tights. "Here, you can wear these with it. They'll make you look taller."

"Right, because I'm flat-chested and a midget." Clary tugged the hem of the dress down. It just brushed the tops of her thighs. She hardly ever wore skirts, much less short ones, so seeing this much of her own legs was alarming. "If it's this short on me, how short must it be on you?" she mused aloud to Isabelle.

Isabelle grinned. "On me it's a shirt."

Clary flopped down on the bed and pulled the tights and boots on. The shoes were a little loose around the calves, but didn't slide around on her feet. She laced them to the top and stood up, looking at herself in the mirror. She had to admit that the combination of short black dress, fishnets, and high boots was fairly badass. The only thing that spoiled it was—

"Your hair," Isabelle said. "It needs fixing. Desperately. Sit." She pointed imperiously toward the vanity table. Clary sat, and squinched her eyes shut as Isabelle yanked her hair out of its braids—none too kindly—brushed it out, and shoved what felt like bobby pins into it. She opened her eyes just as a powder puff smacked her in the face, releasing a dense cloud of glitter. Clary coughed and glared at Isabelle accusingly.

The other girl laughed. "Don't look at me. Look at yourself."

Glancing in the mirror, Clary saw that Isabelle had pulled her hair up into an elegant swirl on the top of her head, held in place with sparkling pins. Clary was reminded suddenly of her dream, the heavy hair weighing her head down, dancing with Simon … She stirred restlessly.

"Don't get up yet," Isabelle said. "We're not done." She seized an eyeliner pen. "Open your eyes."

Clary widened her eyes, which was good for keeping herself from crying. "Isabelle, can I ask you something?'

"Sure," said Isabelle, wielding the eyeliner expertly.

"Is Alec gay?"

Isabelle's wrist jerked. The eyeliner skidded, inking a long line of black from the corner of Clary's eye to her hairline. "Oh, hell," Isabelle said, putting the pen down.

"It's all right," Clary began, putting her hand up to her eye.

"No, it isn't." Isabelle sounded near tears as she scrabbled around among the piles of junk on top of the vanity. Eventually she came up with a cotton ball, which she handed to Clary. "Here. Use this." She sat down on the edge of the bed, ankle bracelets jingling, and looked at Clary through her hair. "How did you guess?" she said finally.

"You absolutely can't tell anyone," said Isabelle.

"Not even Jace?"

"Especially not Jace!"

"All right." Clary heard the stiffness in her own voice. "I guess I didn't realize it was such a big deal."

"It would be to my parents," said Isabelle quietly. "They would disown him and throw him out of the Clave—"

"What, you can't be gay and a Shadowhunter?"

"There's no official rule about it. But people don't like it. I mean, less with people our age—I think," she added, uncertainly, and Clary remembered how few other people her age Isabelle had ever really met. "But the older generation, no. If it happens, you don't talk about it."

"Oh," said Clary, wishing she'd never mentioned it.

"I love my brother," said Isabelle. "I'd do anything for him. But there's nothing I can do."

"At least he has you," said Clary awkwardly, and she thought for a moment of Jace, who thought of love as something that broke you into pieces. "Do you really think that Jace would … mind?"

"I don't know," said Isabelle, in a tone that indicated she'd had enough of the topic. "But it's not my choice to make."

"I guess not," Clary said. She leaned in to the mirror, using the cotton Isabelle had given her to dab away the excess eye makeup. When she sat back, she nearly dropped the cotton ball in surprise: What had Isabelle done to her? Her cheekbones looked sharp and angular, her eyes deep-set, mysterious, and a luminous green.

"I look like my mom," she said in surprise.

Isabelle raised her eyebrows. "What? Too middle-aged? Maybe some more glitter—"

"No more glitter," Clary said hastily. "No, it's good. I like it."

"Great." Isabelle bounced up off the bed, her anklets chiming. "Let's go."

"I need to stop by my room and grab something," Clary said, standing up. "Also—do I need any weapons? Do you?"

"I've got plenty." Isabelle smiled, kicking her feet up so that her anklets jingled like Christmas bells. "These, for instance. The left one is gold, which is poisonous to demons, and the right one is blessed iron, in case I run across any unfriendly vampires or even faeries—faeries hate iron. They both have strength runes carved into them, so I can pack a hell of a kick."

"Demon hunting and fashion," Clary said. "I never would have thought they went together."

Isabelle laughed out loud. "You'd be surprised."

The boys were waiting for them in the entryway. They were wearing black, even Simon, in a slightly too-big pair of black pants and his own shirt turned inside out to hide the band logo. He was standing uncomfortably to the side while Jace and Alec slouched together against the wall, looking bored. Simon glanced up as Isabelle strode into the entryway, her gold whip coiled around her wrist, her metal ankle chains chiming like bells. Clary expected him to look stunned—Isabelle did look amazing—but his eyes slid past her to Clary, where they rested with a look of astonishment.

"What is that?" he demanded, straightening up. "That you're wearing, I mean."

Clary looked down at herself. She'd thrown a light jacket on to make her feel less naked and grabbed her backpack from her room. It was slung over her shoulder, bumping familiarly between her shoulder blades. But Simon wasn't looking at her backpack; he was looking at her legs as if he'd never seen them before.

"It's a dress, Simon," Clary said dryly. "I know I don't wear them that much, but really."

"It's so short," he said in confusion. Even half in demon hunter clothes, Clary thought, he looked like the sort of boy who'd come over to your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets.

Jace, on the other hand, looked like the sort of boy who'd come over to your house and burn it down for kicks. "I like the dress," he said, unhitching himself from the wall. His eyes ran up and down her lazily, like the stroking paws of a cat. "It needs a little something extra, though."

"So now you're a fashion expert?" Her voice came out unevenly—he was standing very close to her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, smell the faint burned scent of newly applied Marks.

He took something out of his jacket and handed it to her. It was a long thin dagger in a leather sheath. The hilt of the dagger was set with a single red stone carved in the shape of a rose.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't even know how to use that—"

He pressed it into her hand, curling her fingers around it. "You'd learn." He dropped his voice. "It's in your blood."

She drew her hand back slowly. "All right."

"I could give you a thigh sheath to put that in," Isabelle offered. "I've got tons."

"CERTAINLY NOT," said Simon.

Clary shot him an irritated look. "Thanks, but I'm not really a thigh sheath kind of girl." She slid the dagger into the outside pocket on her backpack.

She looked up from closing it to find Jace watching her through hooded eyes. "And one last thing," he said. He reached over and pulled the sparkling pins out of her hair, so that it fell in warm and heavy curls down her neck. The sensation of hair tickling her bare skin was unfamiliar and oddly pleasant.

"Much better," he said, and she thought this time that maybe his voice was slightly uneven too.

12 Dead Man's Party

The directions on the invitation took them to a largely industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn whose streets were lined with factories and warehouses. Some, Clary could see, had been converted into lofts and galleries, but there was still something forbidding about their looming square shapes, boasting only a few windows covered in iron grilles.

They made their way from the subway station, Isabelle navigating with the Sensor, which seemed to have a sort of mapping system built in. Simon, who loved gadgets, was fascinated—or at least he was pretending it was the Sensor he was fascinated with. Hoping to avoid them, Clary lagged behind as they crossed through a scrubby park, its badly kept grass burned brown by the summer heat. To her right the spires of a church gleamed gray and black against the starless night sky.

"Keep up," said an irritable voice in her ear. It was Jace, who had dropped back to walk beside her. "I don't want to have to keep looking behind me to make sure nothing's happened to you."

"So don't bother."

"Last time I left you alone, a demon attacked you," he pointed out.

"Well, I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death."

He blinked. "There is a fine line between sarcasm and outright hostility, and you seem to have crossed it. What's up?"

She bit her lip. "This morning, weird creepy guys dug around in my brain. Now I'm going to meet the weird creepy guy who originally dug around in my brain. What if I don't like what he finds?"

"What makes you think you won't?"

Clary pulled her hair away from her sticky skin. "I hate it when you answer a question with a question."

"No you don't, you think it's charming. Anyway, wouldn't you rather know the truth?"

"No. I mean, maybe. I don't know." She sighed. "Would you?"

"This is the right street!" called Isabelle, a quarter of a block ahead. They were on a narrow avenue lined with old warehouses, though most now bore the signs of human residence: window boxes filled with flowers, lace curtains blowing in the clammy night breeze, numbered plastic trash cans stacked on the sidewalk. Clary squinted hard, but there was no way to tell if this was the street she'd seen at the Bone City—in her vision it had been nearly obliterated with snow.

She felt Jace's fingers brush her shoulder. "Absolutely. Always," he murmured.

She looked sideways at him, not understanding. "What?"

"The truth," he said. "I would—"

"Jace!" It was Alec. He was standing on the pavement, not far away; Clary wondered why his voice had sounded so loud.

Jace turned, his hand falling away from her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Think we're in the right place?" Alec was pointing at something Clary couldn't see; it was hidden behind the bulk of a large black car.

"What's that?" Jace joined Alec; Clary heard him laugh. Coming around the car, she saw what they were looking at: several motorcycles, sleek and silvery, with low-slung black chassis. Oily-looking tubes and pipes slithered up and around them, ropy as veins. There was a queasy sense of something organic about the bikes, like the bio-creatures in a Giger painting.

"Vampires," Jace said.

"They look like motorcycles to me," said Simon, joining them with Isabelle at his side. She frowned at the bikes.

"They are, but they've been altered to run on demon energies," she explained. "Vampires use them—it lets them get around fast at night. It's not strictly Covenant, but…"

"I've heard some of the bikes can fly," said Alec eagerly. He sounded like Simon with a new video game. "Or go invisible at the flick of a switch. Or operate under water."

Jace had jumped down off the curb and was circling the bikes, examining them. He reached out a hand and stroked one of the bikes along the sleek chassis. It had words painted along the side, in silver: nox invictus. "Victorious night," he translated.

Alec was looking at him strangely. "What are you doing?"

Clary thought she saw Jace slide his hand back inside his jacket. "Nothing."

"Well, hurry up," said Isabelle. "I didn't get this dressed up to watch you mess around in the gutter with a bunch of motorcycles."

"They are pretty to look at," said Jace, hopping back up on the pavement. "You have to admit that."

"So am I," said Isabelle, who didn't look inclined to admit anything. "Now hurry up."

Jace was looking at Clary. "This building," he said, pointing at the red brick warehouse. "Is this the one?"

Clary exhaled. "I think so," she said uncertainly. "They all look the same."

"One way to find out," said Isabelle, mounting the steps with a determined stride. The rest of them followed, crowding close to one another in the foul-smelling entryway. A naked bulb hung from a cord overhead, illuminating a large metal-bound door and a row of apartment buzzers along the left wall. Only one had a name written over it: bane.

Isabelle pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. She was about to press it a third time when Alec caught her wrist. "Don't be rude," he said.

She glared at him. "Alec—"

The door flew open.

A slender man standing in the doorway regarded them curiously. It was Isabelle who recovered herself first, flashing a brilliant smile. "Magnus? Magnus Bane?"

"That would be me." The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. Clary guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully. "Children of the Nephilim," he said. "Well, well. I don't recall inviting you."

Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. "I have an invitation. These"—she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm—"are my friends."

Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. "I must have been drunk," he said. He threw the door open. "Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests."

Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?"

"Even then." Magnus's hand shot out, so fast it was barely a blur. He plucked the stele out of Jace's hand—Clary hadn't even realized he was holding it—and held it up. Jace looked faintly abashed. "As for this," Magnus said, sliding it into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter."

Magnus grinned and started up the stairs, leaving a surprised-looking Jace holding the door. "Come on," he said, waving the rest of them inside. "Before anyone thinks it's my party."

They pushed past Jace, laughing nervously. Only Isabelle stopped to shake her head. "Try not to piss him off, please. Then he won't help us."

Jace looked bored. "I know what I'm doing."

"I hope so." Isabelle flounced past him in a swirl of skirts.

Magnus's apartment was at the top of a long flight of rickety stairs. Simon hurried to catch up with Clary, who was regretting having put her hand on the banister to steady herself. It was sticky with something that glowed a faint and sickly green.

"Yech," said Simon, and offered her a corner of his T-shirt to wipe her hand on. She did. "Is everything all right? You seem—distracted."

"He just looks so familiar. Magnus, I mean."

"You think he goes to St. Xavier's?"

"Very funny." She looked at him sourly.

"You're right. He's too old to be a student. I think I had him for chem last year."

Clary laughed out loud. Immediately Isabelle was beside her, breathing down her neck. "Am I missing something funny? Simon?"

Simon had the grace to look embarrassed, but said nothing. Clary muttered, "You're not missing anything," and dropped behind them. Isabelle's lug-soled boots were starting to hurt her feet. By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was limping, but she forgot the pain as soon as she walked through Magnus's front door.

The loft was huge and almost totally empty of furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows were smeared with a thick film of dirt and paint, blocking out most of the ambient light from the street. Big metal pillars wound with colored lights held up an arched, sooty ceiling. Doors torn off their hinges and laid across dented metal garbage cans made a makeshift bar at one end of the room. A lilac-skinned woman in a metallic bustier was ranging drinks along the bar in tall, harshly colored glasses that tinted the fluid inside them: blood red, cyanosis blue, poison green. Even for a New York bartender she worked with an amazingly speedy efficiency—probably helped along by the fact that she had a second set of long, graceful arms to go with the first. Clary was reminded of Luke's Indian goddess statue.

The rest of the crowd was just as strange. A good-looking boy with wet green-black hair grinned at her over a platter of what looked like raw fish. His teeth were sharp and serrated, like a shark's. Beside him stood a girl with long dirty-blond hair, braided with flowers. Under the skirt of her short green dress, her feet were webbed like a frog's. A group of young women so pale Clary wondered if they were wearing white stage makeup sipped scarlet liquid too thick to be wine from fluted crystal glasses. The center of the room was packed with bodies dancing to the pounding beat that bounced off the walls, though Clary couldn't see a band anywhere.

"You like the party?"

She turned to see Magnus lounging against one of the pillars. His eyes shone in the darkness. Glancing around, she saw that Jace and the others were gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

She tried to smile. "Is it in honor of anything?"

"My cat's birthday."

"Oh." She glanced around. "Where's your cat?"

He unhitched himself from the pillar, looking solemn. "I don't know. He ran away."

Clary was spared responding to this by the reappearance of Jace and Alec. Alec looked sullen as usual. Jace was wearing a strand of tiny glowing flowers around his neck and seemed pleased with himself. "Where are Simon and Isabelle?" Clary said.

"On the dance floor." He pointed. She could just see them on the edge of the packed square of bodies. Simon was doing what he usually did in lieu of dancing, which was to bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, looking uncomfortable. Isabelle was slinking in a circle around him, sinuous as a snake, trailing her fingers across his chest. She was looking at him as if she were planning to drag him off into a corner to have sex. Clary hugged her arms around herself, her bracelets clanking together. If they dance any closer together, they won't have to go off in a corner to have sex.

"Look," Jace said, turning to Magnus, "we really need to talk to—"

"MAGNUS BANE!" The deep, booming voice belonged to a surprisingly short man who looked to be in his early thirties. He was compactly muscular, with a bald head shaved smooth and a pointed goatee. He leveled a trembling finger at Magnus. "Someone just poured holy water into the gas tank on my bike. It's ruined. Destroyed. All the pipes are melted."

"Melted?" murmured Magnus. "How dreadful."

"I want to know who did it." The man bared his teeth, showing long pointed canines. Clary stared in fascination. They didn't look at all the way she'd imagined vampire fangs: These were as thin and sharp as needles. "I thought you swore there'd be no wolf-men here tonight, Bane."

"I invited none of the Moon's Children," Magnus said, examining his glittery nails. "Precisely because of your stupid little feud. If any of them decided to sabotage your bike, they weren't a guest of mine, and are therefore …" He offered a winsome smile. "Not my responsibility."

The vampire roared with rage, jabbing his finger toward Magnus. "Are you trying to tell me that—"

Magnus's glitter-coated index finger twitched just a fraction, so slightly that Clary almost thought he hadn't moved at all. Mid-roar the vampire gagged and clutched at his throat. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

"You've worn out your welcome," Magnus said lazily, opening his eyes very wide. Clary saw, with a jolt of surprise, that they had vertical slit pupils, like a cat's. "Now go." He splayed the fingers of his hand, and the vampire turned as smartly as if someone had grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. He marched back into the crowd, heading toward the door.

Jace whistled under his breath. "That was impressive."

"You mean that little hissy fit?" Magnus cast his eyes toward the ceiling. "I know. What is her problem?"

Alec made a choking noise. After a moment Clary recognized it as laughter. He ought to do that more often.

"We put the holy water in his gas tank, you know," he said.

"ALEC," said Jace. "Shut up."

"I assumed that," said Magnus, looking amused. "Vindictive little bastards, aren't you? You know their bikes run on demon energies. I doubt he'll be able to repair it."

"One less leech with a fancy ride," said Jace. "My heart bleeds."

"I heard some of them can make their bikes fly," put in Alec, who looked animated for once. He was almost smiling.

"Merely an old witches' tale," said Magnus, his cat's eyes glittering. "So is that why you wanted to crash my party? Just to wreck some bloodsucker bikes?"

"No." Jace was all business again. "We need to talk to you. Preferably somewhere private."

Magnus raised an eyebrow. Damn, Clary thought, another one. "Am I in trouble with the Clave?"

"No," said Jace.

"Probably not," said Alec. "Ow!" He glared at Jace, who had kicked him sharply in the ankle.

"No," Jace repeated. "We can talk to you under the seal of the Covenant. If you help us, anything you say will be confidential."

"And if I don't help you?"

Jace spread his hands wide. The rune tattoos on his palms stood out stark and black. "Maybe nothing. Maybe a visit from the Silent City."

Magnus's voice was honey poured over shards of ice. "That's quite a choice you're offering me, little Shadowhunter."

"It's no choice at all," said Jace.

"Yes," said the warlock. "That's exactly what I meant."

Magnus's bedroom was a riot of color: canary-yellow sheets and bedspread draped over a mattress on the floor, electric-blue vanity table strewn with more pots of paint and makeup than Isabelle's. Rainbow velvet curtains hid the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a tangled wool rug covered the floor.

"Nice place," said Jace, drawing aside a heavy swag of curtain. "Guess it pays well, being the High Warlock of Brooklyn?"

"It pays," Magnus said. "Not much of a benefit package, though. No dental." He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. When he crossed his arms, his T-shirt rode up, showing a strip of flat golden stomach unmarked by a navel. "So," he said. "What's on your devious little minds?"

"It's not them, actually," Clary said, finding her voice before Jace could reply. "I'm the one who wanted to talk to you."

Magnus turned his inhuman eyes on her. "You are not one of them," he said. "Not of the Clave. But you can see the Invisible World."

"My mother was one of the Clave," Clary said. It was the first time she had said it out loud and known it to be true. "But she never told me. She kept it a secret. I don't know why."

"So ask her."

"I can't. She's …" Clary hesitated. "She's gone."

"And your father?"

"He died before I was born."

Magnus exhaled irritably. "As Oscar Wilde once said, 'To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.'"

Clary heard Jace make a small hissing sound, like air being sucked through his teeth. She said, "I didn't lose my mother. She was taken from me. By Valentine."

"I don't know any Valentine," said Magnus, but his eyes flickered like wavering candle flames, and Clary knew he was lying. "I'm sorry for your tragic circumstances, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. If you could tell me—"

"She can't tell you, because she doesn't remember," Jace said sharply. "Someone erased her memories. So we went to the Silent City to see what the Brothers could pull out of her head. They got two words. I think you can guess what they were."

There was a short silence. Finally, Magnus let his mouth turn up at the corner. His smile was bitter. "My signature," he said. "I knew it was folly when I did it. An act of hubris …"

"You signed my mind?" Clary said in disbelief.

Magnus raised his hand, tracing the fiery outlines of letters against the air. When he dropped his hand, they hung there, hot and golden, making the painted lines of his eyes and mouth burn with reflected light, magnus bane.

"I was proud of my work on you," he said slowly, looking at Clary. "So clean. So perfect. What you saw you would forget, even as you saw it. No image of pixie or goblin or long-legged beastie would remain to trouble your blameless mortal sleep. It was the way she wanted it."

Clary's voice was thin with tension. "The way who wanted it?"

Magnus sighed, and at the touch of his breath, the fire-letters sifted away to glowing ash. Finally he spoke—and though she was not surprised, though she had known exactly what he was going to say, still she felt the words like a blow against her heart.

"Your mother," he said.

13 The Memory of Whiteness

"My mother did this to me?" Clary demanded, but her surprised outrage didn't sound convincing, even to her own ears. Looking around, she saw pity in Jace's eyes, in Alec's—even Alec had guessed and felt sorry for her. "Why?"

"I don't know." Magnus spread his long white hands. "It's not my job to ask questions. I do what I get paid to do."

"Within the bounds of the Covenant," Jace reminded him, his voice soft as cat's fur.

Magnus inclined his head. "Within the bounds of the Covenant, of course."

"So the Covenant's all right with this—this mind-rape?" Clary asked bitterly. When no one answered, she sank down on the edge of Magnus's bed. "Was it only once? Was there something specific she wanted me to forget? Do you know what it was?"

Magnus paced restlessly to the window. "I don't think you understand. The first time I ever saw you, you must have been about two years old. I was watching out this window"—he tapped the glass, freeing a shower of dust and paint chips— "and I saw her hurrying up the street, holding something wrapped in a blanket. I was surprised when she stopped at my door. She looked so ordinary, so young."

The moonlight touched his hawkish profile with silver. "She unwrapped the blanket when she came in my door. You were inside it. She set you down on the floor and you started ranging around, picking things up, pulling my cat's tail—you screamed like a banshee when the cat scratched you, so I asked your mother if you were part banshee. She didn't laugh." He paused. They were all watching him intently now, even Alec. "She told me she was a Shadowhunter. There was no point in her lying about it; Covenant Marks show up, even when they've faded with time, like faint silver scars against the skin. They flickered when she moved." He rubbed at the glitter makeup around his eyes. "She told me she'd hoped you'd been born with a blind Inner Eye—some Shadowhunters have to be taught to see the Shadow World. But she'd caught you that afternoon, teasing a pixie trapped in a hedge. She knew you could see. So she asked me if it was possible to blind you of the Sight."

Clary made a little noise, a pained exhalation of breath, but Magnus went on remorselessly.

"I told her that crippling that part of your mind might leave you damaged, possibly insane. She didn't cry. She wasn't the sort of woman who weeps easily, your mother. She asked me if there was another way, and I told her you could be made to forget those parts of the Shadow World that you could see, even as you saw them. The only caveat was that she'd have to come to me every two years as the results of the spell began to fade."

"And did she?" asked Clary.

Magnus nodded. "I've seen you every two years since that first time—I've watched you grow up. You're the only child I have ever watched grow up that way, you know. In my business one isn't generally that welcome around human children."

"So you recognized Clary when we walked in," Jace said. "You must have."

"Of course I did." Magnus sounded exasperated. "And it was a shock, too. But what would you have done? She didn't know me. She wasn't supposed to know me. Just the fact that she was here meant the spell had started to fade—and in fact, we were due for another visit about a month ago. I even came by your house when I got back from Tanzania, but Jocelyn said that you two had had a fight and you'd run off. She said she'd call on me when you came back, but"—an elegant shrug—"she never did."

A cold wash of memory prickled Clary's skin. She remembered standing in the foyer next to Simon, straining to remember something that danced just at the edge of her vision … I thought I saw Dorothea's cat, but it was just a trick of the light.

But Dorothea didn't have a cat. "You were there, that day," Clary said. "I saw you coming out of Dorothea's apartment. I remember your eyes."

Magnus looked as if he might purr. "I'm memorable, it's true," he gloated. Then he shook his head. "You shouldn't remember me," he said. "I threw up a glamour as hard as a wall as soon as I saw you. You should have run right into it face-first—psychically speaking."

If you run into a psychic wall face-first, do you wind up with psychic bruises? Clary said, "If you take the spell off me, will I be able to remember all the things I've forgotten? All the memories you stole?"

"I can't take it off you." Magnus looked uncomfortable.

"What?" Jace sounded furious. "Why not? The Clave requires you—"

Magnus looked at him coldly. "I don't like being told what to do, little Shadowhunter."

Clary could see how much Jace disliked being referred to as "little," but before he could snap out a reply, Alec spoke. His voice was soft, thoughtful. "Don't you know how to reverse it?" he asked. "The spell, I mean."

Magnus sighed. "Undoing a spell is a great deal more difficult than creating it in the first place. The intricacy of this one, the care I put into weaving it—if I made even the smallest mistake in unraveling it, her mind could be damaged forever. Besides," he added, "it's already begun to fade. The effects will vanish over time on their own."

Clary looked at him sharply. "Will I get all my memories back then? Whatever was taken out of my head?"

"I don't know. They might come back all at once, or in stages. Or you might never remember what you've forgotten over the years. What your mother asked me to do was unique, in my experience. I've no idea what will happen."

"But I don't want to wait." Clary folded her hands tightly in her lap, her fingers clamped together so hard that the tips turned white. "All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged. Now I know—"

"I didn't damage you." It was Magnus's turn to interrupt, his lips curled back angrily to show sharp white teeth. "Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants. The difference in your case is that it's true. You are different. Maybe not better—but different. And it's no picnic being different. You want to know what it's like when your parents are good churchgoing folk and you happen to be born with the devil's mark?" He pointed at his eyes, fingers splayed. "When your father flinches at the sight of you and your mother hangs herself in the barn, driven mad by what she's done? When I was ten, my father tried to drown me in the creek. I lashed out at him with everything I had—burned him where he stood. I went to the fathers of the church eventually, for sanctuary. They hid me. They say that pity's a bitter thing, but it's better than hate. When I found out what I was really, only half a human being, I hated myself. Anything's better than that."

There was silence when Magnus was done speaking. To Clary's surprise, it was Alec who broke it. "It wasn't your fault," he said. "You can't help how you're born."

Magnus's expression was closed. "I'm over it," he said. "I think you get my point. Different isn't better, Clarissa. Your mother was trying to protect you. Don't throw it back in her face."

Clary's hands relaxed their grip on each other. "I don't care if I'm different," she said. "I just want to be who I really am."

Magnus swore, in a language she didn't know. It sounded like crackling flames. "All right. Listen. I can't undo what I've done, but I can give you something else. A piece of what would have been yours if you'd been raised a true child of the Nephilim." He stalked across the room to the bookcase and dragged down a heavy volume bound in rotting green velvet. He flipped through the pages, shedding dust and bits of blackened cloth. The pages were thin, almost translucent eggshell parchment, each marked with a stark black rune. Jace's eyebrows went up.

"Is that a copy of the Gray Book?" Magnus, feverishly flipping pages, said nothing.

"Hodge has one," Alec observed. "He showed it to me once."

"It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green."

"If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace, brushing dust off the windowsill and eyeing it as if considering whether it was clean enough to sit on. "Gray is short for 'Gramarye.' It means 'magic, hidden wisdom.' In it is copied every rune the Angel Raziel wrote in the original Book of the Covenant. There aren't many copies because each one has to be specially made. Some of the runes are so powerful they'd burn through regular pages."

Alec looked impressed. "I didn't know all that."

Jace hopped up on the windowsill and swung his legs. "Not all of us sleep through history lessons."

"I do not—"

"Oh, yes you do, and drool on the desk besides."

"Shut up," said Magnus, but he said it quite mildly. He hooked his finger between two pages of the book and came over to Clary, setting it carefully in her lap. "Now, when I open the book, I want you to study the page. Look at it until you feel something change inside your mind."

"Will it hurt?" Clary asked nervously.

"All knowledge hurts," he replied, and stood up, letting the book fall open in her lap. Clary stared down at the clean white page with the black rune Mark spilled across it. It looked something like a winged spiral, until she tilted her head, and then it seemed like a staff wound around with vines. The mutable corners of the pattern tickled her mind like feathers brushed against sensitive skin. She felt the shivery flicker of reaction, making her want to close her eyes, but she held them open until they stung and blurred. She was about to blink when she felt it: a click inside her head, like a key turning in a lock.

The rune on the page seemed to spring into sharp focus, and she thought, involuntarily, Remember. If the rune were a word, it would have been that one, but there was more meaning to it than any word she could imagine. It was a child's first memory of light falling through crib bars, the recollected scent of rain and city streets, the pain of unforgotten loss, the sting of remembered humiliation, and the cruel forgetfulness of old age, when the most ancient of memories stand out with agonizingly clear precision and the nearest of incidents are lost beyond recall.

With a little sigh she turned to the next page, and the next, letting the images and sensations flow over her. Sorrow. Thought. Strength. Protection. Grace—and then cried out in reproachful surprise as Magnus snatched the book off her lap.

"That's enough," he said, sliding it back onto its shelf. He dusted his hands off on his colorful pants, leaving streaks of gray. "If you read all the runes at once, you'll give yourself a headache."

"But—"

"Most Shadowhunter children grow up learning one rune at a time over a period of years," said Jace. "The Gray Book contains runes even I don't know."

"Imagine that," said Magnus.

Jace ignored him. "Magnus showed you the rune for understanding and remembrance. It opens your mind up to reading and recognizing the rest of the Marks."

"It also may serve as a trigger to activate dormant memories," said Magnus. "They could return to you more quickly than they would otherwise. It's the best I can do."

Clary looked down at her lap. "I still don't remember anything about the Mortal Cup."

"Is that what this is about?" Magnus sounded actually astonished. "You're after the Angel's Cup? Look, I've been through your memories. There was nothing in them about the Mortal Instruments."

"Mortal Instruments?" Clary echoed, bewildered. "I thought—"

"The Angel gave three items to the first Shadowhunters. A cup, a sword, and a mirror. The Silent Brothers have the sword; the cup and the mirror were in Idris, at least until Valentine came along."

"Nobody knows where the mirror is," said Alec. "Nobody's known for ages."

"It's the Cup that concerns us," said Jace. "Valentine's looking for it."

"And you want to get to it before he does?" Magnus asked, his eyebrows winging upward.

"I thought you said you didn't know who Valentine was?" Clary pointed out.

"I lied," Magnus admitted candidly. "I'm not one of the fey, you know. I'm not required to be truthful. And only a fool would get between Valentine and his revenge."

"Is that what you think he's after? Revenge?" said Jace.

"I would guess so. He suffered a grave defeat, and he hardly seemed—seems—the type of man to suffer defeat gracefully."

Alec looked harder at Magnus. "Were you at the Uprising?"

Magnus's eyes locked with Alec's. "I was. I killed a number of your folk."

"Circle members," said Jace quickly. "Not ours—"

"If you insist on disavowing that which is ugly about what you do," said Magnus, still looking at Alec, "you will never learn from your mistakes."

Alec, plucking at the coverlet with one hand, flushed an unhappy red. "You don't seem surprised to hear that Valentine's still alive," he said, avoiding Magnus's gaze.

Magnus spread his hands wide. "Are you?"

Jace opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked actually baffled. Eventually, he said, "So you won't help us find the Mortal Cup?"

"I wouldn't if I could," said Magnus, "which, by the way, I can't. I've no idea where it is, and I don't care to know. Only a fool, as I said."

Alec sat up straighter. "But without the Cup, we can't—"

"Make more of you. I know," said Magnus. "Perhaps not everyone regards that as quite the disaster that you do. Mind you," he added, "if I had to choose between the Clave and Valentine, I would choose the Clave. At least they're not actually sworn to wipe out my kind. But nothing the Clave has done has earned my unswerving loyalty either. So no, I'll sit this one out. Now if we're done here, I'd like to get back to my party before any of the guests eat each other."

Jace, who was clenching and unclenching his hands, looked like he was about to say something furious, but Alec, standing up, put a hand on his shoulder. Clary couldn't quite tell in the dimness, but it looked as if Alec was squeezing rather hard. "Is that likely?" he asked.

Magnus was looking at him with some amusement. "It's happened before."

Jace muttered something to Alec, who let go. Detaching himself, he came over to Clary. "Are you all right?" he asked in a low voice.

"I think so. I don't feel any different…"

Magnus, standing by the door, snapped his fingers impatiently. "Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self."

"Canoodle?" repeated Clary, never having heard the word before.

"Magnificent?" repeated Jace, who was just being nasty. Magnus growled. The growl sounded like "Get out."

They got, Magnus trailing behind them as he paused to lock the bedroom door. The tenor of the party seemed subtly different to Clary. Perhaps it was just her slightly altered vision: Everything seemed clearer, crystalline edges sharply defined. She watched a group of musicians take the small stage at the center of the room. They wore flowing garments in deep colors of gold, purple, and green, and their high voices were sharp and ethereal.

"I hate faerie bands," Magnus muttered as the musicians segued into another haunting song, the melody as delicate and translucent as rock crystal. "All they ever play is mopey ballads."

Jace, glancing around the room, laughed. "Where's Isabelle?"

A rush of guilty concern hit Clary. She'd forgotten about Simon. She spun around, looking for the familiar skinny shoulders and shock of dark hair. "I don't see him. Them, I mean."

"There she is." Alec spotted his sister and waved her over, looking relieved. "Over here. And watch out for the phouka."

"Watch out for the phouka?" Jace repeated, glancing toward a thin brown-skinned man in a green paisley vest who eyed Isabelle thoughtfully as she walked by.

"He pinched me when I passed him earlier," Alec said stiffly. "In a highly personal area."

"I hate to break it to you, but if he's interested in your highly personal areas, he probably isn't interested in your sister's."

"Not necessarily," said Magnus. "Faeries aren't particular."

Jace curled his lip scornfully in the warlock's direction. "You still here?"

Before Magnus could reply, Isabelle was on top of them, looking pink-faced and blotchy and smelling strongly of alcohol. "Jace! Alec! Where have you been? I've been looking all over—"

"Where's Simon?" Clary interrupted.

Isabelle wobbled. "He's a rat," she said darkly.

"Did he do something to you?" Alec was full of brotherly concern. "Did he touch you? If he tried anything—"

"No, Alec," Isabelle said irritably. "Not like that. He's a rat."

"She's drunk," said Jace, beginning to turn away in disgust.

"I'm not," Isabelle said indignantly. "Well, maybe a little, but that's not the point. The point is, Simon drank one of those blue drinks—I told him not to, but he didn't listen—and he turned into a rat."

"A rat?" Clary repeated incredulously. "You don't mean…"

"I mean a rat," Isabelle said. "Little. Brown. Scaly tail."

"The Clave isn't going to like this," said Alec dubiously. "I'm pretty sure turning mundanes into rats is against the Law."

"Technically she didn't turn him into a rat," Jace pointed out. "The worst she could be accused of is negligence."

"Who cares about the stupid Law?" Clary screamed, grabbing hold of Isabelle's wrist. "My best friend is a rat!"

"Ouch!" Isabelle tried to pull her wrist back. "Let go of me!"

"Not until you tell me where he is." She'd never wanted to smack anyone as much as she wanted to smack Isabelle right at that moment. "I can't believe you just left him—he's probably terrified—"

"If he hasn't been stepped on," Jace pointed out unhelpfully.

"I didn't leave him. He ran under the bar," Isabelle protested, pointing. "Let go! You're denting my bracelet."

"Bitch," Clary said savagely, and flung a surprised-looking Isabelle's hand back at her, hard. She didn't stop for a reaction; she was running toward the bar. Dropping to her knees, she peered into the dark space under it. In the moldy-smelling gloom, she thought she could just detect a pair of glinting, beady eyes.

"Simon?" she said, her voice choked. "Is that you?"

Simon-the-rat crept forward slightly, his whiskers trembling. She could see the shape of his small rounded ears, flat against his head, and the sharp point of his nose. She fought down a feeling of revulsion—she'd never liked rats, with their yellowy squared-off teeth all ready to bite. She wished he'd been turned into a hamster.

"It's me, Clary," she said slowly. "Are you okay?"

Jace and the others arrived behind her, Isabelle looking more annoyed now than tearful. "Is he under there?" Jace asked curiously.

Clary, still on her hands and knees, nodded. "Shh. You'll frighten him off." She pushed her fingers gingerly under the edge of the bar, and wiggled them. "Please come out, Simon. We'll get Magnus to reverse the spell. It'll be okay."

She heard a squeak, and the rat's pink nose poked out from beneath the bar. With an exclamation of relief, Clary seized the rat in her hands. "Simon! You understood me!"

The rat, huddled in the hollow of her palms, squeaked glumly. Delighted, she hugged him to her chest. "Oh, poor baby," she crooned, almost as if he really were a pet. "Poor Simon, it'll be fine, I promise—"

"I wouldn't feel too sorry for him," Jace said. "That's probably the closest he's ever gotten to second base."

"Shut up!" Clary glared at Jace furiously, but she did loosen her grip on the rat. His whiskers were trembling, whether in anger or agitation or simple terror, she couldn't tell. "Get Magnus," she said sharply. "We have to turn him back."

"Let's not be hasty." Jace was actually grinning, the bastard. He reached toward Simon as if he meant to pet him. "He's cute like that. Look at his little pink nose."

Simon bared long yellow teeth at Jace and made a snapping motion. Jace pulled his outstretched hand back. "Izzy, go fetch our magnificent host."

"Why me?" Isabelle looked petulant.

"Because it's your fault the mundane's a rat, idiot," he said, and Clary was struck by how rarely any of them, other than Isabelle, ever said Simon's actual name. "And we can't leave him here."

"You'd be happy to leave him if it weren't for her," Isabelle said, managing to inject the single syllable word with enough venom to poison an elephant. She stalked off, her skirt flouncing around her hips.

"I can't believe she let you drink that blue drink," Clary said to rat-Simon. "Now you see what you get for being so shallow."

Simon squeaked irritably. Clary heard someone chuckle and glanced up to see Magnus leaning over her. Isabelle stood behind him, her expression furious. "Rattus norvegicus," said Magnus, peering at Simon. "A common brown rat, nothing exotic."

"I don't care what kind of rat he is," Clary said crossly. "I want him turned back."

Magnus scratched his head thoughtfully, shedding glitter. "No point," he said.

"That's what I said." Jace looked pleased.

"NO POINT?" Clary shouted, so loudly that Simon hid his head under her thumb. "HOW CAN YOU SAY THERE'S NO POINT?"

"Because he'll turn back on his own in a few hours," said Magnus. "The effect of the cocktails is temporary. No point working up a transformation spell; it'll just traumatize him. Too much magic is hard on mundanes, their systems aren't used to it."

"I doubt his system is used to being a rat, either," Clary pointed out. "You're a warlock, can't you just reverse the spell?"

Magnus considered. "No," he said.

"You mean you won't."

"Not for free, darling, and you can't afford me."

"I can't take a rat home on the subway either," Clary said plaintively. "I'll drop him, or one of the MTA police will arrest me for transporting pests on the transit system." Simon chirped his annoyance. "Not that you're a pest, of course."

A girl who had been shouting by the door was now joined by six or seven others. The sound of angry voices rose above the hum of the party and the strains of the music. Magnus rolled his eyes. "Excuse me," he said, backing into the crowd, which closed behind him instantly.

Isabelle, wobbling on her sandals, expelled a gusty sigh. "So much for his help."

"You know," Alec said, "you could always put the rat in your backpack."

Clary looked at him hard, but couldn't find anything wrong with the idea. It wasn't as if she had a pocket she could have tucked him in. Isabelle's clothes didn't allow for pockets; they were too tight. Clary was amazed they allowed for Isabelle.

Shrugging off her pack, she found a hiding place for the small brown rat that had once been Simon, nestled between her rolled-up sweater and her sketchpad. He curled up atop her wallet, looking reproachful. "I'm sorry," she said miserably.

"Don't bother," Jace said. "Why mundanes always insist on taking responsibility for things that aren't their fault is a mystery to me. You didn't force that cocktail down his idiotic throat."

"If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have been here at all," Clary said in a small voice.

"Don't flatter yourself. He came because of Isabelle."

Angrily Clary jerked the top of the bag closed and stood up. "Let's get out of here. I'm sick of this place."

The tight knot of shouting people by the door turned out to be more vampires, easily recognizable by the pallor of their skin and the dead blackness of their hair. They must dye it, Clary thought, they couldn't possibly all be naturally dark-haired, and besides, some of them had blond eyebrows. They were loudly complaining about their vandalized motorbikes and the fact that some of their friends were missing and unaccounted for. "They're probably drunk and passed out somewhere," Magnus said, waving long white fingers in a bored manner. "You know how you lot tend to turn into bats and piles of dust when you've downed a few too many Bloody Marys."

"They mix their vodka with real blood," Jace said in Clary's ear.

The pressure of his breath made her shiver. "Yes, I got that, thanks."

"We can't go around picking up every pile of dust in the place just in case it turns out to be Gregor in the morning," said a girl with a sulky mouth and painted-on eyebrows.

"Gregor will be fine. I rarely sweep," soothed Magnus. "I'm happy to send any stragglers back to the hotel come tomorrow—in a car with blacked-out windows, of course."

"But what about our motorbikes?" said a thin boy whose blond roots showed under his bad dye job. A gold earring in the shape of a stake hung from his left earlobe. "It'll take hours to fix them."

"You've got until sunrise," said Magnus, temper visibly fraying. "I suggest you get started." He raised his voice. "All right, that's IT! Party's over! Everybody out!" He waved his arms, shedding glitter.

With a single loud twang the band ceased playing. A drone of loud complaint rose from the partygoers, but they moved obediently toward the doorway. None of them stopped to thank Magnus for the party.

"Come on." Jace pushed Clary toward the exit. The crowd was dense. She held her backpack in front of her, hands wrapped protectively around it. Someone bumped her shoulder, hard, and she yelped and moved sideways, away from Jace. A hand brushed her backpack. She looked up and saw the vampire with the stake earring grinning at her. "Hey, pretty thing," he said. "What's in the bag?"

"Holy water," said Jace, reappearing beside her as if he'd been conjured up like a genie. A sarcastic blond genie with a bad attitude.

"Oooh, a Shadowhunter," said the vampire. "Scary." With a wink he melted back into the crowd.

"Vampires are such prima donnas," Magnus sighed from the doorway. "Honestly, I don't know why I have these parties."

"Because of your cat," Clary reminded him.

Magnus perked up. "That's true. Chairman Meow deserves my every effort." He glanced at her and the tight knot of Shadowhunters just behind her. "You on your way out?"

Jace nodded. "Don't want to overstay our welcome."

"What welcome?" Magnus asked. "I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you, but it wasn't. Not that you aren't all fairly charming, and as for you—" He dropped a glittery wink at Alec, who looked astounded. "Call me?"

Alec blushed and stuttered and probably would have stood there all night if Jace hadn't grasped his elbow and hauled him toward the door, Isabelle at their heels. Clary was about to follow when she felt a light tap on her arm; it was Magnus. "I have a message for you," he said. "From your mother."

Clary was so surprised she nearly dropped the pack. "From my mother? You mean, she asked you to tell me something?"

"Not exactly," Magnus said. His feline eyes, slit by their single vertical pupils like fissures in a green-gold wall, were serious for once. "But I knew her in a way that you didn't. She did what she did to keep you out of a world that she hated. Her whole existence, the running, the hiding—the lies, as you called them—were to keep you safe. Don't waste her sacrifices by risking your life. She wouldn't want that."

"She wouldn't want me to save her?"

"Not if it meant putting yourself in danger."

"But I'm the only person who cares what happens to her—"

"No," Magnus said. "You aren't."

Clary blinked. "I don't understand. Is there—Magnus, if you know something—"

He cut her off with brutal precision. "And one last thing." His eyes flicked toward the door, through which Jace, Alec, and Isabelle had disappeared. "Keep in mind that when your mother fled from the Shadow World, it wasn't the monsters she was hiding from. Not the warlocks, the wolf-men, the Fair Folk, not even the demons themselves. It was them. It was the Shadowhunters."

They were waiting for her outside the warehouse. Jace, hands in pockets, was leaning against the stairway railing and watching as the vampires stalked around their broken motorcycles, cursing and swearing. He had a faint smile on his face. Alec and Isabelle stood a little way off. Isabelle was wiping at her eyes, and Clary felt a wave of irrational anger—Isabelle barely knew Simon. This wasn't her disaster. Clary was the one who had the right to be carrying on, not the Shadowhunter girl.

Jace unhitched himself from the railing as Clary emerged. He fell into step beside her, not speaking. He seemed lost in thought. Isabelle and Alec, hurrying ahead, sounded like they were arguing with each other. Clary stepped up her pace a little, craning her neck to hear them better.

"It's not your fault," Alec was saying. He sounded weary, as if he'd been through this sort of thing with his sister before. Clary wondered how many boyfriends she'd turned into rats by accident. "But it ought to teach you not to go to so many Downworld parties," he added. "They're always more trouble than they're worth."

Isabelle sniffed loudly. "If anything had happened to him, I—I don't know what I would have done."

"Probably whatever it is you did before," said Alec in a bored voice. "It's not like you knew him all that well."

"That doesn't mean that I don't—"

"What? Love him?" Alec scoffed, raising his voice. "You need to know someone to love them."

"But that's not all it is." Isabelle sounded almost sad. "Didn't you have any fun at the party, Alec?"

"No."

"I thought you might like Magnus. He's nice, isn't he?"

"Nice?" Alec looked at her as if she were insane. "Kittens are nice. Warlocks are—" He hesitated. "Not," he finished, lamely.

"I thought you might hit it off." Isabelle's eye makeup glittered as bright as tears as she glanced over at her brother. "Get to be friends."

"I have friends," Alec said, and looked over his shoulder, almost as if he couldn't help it, at Jace.

But Jace, his golden head down, lost in thought, didn't notice.

On impulse Clary reached to open the pack and glance into it—and frowned. The pack was open. She flashed back to the party—she'd lifted the pack, pulled the zipper closed. She was sure of it. She yanked the bag open, her heart pounding.

She remembered the time she'd had her wallet stolen on the subway. She remembered opening her bag, not seeing it there, her mouth drying up in surprise—Did I drop it? Have I lost it? And realizing: It's gone. This was like that, only a thousand times worse. Mouth dry as bone, Clary pawed through the pack, shoving aside clothes and sketchpad, her fingernails gathering grit. Nothing.

She'd stopped walking. Jace was hovering just ahead of her, looking impatient, Alec and Isabelle already a block ahead. "What's wrong?" Jace asked, and she could tell he was about to add something sarcastic. He must have seen the look on her face, though, because he didn't. "Clary?"

"He's gone," she whispered. "Simon. He was in my backpack—"

"Did he climb out?"

It wasn't an unreasonable question, but Clary, exhausted and panic-stricken, reacted unreasonably. "Of course he didn't!" she screamed. "What, you think he wants to get smashed under someone's car, killed by a cat—"

"Clary—"

"Shut up!" she screamed, swinging the pack at him. "You were the one who said not to bother changing him back—"

Deftly he caught the pack as she swung it. Taking it out of her hand, he examined it. "The zipper's torn," he said. "From the outside. Someone ripped this bag open."

Shaking her head numbly, Clary could only whisper, "I didn't…"

"I know." His voice was gentle. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Alec! Isabelle! You go on ahead! We'll catch up."

The two figures, already far ahead, paused; Alec hesitated, but his sister caught hold of his arm and pushed him firmly toward the subway entrance. Something pressed against Clary's back: It was Jace's hand, turning her gently around. She let him lead her forward, stumbling over the cracks in the sidewalk, until they were back in the entryway of Magnus's building. The stench of stale alcohol and the sweet, uncanny smell Clary had come to associate with Downworlders filled the tiny space. Taking his hand away from her back, Jace pressed the buzzer over Magnus's name.

"Jace," she said.

He looked down at her. "What?"

She searched for words. "Do you think he's all right?"

"Simon?" He hesitated then, and she thought of Isabelle's words: Don't ask him a question unless you know you can stand the answer. Instead of saying anything, he pressed the buzzer again, harder this time.

This time Magnus answered it, his voice booming through the tiny entryway. "WHO DARES DISTURB MY REST?"

Jace looked almost nervous. "Jace Wayland. Remember? I'm from the Clave."

"Oh, yes." Magnus seemed to have perked up. "Are you the one with the blue eyes?"

"He means Alec," Clary said helpfully.

"No. My eyes are usually described as golden," Jace told the intercom. "And luminous."

"Oh, you're that one." Magnus sounded disappointed. If Clary hadn't been so upset, she would have laughed. "I suppose you'd better come up."

The warlock answered his door wearing a silk kimono printed with dragons, a gold turban, and an expression of barely controlled annoyance.

"I was sleeping," he said loftily.

Jace looked as if he were about to say something rude, possibly about the turban, so Clary interrupted him. "Sorry to bother you—"

Something small and white peered around the warlock's ankles. It had zigzag gray stripes and tufted pink ears that made it look more like a large mouse than a small cat.

"Chairman Meow?" Clary guessed.

Magnus nodded. "He has returned."

Jace regarded the small tabby kitten with some scorn. "That's not a cat," he observed. "It's the size of a hamster."

"I am kindly going to forget you said that," said Magnus, using his foot to nudge Chairman Meow behind him. "Now, exactly what did you come here for?"

Clary held out the torn pack. "It's Simon. He's missing."

"Ah," said Magnus, delicately, "missing what, exactly?"

"Missing," Jace repeated, "as in gone, absent, notable for his lack of presence, disappeared."

"Maybe he's gone and hidden under something," Magnus suggested. "It can't be easy getting used to being a rat, especially for someone so dim-witted in the first place."

"Simon's not dim-witted," Clary protested angrily.

"It's true," Jace agreed. "He just looks dim-witted. Really his intelligence is quite average." His tone was light but his shoulders were tense as he turned to Magnus. "When we were leaving, one of your guests brushed up against Clary. I think he tore her bag open and took the rat. Simon, I mean."

Magnus looked at him. "And?"

"And I need to find out who it was," said Jace steadily. "I'm guessing you know. You are the High Warlock of Brooklyn. I'm thinking not much happens in your own apartment that you don't know about."

Magnus inspected a glittery nail. "You're not wrong."

"Please tell us," Clary said. Jace's hand tightened on her wrist. She knew he wanted her to be quiet, but that was impossible. "Please."

Magnus dropped his hand with a sigh. "Fine. I saw one of the vampire bike kids from the uptown lair leave with a brown rat in his hands. Honestly, I figured it was one of their own. Sometimes the Night Children turn into rats or bats when they get drunk."

Clary's hands were shaking. "But now you think it was Simon?"

"It's just a guess, but it seems likely."

"There's one more thing." Jace spoke calmly enough, but he was on alert now, the way he had been in the apartment before they'd found the Forsaken. "Where's their lair?"

"Their what?"

"The vampires' lair. That's where they went, isn't it?"

"I would imagine so." Magnus looked as if he'd rather be anywhere else.

"I need you to tell me where it is."

Magnus shook his turbaned head. "I'm not setting myself on the bad side of the Night Children for a mundane I don't even know."

"Wait," Clary interrupted. "What would they want with Simon? I thought they weren't allowed to hurt people…"

"My guess?" said Magnus, not unkindly. "They assumed he was a tame rat and thought it would be funny to kill a Shadowhunter's pet. They don't like you much, whatever the Accords might say—and there's nothing in the Covenant about not killing animals."

"They're going to kill him?" Clary said, staring.

"Not necessarily," said Magnus hastily. "They might have thought he was one of their own."

"In which case, what'll happen to him?" Clary said.

"Well, when he turns back into a human, they'll still kill him. But you might have a few more hours."

"Then you have to help us," Clary said to the warlock. "Otherwise Simon will die."

Magnus looked her up and down with a sort of clinical sympathy. "They all die, dear," he said. "You might as well get used to it."

He began to shut the door. Jace stuck out a foot, wedging it open. Magnus sighed. "What now?"

"You still haven't told us where the lair is," Jace said.

"And I'm not going to. I told you—"

It was Clary who cut him off, pushing herself in front of Jace. "You messed with my brain," she said. "Took my memories. Can't you do this one thing for me?"

Magnus narrowed his gleaming cat's eyes. Somewhere in the distance Chairman Meow was crying. Slowly the warlock lowered his head and struck it once, none too gently, against the wall. "The old Hotel Dumont," he said. "Uptown."

"I know where that is." Jace looked pleased.

"We need to get there right away. Do you have a Portal?" Clary demanded, addressing Magnus.

"No." He looked annoyed. "Portals are quite difficult to construct and pose no small risk to their owner. Nasty things can come through them if they're not warded properly. The only ones I know of in New York are the one at Dorothea's and the one at Renwick's, but they're both too far away to be worth the bother of trying to get there, even if you were sure their owners would let you use them, which they probably wouldn't. Got that? Now go away." Magnus stared pointedly at Jace's foot, still blocking the door. Jace didn't move.

"One more thing," Jace said. "Is there a holy place around here?"

"Good idea. If you're going to take on a lair of vampires by yourself, you'd better pray first."

"We need weapons," Jace said tersely. "More than what we've got on us."

Magnus pointed. "There's a Catholic church down on Diamond Street. Will that do?"

Jace nodded, stepping back. "That's—"

The door slammed in their faces. Clary, breathing as if she'd been running, stared at it until Jace took her arm and steered her down the steps and into the night.

14 The Hotel Dumort

At night the Diamond Street church looked spectral, its Gothic arched windows reflecting the moonlight like silvery mirrors. A wrought iron fence surrounded the building and was painted a matte black. Clary rattled the front gate, but a sturdy padlock held it closed. "It's locked," she said, glancing at Jace over her shoulder.

He brandished his stele. "Let me at it."

She watched him as he worked at the lock, watched the lean curve of his back, the swell of muscles under the short sleeves of his T-shirt. The moonlight washed the color out of his hair, turning it more silver than gold.

The padlock hit the ground with a clang, a twisted lump of metal. Jace looked pleased with himself. "As usual," he said, "I'm amazingly good at that."

Clary felt suddenly annoyed. "When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?"

"Exsanguinated," said Jace, impressed. "That's a big word."

"And you're a big—"

"Tsk tsk," he interrupted. "No swearing in church."

"We're not in the church yet," Clary muttered, following him up the stone path to the double front doors. The stone arch above the doors was beautifully carved, an angel looking down from its highest point. Sharply pointed spires were silhouetted black against the night sky, and Clary realized that this was the church she had glimpsed earlier that night from McCarren Park. She bit her lip. "It seems wrong to pick the lock on a church door, somehow."

Jace's profile in the moonlight was serene. "We're not going to," he said, sliding his stele into his pocket. He placed a thin brown hand, marked all over with delicate white scars like a veiling of lace, against the wood of the door, just above the latch. "In the name of the Clave," he said, "I ask entry to this holy place. In the name of the Battle That Never Ends, I ask the use of your weapons. And in the name of the Angel Raziel, I ask your blessings on my mission against the darkness." Clary stared at him. He didn't move, though the night wind blew his hair into his eyes; he blinked, and just as she was about to speak, the door opened with a click and a creak of hinges. It swung inward smoothly before them, opening onto a cool dark empty space, lit by points of fire. Jace stepped back. "After you."

When Clary stepped inside, a wave of cool air enveloped her, along with the smell of stone and candle wax. Dim rows of pews stretched toward the altar, and a bank of candles glowed like a bed of sparks against the far wall. She realized that, apart from the Institute, which didn't really count, she'd never actually been inside a church before. She'd seen pictures, and seen the insides of churches in movies and in anime shows, where they turned up regularly. A scene in one of her favorite anime series took place in a church with a monstrous vampire priest. You were supposed to feel safe inside a church, but she didn't. Strange shapes seemed to loom up at her out of the shadows. She shivered.

"The stone walls keep out the heat," said Jace, noticing.

"It's not that," she said. "You know, I've never been in a church before."

"You've been in the Institute."

"I mean in a real church. For services. That sort of thing."

"Really. Well, this is the nave, where the pews are. It's where people sit during services." They moved forward, their voices echoing off the stone walls. "Up here is the apse. That's where we're standing. And this is the altar, where the priest performs the Eucharist. It's always at the east side of the church." He knelt down in front of the altar, and she thought for a moment that he was praying. The altar itself was high, made of a dark granite, and draped with a red cloth. Behind it loomed an ornate gold screen, etched with the figures of saints and martyrs, each with a flat gold disk behind his head representing a halo.

"Jace," she whispered. "What are you doing?"

He had placed his hands on the stone floor and was moving them back and forth rapidly, as if searching for something, his fingertips stirring up dust. "Looking for weapons."

"Here?"

"They'd be hidden, usually around the altar. Kept for our use in case of emergencies."

"And this is what, some kind of deal you have with the Catholic Church?"

"Not specifically. Demons have been on Earth as long as we have. They're all over the world, in their different forms—Greek daemons, Persian daevas, Hindu asuras, Japanese oni. Most belief systems have some method of incorporating both their existence and the fight against them. Shadowhunters cleave to no single religion, and in turn all religions assist us in our battle. I could as easily have gone for help to a Jewish synagogue or a Shinto temple, or—Ah. Here it is." He brushed dust aside as she knelt down beside him. Carved into one of the octagonal stones before the altar was a rune. Clary recognized it, almost as easily as if she were reading a word in English. It was the rune that meant "Nephilim."

Jace took out his stele and touched it to the stone. With a grinding noise it moved back, revealing a dark compartment underneath. Inside the compartment was a long wooden box; Jace lifted the lid, and regarded the neatly arranged objects inside with satisfaction.

"What are all these?" Clary asked.

"Vials of holy water, blessed knives, steel and silver blades," Jace said, piling the weapons on the floor beside him, "electrum wire—not much use at the moment, but it's always good to have spare—silver bullets, charms of protection, crucifixes, stars of David—"

"Jesus," said Clary.

"I doubt he'd fit."

"Jace." Clary was appalled.

"What?"

"I don't know, it seems wrong to make jokes like that in a church."

He shrugged. "I'm not really a believer."

Clary looked at him in surprise. "You're not?"

He shook his head. Hair fell over his face, but he was examining a vial of clear liquid and didn't reach up to push it back. Clary's fingers itched with the desire to do it for him. "You thought I was religious?" he said.

"Well." She hesitated. "If there are demons, then there must be…"

"Must be what?" Jace slid the vial into his pocket. "Ah," he said. "You mean if there's this"—and he pointed down, toward the floor—"there must be this." He pointed up, toward the ceiling.

"It stands to reason. Doesn't it?"

Jace lowered his hand and picked up a blade, examining the hilt. "I'll tell you," he said. "I've been killing demons for a third of my life. I must have sent five hundred of them back to whatever hellish dimension they crawled out of. And in all that time—in all that time—I've never seen an angel. Never even heard of anyone who has."

"But it was an angel who created Shadowhunters in the first place," Clary said. "That's what Hodge said."

"It makes a nice story." Jace looked at her through eyes slitted like a cat's. "My father believed in God," he said. "I don't."

"At all?" She wasn't sure why she was needling him—she'd never given any thought to whether she believed in God and angels and so forth herself, and if asked, would have said she didn't. There was something about Jace, though, that made her want to push him, crack that shell of cynicism and make him admit he believed in something, felt something, cared about anything at all.

"Let me put it this way," he said, sliding a pair of knives into his belt. The faint light that filtered through the stained-glass windows threw squares of color across his face. "My father believed in a righteous God. Deus volt, that was his motto— 'because God wills it.' It was the Crusaders' motto, and they went out to battle and were slaughtered, just like my father. And when I saw him lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way, we're on our own."

They were the only passengers in their train car heading back uptown. Clary sat without speaking, thinking about Simon. Every once in a while Jace would look over at her as if he were about to say something, before lapsing back into an uncharacteristic silence.

When they climbed out of the subway, the streets were deserted, the air heavy and metal-tasting, the bodegas and Laundromats and check-cashing centers silent behind their nighttime doors of corrugated steel. They found the hotel, finally, after an hour of looking, on a side street off 116th. They'd walked past it twice, thinking it was just another abandoned apartment building, before Clary saw the sign. It had come loose from a nail and it dangled hidden behind a stunted tree, hotel dumont, it should have said, but someone had painted out the N and replaced it with an R.

"Hotel Dumort," Jace said when she pointed it out to him. "Cute."

Clary had only had two years of French, but it was enough to get the joke. "Du mort," she said. "Of death."

Jace nodded. He had gone alert all over, like a cat who sees a mouse whisking behind a sofa.

"But it can't be the hotel," Clary said. "The windows are all boarded up, and the door's been bricked over—Oh," she finished, catching his look. "Right. Vampires. But how do they get inside?"

"They fly," Jace said, and indicated the upper floors of the building. It had once, clearly, been a graceful and luxurious hotel. The stone façade was elegantly decorated with carved curlicues and fleur-de-lis, dark and eroded from years of exposure to polluted air and acid rain.

"We don't fly," Clary felt impelled to point out.

"No," Jace agreed. "We don't fly. We break and enter." He started across the street toward the hotel.

"Flying sounds like more fun," Clary said, hurrying to catch up with him.

"Right now everything sounds like more fun." She wondered if he meant it. There was an excitement about him, an anticipation of the hunt that didn't look to her as if he were as unhappy as he claimed. He's killed more demons than anyone else his age. You didn't kill that many demons by hanging back reluctantly from a fight.

A hot wind had come up, stirring the leaves on the stunted trees outside the hotel, sending the trash in the gutters and on the sidewalk skittering across the cracked pavement. The area was oddly deserted, Clary thought—usually, in Manhattan, there was always someone else on the street, even at four in the morning. Several of the streetlights lining the sidewalk were out, though the one closest to the hotel cast a dim yellow glow across the cracked pathway that led up to what had once been the front door.

"Stay out of the light," Jace said, pulling her toward him by her sleeve. "They might be watching from the windows. And don't look up," he added, but it was too late. Clary had already glanced up at the shattered windows of the higher floors. For a moment she half-thought she glimpsed a flicker of movement at one of the windows, a flash of whiteness that could have been a face, or a hand drawing back a heavy drape—

"Come on." Jace drew her with him to melt into the shadows closer to the hotel. She felt her heightened nervousness in her spine, in the pulse in her wrists, in the hard beat of blood in her ears. The faint drone of distant cars seemed very far away, the only sound the crunch of her own shoes on the garbage-strewn pavement. She wished she could walk soundlessly, like a Shadowhunter. Maybe someday she'd ask Jace to teach her.

They slipped around the corner of the hotel into an alley that had probably once been a service lane for deliveries. It was narrow, choked with garbage: moldy cardboard boxes, empty glass bottles, shredded plastic, scattered things that Clary thought at first were toothpicks, but up close looked like—

"Bones," Jace said flatly. "Dog bones, cat bones. Don't look too closely; going through vampires' trash is rarely a pretty picture."

She swallowed down her nausea. "Well," she said, "at least we know we're in the right place," and was rewarded by the glint of respect that showed, briefly, in Jace's eyes.

"Oh, we're in the right place," he said. "Now we just have to figure out how to get inside."

There had clearly been windows here once, now bricked up. There was no door and no sign of a fire escape. "When this was a hotel," Jace said slowly, "they must have gotten their deliveries here. I mean, they wouldn't have brought things through the front door, and there's no place else for trucks to pull up. So there must be a way in."

Clary thought of the little shops and bodegas near her house in Brooklyn. She'd seen them get their deliveries, early in the morning while she was walking to school, seen the Korean deli owners opening the metal doors set into the pavement outside their front doors, so they could carry boxes of paper towels and cat food into their supply cellars. "I bet the doors are in the ground. Probably buried under all this garbage."

Jace, a beat behind her, nodded. "That's what I was thinking." He sighed. "I guess we'd better move the trash. We can start with the Dumpster." He pointed at it, looking distinctly unenthusiastic.

"You'd rather face a ravening horde of demons, wouldn't you?" Clary said.

"At least they wouldn't be crawling with maggots. Well," he added thoughtfully, "not most of them, anyway. There was this one demon, once, that I tracked down to the sewers under Grand Central—"

"Don't." Clary raised a warning hand. "I'm not really in the mood right now."

"That's got to be the first time a girl's ever said that to me," Jace mused.

"Stick with me and it won't be the last."

The corner of Jace's mouth twitched. "This is hardly the time for idle banter. We have garbage to haul." He stalked over to the Dumpster and took hold of one side of it. "You get the other. We'll tip it."

"Tipping it will make too much noise," Clary argued, taking up her station on the other side of the huge container. It was a standard city trash bin, painted dark green, splotched with strange stains. It stank, even more than most Dumpsters, of garbage and something else, something thick and sweet that filled her throat and made her want to gag. "We should push it."

"Now, look—," Jace began, when a voice spoke, suddenly, out of the shadows behind them.

"Do you really think you should be doing that?" it asked.

Clary froze, staring into the shadows at the mouth of the alley. For a panicked moment she wondered if she'd imagined the voice, but Jace was frozen too, astonishment on his face. It was rare that anything surprised him, rarer that anyone snuck up on him. He stepped away from the Dumpster, his hand sliding toward his belt, his voice flat. "Is there someone there?"

"Dios mío." The voice was male, amused, speaking a liquid Spanish. "You're not from this neighborhood, are you?"

He stepped forward, out of the thickest of the shadows. The shape of him evolved slowly: a boy, not much older than Jace and probably six inches shorter. He was thin-boned, with the big dark eyes and honey-colored skin of a Diego Rivera painting. He wore black slacks and an open-necked white shirt, and a gold chain around his neck that sparked faintly as he moved closer to the light.

"You could say that," Jace said carefully, not moving his hand away from his belt.

"You shouldn't be here." The boy raked a hand through the thick black curls that spilled over his forehead. "This place is dangerous."

He means it's a bad neighborhood. Clary almost wanted to laugh, even though it wasn't at all funny. "We know," she said. "We just got a little lost, that's all."

The boy gestured to the Dumpster. "What were you doing with that?"

I'm no good at lying on the spot, Clary thought, and looked at Jace, who, she hoped, would be excellent at it.

He disappointed her immediately. "We were trying to get into the hotel. We thought there might be a cellar door behind the trash bin."

The boy's eyes widened in disbelief. "Puta madre—why would you want to do something like that?"

Jace shrugged. "For a prank, you know. Just a little fun."

"You don't understand. This place is haunted, cursed. Bad luck." He shook his head vigorously and said several things in Spanish that Clary suspected had to do with the stupidity of spoiled white kids in general and their stupidity in particular. "Walk with me, I'll take you to the subway."

"We know where the subway is," said Jace.

The boy laughed a soft, vibrant laugh. "Claro. Of course you do, but if you go with me, no one will bother you. You do not want trouble, do you?"

"That depends," Jace said, and moved so that his jacket opened slightly, showing the glint of the weapons thrust through his belt. "How much are they paying you to keep people away from the hotel?"

The boy glanced behind him, and Clary's nerves twanged as she imagined the narrow alley mouth filling up with other shadowy figures, white-faced, red-mouthed, the glint of fangs as sudden as metal striking sparks from pavement. When he looked back at Jace, his mouth was a thin line. "How much are who paying me, chico?"

"The vampires. How much are they paying you? Or is it something else—did they tell you they'd make you one of them, offer you eternal life, no pain, no sickness, you get to live forever? Because it's not worth it. Life stretches out very long when you never see the sunlight, chico," said Jace.

The boy was expressionless. "My name is Raphael. Not chico."

"But you know what we're talking about. You know about the vampires?" Clary said.

Raphael turned his face to the side and spit. When he looked back at them, his eyes were full of a glittering hate. "Los vampiros, sí, the blood-drinking animals. Even before the hotel was boarded up, there were stories, the laughter late at night, the small animals disappearing, the sounds—" He stopped, shaking his head. "Everyone in the neighborhood knows to stay away, but what can you do? You cannot call the police and tell them your problem is vampires."

"Have you ever seen them?" Jace asked. "Or known anyone who has?"

Raphael spoke slowly. "There were some boys, once, a group of friends. They thought they had a good idea, to go into the hotel and kill the monsters inside. They took guns with them, knives too, all blessed by a priest. They never came out. My aunt, she found their clothes later, in front of the house."

"Your aunt's house?" said Jace.

"Sí. One of the boys was my brother," said Raphael flatly. "So now you know why I walk by here in the middle of the night sometimes, on the way home from my aunt's house, and why I warned you away. If you go in there, you will not come out again."

"My friend is in there," said Clary. "We came to get him."

"Ah," said Raphael, "then perhaps I cannot warn you away."

"No," Jace said. "But don't worry. What happened to your friends won't happen to us." He took one of the angel blades from his belt and held it up, the faint light emanating from it lit the hollows under his cheekbones, shadowed his eyes. "I've killed plenty of vampires before. Their hearts don't beat, but they can still die."

Raphael inhaled sharply and said something in Spanish too low and rapid for Clary to understand. He came toward them, almost stumbling over a pile of crumpled plastic wrappers in his haste. "I know what you are—I have heard about your kind, from the old padre at St. Cecilia's. I thought that was just a story."

"All the stories are true," Clary said, but so quietly that he didn't seem to hear her. He was looking at Jace, his fists clenched.

"I want to go with you," he said.

Jace shook his head. "No. Absolutely not."

"I can show you how to get inside," Raphael said.

Jace wavered, temptation plain on his face. "We can't bring you."

"Fine." Raphael stalked by him and kicked aside a heap of trash piled against a wall. There was a metal grating there, thin bars filmed with a brownish red coating of rust. He knelt down, took hold of the bars, and lifted the grating away. "This is how my brother and his friends got in. It goes down to the basement, I think." He looked up as Jace and Clary joined him. Clary half-held her breath; the smell of the garbage was overwhelming, and even in the darkness she could see the darting shapes of cockroaches crawling over the piles.

A thin smile had formed, just at the corners of Jace's mouth. He still had the angel blade in his hand. The witchlight that came from it lent his face a ghostly cast, reminding her of the way Simon had held a flashlight under his chin while telling her horror stories when they were both eleven. "Thanks," he said to Raphael. "This will work just fine."

The other boy's face was pale. "You go in there and do for your friend what I could not do for my brother."

Jace slipped the seraph blade back into his belt and glanced at Clary. "Follow me," he said, and slid through the grating in a single smooth move, feet first. She held her breath, waiting for a shout of agony or amazement, but there was only the soft thump of feet landing on solid ground. "It's fine," he called up, his voice muffled. "Jump down and I'll catch you."

She looked at Raphael. "Thanks for your help."

He said nothing, only held out his hand. She used it to steady herself while she maneuvered into position. His fingers were cold. He let go as she dropped down through the grating. It was only a second's fall and Jace caught her, her dress rucking up around her thighs and his hand grazing her legs as she slid into his arms. He let her go almost immediately. "You all right?"

She pulled her dress down, glad he couldn't see her in the dark. "I'm fine."

Jace pulled the dimly glowing angel blade out of his belt and lifted it, letting its growing illumination wash over their surroundings. They were standing in a shallow, low-ceilinged space with a cracked concrete floor. Squares of dirt showed where the floor was broken, and Clary could see that black vines had begun to twine up the walls. A doorway, missing its door, opened onto another room.

A loud thump made her start, and she turned to see Raphael landing, knees bent, just a few feet from her. He had followed them through the grating. He straightened up and grinned manically.

Jace looked furious. "I told you—"

"And I heard you." Raphael waved a dismissive hand. "What are you going to do about it? I can't get back out the way we came in, and you can't just leave me here for the dead to find … can you?"

"I'm thinking about it," Jace said. He looked tired, Clary saw with some surprise, the shadows under his eyes more pronounced.

Raphael pointed. "We must go that way, toward the stairs. They are up on the higher floors of the hotel. You will see." He pushed past Jace and through the narrow doorway. Jace looked after him, shaking his head.

"I'm really starting to hate mundanes," he said.

The lower floor of the hotel was a warren of mazelike corridors opening onto empty storage rooms, a deserted laundry—moldy stacks of linen towels piled high in rotted wicker baskets—even a ghostly kitchen, banks of stainless steel counters stretching away into the shadows. Most of the staircases leading upstairs were gone; not rotted but deliberately chopped away, reduced to stacks of kindling shoved against walls, bits of once-luxurious Persian carpet clinging to them like blossoms of furry mold.

The missing stairs baffled Clary. What did vampires have against stairs? They finally found an unharmed set, tucked away behind the laundry. Maids must have used it to carry linens up and down the stairs in the days before elevators. Dust lay thick on the steps now, like a layer of powdery gray snow that made Clary cough.

"Shh," hissed Raphael. "They will hear you. We are close to where they sleep."

"How do you know?" she whispered back. He wasn't even supposed to be there. What gave him the right to lecture her about noise?

"I can feel it." The corner of his eye twitched, and she saw that he was as scared as she was. "Can't you?"

She shook her head. She felt nothing, other than strangely cold; after the stifling heat of the night outside, the chill inside the hotel was intense.

At the top of the stairs was a door on which the painted word "Lobby" was barely legible beneath years of accumulated dirt. The door sprayed rust when Jace pushed it open. Clary braced herself—

But the room beyond was empty. They were in a large foyer, its rotting carpeting torn back to show the splintered floorboards beneath. Once the centerpiece of this room had been a grand staircase, gracefully curving, lined with gilt banisters and richly carpeted in gold and scarlet. Now all that remained were the higher steps, leading up into blackness. The remainder of the staircase ended just above their heads, in midair. The sight was as surreal as one of the abstract Magritte paintings Jocelyn had loved. This one, Clary thought, would be called The Stairs to Nowhere.

Her voice sounded as dry as the dust that coated everything. "What do vampires have against stairs?"

"Nothing," said Jace. "They just don't need to use them."

"It is a way of showing that this place is one of theirs." Raphael's eyes were bright. He seemed almost excited. Jace glanced at him sideways.

"Have you ever actually seen a vampire, Raphael?" he asked.

Raphael glanced at him almost absently. "I know what they look like. They are paler, thinner than human beings, but very strong. They walk like cats and spring with the swiftness of serpents. They are beautiful and terrible. Like this hotel."

"You think it's beautiful?" Clary asked, surprised.

"You can see where it was, years ago. Like an old woman who was once beautiful, but time has taken her beauty away. You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people. Not the way it is now, so—" He broke off, searching for a word.

"Truncated?" Jace suggested dryly.

Raphael looked almost startled, as if Jace had broken him out of a reverie. He laughed shakily and turned away.

Clary turned to Jace. "Where are they, anyway? The vampires, I mean."

"Upstairs, probably. They like to be high up when they sleep, like bats. And it's nearly sunrise."

Like puppets with their heads attached to strings, Clary and Raphael both looked up at the same time. There was nothing above them but the frescoed ceiling, cracked and black in places as if it had been burned in a fire. An archway to their left led farther into darkness; the pillars on either side were engraved with a motif of leaves and flowers. As Raphael glanced back down, a scar at the base of his throat, very white against his brown skin, flashed like a winking eye. She wondered how he'd gotten it.

"I think we should go back to the servants' stairs," she whispered. "I feel too exposed out here."

Jace nodded. "You realize, once we get there, you'll have to call out for Simon and hope he can hear you?"

She wondered if the fear she felt showed on her face. "I—"

Her words were cut short by a bloodcurdling scream. Clary whirled.

Raphael. He was gone, no marks in the dust showing where he might have walked—or been dragged. She reached for Jace, reflexively, but he was already moving, running toward the gaping arch in the far wall and the shadows beyond. She couldn't see him but followed the darting witchlight he carried, like a traveler being led through a swamp by a treacherous will-o'-the-wisp.

Beyond the arch was what had once been a grand ballroom. The ruined floor was white marble, now so badly cracked that it resembled a sea of floating arctic ice. Curved balconies ran along the walls, their railings veiled in rust. Gold-framed mirrors hung at intervals between them, each crowned with a gilded cupid's head. Spiderwebs drifted in the clammy air like ancient wedding veils.

Raphael was standing in the center of the room, his arms at his sides. Clary ran to him, Jace following more slowly behind her. "Are you all right?" she asked breathlessly.

He nodded slowly. "I thought I saw a movement in the shadows. It was nothing."

"We've decided to head back to the servants' stairs," Jace said. "There's nothing on this floor."

Raphael nodded. "Good idea."

He headed for the door, not looking to see if they followed. He had gotten only a few steps when Jace said, "Raphael?"

Raphael turned, eyes widening inquisitively, and Jace threw his knife.

Raphael's reflexes were quick, but not quick enough. The blade struck home, the force of the impact knocking him over. His feet went out from under him and he fell heavily to the cracked marble floor. In the dim witchlight his blood looked black.

"Jace," Clary hissed in disbelief, shock pounding through her. He'd said he hated mundanes, but he'd never—

As she turned to go to Raphael, Jace shoved her brutally aside. He flung himself on the other boy and grabbed for the knife sticking out of Raphael's chest.

But Raphael was faster. He seized the knife, then screamed as his hand came in contact with the cross-shaped hilt. It clattered to the marble floor, blade smeared black. Jace had one hand fisted in the material of Raphael's shirt, Sanvi in the other. It was glowing with such a bright light that Clary could see colors again: the peeling royal blue of the wallpaper, the gold flecks in the marble floor, the red stain spreading across Raphael's chest.

But Raphael was laughing. "You missed," he said, and grinned for the first time, showing pointed white incisors. "You missed my heart."

Jace tightened his grip. "You moved at the last minute," he said. "That was very inconsiderate."

Raphael frowned and spat, red. Clary stepped back, staring in dawning horror.

"When did you figure it out?" he demanded. His accent had faded, his words more precise and clipped now.

"I guessed in the alley," Jace said. "But I figured you'd get us inside the hotel, then turn on us. Once we'd trespassed, we'd have been out of the protection of the Covenant. Fair game. When you didn't, I thought I might have been wrong. Then I saw that scar on your throat." He sat back a little, still holding the blade at Raphael's throat. "I thought when I first saw that chain that it looked like the sort you'd hang a cross from. And you did, didn't you, when you went out to see your family? What's the scar of a little burn when your kind heal so quickly?"

Raphael laughed. "Was that all? My scar?"

"When you left the foyer, your feet didn't leave marks in the dust. Then I knew."

"It wasn't your brother who went in here looking for monsters and never came out, was it?" Clary said, realizing. "It was you."

"You are both very clever," Raphael said. "Although not quite clever enough. Look up," he said, and lifted a hand to point at the ceiling.

Jace knocked the hand away without moving his glance from Raphael. "Clary. What do you see?"

She raised her head slowly, dread curdling in the pit of her stomach.

You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people. They were filled with people now, row on row of vampires with their dead-white faces, their red stretched mouths, staring bemusedly downward.

Jace was still looking at Raphael. "You called them. Didn't you?"

Raphael was still grinning. The blood had stopped spreading from the wound in his chest. "Does it matter? There are too many of them, even for you, Wayland."

Jace said nothing. Though he hadn't moved, he was breathing in short quick pants, and Clary could almost feel the strength of his desire to kill the vampire boy, to shove the knife through his heart and wipe that grin off his face forever. "Jace," she said warningly. "Don't kill him."

"Why not?"

"Maybe we can use him as a hostage."

Jace's eyes widened. "A hostage?"

She could see them, more of them, filling the arched doorway, moving as silently as the Brothers of the Bone City. But the Brothers had not had skin so white and colorless, nor hands that curled into claws at the tips…

Clary licked her dry lips. "I know what I'm doing. Get him on his feet, Jace."

Jace looked at her, then shrugged. "All right."

Raphael snapped, "This isn't funny."

"That's why no one's laughing." Jace stood, hauling Raphael upright, jamming the tip of his knife between Raphael's shoulder blades. "I can pierce your heart just as easily through your back," he said. "I wouldn't move if I were you."

Clary turned away from them to face the oncoming dark shapes. She flung out a hand. "Stop right there," she said. "Or he'll put that blade through Raphael's heart."

A sort of murmur ran through the crowd that could have been whispering or laughter. "Stop," Clary said again, and this time Jace did something, she didn't see what, that made Raphael cry out in surprised pain.

One of the vampires flung an arm out to hold back his companions. Clary recognized him as the thin blond boy with the earring that she'd seen at Magnus's party. "She means it," he said. "They are Shadowhunters."

Another vampire pushed her way through the crowd to stand at his side—a pretty blue-haired Asian girl in a silver foil skirt. Clary wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones. Maybe they didn't make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn't want to live forever. "Shadowhunters trespassing on our territory," she said. "They are out of the protection of the Covenant. I say we kill them—they have killed enough of ours."

"Which of you is the master of this place?" Jace said, his voice very flat. "Let him step forward."

The girl bared her pointed teeth. "Do not use Clave language on us, Shadowhunter. You have broken your precious Covenant, coming in here. The Law will not protect you."

"That's enough, Lily," said the blond boy sharply. "Our master is not here. She is in Idris."

"Someone must rule you in her stead," Jace observed.

There was a silence. The vampires up in the balconies were hanging off the railings, leaning down to hear what was being said. Finally, "Raphael leads us," said the blond vampire.

The blue-haired girl, Lily, let out a hiss of disapproval. "Jacob—"

"I propose a trade," Clary said quickly, cutting off Lily's tirade and Jacob's retort. "By now you must know you took home too many people from the party tonight. One of them was my friend Simon."

Jacob raised his eyebrows. "You're friends with a vampire?"

"He's not a vampire. And not a Shadowhunter, either," she added, seeing Lily's pale eyes narrow. "Just an ordinary human boy."

"We didn't take any human boys home with us from Magnus's party. That would have been a violation of the Covenant."

"He'd been transformed into a rat. A small brown rat," said Clary. "Someone might have thought he was a pet, or …"

Her voice trailed off. They were staring at her as if she were insane. Cold despair seeped into her bones.

"Let me get this straight," Lily said. "You're offering to trade Raphael's life for a rat?"

Clary looked helplessly back at Jace. He gave her a look that said, This was your idea. You're on your own.

"Yes," she said, turning back to the vampires. "That's the trade we're offering."

They stared at her, white faces nearly expressionless. In another context Clary would have said that they looked baffled.

She could feel Jace standing behind her, hear the rasp of his breathing. She wondered if he was racking his brain trying to figure out why he'd let her drag them both here in the first place. She wondered if he was starting to hate her.

"Do you mean this rat?"

Clary blinked. Another vampire, a thin black boy with dreadlocks, had pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He was holding something in his hands, something brown that squirmed feebly. "Simon?" she whispered.

The rat squeaked and started to thrash wildly in the boy's grip. He looked down at the captive rodent with an expression of distaste. "Man, I thought he was Zeke. I wondered why he was copping such an attitude." He shook his head, dreadlocks bouncing. "I say she can have him, dude. He's already bitten me five times."

Clary reached out for Simon, her hands aching to hold him. But Lily stepped in front of her before she could take more than a step in his direction. "Wait," Lily said. "How do we know you won't just take the rat and kill Raphael anyway?"

"We'll give our word," Clary said immediately, then tensed, waiting for them to laugh.

Nobody laughed. Raphael swore softly in Spanish. Lily looked curiously at Jace.

"Clary," he said. There was an undercurrent of exasperated desperation in his voice. "Is this really a—"

"No oath, no trade," said Lily immediately, seizing on his uncertain tone. "Elliott, hold on to that rat."

The dreadlocked boy tightened his grip on Simon, who sank his teeth savagely into Elliott's hand. "Man," he said glumly. "That hurt."

Clary took the opportunity to whisper to Jace. "Just swear! What can it hurt?"

"Swearing for us isn't like it is for you mundanes," he snapped back angrily. "I'll be bound forever to any oath I make."

"Oh, yeah? What would happen if you broke it?"

"I wouldn't break it, that's the point—"

"Lily is right," said Jacob. "An oath is required. Swear that you won't hurt Raphael. Even if we give you the rat back."

"I won't hurt Raphael," Clary said immediately. "No matter what."

Lily smiled at her tolerantly. "It isn't you we're worried about." She shot a pointed look at Jace, who was holding Raphael so tightly that his knuckles were white. A patch of sweat darkened the cloth of his shirt, just between his shoulder blades.

He said, "All right. I swear it."

"Speak the oath," Lily said swiftly. "Swear on the Angel. Say it all."

Jace shook his head. "You swear first."

His words fell into the silence like stones, sending a rippling murmur through the crowd. Jacob looked concerned; Lily furious. "Not a chance, Shadowhunter."

"We have your leader." The tip of Jace's knife dug farther into Raphael's throat. "And what have you got there? A rat."

Simon, pinned in Elliott's hands, squeaked furiously. Clary longed to snatch him up, but held herself back. "Jace—"

Lily looked toward Raphael. "Master?"

Raphael had his head down, his dark curls falling to hide his face. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, trickled down the bare brown skin underneath. "A pretty important rat," he said, "for you to come all the way here for him. It is you, Shadowhunter, I think, who will swear first."

Jace's grip on him tightened convulsively. Clary saw the swell of the muscles under his skin, the whitening of his fingers and at the sides of his mouth as he fought his anger. "The rat's a mundane," he said sharply. "If you kill him, you'll be subject to the Law—"

"He is on our territory. Trespassers are not protected by the Covenant, you know that—"

"You brought him here," Clary interjected. "He didn't trespass."

"Technicalities," said Raphael, grinning at her despite the knife at his throat. "Besides. You think we do not hear the rumors, the news that is running through Downworld like blood through veins? Valentine is back. There will be no Accords and no Covenant soon enough."

Jace's head jerked up. "Where did you hear that?"

Raphael frowned scornfully. "All Downworld knows it. He paid a warlock to raise a pack of Raveners only a week ago. He has brought his Forsaken to seek the Mortal Cup. When he finds it, there will be no more false peace between us, only war. No Law will prevent me from tearing your heart out on the street, Shadowhunter—"

That was enough for Clary. She dove for Simon, shouldering Lily aside, and snatched the rat out of Elliott's hands. Simon scrabbled up her arm, gripping her sleeve with frantic paws.

"It's okay," she whispered, "it's okay." Though she knew it wasn't. She turned to run, and felt hands catch at her jacket, holding her. She struggled, but her efforts to tear herself free of the hands that held her—Lily's, narrow and bony with black fingernails—were hampered by her fear of dislodging Simon, who clung to her jacket with paws and teeth. "Let go!" she screamed, kicking out at the vampire girl. Her booted toe connected, hard, and Lily shouted in pain and rage. She whipped her hand forward, striking Clary's cheek with enough force to rock her head back.

Clary staggered and nearly fell. She heard Jace shout her name, and turned to see that he had let go of Raphael and was racing toward her. Clary tried to go to him, but her shoulders were gripped by Jacob, his fingers digging into her skin.

Clary cried out—and the noise was lost in a larger shriek as Jace, snatching one of the glass vials from his jacket, flung its contents toward her. She felt cool wetness splash her face, and heard Jacob scream as the water touched his skin. Smoke rose from his fingers and he released Clary, howling a high animal howl. Lily darted toward him, crying out his name, and in the pandemonium, Clary felt someone seize her wrist. She struggled to yank herself away.

"Stop it—you idiot—it's me," Jace panted in her ear.

"Oh!" She relaxed momentarily, then tensed again, seeing a familiar shape loom up behind Jace. She cried out and Jace ducked and spun just as Raphael leaped at him, teeth bared, quick as a cat. His fangs caught Jace's shirt near the shoulder and tore the fabric lengthwise as Jace staggered. Raphael clung on like a gripping spider, teeth snapping at Jace's throat. Clary fumbled in her pack for the dagger Jace had given her—

A small brown shape streaked across the floor, shot between Clary's feet, and launched itself at Raphael.

Raphael screamed. Simon hung grimly from his forearm, his sharp rat-teeth sunk deep into the flesh. Raphael let go of Jace, flailing backward, blood spurting as a stream of Spanish obscenities poured from his mouth.

Jace gaped, his mouth open. "Son of a—"

Regaining his balance, Raphael tore the rat free from his arm and flung him to the marble floor. Simon squeaked once in pain, then dashed over to Clary. She bent down and snatched him up, holding him against her chest as tightly as she could without hurting him. She could feel the hammering beat of his tiny heart against her fingers. "Simon," she whispered. "Simon—"

"There's no time for that. Hold on to him." Jace had caught at her right arm, gripping with painful force. In the other hand he held a glowing seraph blade. "Move."

He began to half-pull her, half-push her, to the edge of the crowd. The vampires winced away from the light of the seraph blade as it swept over them, all of them hissing like scalded cats.

"Enough standing around!" It was Raphael. His arm was streaming blood, his lips curled back from his pointed incisors. He glared at the teeming mass of vampires milling in confusion. "Seize the trespassers," he shouted. "Kill them both—the rat as well!"

The vampires started toward Jace and Clary, some of them walking, others gliding, others swooping down from the balconies above like flapping black bats. Jace increased his pace as they broke free of the crowd, heading toward the far wall. Clary squirmed, half-turning to look up at him. "Shouldn't we stand back to back or something?"

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. In movies that's what they do in this kind of… situation."

She felt him shake. Was he frightened? No, he was laughing. "You," he breathed. "You are the most—"

"The most what?" she demanded indignantly. They were still backing up, stepping carefully to avoid the broken bits of furniture and smashed marble that littered the floor. Jace held the angel blade high above both their heads. She could see how the vampires circled around the edges of the glimmering circle it cast. She wondered how long it would hold them off.

"Nothing," he said. "This isn't a situation, okay? I save that word for when things get really bad."

"Really bad? This isn't really bad? What do you want, a nuclear—"

She broke off with a scream as Lily, braving the light, launched herself at Jace, her teeth bared in a searing snarl. Jace seized the second blade from his belt and hurled it through the air; Lily fell back screeching, a long gash sizzling down her arm. As she staggered, the other vampires surged forward around her. There were so many of them, Clary thought, so many—

She fumbled at her belt, her fingers closing around the hilt of the dagger. It felt cold and foreign in her hand. She didn't know how to use a knife. She'd never hit anyone, let alone stabbed them. She'd even skipped gym class the day they'd learned how to ward off muggers and rapists with ordinary objects like car keys and pencils. She pulled the knife free, raised it in a shaking hand—

The windows exploded inward in a shower of broken glass. She heard herself cry out, saw the vampires—barely an arm's length from her and Jace—whirl in astonishment, shock mingling with terror on their faces. Through the shattered windows came dozens of sleek shapes, four-footed and low to the ground, their coats scattering moonlight and broken bits of glass. Their eyes were blue fire, and from their throats came a combined low growl that sounded like the roiling crash of a waterfall.

Wolves.

"Now this," said Jace, "is a situation."

15 High and Dry

The wolves crouched, low and snarling, and the vampires, looking stunned, backed away. Only Raphael held his ground. He still clutched his wounded arm, his shirt a smeared mess of blood and dirt. "Los Niños de la Luna," he hissed. Even Clary, whose Spanish was almost nonexistent, knew what he had said. The Moon's Children—werewolves. "I thought they hated each other," she whispered to Jace. "Vampires and werewolves."

"They do. They never come to each other's lairs. Never. The Covenant forbids it." He sounded almost indignant. "Something must have happened. This is bad. Very bad."

"How can it be worse than it was before?"

"Because," he said, "we're about to be in the middle of a war."

"HOW DARE YOU ENTER OUR PLACE?" Raphael screamed. His face was scarlet, suffused with blood.

The largest of the wolves, a brindled gray monster with teeth like a shark's, gave a panting doglike chuckle. As he moved forward, between one step and the next he seemed to shift and change like a wave rising and curling. Now he was a tall heavily muscled man with long hair that hung in gray rope-like tangles. He wore jeans and a thick leather jacket, and there was still something wolfish in the cast of his lean, weathered face. "We didn't come for a blooding," he said. "We came for the girl."

Raphael managed to look furious and astounded at once. "Who?"

"The human girl." The werewolf flung out a stiff arm, pointing at Clary.

She was too shocked to move. Simon, who had been squirming in her grasp, went still. Behind her Jace muttered something that sounded distinctly blasphemous. "You didn't tell me you knew any werewolves." She could hear the slight catch under his flat tone—he was as surprised as she was.

"I don't," she said.

"This is bad," said Jace.

"You said that before."

"It seemed worth repeating."

"Well, it wasn't." Clary shrank back against him. "Jace. They're all looking at me."

Every face was turned to her; most looked astonished. Raphael's eyes were narrowed. He turned back to the werewolf, slowly. "You can't have her," he said. "She trespassed on our ground; therefore she's ours."

The werewolf laughed. "I'm so glad you said that," he said, and launched himself forward. In midair his body rippled, and he was again a wolf, coat bristling, jaws gaping, ready to tear. He struck Raphael square in the chest, and the two went over in a writhing, snarling tangle. With answering howls of rage, the vampires charged the werewolves, who met them head-on in the center of the ballroom.

The noise was like nothing Clary had ever heard. If Bosch's paintings of hell had come with a soundtrack, they would have sounded like this.

Jace whistled. "Raphael is really having an exceptionally bad night."

"So what?" Clary had no sympathy for the vampire. "What are we going to do?"

He glanced around. They were pinned in a corner by the churning mass of bodies; though they were being ignored for now, it wouldn't be for long. Before Clary could voice this thought, Simon suddenly squirmed violently free of her grasp and leaped to the floor. "Simon!" she screamed as he dashed for the corner and a moldering pile of rotted velvet drapes. "Simon, stop!"

Jace's eyebrows made quizzical peaks. "What is he—" He grabbed for her arm, jerking her back. "Clary, don't chase the rat. He's fleeing. That's what rats do."

She shot him a furious look. "He's not a rat. He's Simon. And he bit Raphael for you, you ungrateful cretin." She yanked her arm free and dashed after Simon, who was crouched in the folds of the drapes, chittering excitedly and pawing at them. Belatedly realizing what he was trying to tell her, she yanked the drapes aside. They were slimy with mold, but behind them was—

"A door," she breathed. "You genius rat."

Simon squeaked modestly as she snatched him up. Jace was right behind her. "A door, eh? Well, does it open?"

She grabbed for the knob and turned to him, crestfallen. "It's locked. Or stuck."

Jace threw himself against the door. It didn't budge. He cursed. "My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health."

"Just break the door down, will you?"

He looked past her with wide eyes. "Clary—"

She turned. A huge wolf had broken away from the melee and was racing toward her, ears flattened to its narrow head. It was huge, gray-black and brindled, with a long lolling red tongue. Clary screamed. Jace threw himself against the door again, still cursing. She reached for her belt, grabbed the dagger, and threw it.

She'd never thrown a weapon before, never even thought of throwing one. The closest she'd come to weaponry before this week was drawing pictures of them, so Clary was more surprised than anyone else, she suspected, when the dagger flew, wobbly but true, and sank into the werewolf's side.

It yelped, slowing, but three of its comrades were already racing toward them. One paused at the side of the wounded wolf, but the others charged for the door. Clary screamed again as Jace hurled his body against the door a third time. It gave with an explosive shriek of grinding rust and tearing wood. "Three times the charm," he panted, holding his shoulder. He ducked into the dark space that gaped beyond the broken door, and turned to hold out an impatient hand. "Clary, come on."

With a gasp she darted after him and flung the door shut, just as two heavy bodies thudded against it. She fumbled for the bolt, but it was gone, torn away where Jace had broken through it.

"Duck," he said, and as she did, the stele whipped over her head, slicing dark lines into the moldering wood of the door. She craned her neck to see what he'd carved: a curve like a sickle, three parallel lines, a rayed star: To hold against pursuit.

"I lost your dagger," she confessed. "I'm sorry."

"It happens." He pocketed the stele. She could hear the faint thuds as the wolves hurled themselves against the door again and again, but it held. "The rune will keep them back, but not for long. We'd better hurry."

She looked up. They were in a dank passageway; a narrow set of stairs led up into darkness. The steps were wood, the banisters filmy with dust. Simon thrust his nose out of her jacket pocket, his black button eyes glittering in the dim light. "All right," she nodded at Jace. "You go first."

Jace looked as if he wanted to grin but was too tired. "You know how I like to be first. But slowly," he added. "I'm not sure the stairs can hold our weight."

Clary wasn't sure either. The steps creaked and groaned as they ascended, like an old woman complaining about her aches and pains. Clary gripped the banister for balance, and a chunk of it snapped off in her hand, making her squeak and wringing an exhausted chuckle out of Jace. He took her hand. "Here. Steady."

Simon made a sound that, for a rat, sounded a lot like a snort. Jace didn't seem to hear it. They were stumbling up the steps as rapidly as they dared. The flight rose in a high spiral, up through the building. They passed landing after landing, but no doors. They had reached the fourth featureless turn when a muffled explosion rocked the stairwell, and a cloud of dust billowed upward.

"They've gotten past the door," Jace said grimly. "Damn—I thought it would hold for longer."

"Do we run now?" Clary inquired.

"Now we run," he said, and they thundered up the stairs, which shrieked and wailed under their weight, nails popping like gunfire. They were at the fifth landing now—she could hear the soft thud-thud of the wolves' paws on the steps far below, or perhaps it was just her imagination. She knew there wasn't really hot breath on the back of her neck, but the snarls and howls, getting louder as they came closer, were real and terrifying.

The sixth landing rose in front of them and they half-flung themselves onto it. Clary was gasping, her breath sawing painfully in her lungs, but she managed a weak cheer when she saw the door. It was heavy steel, riveted with nails, and propped open with a brick. She barely had time to wonder why when Jace kicked it open, pushed her though, and, following, slammed it shut. She heard a definitive click as it locked behind them. Thank God, she thought.

Then she turned around.

The night sky wheeled above her, scattered with stars like a handful of loose diamonds. It was not black but a clear dark blue, the color of oncoming dawn. They were standing on a bare slate roof turreted with brick chimneys. An old water tower, black with neglect, stood on a raised platform at one end; a heavy tarpaulin concealed a lumpy pile of lumber at the other. "This must be how they get in and out," Jace said, glancing back at the door. Clary could see him properly now in the pale light, the lines of strain around his eyes like shallow cuts. The blood on his clothes, mostly Raphael's, looked black. "They fly up here. Not that that does us much good."

"There might be a fire escape," Clary suggested. Together they picked their way gingerly to the edge of the roof. Clary had never liked heights, and the ten-floor drop to the street made her stomach spin. So did the sight of the fire escape, a twisted, unusable hunk of metal still clinging to the side of the hotel's stone façade. "Or not," she said. She glanced back at the door they had emerged from. It was set into a cabinlike structure in the center of the roof. It was vibrating, the knob jerking wildly. It would only hold for a few more minutes, perhaps less.

Jace pressed the backs of his hands against his eyes. The leaden air bore down on them, making the back of Clary's neck prickle. She could see the sweat trickling into his collar. She wished, irrelevantly, that it would rain. Rain would burst this heat bubble like a pricked blister.

Jace was muttering to himself. "Think, Wayland, think—"

Something began to take shape in the back of Clary's mind. A rune danced against the backs of her eyelids: two downward triangles, joined by a single bar—a rune like a pair of wings…

"That's it," Jace breathed, dropping his hands, and for a startled moment Clary wondered if he had read her mind. He looked feverish, his gold-flecked eyes very bright. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before." He dashed to the far end of the roof, then paused and looked back at her. She was still standing dazed, her thoughts full of glimmering shapes. "Come on, Clary."

She followed him, pushing thoughts of runes from her mind. He had reached the tarpaulin and was tugging at the edge of it. It came away, revealing not junk but sparkling chrome, tooled leather, and gleaming paint. "Motorcycles?"

Jace reached for the nearest one, an enormous dark red Harley with gold flames on the tank and fenders. He swung a leg over it and looked over his shoulder at her. "Get on."

Clary stared. "Are you kidding? Do you even know how to drive that thing? Do you have keys?"

"I don't need keys," he explained with infinite patience. "It runs on demon energies. Now, are you going to get on, or do you want to ride your own?"

Numbly Clary slid onto the bike behind him. Somewhere, in some part of her brain, a tiny voice was screaming about what a bad idea this was.

"Good," Jace said. "Now put your arms around me." She did, feeling the hard muscles of his abdomen contract as he leaned forward and jammed the point of the stele into the ignition. To her amazement she felt the motorcycle thrum to life under her. In her pocket Simon squeaked loudly.

"Everything's okay," she said, as soothingly as she could. "Jace!" she shouted, over the sound of the motorcycle's engine. "What are you doing?"

He yelled back something that sounded like "Pushing in the choke!"

Clary blinked. "Well, hurry it up! The door—"

On cue, the roof door burst open with a crash, torn from its hinges. Wolves poured through the gap, racing across the roof straight at them. Above them flew the vampires, hissing and screeching, filling the night with predatory cries.

She felt Jace's arm jerk back and the motorcycle lurch forward, sending her stomach slamming into her spine. She clutched convulsively at Jace's belt as they shot forward, tires skidding along the slates, scattering the wolves, who yelped as they leaped aside. She heard Jace shout something, his words torn away by the noise of wheels and wind and engine. The edge of the roof was coming up fast, so fast, and Clary wanted to shut her eyes but something held them wide open as the motorcycle hurtled over the parapet and plummeted like a rock toward the ground, ten stories down.

If Clary screamed, she didn't remember it later. It was like the first drop on a roller coaster, where the track falls away and you feel yourself hurtling through space, your hands waving uselessly in the air and your stomach jammed up around your ears. When the cycle righted itself with a sputter and a jerk, she almost wasn't surprised. Instead of plunging downward they were now hurtling up toward the diamond-littered sky.

Clary glanced back and saw a cluster of vampires standing on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by wolves. She looked away—if she never saw that hotel again, it'd be too soon.

Jace was yelling, loud whooping shrieks of delight and relief. Clary leaned forward, her arms tight around him. "My mother always told me if I rode a motorcycle with a boy, she'd kill me," she called over the noise of the wind whipping past her ears and the deafening rumble of the engine.

She couldn't hear him laugh, but she felt his body shake. "She wouldn't say that if she knew me," he called back to her confidently. "I'm an excellent driver."

Belatedly, Clary recollected something. "I thought you guys said only some of the vampire bikes could fly?"

Deftly, Jace steered them around a stoplight in the process of turning from red to green. Below, Clary could hear cars honking, ambulance sirens wailing, and buses puffing to their stops, but she didn't dare look down. "Only some of them can!"

"How did you know this was one of them?"

"I didn't!" he shouted gleefully, and did something that made the bike rise almost vertically into the air. Clary shrieked and grabbed for his belt again.

"You should look down!" Jace shouted. "It's awesome!"

Sheer curiosity forced its way past terror and vertigo. Swallowing hard, Clary opened her eyes.

They were higher than she had realized, and for a moment the earth swung dizzily beneath her, a blurring landscape of shadow and light. They were flying east, away from the park, toward the highway that snaked along the right bank of the city.

There was a numbness in Clary's hands, a hard pressure in her chest. It was lovely, she could see that: the city rising up beside her like a towering forest of silver and glass, the dull gray shimmer of the East River, slicing between Manhattan and the boroughs like a scar. The wind was cool in her hair, on her skin, delicious after so many days of heat and stickiness. Still, she'd never flown, not even in an airplane, and the vast empty space between them and the ground terrified her. She couldn't keep from squinching her eyes almost shut as they shot out over the river. Just below the Queensboro Bridge, Jace turned the bike south and headed to the foot of the island. The sky had begun to lighten, and in the distance Clary could see the glittering arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond that, a smudge on the horizon, the Statue of Liberty.

"Are you all right?" Jace shouted.

Clary said nothing, just clutched him more tightly. He banked the cycle, and then they were sailing toward the bridge, and Clary could see stars through the suspension cables. An early morning train was rattling over it—the Q, carrying a load of sleepy dawn commuters. She thought how often she'd been on that train. A wave of vertigo swamped her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, gasping with nausea.

"Clary?" Jace called. "Clary, are you all right?"

She shook her head, eyes still shut, alone in the dark and the tearing wind with just the pounding of her heart. Something sharp scratched against her chest. She ignored it until it came again, more insistent. Barely opening an eye, she saw that it was Simon, his head poking out of her pocket, tugging her jacket with an urgent paw. "It's all right, Simon," she said with an effort, not looking down. "It was just the bridge—"

He scratched her again, then pointed an urgent paw toward the waterfront of Brooklyn, rising up on their left. Dizzy and sick, she looked and saw, beyond the outlines of the warehouses and factories, a sliver of golden sunrise just visible, like the edge of a pale gilt coin. "Yes, very pretty," Clary said, closing her eyes again. "Nice sunrise."

Jace went rigid all over, as if he'd been shot. "Sunrise?" he yelled, then jerked the cycle savagely to the right. Clary's eyes flew open as they plunged toward the water, which had begun to shimmer with the blue of oncoming dawn.

Clary leaned as close to Jace as she could get without squashing Simon between them. "What's so bad about sunrise?"

"I told you! The bike runs on demon energies!" He pulled back so that they were level with the river, just skimming along the surface with the wheels kicking up spray. River water splashed into Clary's face. "As soon as the sun comes up—"

The bike began to sputter. Jace swore colorfully, slamming his fist into the accelerator. The bike lunged forward once, then choked, jerking under them like a bucking horse. Jace was still swearing as the sun peeked over the crumbling wharves of Brooklyn, lighting the world with devastating clarity. Clary could see every rock, every pebble under them as they cleared the river and hurtled over the narrow bank. Below them was the highway, already streaming with early traffic. They only just cleared it, the wheels grazing the roof of a passing truck. Beyond was the trash-strewn parking lot of an enormous supermarket. "Hang on to me!" Jace was shouting, as the bike jerked and sputtered underneath them. "Hang on to me, Clary, and do not let—"

The bike tilted and struck the asphalt of the parking lot, front wheel first. It shot forward, wobbling violently, and went into a long skid, bouncing and slamming over the uneven ground, whipping Clary's head back and forth with neck-cracking force. The air stank of burned rubber. But the bike was slowing, skidding to a halt—and then it struck a concrete parking barrier with such force that she was lifted into the air and hurled sideways, her hand tearing free of Jace's belt. She barely had time to curl herself into a protective ball, holding her arms as rigid as possible and praying Simon wouldn't be crushed, when they struck the ground.

She hit hard, agony screaming up her arm. Something splashed up in her face, and she was coughing as she flipped over, rolling onto her back. She grabbed for her pocket. It was empty. She tried to say Simon's name, but the breath had been knocked out of her. She wheezed as she gasped in air. Her face was wet and dampness was running down into her collar.

Is that blood? She opened her eyes hazily. Her face felt like one big bruise, her arms, aching and stinging, like raw meat. She had rolled onto her side and was lying half-in and half-out of a puddle of filthy water. Dawn had truly come—she could see the remains of the bike, subsiding into a heap of unrecognizable ash as the sun's rays struck it.

And there was Jace, getting painfully to his feet. He started to hurry toward her, then slowed as he approached. The sleeve of his shirt had been torn away and there was a long bloody graze along his left arm. His face, under the cap of dark gold curls matted with sweat, dust, and blood, was white as a sheet. She wondered why he looked like that. Was her torn-off leg lying across the parking lot somewhere in a pool of blood?

She started to struggle up and felt a hand on her shoulder. "Clary?"

"Simon!"

He was kneeling next to her, blinking as if he couldn't quite believe it either. His clothes were crumpled and grimy, and he had lost his glasses somewhere, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Without the glasses he looked younger, defenseless, and a little dazed. He reached to touch her face, but she flinched back. "Ow!"

"Are you okay? You look great," he said, with a catch in his voice. "The best thing I've ever seen—"

"That's because you don't have your glasses on," she said weakly, but if she'd expected a smart-aleck response, she didn't get one. Instead he threw his arms around her, holding her tightly to him. His clothes smelled of blood and sweat and dirt, and his heart was beating a mile a minute and he was pressing on her bruises, but it was a relief nevertheless to be held by him and to know, really know, that he was all right. "Clary," he said roughly. "I thought—I thought you—"

"Wouldn't come back for you? But of course I did," she said. "Of course I did."

She put her arms around him. Everything about him was familiar, from the overwashed fabric of his T-shirt to the sharp angle of the collarbone that rested just under her chin. He said her name, and she stroked his back reassuringly. When she glanced back just for a moment, she saw Jace turning away as if the brightness of the rising sun hurt his eyes.

16 Falling Angels

Hodge was enraged. He had been standing in the foyer, Isabelle and Alec lurking behind him, when Clary and the boys limped in, filthy and covered in blood, and had immediately launched into a lecture that would have done Clary's mother proud. He didn't forget to include the part about lying to him about where they were going—which Jace, apparently, had— or the part about never trusting Jace again, and even added extra embellishments, like some bits about breaking the Law, getting tossed out of the Clave, and bringing shame on the proud and ancient name of Wayland. Winding down, he fixed Jace with a glare. "You've endangered other people with your willfulness. This is one incident I will not allow you to shrug off!"

"I wasn't planning to," Jace said. "I can't shrug anything off. My shoulder's dislocated."

"If only I thought physical pain was actually a deterrent for you," said Hodge with grim fury. "But you'll just spend the next few days in the infirmary with Alec and Isabelle fussing around you. You'll probably even enjoy it."

Hodge had been two-thirds right: Jace and Simon both wound up in the infirmary, but only Isabelle was fussing over either of them when Clary—who'd gone to clean herself up— came in a few hours later. Hodge had fixed the swelling bruise on her arm, and twenty minutes in the shower had gotten most of the ground-in asphalt out of her skin, but she still felt raw and aching.

Alec, sitting on the windowsill and looking like a thundercloud, scowled as the door shut behind her. "Oh. It's you."

She ignored him. "Hodge says he's on his way and he hopes you can both manage to cling to your flickering sparks of life until he gets here," she told Simon and Jace. "Or something like that."

"I wish he'd hurry," Jace said crossly. He was sitting up in bed against a pair of fluffed white pillows, still wearing his filthy clothes.

"Why? Does it hurt?" Clary asked.

"No. I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's less of a threshold and more of a large and tastefully decorated foyer. But I do get easily bored." He squinted at her. "Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you'd get dressed up in a nurse's outfit and give me a sponge bath?"

"Actually, I think you misheard," Clary said. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."

Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at him widely. "As soon as I'm back on my feet, handsome."

"I knew we should have left you a rat," said Jace.

Clary laughed and went over to Simon, who seemed acutely uncomfortable surrounded by dozens of pillows and with blankets heaped over his legs.

Clary sat down on the edge of Simon's bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone massaged me with a cheese grater," Simon said, wincing as he pulled his legs up. "I broke a bone in my foot. It was so swollen, Isabelle had to cut my shoe off."

"Glad she's taking good care of you." Clary let a small amount of acid creep into her voice.

Simon leaned forward, not taking his eyes off Clary. "I want to talk to you."

Clary nodded in half-reluctant agreement. "I'm going to my room. Come and see me after Hodge fixes you up, okay?"

"Sure." To her surprise he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. It was a butterfly kiss, a quick brush of lips on skin, but as she pulled away, she knew she was blushing. Probably, she thought, standing up, because of the way everyone else was staring at them.

Out in the hallway, she touched her cheek in bemusement. A peck on the cheek didn't mean much, but it was so out of character for Simon. Maybe he was trying to make a point to Isabelle? Men, Clary thought, they were so baffling. And Jace, doing his wounded-prince routine. She'd left before he could start complaining about the thread count of the sheets.

"Clary!"

She turned around in surprise. Alec was loping down the hall after her, hurrying to catch up. He stopped when she did. "I need to talk to you."

She looked at him in surprise. "What about?"

He hesitated. With his pale skin and dark blue eyes he was as striking as his sister, but unlike Isabelle he did everything he could to downplay his looks. The frayed sweaters and the hair that looked as if he had cut it himself in the dark were only part of it. He looked uncomfortable in his own skin. "I think you should leave. Go home," he said.

She'd known he didn't like her, but it still felt like a slap. "Alec, the last time I was home, it was infested with Forsaken. And Raveners. With fangs. Nobody wants to go home more than I do, but—"

"You must have relatives you can stay with?" There was a tinge of desperation in his voice.

"No. Besides, Hodge wants me to stay," she said shortly.

"He can't possibly. I mean, not after what you've done—"

"What I've done?"

He swallowed hard. "You almost got Jace killed."

"I almost—What are you talking about?"

"Running off after your friend like that—do you know how much danger you put him in? Do you know—"

"Him? You mean Jace?" Clary cut him off in midsentence. "For your information the whole thing was his idea. He asked Magnus where the lair was. He went to the church to get weapons. If I hadn't come with him, he would have gone anyway."

"You don't understand," Alec said. "You don't know him. I know him. He thinks he has to save the world; he'd be glad to kill himself trying. Sometimes I think he even wants to die, but that doesn't mean you should encourage him to do it."

"I don't get it," she said. "Jace is a Nephilim. This is what you do, you rescue people, you kill demons, you put yourselves in danger. How was last night any different?"

Alec's control shattered. "Because he left me behind!" he shouted. "Normally I'd be with him, covering him, watching his back, keeping him safe. But you—you're dead weight, a mundane." He spit the word out as if it were an obscenity.

"No," Clary said. "I'm not. I'm Nephilim—just like you."

His lip curled up at the corner. "Maybe," he said. "But with no training, no nothing, you're still not much use, are you? Your mother brought you up in the mundane world, and that's where you belong. Not here, making Jace act like—like he isn't one of us. Making him break his oath to the Clave, making him break the Law—"

"News flash," Clary snapped. "I don't make Jace do anything. He does what he wants. You ought to know that."

He looked at her as if she were an especially disgusting kind of demon he'd never seen before. "You mundanes are completely selfish, aren't you? Have you no idea what he's done for you, what kind of personal risks he's taken? I'm not just talking about his safety. He could lose everything. He already lost his father and mother; do you want to make sure he loses the family he's got left as well?"

Clary recoiled. Rage rose up in her like a black wave—rage against Alec, because he was partly right, and rage against everything and everyone else: against the icy road that had taken her father away from her before she was born, against Simon for nearly getting himself killed, against Jace for being a martyr and for not caring whether he lived or died. Against Luke for pretending he cared about her when it was all a lie. And against her mother for not being the boring, normal, haphazard mother she'd always pretended to be, but someone else entirely: someone heroic and spectacular and brave whom Clary didn't know at all. Someone who wasn't there now, when Clary needed her desperately.

"You should talk about selfish," she hissed, so viciously that he took a step back. "You couldn't care less about anyone in this world except yourself, Alec Lightwood. No wonder you've never killed a single demon, because you're too afraid."

Alec looked stunned. "Who told you that?"

"Jace."

He looked as if she'd slapped him. "He wouldn't. He wouldn't say that."

"He did." She could see how she was hurting him, and it made her glad. Someone else ought to be in pain for a change. "You can rant all you want about honor and honesty and how mundanes don't have any of either, but if you were honest, you'd admit this tantrum is just because you're in love with him. It doesn't have anything to do with—"

Alec moved, blindingly fast. A sharp crack resounded through her head. He had shoved her against the wall so hard that the back of her skull had struck the wood paneling. His face was inches from hers, eyes huge and black. "Don't you ever," he whispered, mouth a blanched line, "ever, say anything like that to him or I'll kill you. I swear on the Angel, I'll kill you."

The pain in her arms where he gripped her was intense. Against her will she gasped. He blinked—as if he were waking up out of a dream—and let her go, jerking his hands away like her skin had burned him. Without a word he spun and hurried back toward the infirmary. He was lurching as he walked, like someone drunk or dizzy.

Clary rubbed her sore arms, staring after him, appalled at what she'd done. Good job, Clary. Now you've really made him hate you.

She should have fallen instantly into bed, but despite her exhaustion, sleep remained out of reach. Eventually she pulled her sketchpad out of her backpack and started drawing, propping the tablet against her knees. Idle scribbles at first—a detail from the crumbling façade of the vampire hotel: a fanged gargoyle with bulging eyes. An empty street, a single lamppost casting a yellow pool of illumination, a shadowy figure poised at the edge of the light. She drew Raphael in his bloody white shirt with the scar of the cross on his throat. And then she drew Jace standing on the roof, looking down at the ten-story drop below. Not afraid, but as if the fall challenged him—as if there were no empty space he could not fill with his belief in his own invincibility. As in her dream, she drew him with wings that curved out behind his shoulders in an arc like the wings of the angel statue in the Bone City.

She tried to draw her mother, last. She had told Jace she didn't feel any different after reading the Gray Book, and it was mostly true. Now, though, as she tried to visualize her mother's face, she realized there was one thing that was different in her memories of Jocelyn: She could see her mother's scars, the tiny white marks that covered her back and shoulders as if she had been standing in a snowfall.

It hurt, knowing that the way she'd always seen her mother, all her life, had been a lie. She slid the sketchpad under her pillow, eyes burning.

There was a tap on the door—soft, hesitant. She scrubbed hastily at her eyes. "Come in."

It was Simon. She hadn't really focused on what a mess he was. He hadn't showered, and his clothes were torn and stained, his hair tangled. He hesitated in the doorway, oddly formal.

She scooted sideways, making room for him on the bed. There was nothing strange about sitting in bed with Simon; they'd slept over at each other's houses for years, made tents and forts with the blankets when they were small, stayed up reading comics when they were older.

"You found your glasses," she said. One lens was cracked.

"They were in my pocket. They came through better than I would have expected. I'll have to write a nice note to LensCrafters." He settled beside her gingerly

"Did Hodge fix you up?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I still feel like I've been worked over with a tire iron, but nothing's broken—not anymore." He turned to look at her. His eyes behind the ruined glasses were the eyes she remembered: dark and serious, ringed by the kind of lashes boys didn't care about and girls would kill for. "Clary, that you came for me—that you would risk all that—"

"Don't." She held up a hand awkwardly. "You would have done it for me."

"Of course," he said, without arrogance or pretension, "but I always thought that was the way things were, with us. You know."

She scrambled around to face him, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Simon, as if he were surprised to find himself explaining something that should have been obvious, "I've always been the one who needed you more than you needed me."

"That's not true." Clary was appalled.

"It is," Simon said with the same unnerving calm. "You've never seemed to really need anyone, Clary. You've always been so… contained. All you've ever needed is your pencils and your imaginary worlds. So many times I've had to say things six, seven times before you'd even respond, you were so far away. And then you'd turn to me and smile that funny smile, and I'd know you'd forgotten all about me and just remembered—but I was never mad at you. Half of your attention is better than all of anyone else's."

She tried to catch at his hand, but got his wrist. She could feel the pulse under his skin. "I only ever loved three people in my life," she said. "My mom and Luke, and you. And I've lost all of them except you. Don't ever imagine you aren't important to me—don't even think it."

"My mom says you only need three people you can rely on in order to achieve self-actualization," said Simon. His tone was light but his voice cracked halfway through "actualization."

"She says you seem pretty self-actualized."

Clary smiled at him ruefully. "Did your mom have any other words of wisdom about me?"

"Yeah." He returned her smile with one just as crooked. "But I'm not going to tell you what they were."

"No fair keeping secrets!"

"Who ever said the world was fair?"

In the end, they lay against each other as they had when they were children: shoulder to shoulder, Clary's leg thrown over Simon's. Her toes came to just below his knee. Flat on their backs, they stared up at the ceiling as they talked, a habit left over from the time when Clary's ceiling had been covered with paste-on glow-in-the-dark stars. Where Jace had smelled like soap and limes, Simon smelled like someone who'd been rolling around the parking lot of a supermarket, but Clary didn't mind.

"The weird thing is"—Simon wound a curl of her hair around his finger—"I was joking with Isabelle about vampires right before it all happened. Just trying to get her to laugh, you know? "What freaks out Jewish vampires? Silver stars of David? Chopped liver? Checks for eighteen dollars?'"

Clary laughed.

Simon looked gratified. "Isabelle didn't laugh."

Clary thought of a number of things she wanted to say, and didn't say them. "I'm not sure that's Isabelle's kind of humor."

Simon cut a sideways glance at her under his lashes. "Is she sleeping with Jace?"

Clary's squeak of surprise turned into a cough. She glared at him. "Ew, no. They're practically related. They wouldn't do that." She paused. "I don't think so, anyway."

Simon shrugged. "Not like I care," he said firmly.

"Sure you don't."

"I don't!" He rolled onto his side. "You know, initially I thought Isabelle seemed, I don't know—cool. Exciting. Different. Then, at the party, I realized she was actually crazy."

Clary slit her eyes at him. "Did she tell you to drink the blue cocktail?"

He shook his head. "That was all me. I saw you go off with Jace and Alec, and I don't know… You looked so different from usual. You seemed so different. I couldn't help thinking you'd changed already, and this new world of yours would leave me out. I wanted to do something that would make me more a part of it. So when the little green guy came by with the tray of drinks…"

Clary groaned. "You're an idiot."

"I've never claimed otherwise."

"Sorry. Was it awful?"

"Being a rat? No. First it was disorienting. I was suddenly at ankle-level with everyone. I thought I'd drunk a shrinking potion, but I couldn't figure out why I had this urge to chew used gum wrappers."

Clary giggled. "No. I mean the vampire hotel—was that awful?"

Something flickered behind his eyes. He looked away. "No. I don't really remember much between the party and landing in the parking lot."

"Probably better that way."

He started to say something but was arrested mid-yawn. The light in the room had slowly faded. Disentangling herself from Simon and the bedsheets, Clary got up and pushed aside the window curtains. Outside, the city was bathed in the reddish glow of sunset. The silvery roof of the Chrysler Building, fifty blocks downtown, glowed like a poker left too long in the fire. "The sun's setting. Maybe we should look for some dinner."

There was no response. Turning, she saw that Simon was asleep, his arms folded under his head, legs sprawled. She sighed, went over to the bed, plucked his glasses off, and set them on the night table. She couldn't count the times he'd fallen asleep with them on and been woken by the sound of cracking lenses.

Now where am I going to sleep? Not that she minded sharing a bed with Simon, but he hadn't exactly left her any room. She considered poking him awake, but he looked so peaceful. Besides, she wasn't sleepy. She was just reaching for the sketchpad under the pillow when a knock sounded on the door.

She padded barefoot across the room and turned the doorknob quietly. It was Jace. Clean, in jeans and a gray shirt, his washed hair a halo of damp gold. The bruises on his face were already fading from purple to faint gray, and his hands were behind his back.

"Were you asleep?" he asked. There was no contrition in his voice, only curiosity.

"No." Clary stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her. "Why would you think that?"

He eyed her baby blue cotton tank top and sleep shorts set. "No reason."

"I was in bed most of the day," she said, which was technically true. Seeing him, her jitter level had shot up about a thousand percent, but she saw no reason to share that information. "What about you? Aren't you exhausted?"

He shook his head. "Much like the postal service, demon hunters never sleep. 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these—'"

"You'd be in major trouble if gloom of night did stay you," she pointed out.

He grinned. Unlike his hair, his teeth weren't perfect. An upper incisor was slightly, endearingly chipped.

She gripped her elbows. It was chilly in the hallway and she could feel goose bumps starting up her arms. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"'Here' as in your bedroom or 'here' as in the great spiritual question of our purpose here on this planet? If you're asking whether it's all just a cosmic coincidence or there's a greater meta-ethical purpose to life, well, that's a puzzler for the ages. I mean, simple ontological reductionism is clearly a fallacious argument, but—"

"I'm going back to bed." Clary reached for the doorknob.

He slid nimbly between her and the door. "I'm here," he said, "because Hodge reminded me it was your birthday."

Clary exhaled in exasperation. "Not until tomorrow."

"That's no reason not to start celebrating now."

She eyed him. "You're avoiding Alec and Isabelle."

He nodded. "Both of them are trying to pick fights with me."

"For the same reason?"

"I couldn't tell." He glanced furtively up and down the hallway. "Hodge, too. Everyone wants to talk to me. Except you. I bet you don't want to talk to me."

"No," said Clary. "I want to eat. I'm starving."

He brought his hand out from behind his back. In it was a slightly crumpled paper bag. "I sneaked some food from the kitchen when Isabelle wasn't looking."

Clary grinned. "A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of—"

He waved a hand. "Faeries. I know."

"I was going to say muggers," said Clary. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you."

"That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it," said Jace, looking gratified. "But I wasn't thinking of Central Park. How about the greenhouse?"

"Now? At night? Won't it be—dark?"

He smiled as if at a secret. "Come on. I'll show you."

17 The Midnight Flower

In the half-light the big empty rooms they passed through on their way to the roof looked as deserted as stage sets, the white-draped furniture looming up out of the dimness like icebergs through fog.

When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat's paw: the rich dark smell of earth and the stronger, soapy scent of night-blooming flowers— moonflowers, white angel's trumpet, four-o'clocks—and some she didn't recognize, like a plant bearing a star-shaped yellow blossom whose petals were medallioned with golden pollen. Through the glass walls of the enclosure she could see the lights of Manhattan burning like cold jewels.

"Wow." She turned slowly, taking it in. "It's so beautiful here at night."

Jace grinned. "And we have the place to ourselves. Alec and Isabelle hate it up here. They have allergies."

Clary shivered, though she wasn't at all cold. "What kind of flowers are these?"

Jace shrugged and sat down, carefully, next to a glossy green shrub dotted all over with tightly closed flower buds. "No idea. You think I pay attention in botany class? I'm not going to be an archivist. I don't need to know about that stuff."

"You just need to know how to kill things?"

He looked up at her and smiled. He looked like a fair-haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish mouth. "That's right." He took a napkin-wrapped package out of the bag and offered it to her. "Also," he added, "I make a mean cheese sandwich. Try one."

Clary smiled reluctantly and sat down across from him. The stone floor of the greenhouse was cold against her bare legs, but it was pleasant after so many days of relentless heat. Out of the paper bag Jace drew some apples, a bar of fruit and nut chocolate, and a bottle of water. "Not a bad haul," she said admiringly.

The cheese sandwich was warm and a little limp, but it tasted fine. From one of the innumerable pockets inside his jacket, Jace produced a bone-handled knife that looked capable of disemboweling a grizzly. He set to work on the apples, carving them into meticulous eighths. "Well, it's not birthday cake," he said, handing her a section, "but hopefully it's better than nothing."

"Nothing is what I was expecting, so thanks." She took a bite. The apple tasted green and cool.

"Nobody should get nothing on their birthday." He was peeling the second apple, the skin coming away in long curling strips. "Birthdays should be special. My birthday was always the one day my father said I could do or have anything I wanted."

"Anything?" She laughed. "Like what kind of anything did you want?"

"Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti."

"But he didn't let you, right?"

"No, that's the thing. He did. He said it wasn't expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down …" He shrugged. "I took a bath in it."

Servants? Clary thought. Out loud she said, "How was it?"

"Slippery."

"I'll bet." She tried to picture him as a little boy, giggling, up to his ears in pasta. The image wouldn't form. Surely Jace never giggled, not even at the age of five. "What else did you ask for?"

"Weapons, mostly," he said, "which I'm sure doesn't surprise you. Books. I read a lot on my own."

"You didn't go to school?"

"No," he said, and now he spoke slowly, almost as if they were approaching a topic he didn't want to discuss.

"But your friends—"

"I didn't have friends," he said. "Besides my father. He was all I needed."

She stared at him. "No friends at all?"

He met her look steadily. "The first time I saw Alec," he said, "when I was ten years old, that was the first time I'd ever met another child my own age. The first time I had a friend."

She dropped her gaze. Now an image was forming, unwelcome, in her head: She thought of Alec, the way he had looked at her. He wouldn't say that.

"Don't feel sorry for me," Jace said, as if guessing her thoughts, though it hadn't been him she'd been feeling sorry for. "He gave me the best education, the best training. He took me all over the world. London. Saint Petersburg. Egypt. We used to love to travel." His eyes were dark. "I haven't been anywhere since he died. Nowhere but New York."

"You're lucky," Clary said. "I've never been outside this state in my life. My mom wouldn't even let me go on field trips to D.C. I guess I know why now," she added ruefully.

"She was afraid you'd freak out? Start seeing demons in the White House?"

She nibbled a piece of chocolate. "There are demons in the White House?"

"I was kidding," said Jace. "I think." He shrugged philosophically. "I'm sure someone would have mentioned it."

"I think she just didn't want me to get too far away from her. My mom, I mean. After my dad died, she changed a lot." Luke's voice echoed in her mind. You've never been the same since it happened, but Clary isn't Jonathan.

Jace cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do you remember your father?"

She shook her head. "No. He died before I was born."

"You're lucky," he said. "That way you don't miss him."

From anyone else it would have been an appalling thing to say, but there was no bitterness in his voice for a change, only an ache of loneliness for his own father. "Does it go away?" she asked. "Missing him, I mean?"

He looked at her obliquely, but didn't answer. "Are you thinking of your mother?"

No. She wouldn't think of her mother that way. "Of Luke, actually."

"Not that that's actually his name." He took a thoughtful bite of apple and said, "I've been thinking about him. Something about his behavior doesn't add up—"

"He's a coward." Clary's voice was bitter. "You heard him. He won't go against Valentine. Not even for my mother."

"But that's exactly—" A long clanging reverberation interrupted him. Somewhere, a bell was tolling. "Midnight," said Jace, setting the knife down. He got to his feet, holding his hand out to pull her up beside him. His fingers were slightly sticky with apple juice. "Now, watch."

His gaze was fixed on the green shrub they'd been sitting beside, with its dozens of shiny closed buds. She started to ask him what she was supposed to be looking at, but he held up a hand to forestall her. His eyes were shining. "Wait," he said.

The leaves on the shrub hung still and motionless. Suddenly one of the tightly closed buds began to quiver and tremble. It swelled to twice its size and burst open. It was like watching a speeded-up film of a flower blooming: the delicate green sepals opening outward, releasing the clustered petals inside. They were dusted with pale gold pollen as light as talcum.

"Oh!" said Clary, and looked up to find Jace watching her. "Do they bloom every night?"

"Only at midnight," he said. "Happy birthday, Clarissa Fray."

She was oddly touched. "Thank you."

"I have something for you," he said. He dug into his pocket and brought out something, which he pressed into her hand. It was a gray stone, slightly uneven, worn to smoothness in spots.

"Huh," said Clary, turning it over in her fingers. "You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you know, literally a big rock."

"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone."

"Oh." She looked at it with renewed interest, closing her fingers around it as she'd seen Jace do in the cellar. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could see a glint of light peeking out through her fingers.

"It will bring you light," said Jace, "even among the darkest shadows of this world and others."

She slipped it into her pocket. "Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." The tension between them seemed to press down on her like humid air. "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day."

He said darkly, "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you."

"Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes," Clary said. "The difference is, she didn't let me."

"Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace pointed out, "whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it."

The midnight flower was already shedding petals. They drifted toward the floor, glimmering like slivers of starlight. "When I was twelve, I wanted a tattoo," Clary said. "My mom wouldn't let me have that, either."

Jace didn't laugh. "Most Shadowhunters get their first Marks at twelve. It must have been in your blood."

"Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their left shoulder."

Jace looked baffled. "You wanted a turtle on your shoulder?"

"I wanted to cover my chicken pox scar." She pulled the strap of the tank top aside slightly, showing the star-shaped white mark at the top of her shoulder. "See?"

He looked away. "It's getting late," he said. "We should go back downstairs."

Clary pulled her strap back up awkwardly. As if he wanted to see her stupid scars.

The next words tumbled out of her mouth without any volition on her part. "Have you and Isabelle ever—dated?"

Now he did look at her. The moonlight leached the color out of his eyes. They were more silver than gold now. "Isabelle?" he said blankly.

"I thought—" Now she felt even more awkward. "Simon was wondering."

"Maybe he should ask her."

"I'm not sure he wants to," Clary said. "Anyway, never mind. It's none of my business."

He smiled unnervingly. "The answer is no. I mean, there may have been a time when one or the other of us considered it, but she's almost a sister to me. It would be strange."

"You mean Isabelle and you never—"

"Never," said Jace.

"She hates me," observed Clary.

"No, she doesn't," he said, to her surprise. "You just make her nervous, because she's always been the only girl in a crowd of adoring boys, and now she isn't anymore."

"But she's so beautiful."

"So are you," said Jace, "and very different from how she is, and she can't help but notice that. She's always wanted to be small and delicate, you know. She hates being taller than most boys."

Clary said nothing to this, because she had nothing to say. Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful. She stared at him.

"We should probably go downstairs," he said again. She was sure she was making him uncomfortable with the staring, but she didn't seem to be able to stop.

"All right," she said finally. To her relief, her voice sounded normal. It was a further relief to look away from him as she turned around. The moon, directly overhead now, lit everything nearly to daylight brightness. In between one step and another she saw a white spark struck off something on the floor: It was the knife Jace had been using to cut apples, lying on its side. She jerked hastily back to avoid stepping on it, and her shoulder bumped his—he put a hand out to steady her, just as she turned to apologize, and then she was somehow in the circle of his arm and he was kissing her.

It was at first almost as if he hadn't wanted to kiss her: His mouth was hard on hers, unyielding; then he put both arms around her and pulled her against him. His lips softened. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart, taste the sweetness of apples still on his mouth. She wound her hands into his hair, as she'd wanted to do since the first time she'd seen him. His hair curled around her fingers, silky and fine. Her heart was hammering, and there was a rushing sound in her ears, like beating wings—

Jace drew away from her with a muffled exclamation, though his arms were still around her. "Don't panic, but we've got an audience."

Clary turned her head. Perched on a nearby tree branch was Hugo, watching them beadily from bright black eyes. So the sound she'd heard had been wings rather than demented passion. That was disappointing.

"If he's here, Hodge won't be far behind," said Jace under his breath. "We should go."

"Is he spying on you?" Clary hissed. "Hodge, I mean."

"No. He just likes to come up here to think. Too bad—we were having such a scintillating conversation." He laughed soundlessly.

They made their way back downstairs the way they had come, but it felt like a different journey entirely to Clary. Jace kept her hand in his, sending tiny electrical shocks traveling up and down her veins from every point where he touched her: her fingers, her wrist, the palm of her hand. Her mind was buzzing with questions, but she was too afraid of breaking the mood to ask him any of them. He'd said "too bad," so she guessed their evening was over, at least the kissing part.

They reached her door. She leaned against the wall beside it, looking up at him. "Thanks for the birthday picnic," she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

He seemed reluctant to let go of her hand. "Are you going to sleep?"

He's just being polite, she told herself. Then again, this was Jace. He was never polite. She decided to answer the question with a question. "Aren't you tired?"

His voice was low. "I've never been more awake."

He bent to kiss her, cupping her face with his free hand. Their lips touched, lightly at first, and then with a stronger pressure. It was at precisely that moment that Simon threw open the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.

He was blinking and tousle-haired and without his glasses, but he could see well enough. "What the hell?" he demanded, so loudly that Clary leaped away from Jace as if his touch burned her.

"Simon! What are you—I mean, I thought you were—"

"Asleep? I was," he said. The tops of his cheekbones had flushed dark red through his tan, the way they always did when he was embarrassed or upset. "Then I woke up and you weren't there, so I thought…"

Clary couldn't think of a thing to say. Why hadn't it occurred to her that this might happen? Why hadn't she said they should go to Jace's room? The answer was as simple as it was awful: She had forgotten about Simon completely.

"I'm sorry," she said, not sure who she was even speaking to. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage—but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored.

"In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations."

"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken.

"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit."

"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing."

"Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love."

"Jace…"

She saw the bright malice in his eyes and trailed off. There was no point. Her stomach felt suddenly heavy. "Simon, it's late," she said tiredly. "I'm sorry we woke you up."

"So am I." He stalked back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Jace's smile was as bland as buttered toast. "Go on, go after him. Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little guy. Isn't that what you want to do?"

"Stop it," she said. "Stop being like that."

His smile widened. "Like what?"

"If you're angry, just say it. Don't act like nothing ever touches you. It's like you never feel anything at all."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you kissed me," he said.

She looked at him incredulously. "I kissed you?"

He looked at her with glittering malice. "Don't worry," he said, "it wasn't that memorable for me, either."

She watched him walk away, and felt the mingled urge to burst into tears and to run after him for the express purpose of kicking him in the ankle. Knowing either action would fill him with satisfaction, she did neither, but went warily back into the bedroom.

Simon was standing in the middle of the room, looking lost. He'd put his glasses back on. She heard Jace's voice in her head, saying nastily: Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little guy.

She took a step toward him, then stopped when she realized what he was holding in his hand. Her sketchpad, open to the drawing she'd been doing, the one of Jace with angel wings. "Nice," he said. "All those Tisch classes must be paying off."

Normally, Clary would have told him off for looking into her sketchpad, but now wasn't the time. "Simon, look—"

"I recognize that stalking off to sulk in your bedroom might not have been the smoothest move," he interrupted stiffly, tossing the sketchpad back onto the bed. "But I had to get my stuff."

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Home. I've been here too long, I think. Mundanes like me don't belong in a place like this."

She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I wasn't intending to kiss him; it just happened. I know you don't like him."

"No," Simon said even more stiffly. "I don't like flat soda. I don't like crappy boy band pop. I don't like being stuck in traffic. I don't like math homework. I hate Jace. See the difference?"

"He saved your life," Clary pointed out, feeling like a fraud— after all, Jace had come along to the Dumort only because he'd been worried he'd get in trouble if she got herself killed.

"Details," said Simon dismissively. "He's an asshole. I thought you were better than that."

Clary's temper flared. "Oh, and now you're pulling a high-and-mighty trip on me?" she snapped. "You're the one who was going to ask the girl with the most 'rockin' bod' to the Fall Fling." She mimicked Eric's lazy tone. Simon's mouth thinned out angrily. "So what if Jace is a jerk sometimes? You're not my brother, you're not my dad, you don't have to like him. I've never liked any of your girlfriends, but at least I've had the decency to keep it to myself."

"This," said Simon, between his teeth, "is different."

"How? How is it different?"

"Because I see the way you look at him!" he shouted. "And I never looked at any of those girls like that! It was just something to do, a way to practice, until—"

"Until what?" Clary knew dimly that she was being horrible, the whole thing was horrible; they'd never even had a fight before that was more serious than an argument about who'd eaten the last Pop-Tart from the box in the tree house, but she didn't seem able to stop. "Until Isabelle came along? I can't believe you're lecturing me about Jace when you made a complete fool of yourself over her!" Her voice rose to a scream.

"I was trying to make you jealous!" Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fists at his sides. "You're so stupid, Clary. You're so stupid, can't you see anything?"

She stared at him in bewilderment. What on earth did he mean? "Trying to make me jealous? Why would you try to do that?"

She saw immediately that this was the worst thing she could have asked him.

"Because," he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, "I've been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess, you don't."

He might as well have kicked her in the stomach. She couldn't speak; the air had been sucked out of her lungs. She stared at him, trying to frame a response, any response.

He cut her off sharply. "Don't. There's nothing you can say." She watched him walk to the door as if paralyzed; she couldn't move to hold him back, much as she wanted to. What could she say? "I love you, too"? But she didn't—did she?

He paused at the door, hand on the knob, and turned to look at her. His eyes, behind the glasses, looked more tired than angry now. "You really want to know what else it was my mom said about you?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He didn't seem to notice. "She said you'd break my heart," he told her, and left. The door closed behind him with a decided click, and Clary was alone.

After he was gone, she sank down onto the bed and picked up her sketchbook. She cradled it to her chest, not wanting to draw in it, just craving the feel and smell of familiar things: ink, paper, chalk.

She thought about running after Simon, trying to catch him. But what would she say? What could she possibly say? You're so stupid, Clary, he'd said to her. Can't you see anything?

She thought of a hundred things he'd said or done, jokes Eric and the others had made about them, conversations hushed when she'd walked into the room. Jace had known from the beginning. I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited. She hadn't stopped to wonder what he was talking about, but now she knew.

She had told Simon earlier that she'd only ever loved three people: her mother, Luke, and him. She wondered if it was actually possible, within the space of a week, to lose everyone that you loved. She wondered if it was the sort of thing you survived or not. And yet—for those brief moments, up on the roof with Jace, she'd forgotten her mother. She'd forgotten Luke. She'd forgotten Simon. And she'd been happy. That was the worst part, that she'd been happy.

Maybe this, she thought, losing Simon, maybe this is my punishment for the selfishness of being happy, even for just a moment, when my mother is still missing. None of it had been real, anyway. Jace might be an exceptional kisser, but he didn't care about her at all. He'd said as much.

She lowered the sketchbook slowly into her lap. Simon had been right; it was a good picture of Jace. She'd caught the hard line of his mouth, the incongruously vulnerable eyes. The wings looked so real she imagined that if she brushed her fingers across them, they'd be soft. She let her hand trail across the page, her mind wandering …

And jerked her hand back, staring. Her fingers had touched not dry paper but the soft down of feathers. Her eyes flashed up to the runes she'd scrawled in the corner of the page. They were shining, the way she'd seen the runes Jace drew with his stele shine.

Her heart had begun to beat with a rapid, steady sharpness. If a rune could bring a painting to life, then maybe—

Not taking her eyes off the drawing, she fumbled for her pencils. Breathless, she flipped to a new, clean page and hastily began to draw the first thing that came to mind. It was the coffee mug sitting on the nightstand next to her bed. Drawing on her memories of still life class, she drew it in every detail: the smudged rim, the crack in the handle. When she was done, it was as exact as she could make it. Driven by some instinct she didn't quite understand, she reached for the cup and set it down on top of the paper. Then, very carefully, she began to sketch the runes beside it.

18 The Mortal Cup

Jace was lying on his bed pretending to be asleep—for his own benefit, not anyone else's—when the banging on the door finally got to be too much for him. He hauled himself off the bed, wincing. Much as he'd pretended to be fine up in the greenhouse, his whole body still ached from the beating it had taken last night.

He knew who it was going to be before he opened the door. Maybe Simon had managed to get himself turned into a rat again. This time Simon could stay a goddamned rat forever, for all he, Jace Wayland, was prepared to do about it.

She was clutching her sketchpad, her bright hair escaping out of its braids. He leaned against the door frame, ignoring the kick of adrenaline the sight of her produced. He wondered why, not for the first time. Isabelle used her beauty like she used her whip, but Clary didn't know she was beautiful at all. Maybe that was why.

He could think of only one reason for her to be there, though it made no sense after what he'd said to her. Words were weapons, his father had taught him that, and he'd wanted to hurt Clary more than he'd ever wanted to hurt any girl. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever wanted to hurt a girl before. Usually he just wanted them, and then wanted them to leave him alone.

"Don't tell me," he said, drawing his words out in that way he knew she hated. "Simon's turned himself into an ocelot and you want me to do something about it before Isabelle makes him into a stole. Well, you'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'm out of commission." He pointed at himself—he was wearing blue pajamas with a hole in the sleeve. "Look. Jammies."

Clary seemed barely to have heard him. He realized she was clutching something in her hands—her sketchpad. "Jace," she said. "This is important."

"Don't tell me," he said. "You've got a drawing emergency. You need a nude model. Well, I'm not in the mood. You could ask Hodge," he added, as an afterthought. "I hear he'll do anything for a—"

"JACE!" she interrupted him, her voice rising to a scream. "JUST SHUT UP FOR A SECOND AND LISTEN, WILL YOU?"

He blinked.

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. Her eyes were full of uncertainty. An unfamiliar urge rose inside him: the urge to put his arms around her and tell her it was all right. He didn't. In his experience, things were rarely all right. "Jace," she said, so softly that he had to lean forward to catch her words, "I think I know where my mother hid the Mortal Cup. It's inside a painting."

"What?" Jace was still staring at her as if she'd told him she'd found one of the Silent Brothers doing nude cartwheels in the hallway. "You mean she hid it behind a painting? All the paintings in your apartment were torn out of the frames."

"I know." Clary glanced past him into his bedroom. It didn't look like there was anyone else in there, to her relief. "Look, can I come in? I want to show you something."

He slouched back from the door. "If you must."

She sat down on the bed, balancing her sketchpad on her knees. The clothes he'd been wearing earlier were flung across the covers, but the rest of the room was neat as a monk's chamber. There were no pictures on the walls, no posters or photos of friends or family. The blankets were white and pulled tight and flat across the bed. Not exactly a typical teenage boy's bedroom. "Here," she said, flipping the pages until she found the coffee cup drawing. "Look at this."

Jace sat down next to her, shoving his discarded T-shirt out of the way. "It's a coffee cup."

She could hear the irritation in her own voice. "I know it's a coffee cup."

"I can't wait till you draw something really complicated, like the Brooklyn Bridge or a lobster. You'll probably send me a singing telegram."

She ignored him. "Look. This is what I wanted you to see." She passed her hand over the drawing; then, with a quick darting motion, reached into the paper. When she drew her hand back a moment later, there was the coffee cup, dangling from her fingers.

She had imagined Jace leaping from the bed in astonishment and gasping something like "Egad!" This didn't happen—largely, she suspected, because Jace had seen much stranger things in his life, and also because nobody used the word "Egad!" anymore. His eyes widened, though. "You did that?"

She nodded.

"When?"

"Just now, in my bedroom, after—after Simon left."

His glance sharpened, but he didn't pursue it. "You used runes? Which ones?"

She shook her head, fingering the now blank page. "I don't know. They came into my head and I drew them exactly how I saw them."

"Ones you saw earlier in the Gray Book?"

"I don't know." She was still shaking her head. "I couldn't tell you."

"And no one ever showed you how to do this? Your mother, for instance?"

"No. I told you before, my mother always told me there was no such thing as magic—"

"I bet she did teach you," he interrupted. "And made you forget it afterward. Magnus did say your memories would come back slowly."

"Maybe."

"Of course." Jace got to his feet and started to pace. "It's probably against the Law to use runes like that unless you've been licensed. But that doesn't matter right now. You think your mother put the Cup into a painting? Like you just did with that mug?"

Clary nodded. "But not one of the paintings in the apartment."

"Where else? A gallery? It could be anywhere—"

"Not a painting at all," Clary said. "In a card."

Jace paused, turning toward her. "A card?"

"You remember that tarot deck of Madame Dorothea's? The one my mother painted for her?"

He nodded.

"And remember when I drew the Ace of Cups? Later when I saw the statue of the Angel, the Cup looked familiar to me. It was because I'd seen it before, on the Ace. My mother painted the Mortal Cup into Madame Dorothea's tarot deck."

Jace was a step behind her. "Because she knew that it would be safe with a Control, and it was a way she could give it to Dorothea without actually telling her what it was or why she had to keep it hidden."

"Or even that she had to keep it hidden at all. Dorothea never goes out, she'd never give it away—"

"And your mother was ideally placed to keep an eye on both it and her." Jace sounded almost impressed. "Not a bad move."

"I guess so." Clary fought to control the waver in her voice. "I wish she hadn't been so good at hiding it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if they'd found it, maybe they would have left her alone. If all they wanted was the Cup—"

"They would have killed her, Clary," Jace said. She knew he was telling the truth. "These are the same men who killed my father. The only reason she may still be alive now is that they can't find the Cup. Be glad she hid it so well."

"I don't really see what any of this has to do with us," Alec said, looking blearily through his hair. Jace had woken the rest of the Institute's residents at the crack of dawn and dragged them to the library to, as he said, "devise battle strategies." Alec was still in his pajamas, Isabelle in a pink peignoir set. Hodge, in his usual sharp tweed suit, was drinking coffee out of a chipped blue ceramic mug. Only Jace, bright-eyed despite fading bruises, looked really awake. "I thought the search for the Cup was in the hands of the Clave now."

"It's just better if we do this ourselves," said Jace impatiently. "Hodge and I already discussed it and that's what we decided."

"Well." Isabelle tucked a pink-ribboned braid behind her ear. "I'm game."

"I'm not," Alec said. "There are operatives of the Clave in this city right now looking for the Cup. Pass the information on to them and let them get it."

"It's not that simple," said Jace.

"It is simple." Alec sat forward, frowning. "This has nothing to do with us and everything to do with your—your addiction to danger."

Jace shook his head, clearly exasperated. "I don't understand why you're fighting me on this."

Because he doesn't want you to get hurt, Clary thought, and wondered at his total inability to see what was really going on with Alec. Then again, she'd missed the same thing in Simon. Who was she to talk? "Look, Dorothea—the owner of the Sanctuary—doesn't trust the Clave. Hates them, in fact. She does trust us."

"She trusts me," said Clary. "I don't know about you. I'm not sure she likes you at all."

Jace ignored her. "Come on, Alec. It'll be fun. And think of the glory if we bring the Mortal Cup back to Idris! Our names will never be forgotten."

"I don't care about glory," said Alec, his eyes never leaving Jace's face. "I care about not doing anything stupid."

"In this case, however, Jace is right," said Hodge. "If the Clave were to come to the Sanctuary, it would be a disaster. Dorothea would flee with the Cup and would probably never be found. No, Jocelyn clearly wanted only one person to be able to find the Cup, and that is Clary, and Clary alone."

"Then let her go alone," said Alec.

Even Isabelle gave a little gasp at that. Jace, who had been leaning forward with his hands flat on the desk, stood up straight and looked at Alec coolly. Only Jace, Clary thought, could look cool in pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt, but he pulled it off, probably through sheer force of will. "If you're afraid of a few Forsaken, by all means stay home," he said softly.

Alec went white. "I'm not afraid," he said.

"Good," said Jace. "Then there's no problem, is there?" He looked around the room. "We're all in this together."

Alec mumbled an affirmative, while Isabelle shook her head in a vigorous nod. "Sure," she said. "It sounds fun."

"I don't know about fun," said Clary. "But I'm in, of course."

"But Clary," Hodge said quickly. "If you are concerned about the danger, you don't need to go. We can notify the Clave—"

"No," Clary said, surprising herself. "My mom wanted me to find it. Not Valentine, and not them, either." It wasn't the monsters she was hiding from, Magnus had said. "If she really spent her whole life trying to keep Valentine away from this thing, this is the least I can do."

Hodge smiled at her. "I think she knew you would say that," he said.

"Don't worry, anyway," Isabelle said. "You'll be fine. We can handle a couple of Forsaken. They're crazy, but they're not very smart."

"And a lot easier to deal with than demons," said Jace. "Not so tricksy. Oh, and we're going to need a car," he added. "Preferably a big one."

"Why?" said Isabelle. "We've never needed a car before."

"We've never had to worry about having an immeasurably precious object with us before. I don't want to haul it on the L train," Jace explained.

"There's taxis," said Isabelle. "And rental vans."

Jace shook his head. "I want an environment we control. I don't want to deal with taxi drivers or mundane rental companies when we're doing something this important."

"Don't you have a driver's license or a car?" Alec asked Clary, looking at her with veiled loathing. "I thought all mundanes had those."

"Not when they're fifteen," Clary said crossly. "I was supposed to get one this year, but not yet."

"Fat lot of use you are."

"At least my friends can drive," she shot back. "Simon's got a license."

She instantly regretted saying it.

"Does he?" said Jace, in an aggravatingly thoughtful tone.

"But he hasn't got a car," she added quickly.

"So does he drive his parents' car?" Jace asked.

Clary sighed, settling back against the desk. "No. Usually he drives Eric's van. Like, to gigs and stuff. Sometimes Eric lets him borrow it for other stuff. Like if he has a date."

Jace snorted. "He picks up his dates in a van? No wonder he's such a hit with the ladies."

"It's a car," Clary said. "You're just mad Simon has something you haven't got."

"He has many things I haven't got," said Jace. "Like nearsightedness, bad posture, and an appalling lack of coordination."

"You know," Clary said, "most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction."

"Ah," said Jace blithely, "that might explain why I so often run into people who seem to dislike me."

"I don't dislike you," said Alec quickly.

"That is because we share a brotherly affection," said Jace, striding over to the desk. He took the black telephone and held it out to Clary. "Call him."

"Call who?" Clary said, stalling for time. "Eric? He'd never lend me his car."

"Simon," said Jace. "Call Simon and ask him if he'll drive us to your house."

Clary made a last effort. "Don't you know any Shadowhunters who have cars?"

"In New York?" Jace's grin faded. "Look, everyone's in Idris for the Accords, and anyway, they'd insist on coming with us. It's this or nothing."

She met his eyes for a moment. There was a challenge in them, and something more, as if he were daring her to explain her reluctance. With a scowl she stalked over to the desk and snatched the telephone out of his hand.

She didn't have to think before dialing. Simon's number was as familiar to her as her own. She braced herself to deal with his mother or his sister, but he picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Simon?"

Silence.

Jace was looking at her. Clary squeezed her eyes shut, trying to pretend he wasn't there. "It's me," she said. "Clary."

"I know who it is." He sounded irritated. "I was asleep, you know."

"I know. It's early. I'm sorry." She twirled the phone cord around her finger. "I need to ask you for a favor."

There was another silence before he laughed bleakly. "You're kidding."

"I'm not kidding," she said. "We know where the Mortal Cup is, and we're prepared to go get it. The only thing is, we need a car."

He laughed again. "Sorry, are you telling me that your demon-slaying buddies need to be driven to their next assignation with the forces of darkness by my mom?"

"Actually, I thought you could ask Eric if you could borrow the van."

"Clary, if you think that I—"

"If we get the Mortal Cup, I'll have a way to get my mom back. It's the only reason Valentine hasn't killed her or let her go."

Simon let out a long, whistling breath. "You think it's going to be that easy to make a trade? Clary, I don't know."

"I don't know either. I just know it's a chance."

"This thing is powerful, right? In D&D it's usually better not to mess with powerful objects until you know what they do."

"I'm not going to mess with it. I'm just going to use it to get my mom back."

"That doesn't make any sense, Clary."

"This isn't D&D, Simon!" she half-screamed. "It's not a funny game where the worst thing that happens is you get a bad dice roll. This is my mom we're talking about, and Valentine could be torturing her. He could kill her. I have to do anything I can to get her back—just like I did for you."

Pause. "Maybe you're right. I don't know, this isn't really my world. Look, where are we driving to, exactly? So I can tell Eric."

"Don't bring him," she said quickly.

"I know," he replied with exaggerated patience. "I'm not stupid."

"We're driving to my house. It's in my house."

There was a short silence—bewilderment this time. "In your house? I thought your house was full of zombies."

"Forsaken warriors. They're not zombies. Anyway, Jace and the others can take care of them while I get the Cup."

"Why do you have to get the Cup?" He sounded alarmed.

"Because I'm the only one who can," she said. "Pick us up at the corner as soon as you can."

He muttered something nearly inaudible, then: "Fine."

She opened her eyes. The world swam before her in a blur of tears. "Thanks, Simon," she said. "You're a—"

But he had hung up.

"It occurs to me," said Hodge, "that the dilemmas of power are always the same." Clary glanced at him sideways. "What do you mean?" She sat on the window seat in the library, Hodge in his chair with Hugo on the armrest. The remains of breakfast—sticky jam, toast crumbs, and smears of butter—clung to a stack of plates on the low table that no one had seemed inclined to clear away. After breakfast they had scattered to prepare themselves, and Clary had been the first one back. This was hardly surprising, considering that all she had to do was pull on jeans and a shirt and run a brush through her hair, while everyone else had to arm themselves heavily. Having lost Jace's dagger in the hotel, the only remotely supernatural object she had on her was the witchlight stone in her pocket.

"I was thinking of your Simon," Hodge said, "and of Alec and Jace, among others."

She glanced out the window. It was raining, thick fat drops spattering against the panes. The sky was an impenetrable gray. "What do they have to do with each other?"

"Where there is feeling that is not requited," said Hodge, "there is an imbalance of power. It is an imbalance that is easy to exploit, but it is not a wise course. Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side."

"Simon doesn't hate me."

"He might grow to, over time, if he felt you were using him." Hodge held up a hand. "I know you do not intend to, and in some cases necessity trumps nicety of feeling. But the situation has put me in mind of another. Do you still have that photograph I gave you?"

Clary shook her head. "Not on me. It's back in my room. I could go get it—"

"No." Hodge stroked Hugo's ebony feathers. "When your mother was young, she had a best friend, just as you have Simon. They were as close as siblings. In fact, they were often mistaken for brother and sister. As they grew older, it became clear to everyone around them that he was in love with her, but she never saw it. She always called him a 'friend.'"

Clary stared at Hodge. "Do you mean Luke?"

"Yes," said Hodge. "Lucian always thought he and Jocelyn would be together. When she met and loved Valentine, he could not bear it. After they were married, he left the Circle, disappeared—and let us all think that he was dead."

"He never said—never even hinted at anything like that," Clary said. "All these years, he could have asked her—"

"He knew what the answer would be," said Hodge, looking past her toward the rain-spattered skylight. "Lucian was never the sort of man who would have deluded himself. No, he contented himself with being near her—assuming, perhaps, that over time her feelings might change."

"But if he loved her, why did he tell those men he didn't care what happened to her? Why did he refuse to let them tell him where she was?"

"As I said before, where there is love, there is also hatred," said Hodge. "She hurt him badly all those years ago. She turned her back on him. And yet he has played her faithful lapdog ever since, never remonstrating, never accusing, never confronting her with his feelings. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to turn the tables. To hurt her as he'd been hurt."

"Luke wouldn't do that." But Clary was remembering his icy tone as he told her not to ask him for favors. She saw the hard look in his eyes as he faced Valentine's men. That wasn't the Luke she'd known, the Luke she'd grown up with. That Luke would never have wanted to punish her mother for not loving him enough or in the right way. "But she did love him," Clary said, speaking aloud without realizing it. "It just wasn't the same way he loved her. Isn't that enough?"

"Perhaps he didn't think so."

"What will happen after we get the Cup?" she said. "How will we reach Valentine to let him know we have it?"

"Hugo will find him."

The rain smashed against the windows. Clary shivered. "I'm going to get a jacket," she said, slipping off the window seat.

She found her green and pink hoodie stuffed down at the bottom of her backpack. When she pulled it out, she heard something crinkle. It was the photograph of the Circle, her mother and Valentine. She looked at it for a long moment before slipping it back into the bag.

When she returned to the library, the others were all gathered there: Hodge sitting watchfully on the desk with Hugo on his shoulder, Jace all in black, Isabelle with her demon-stomping boots and gold whip, and Alec with a quiver of arrows strapped across his shoulder and a leather bracer sheathing his right arm from wrist to elbow. Everyone but Hodge was covered in freshly applied Marks, every inch of bare skin inked with swirling patterns. Jace had his left sleeve pulled up, chin on his shoulder, and was frowning as he scrawled an octagonal Mark on the skin of his upper arm.

Alec looked over at him. "You're messing it up," he said. "Let me do that."

"I'm left-handed," Jace pointed out, but he spoke mildly and held his stele out. Alec looked relieved as he took it, as if he hadn't been sure until now that he was forgiven for his earlier behavior. "It's a basic iratze," Jace said as Alec bent his dark head over Jace's arm, carefully tracing the lines of the healing rune. Jace winced as the stele slid over his skin, his eyes half-closing and his fist tightening until the muscles of his left arm stood out like cords. "By the Angel, Alec—"

"I'm trying to be careful," said Alec. He let go of Jace's arm and stepped back to admire his handiwork. "There."

Jace unclenched his fist, lowering his arm. "Thanks." He seemed to sense Clary's presence then, glancing over at her, his gold eyes narrowing. "Clary."

"You look ready," she said as Alec, suddenly flushed, moved away from Jace and busied himself with his arrows.

"We are," Jace said. "Do you still have that dagger I gave you?"

"No. I lost it in the Dumort, remember?"

"That's right." Jace looked at her, pleased. "Nearly killed a werewolf with it. I remember."

Isabelle, who had been standing by the window, rolled her eyes. "I forgot that's what gets you all hot and bothered, Jace. Girls killing things."

"I like anyone killing things," he said equably. "Especially me."

Clary glanced anxiously toward the clock on the desk. "We should go downstairs. Simon will be here any minute."

Hodge stood up from his chair. He looked very tired, Clary thought, as if he hadn't slept in days.

"May the Angel watch over you all," he said, and Hugo rose up from his shoulder into the air cawing loudly, just as the noon bells began to ring.

It was still drizzling when Simon pulled the van up at the corner and honked twice. Clary's heart leaped—some part of her had been worried that he wasn't going to show up.

Jace squinted through the dripping rain. The four of them had taken shelter under a carved stone cornice. "That's the van? It looks like a rotting banana."

This was undeniable—Eric had painted the van a neon shade of yellow, and it was blotched with dings and rust like splotches of decay. Simon honked again. Clary could see him, a blurred shape through the wet windows. She sighed and pulled her hood up to cover her hair. "Let's go."

They splashed through the filthy puddles that had collected on the pavement, Isabelle's enormous boots making a satisfying noise every time she put her feet down. Simon, leaving the motor idling, crawled into the back to pull the door aside, revealing seats whose upholstery had half-rotted through. Dangerous-looking springs poked through the gaps. Isabelle wrinkled her nose. "Is it safe to sit?"

"Safer than being strapped to the roof," said Simon pleasantly, "which is your other option." He nodded a greeting to Jace and Alec, ignoring Clary completely. "Hey."

"Hey indeed," said Jace, and lifted the rattling canvas duffel bag that held their weapons. "Where can we put these?"

Simon directed him to the back, where the boys usually kept their musical instruments, while Alec and Isabelle crawled into the van's interior and perched on the seats. "Shotgun!" announced Clary as Jace came back around the side of the van.

Alec grabbed for his bow, strapped across his back. "Where?"

"She means she wants the front seat," said Jace, pushing wet hair out of his eyes.

"That's a nice bow," said Simon, with a nod toward Alec.

Alec blinked, rain running off his eyelashes. "Do you know much about archery?" he asked, in a tone that suggested that he doubted it.

"I did archery at camp," said Simon. "Six years running."

The response to this was three blank stares and a supportive smile from Clary, which Simon ignored. He glanced up at the lowering sky. "We should go before it starts pouring again."

The front seat of the car was covered in Doritos wrappers and Pop-Tart crumbs. Clary brushed away what she could. Simon started the car before she'd finished, flinging her back against the seat. "Ouch," she said reprovingly.

"Sorry." He didn't look at her.

Clary could hear the others talking softly in the back amongst themselves—probably discussing battle strategies and the best way to behead a demon without getting ichor on your new leather boots. Though there was nothing separating the front seat from the rest of the van, Clary felt the awkward silence between her and Simon as if they were alone.

"So what's with that 'hey' thing?" she asked as Simon maneuvered the car onto the FDR parkway, the highway that ran alongside the East River.

"What 'hey' thing?" he replied, cutting off a black SUV whose occupant, a suited man with a cell phone in his hand, made an obscene gesture at them through the tinted windows.

"The 'hey' thing that guys always do. Like when you saw Jace and Alec, you said 'hey,' and they said 'hey' back. What's wrong with 'hello'?"

She thought she saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. "'Hello' is girly," he informed her. "Real men are terse. Laconic."

"So the more manly you are, the less you say?"

"Right." Simon nodded. Past him she could see the humid fog lowering over the East River, shrouding the waterfront in feathery gray mist. The water itself was the color of lead, churned to a whipped cream consistency by the steady wind. "That's why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don't say anything, they just nod. The nod means, 'I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,' but they don't say anything because they're Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Jace, from the backseat.

"Good," Clary said, and was rewarded by the smallest of smiles from Simon as he turned the van onto the Manhattan Bridge, heading toward Brooklyn and home.

By the time they reached Clary's house, it had finally stopped raining. Threaded beams of sunlight were burning away the remnants of mist, and the puddles on the sidewalk were drying. Jace, Alec, and Isabelle made Simon and Clary wait by the van while they went to check, as Jace said, the "demonic activity levels."

Simon watched as the three Shadowhunters headed up the rose-lined walkway to the house. "Demonic activity levels? Do they have a device that measures whether the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?"

"No," Clary said, pushing her damp hood back so she could enjoy the feel of the sunlight on her draggled hair. "The Sensor tells them how powerful the demons are—if there are any demons." Simon looked impressed.

"That is useful."

She turned to him. "Simon, about last night—"

He held up a hand. "We don't have to talk about it. In fact, I'd rather not."

"Just let me say one thing." She spoke quickly. "I know that when you said you loved me, what I said back wasn't what you wanted to hear."

"True. I'd always hoped that when I finally said 'I love you' to a girl, she'd say 'I know' back, like Leia did to Han in Return of the Jedi."

"That is so geeky," Clary said, unable to help herself.

He glared at her.

"Sorry," she said. "Look, Simon, I—"

"No," he said. "You look, Clary. Look at me, and really see me. Can you do that?"

She looked at him. Looked at the dark eyes, flecked with lighter color toward the outside edge of the iris, at the familiar, slightly uneven eyebrows, the long lashes, the dark hair and hesitating smile and graceful musical hands that were all part of Simon, who was part of her. If she had to tell the truth, would she really say that she'd never known that he loved her? Or just that she'd never known what she would do about it if he did?

She sighed. "Seeing through glamour is easy. It's people that are hard."

"We all see what we want to see," he said quietly.

"Not Jace," she said, unable to help herself, thinking of those clear, impassive eyes.

"Him more than anyone."

She frowned. "What do you—"

"All right," came Jace's voice, interrupting them. Clary turned hastily. "We've checked all four corners of the house— nothing. Low activity. Probably just the Forsaken, and they might not even bother us unless we try getting into the upstairs apartment."

"And if they do," said Isabelle, her grin as glittering as her whip, "we'll be ready for them."

Alec dragged the heavy canvas bag out of the back of the van, dropping it on the sidewalk. "Ready to go," he announced. "Let's kick some demon butt!"

Jace looked at him a little oddly. "You all right?"

"Fine." Not looking at him, Alec discarded his bow and arrow in favor of a polished wooden featherstaff, with two glittering blades that appeared at a light touch from his fingers. "This is better."

Isabelle looked at her brother with concern. "But the bow…"

Alec cut her off. "I know what I'm doing, Isabelle."

The bow lay across the backseat, gleaming in the sunlight. Simon reached for it, then drew his hand back as a laughing group of young women pushing strollers headed up the street in the direction of the park. They took no notice of the three heavily armed teenagers crouched by the yellow van. "How come I can see you guys?" Simon asked. "What happened to that invisibility magic of yours?"

"You can see us," said Jace, "because now you know the truth of what you're looking at."

"Yeah," said Simon. "I guess I do."

He protested a little when they asked him to stay by the van, but Jace impressed upon him the importance of having a getaway vehicle idling by the curb. "Sunlight's fatal to demons, but it won't hurt the Forsaken. What if they chase us? What if the car gets towed?"

The last Clary saw of Simon as she turned to wave from the front porch was his long legs propped up on the dashboard as he sorted through Eric's CD collection. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least Simon was safe.

The smell hit her the moment they walked through the front door. It was almost indescribable, like spoiled eggs and maggoty meat and seaweed rotting on a hot beach. Isabelle wrinkled her nose and Alec turned greenish, but Jace looked as if he were inhaling rare perfume. "Demons have been here," he announced, with cold delight. "Recently, too."

Clary looked at him anxiously. "But they're not still—"

"No." He shook his head. "We would have sensed it. Still." He jerked his chin at Dorothea's door, tightly shut without a wisp of light peeking from underneath. "She might have some questions to answer if the Clave hears she's been entertaining demons."

"I doubt the Clave will be too pleased about any of this," said Isabelle. "On balance, she'll probably come out of it better than we do."

"They won't care as long as we get the Cup in the end." Alec was glancing around, blue eyes taking in the sizeable foyer, the curved staircase leading upstairs, the stains on the walls. "Especially if we slaughter a few Forsaken while we do it."

Jace shook his head. "They're in the upstairs apartment. My guess is that they won't bother us unless we try to get in."

Isabelle blew a sticky strand of hair out of her face and frowned at Clary. "What are you waiting for?"

Clary glanced involuntarily at Jace, who gave her a sideways smile. Go ahead, said his eyes.

She moved across the foyer toward Dorothea's door, stepping carefully. With the skylight blackened with dirt and the entryway lightbulb still out, the only illumination came from Jace's witchlight. The air was hot and close, and the shadows seemed to rise up before her like magically fast-growing plants in a nightmare forest. She reached up to knock on Dorothea's door, once lightly and then again with more force.

It swung open, spilling a great wash of golden light into the foyer. Dorothea stood there, massive and imposing in swaths of green and orange. Today her turban was neon yellow, adorned with a stuffed canary and rickrack trim. Chandelier earrings bobbed against her hair, and her big feet were bare. Clary was surprised—she'd never seen Dorothea barefoot before, or wearing anything other than her faded carpet slippers.

Her toenails were a pale, and very tasteful, shell pink.

"Clary!" she exclaimed, and swept Clary into an overwhelming embrace. For a moment Clary struggled, embroiled in a sea of perfumed flesh, swaths of velvet, and the tasseled ends of Dorothea's shawl. "Good Lord, girl," said the witch, shaking her head until her earrings swung like wind chimes in a storm. "The last time I saw you, you were disappearing through my Portal. Where'd you end up?"

"Williamsburg," said Clary, catching her breath.

Dorothea's eyebrows shot skyward. "And they say there's no convenient public transportation in Brooklyn." She swung the door open and gestured for them to come in.

The place looked unchanged from the last time Clary had seen it: There were the same tarot cards and crystal ball scattered on the table. Her fingers itched for the cards, itched to snatch them up and see what might lie hidden inside their slickly painted surfaces.

Dorothea sank gratefully into an armchair and regarded the Shadowhunters with a stare as beady as the eyes of the stuffed canary on her hat. Scented candles burned in dishes on either side of the table, which did little to dispel the thick stench pervading every inch of the house. "I take it you haven't located your mother?" she asked Clary.

Clary shook her head. "No. But I know who took her."

Dorothea's eyes darted past Clary to Alec and Isabelle, who were examining the Hand of Fate on the wall. Jace, looking supremely unconcerned in his role of bodyguard, lounged against a chair arm. Satisfied that none of her belongings were being destroyed, Dorothea returned her gaze to Clary. "Was it—"

"Valentine," Clary confirmed. "Yes."

Dorothea sighed. "I feared as much." She settled back against the cushions. "Do you know what he wants with her?"

"I know she was married to him—"

The witch grunted. "Love gone wrong. The worst."

Jace made a soft, almost inaudible noise at that—a chuckle. Dorothea's ears pricked like a cat's. "What's so funny, boy?"

"What would you know about it?" he said. "Love, I mean."

Dorothea folded her soft white hands in her lap. "More than you might think," she said. "Didn't I read your tea leaves, Shadowhunter? Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?"

Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself."

Dorothea roared at that. "At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland."

"Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting."

Dorothea roared again. Clary interrupted her. "You must be wondering why we're here, Madame Dorothea."

Dorothea subsided, wiping at her eyes. "Please," she said, "feel free to give me my proper title, as the boy did. You may call me Lady. And I assumed," she added, "that you came for the pleasure of my company. Was I wrong?"

"I don't have time for the pleasure of anyone's company. I have to help my mother, and to do that there's something I need."

"And what's that?"

"It's something called the Mortal Cup," Clary said, "and Valentine thought my mother had it. That's why he took her."

Dorothea looked well and truly astonished. "The Cup of the Angel?" she said, disbelief coloring her voice. "Raziel's Cup, in which he mixed the blood of angels and the blood of men and gave of this mixture to a man to drink, and created the first Shadowhunter?"

"That would be the one," said Jace, a little dryness in his tone.

"Why on earth would he think she had it?" Dorothea demanded. "Jocelyn, of all people?" Realization dawned on her face before Clary could speak. "Because she wasn't Jocelyn Fray at all, of course," she said. "She was Jocelyn Fairchild, his wife. The one everyone thought had died. She took the Cup and fled, didn't she?"

Something flickered in the back of the witch's eyes then, but she lowered her lids so quickly that Clary thought she might have imagined it. "So," Dorothea said, "do you know what you're going to do now? Wherever she's hidden it, it can't be easy to find—if you even want it found. Valentine could do terrible things with his hands on that Cup."

"I want it found," said Clary. "We want to—"

Jace cut her off smoothly. "We know where it is," he said. "It's only a matter of retrieving it."

Dorothea's eyes widened. "Well, where is it?"

"Here," said Jace, in a tone so smug that Isabelle and Alec wandered over from their perusal of the bookcase to see what was going on.

"Here? You mean you have it with you?"

"Not exactly, dear Lady," said Jace, who was, Clary felt, enjoying himself in a truly appalling manner. "I meant that you have it."

Dorothea's mouth snapped shut. "That's not funny," she said, so sharply that Clary became worried that this was all going terribly wrong. Why did Jace always have to antagonize everyone?

"You do have it," Clary interrupted hurriedly, "but not—"

Dorothea rose from the armchair to her full, magnificent height, and glowered down at them. "You are mistaken," she said coldly. "Both in imagining that I have the Cup, and in daring to come here and call me a liar."

Alec's hand went to his featherstaff. "Oh, boy," he said under his breath.

Baffled, Clary shook her head. "No," she said quickly, "I'm not calling you a liar, I promise. I'm saying the Cup is here, but you never knew it."

Madame Dorothea stared at her. Her eyes, nearly hidden in the folds of her face, were hard as marbles. "Explain yourself," she said.

"I'm saying my mother hid it here," said Clary. "Years ago. She never told you because she didn't want to involve you."

"So she gave it to you disguised," Jace explained, "in the form of a gift."

Dorothea looked at him blankly.

Doesn't she remember? Clary thought, puzzled. "The tarot deck," she said. "The cards she painted for you."

The witch's gaze went to the cards, lying in their silk wrappings on the table. "The cards?" As her gaze widened, Clary stepped to the table and picked up the deck. They were warm to the touch, almost slippery. Now, as she had not been able to before, she felt the power from the runes painted on their backs pulsing through the tips of her fingers. She found the Ace of Cups by touch and pulled it out, setting the rest of the cards back down on the table.

"Here it is," she said.

They were all looking at her, expectant, perfectly still. Slowly she turned the card over and looked again at her mother's artwork: the slim painted hand, its fingers wrapped around the gold stem of the Mortal Cup.

"Jace," she said. "Give me your stele."

He pressed it, warm and alive-feeling, into her palm. She turned the card over and traced over the runes painted on its back—a twist here and a line there and they meant something entirely different. When she turned the card back over, the picture had subtly changed: The fingers had released their grip on the Cup's stem, and the hand seemed almost to be offering the Cup to her as if to say, Here, take it.

She slid the stele into her pocket. Then, though the painted square was no bigger than her hand, she reached into it as if through a wide gap. Her hand wrapped around the base of the Cup—her fingers closed on it—and as she drew her hand back, the Cup gripped firmly in it, she thought she heard the smallest of sighs before the card, now blank and empty, turned to ash that sifted away between her fingers to the carpeted floor.

19 Abbadon

Clary wasn't sure what she'd expected—exclamations of delight, perhaps a smattering of applause. Instead there was silence, broken only when Jace said, "Somehow, I thought it would be bigger."

Clary looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size, perhaps, of an ordinary wineglass, only much heavier. Power thrummed through it, like blood through living veins. "It's a perfectly nice size," she said indignantly.

"Oh, it's big enough," he said patronizingly, "but somehow I was expecting something… you know." He gestured with his hands, indicating something roughly the size of a house cat.

"It's the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl," said Isabelle. "Are we done now? Can we go?"

Dorothea had her head cocked to one side, her beady eyes bright and interested. "But it's damaged!" she exclaimed. "How did that happen?"

"Damaged?" Clary looked at the Cup in bewilderment. It looked fine to her.

"Here," said the witch, "let me show you," and she took a step toward Clary, holding her long red-nailed hands out for the Cup. Clary, without knowing why, shrank back. Suddenly Jace was between them, his hand hovering near the sword at his waist.

"No offense," he said calmly, "but nobody touches the Mortal Cup except us."

Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and that same strange blankness returned to her eyes. "Now," she said, "let's not be hasty. Valentine would be displeased if anything were to happen to the Cup."

With a soft snick, the sword at Jace's waist came free. The point hovered just below Dorothea's chin. Jace's look was steady. "I don't know what this is about," he said. "But we're leaving."

The old woman's eyes gleamed. "Of course, Shadowhunter," she said, backing up to the curtained wall. "Would you like to use the Portal?"

The point of Jace's sword wavered as he stared in momentary confusion. Then Clary saw his jaw tighten. "Don't touch that—"

Dorothea chuckled, and quick as a flash she jerked down the curtains hanging along the wall. They fell with a sound of soft collapse. The Portal behind them was open.

Clary heard Alec, behind her, suck in his breath. "What is that?" Clary had caught only a glimpse of what was visible through the door—red roiling clouds shot through with black lightning, and a terrible dark, rushing shape that hurtled toward them—when Jace shouted for them to get down. He dropped to the floor, yanking Clary down with him. Flat on her stomach on the carpet, she lifted her head in time to see the rushing dark thing strike Madame Dorothea, who screamed, thrusting her arms upward. Rather than knocking her down, the dark thing wrapped her like a shroud, its blackness seeming to seep into her like ink sinking into paper. Her back humped monstrously, her whole shape elongating as she rose and rose into the air, her bulk stretching and re-forming. A sharp rattle of objects striking the floor made Clary look down: They were Dorothea's bracelets, twisted and broken. Scattered among the jewels were what looked like small white stones. It took Clary a moment to realize that they were teeth.

Beside her Jace whispered something. It sounded like an exclamation of disbelief. Next to him, Alec in a choked voice said, "But you said there wasn't much demonic activity—you said the levels were low!"

"They were low," Jace growled.

"Your version of low must be different from mine!" Alec shouted, as the thing that had once been Dorothea howled and twisted. It seemed to be spreading, humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen—

Clary tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her after him. Isabelle and Alec stumbled to their feet, gripping their weapons. The hand holding Isabelle's whip was trembling slightly.

"Move!" Jace shoved Clary toward the apartment door. When she tried to look back over her shoulder, she saw only a thickly swirling grayness, like storm clouds, a dark shape at its center…

The four of them burst out into the foyer, Isabelle in the lead. She raced toward the front door, tried it, and turned with a stricken face: "It's resistant. Must be a spell—"

Jace swore and fumbled in his jacket. "Where the hell is my stele—?"

"I have it," Clary said, remembering. As she reached for her pocket, a noise like thunder exploded through the room. The floor heaved under her feet. She stumbled and nearly fell, catching at the banister for support. When she looked up, she saw a gaping new hole in the wall separating the foyer from Dorothea's apartment, lined all around its ragged edges with wood and plaster rubble, through which something was climbing—almost oozing—

"Alec!" It was Jace, shouting: Alec was standing in front of the hole, white-faced and horrified-looking. Swearing, Jace ran up and grabbed him, dragging him back just as the oozing thing pulled itself free of the wall and into the foyer.

Clary heard her breath catch. The creature's flesh was livid and bruised-looking. Through the seeping skin, bones protruded—not new white bones, but bones that looked as if they had been in the earth a thousand years, black and cracked and filthy. Its fingers were stripped and skeletal, its thin-fleshed arms pocked with dripping black sores through which more yellowing bone was visible. Its face was a skull, its nose and eyes caved-in holes. Its taloned fingers brushed the floor. Tangled around its wrists and shoulders were bright swatches of cloth: all that remained of Madame Dorothea's silk scarves and turban. It was at least nine feet tall.

It looked down at the four teenagers with empty eye sockets. "Give me," it said, in a voice like the wind blowing trash across empty pavement, "the Mortal Cup. Give it to me, and I will let you live."

Panicked, Clary stared at the others. Isabelle looked as if the sight of the thing had hit her like a punch to the stomach. Alec was motionless. It was Jace, as always, who spoke. "What are you?" he asked, voice steady, though he looked more rattled than Clary had ever seen him.

The thing inclined its head. "I am Abbadon. I am the Demon of the Abyss. Mine are the empty places between the worlds. Mine is the wind and the howling darkness. I am as unlike those mewling things you call demons as an eagle is unlike a fly. You cannot hope to defeat me. Give me the Cup or die."

Isabelle's whip trembled. "It's a Greater Demon," she said. "Jace, if we—"

"What about Dorothea?" Clary's voice came shrilly out of her mouth before she could stop it. "What happened to her?"

The demon's empty eyes swung to regard her. "She was a vessel only," it said. "She opened the Portal and I took possession of her. Her death was swift." Its gaze moved to the Cup in her hand. "Yours will not be."

It began to move toward her. Jace blocked its way, the glittering sword in one hand, a seraph blade appearing in the other. Alec was watching him, his expression sick with horror.

"By the Angel," Jace said, looking the demon up and down. "I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell."

Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth.

"I'm not so sure about this wind and howling darkness business," Jace went on, "smells more like landfill to me. You sure you're not from Staten Island?"

The demon leaped at him. Jace whipped his blades up and outward with an almost frightening speed; both sank into the fleshiest part of the demon, its abdomen. It howled and struck at him, knocking him aside the way a cat might bat aside a kitten. Jace rolled and got to his feet, but Clary could see from the way he was holding his arm that he'd been hurt.

That was enough for Isabelle. Darting forward, she lashed out at the demon with her whip. It struck the demon's gray hide, and a red weal appeared, welling blood. Abbadon ignored her, moving toward Jace.

With his uninjured hand Jace drew out a second seraph blade. He whispered to it and it sprung free, bright and gleaming. He raised it as the demon loomed up before him; he looked impossibly small in front of it, a child dwarfed by a monster. And he was grinning, even as the demon reached for him. Isabelle, screaming, lashed at it, sending blood in a thick spray across the floor—

The demon struck, its razored hand lashing down at Jace. Jace staggered back, but he was unharmed. Something had thrown itself between him and the demon, a slim black shadow with a gleaming blade in its hand. Alec. The demon shrieked— Alec's featherstaff had pierced its skin. With a snarl it struck again, bone-talons catching Alec a vicious blow that lifted him off his feet and hurled him against the far wall. He struck with a sickening crunch and slid to the floor.

Isabelle screamed her brother's name. He didn't move. Lowering the whip, she started to run to him. The demon, turning, caught her a backhanded blow that sent her spinning to the ground. Coughing blood, Isabelle started to get to her feet; Abbadon knocked her down again, and this time she lay still.

The demon moved toward Clary.

Jace stood frozen, staring at Alec's crumpled body like someone caught in a dream. Clary screamed as Abbadon neared her. She began to back up the stairs, stumbling on the broken steps. The stele burned against her skin. If only she had a weapon, anything—

Isabelle had clawed her way into a sitting position. Pushing her bloody hair back, she screamed at Jace. Clary heard her own name in Isabelle's screams and saw Jace, blinking as if slapped awake, spin toward her. He began to run. The demon was close enough now that Clary could see the black sores on its skin, could see that there were things crawling inside them. It reached for her—

But Jace was there, knocking Abbadon's hand aside. He flung the seraph blade at the demon; it stuck in the creature's chest, next to the two blades already there. The demon snarled as if the blades were no more than an annoyance. "Shadowhunter," it snarled. "I shall take pleasure in killing you, in hearing your bones crunch as your friend's did—"

Springing onto the banister, Jace flung himself at Abbadon. The force of the jump knocked the demon backward; it staggered, Jace clinging to its back. He seized a seraph blade out of its chest, sending up a spray of ichor, and brought the blade down, again and again, into the demon's back, its shoulders running with black fluid.

Snarling, Abbadon backed toward the wall. Jace had to drop or be crushed. He fell to the ground, landed lightly, and raised the blade again. But Abbadon was too swift for him; its hand lashed out, knocking Jace into the stairs. Jace went down, a circle of talons at his throat.

"Tell them to give me the Cup," Abbadon snarled, talons hovering just above Jace's skin. "Tell them to give it to me and I will let them live."

Jace swallowed. "Clary—"

But Clary would never know what he would have said, because at that moment the front door flew open. For a moment all she saw was brightness. Then, blinking away the fiery afterimage, she saw Simon standing in the open doorway. Simon. She had forgotten he was outside, had almost forgotten he existed.

He saw her, crouched on the stairs, and his gaze moved past her and over Abbadon and Jace. He reached back over his shoulder. He was holding Alec's bow, she realized, and the quiver was strapped across his back. He drew an arrow from it, fitted it to the string, and lifted the bow expertly, as if he'd done the same thing a hundred times before.

The arrow sprang free. It made a hot buzzing sound, like a huge bumblebee, as it shot over Abbadon's head, plunged toward the roof—

And shattered the skylight. Dirty black glass fell like rain, and through the broken pane streamed sunlight, quantities of sunlight, great golden bars of it stabbing downward and flooding the foyer with light.

Abbadon screamed and staggered back, shielding its misshapen head with its hands. Jace put a hand to his unharmed throat, staring in disbelief as the demon crumpled, howling, to the floor. Clary half-expected it to burst into flames, but instead it began to fold in on itself. Its legs collapsed toward its torso, its skull crumpling like burning paper, and within the span of a minute it had vanished entirely, leaving only scorch marks behind.

Simon lowered the bow. He was blinking behind his glasses, his mouth slightly open. He looked as astonished as Clary felt.

Jace lay on the stairs where the demon had thrown him. He was struggling to sit up as Clary slid down the steps and fell to her knees beside him. "Jace—"

"I'm all right." He sat up, wiping blood from his mouth. He coughed and spit red. "Alec—"

"Your stele," she interrupted, reaching for her pocket. "Do you need it to fix yourself ?"

He looked at her. The sunlight pouring through the shattered skylight lit his face. He looked as if he were holding himself back from something with a terrible effort. "I'm all right," he said again, and pushed her aside, none too gently. He got to his feet, staggered, and nearly fell—the first ungraceful thing she'd ever seen him do. "Alec?"

Clary watched him as he limped across the foyer toward his unconscious friend. Then she zipped the Mortal Cup into the pocket of her hoodie and got to her feet. Isabelle had crawled to her brother's side and was cradling his head in her lap, stroking his hair. His chest rose and fell—slowly, but he was breathing. Simon, leaning against the wall watching them, looked utterly drained. Clary squeezed his hand as she passed him. "Thank you," she whispered. "That was amazing."

"Don't thank me," he said, "thank the archery program at B'nai B'rith summer camp."

"Simon, I don't—"

"Clary!" It was Jace, calling her. "Bring my stele."

Simon let her go reluctantly. She knelt down next to the Shadowhunters, the Mortal Cup thumping heavily against her side. Alec's face was white, freckled with drops of blood, his eyes unnaturally blue. His grip on Jace's wrist left bloody smears. "Did I…," he started, then seemed to see Clary, as if for the first time. There was something in his look she hadn't expected. Triumph. "Did I kill it?"

Jace's face twisted painfully. "You—"

"Yes," Clary said. "It's dead."

Alec looked at her and laughed. Blood bubbled up in his mouth. Jace pulled his wrist free, touched his fingers to either side of Alec's face. "Don't," he said. "Hold still, just hold still."

Alec closed his eyes. "Do what you have to," he whispered.

Isabelle held her stele out to Jace. "Take it."

He nodded, and drew the tip of the stele down the front of Alec's shirt. The material parted as if he'd sliced it with a knife. Isabelle watched him through frantic eyes as he yanked the shirt open, leaving Alec's chest bare. His skin was very white, marked here and there with old translucent scars. There were other injuries there too: a darkening lattice of claw marks, each hole red and oozing. Jaw set, Jace set the stele to Alec's skin, moving it back and forth with the ease of long practice. But there was something wrong. Even as he drew the healing marks, they seemed to vanish as if he were writing on water.

Jace threw the stele aside. "Damn it."

Isabelle's voice was shrill. "What's going on?"

"It cut him with its talons," Jace said. "There's demon poison in him. The Marks can't work." He touched Alec's face again, gently. "Alec," he said. "Can you hear me?"

Alec didn't move. The shadows under his eyes looked blue and as dark as bruises. If it weren't for his breathing, Clary would have thought he was already dead.

Isabelle bent her head, her hair covering Alec's face. Her arms were around him. "Maybe," she whispered, "we could—"

"Take him to the hospital." It was Simon, standing over them, the bow dangling in his hand. "I'll help you carry him to the van. There's Methodist down on Seventh Avenue—"

"No hospitals," said Isabelle. "We need to get him to the Institute."

"But—"

"They won't know how to treat him in a hospital," said Jace. "He's been cut by a Greater Demon. No mundane doctor would know how to heal those wounds."

Simon nodded. "All right. Let's get him to the car."

In a stroke of good luck, the van hadn't been towed. Isabelle draped a dirty blanket across the backseat and they laid Alec down across it, his head on Isabelle's lap. Jace crouched down on the floor beside his friend. His shirt was stained dark across the sleeves and chest with blood, demon and human. When he looked at Simon, Clary saw that all the gold seemed washed out of his eyes by something she had never seen in them before. Panic.

"Drive fast, mundane," he said. "Drive like hell was following you."

Simon drove.

They careened down Flatbush and rocketed onto the bridge, keeping pace with the Q train as it roared over the blue water. The sun was painfully bright in Clary's eyes, striking hot sparks off the river. She clutched at her seat as Simon took the curving ramp off the bridge at fifty miles an hour.

She thought about the awful things she'd said to Alec, the way he'd thrown himself at Abbadon, the look of triumph on his face. When she turned her head now, she saw Jace kneeling next to his friend as blood seeped through the blanket. She thought of the little boy with the dead falcon. To love is to destroy.

Clary turned back around, a hard lump lodged in the back of her throat. Isabelle was visible in the badly angled rearview mirror, wrapping the blanket around Alec's throat. She looked up and met Clary's eyes. "How much farther?"

"Maybe ten minutes. Simon's driving as fast as he can."

"I know," Isabelle said. "Simon—what you did, that was incredible. You moved so fast. I wouldn't have thought a mundane could have thought of something like that."

Simon didn't seem fazed by praise from such an unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. "You mean shooting out the skylight? It hit me after you guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and how you'd said demons couldn't stand direct sun. So, actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don't feel bad," he added, "you can't even see that skylight unless you know it's there."

I knew it was there, Clary thought. I should have acted on it. Even if I didn't have a bow and arrow like Simon, I could have thrown something at it or told Jace about it. She felt stupid and useless and thick, as though her head were full of cotton. The truth was that she'd been frightened. Too frightened to think straight. She felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind her eyelids like a small sun.

Jace spoke then. "It was well done," he said.

Simon's eyes narrowed. "So, if you don't mind telling me— that thing, the demon—where did it come from?"

"It was Madame Dorothea," said Clary. "I mean, it was sort of her."

"She was never exactly a pinup, but I don't remember her looking that bad."

"I think she was possessed," said Clary slowly, trying to piece it together in her own mind. "She wanted me to give her the Cup. Then she opened the Portal…"

"It was clever," said Jace. "The demon possessed her, then hid the majority of its ethereal form just outside the Portal, where the Sensor wouldn't register it. So we went in expecting to fight a few Forsaken. Instead we found ourselves facing a Greater Demon. Abbadon—one of the Ancients. The Lord of the Fallen."

"Well, it looks like the Fallen will just have to learn to get along without him from now on," said Simon, turning onto the street.

"He's not dead," Isabelle said. "Hardly anyone's ever killed a Greater Demon. You have to kill them in their physical and ethereal forms before they'll die. We just scared him off."

"Oh." Simon looked disappointed. "What about Madame Dorothea? Will she be all right now that—"

He broke off, because Alec had begun to choke, his breath rattling in his chest. Jace swore under his breath with vicious precision. "Why aren't we there yet?"

"We are here. I just don't want to crash into a wall." As Simon pulled up carefully at the corner, Clary saw that the door of the Institute was open, Hodge standing framed in the arch. The van jerked to a halt and Jace leaped out, reaching back to lift Alec as if he weighed no more than a child. Isabelle followed him up the walk, holding her brother's bloody featherstaff. The Institute door slammed shut behind them.

Tiredness washing over her, Clary looked at Simon. "I'm sorry. I don't know how you're going to explain all the blood to Eric."

"Screw Eric," he said with conviction. "Are you all right?"

"Not a scratch. Everyone else got hurt, but not me."

"It's their job, Clary," he said gently. "Fighting demons—it's what they do. Not what you do."

"What do I do, Simon?" she asked, searching his face for an answer. "What do I do?"

"Well—you got the Cup," he said. "Didn't you?"

She nodded, and tapped her pocket. "Yes."

He looked relieved. "I almost didn't want to ask," he said. "That's good, right?"

"It is," she said. She thought of her mother, and her hand tightened on the Cup. "I know it is."

Church met her at the top of the stairs, yowling like a foghorn, and led her to the infirmary. The double doors were open, and through them she could see Alec's still figure, motionless on one of the white beds. Hodge was bent over him; Isabelle, beside the older man, held a silver tray in her hands.

Jace was not with them. He was not with them because he was standing outside the infirmary, leaning against the wall, his bare, bloody hands curled at his sides. When Clary stopped in front of him, his lids flew open, and she saw that the pupils of his eyes were dilated, all the gold swallowed up in black.

"How is he?" she asked, as gently as she could.

"He's lost a lot of blood. Demon poisonings are common, but since it was a Greater Demon, Hodge isn't sure if the antidotes he usually employs will be viable."

She reached to touch his arm. "Jace—"

He flinched away. "Don't."

She sucked in her breath. "I never would have wanted anything to happen to Alec. I'm so sorry."

He looked at her as if seeing her there for the first time. "It's not your fault," he said. "It's mine."

"Yours? Jace, no it isn't—"

"Oh, but it is," he said, his voice as fragile as a sliver of ice. "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"What does that mean?"

"My fault," he said, "my own fault, my most grievous fault. It's Latin." He brushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead absently, as if unaware he was doing it. "Part of the Mass."

"I thought you didn't believe in religion."

"I may not believe in sin," he said, "but I do feel guilt. We Shadowhunters live by a code, and that code isn't flexible. Honor, fault, penance, those are real to us, and they have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with who we are. This is who I am, Clary," he said desperately. "I am one of the Clave. It's in my blood and bones. So tell me, if you're so sure this wasn't my fault, why is it that the first thought in my mind when I saw Abbadon wasn't for my fellow warriors but for you?" His other hand came up; he was holding her face, prisoned between his palms. "I know—I knew—Alec wasn't acting like himself. I knew something was wrong. But all I could think about was you…"

He bent his head forward, so their foreheads touched. She could feel his breath stir her eyelashes. She closed her eyes, letting the nearness of him wash over her like a tide. "If he dies, it will be like I killed him," he said. "I let my father die, and now I've killed the only brother I ever had."

"That's not true," she whispered.

"Yes, it is." They were close enough to kiss. And still he held her tightly, as if nothing could reassure him that she was real. "Clary," he said. "What's happening to me?"

She searched her mind for an answer—and heard someone clear his throat. She opened her eyes. Hodge stood by the infirmary door, his neat suit stained with patches of rust. "I have done what I can. He is sedated, not in pain, but…" He shook his head. "I must contact the Silent Brothers. This is beyond my abilities."

Jace drew slowly away from Clary. "How long will it take them to get here?"

"I don't know." Hodge started down the corridor, shaking his head. "I'll send Hugo immediately, but the Brothers come at their own discretion."

"But for this—" Even Jace was scrambling to keep up with Hodge's long strides; Clary had fallen hopelessly behind the two of them and had to strain her ears to hear what he was saying. "He might die otherwise."

"He might," was all Hodge said in response.

The library was dark and smelled like rain: One of the windows had been left open, and a puddle of water had collected under the curtains. Hugo chirruped and bounced on his perch as Hodge strode over to him, pausing only to light the lamp on his desk. "It is a pity," Hodge said, reaching for paper and a fountain pen, "that you did not retrieve the Cup. It would, I think, bring some comfort to Alec and certainly to his—"

"But I did retrieve the Cup," said Clary, amazed. "Didn't you tell him, Jace?"

Jace was blinking, though whether it was because of surprise or the sudden light, Clary couldn't tell. "There wasn't time—I was bringing Alec upstairs …"

Hodge had gone very still, the pen motionless between his fingers. "You have the Cup?"

"Yes." Clary drew the Cup out of her pocket: It was still cold, as if contact with her body could not warm the metal. The rubies winked like red eyes. "I have it here."

The pen slipped from Hodge's hand entirely and struck the floor at his feet. The lamplight, thrown upward, was not kind to his ravaged face: It showed every etched line of harshness and worry and despair. "That is the Angel's Cup?"

"The one," said Jace. "It was—"

"Never mind that now," said Hodge. He set the paper down on the desk and moved toward Jace, catching his student by the shoulders. "Jace Wayland, do you know what you've done?"

Jace looked up at Hodge, surprised. Clary noted the contrast: the ravaged face of the older man and the boy's unlined one, the pale locks of hair falling into Jace's eyes making him look even younger. "I'm not sure what you mean," Jace said.

Hodge's breath hissed out through his teeth. "You look so much like him."

"Like who?" said Jace in astonishment; he had clearly never heard Hodge talk this way before.

"Like your father," Hodge said, and raised his eyes to where Hugo, black wings stirring the humid air, hovered just overhead.

Hodge narrowed his eyes. "Hugin," he said, and with an unearthly caw the bird dived straight for Clary's face, claws outstretched.

Clary heard Jace shout, and then the world was whirling feathers and slashing beak and claws. Bright pain bloomed along her cheek and she shrieked, instinctively throwing her hands up to cover her face.

She felt the Mortal Cup yanked from her grasp. "No!" she cried, grabbing for it. An agonizing pain shot up her arm. Her legs seemed to go out from under her. She slipped and fell, striking her knees painfully against the hard floor. Claws raked her forehead.

"That's enough, Hugo," said Hodge in his quiet voice.

Obediently the bird spun away from Clary. Gagging, she blinked blood out of her eyes. Her face felt shredded.

Hodge had not moved; he stood where he was, holding the Mortal Cup. Hugo was circling him in wide, agitated rounds, cawing softly. And Jace—Jace lay on the floor at Hodge's feet, very still, as if he had fallen suddenly asleep.

All other thoughts were driven from her mind. "Jace!" Speaking hurt—the pain in her cheek was startling and she could taste blood in her mouth. Jace didn't move.

"He's not hurt," said Hodge. Clary started to her feet, meaning to fling herself at him—then reeled back as she struck something invisible but as hard and strong as glass. Infuriated, she struck against the air with her fist.

"Hodge!" she shouted. She kicked out, nearly bruising her feet on the same invisible wall. "Don't be stupid. When the Clave finds out what you've done—"

"I'll be long gone by then," he said, kneeling over Jace.

"But—" A shock ran through her, a jolt of electric realization. "You never sent a message to the Clave, did you? That's why you were so weird when I asked you about it. You wanted the Cup for yourself."

"Not," said Hodge, "for myself."

Clary's throat was dry as dust. "You work for Valentine," she whispered.

"I do not work for Valentine," said Hodge. He lifted Jace's hand and drew something from it. It was the engraved ring Jace always wore. Hodge slipped it onto his own finger. "But I am Valentine's man, it is true."

With a swift movement he twisted the ring three times around his finger. For a moment nothing happened; then Clary heard the sound of a door opening and turned instinctively to see who was coming into the library. When she turned back, she saw that the air beside Hodge was shimmering, like the surface of a lake seen from a distance. The shimmering wall of air parted like a silver curtain, and then a tall man was standing next to Hodge, as if he had coalesced out of the humid air.

"Starkweather," he said. "You have the Cup?"

Hodge raised the Cup in his hands, but said nothing. He appeared paralyzed, whether with fear or astonishment, it was impossible to tell. He had always seemed tall to Clary, but now he looked hunched and small. "My Lord Valentine," he said, finally. "I had not expected you so quickly."

Valentine. He bore little resemblance to the handsome boy in the photograph, though his eyes were still black. His face was not what she had expected: It was a restrained, closed, interior face, the face of a priest, with sorrowful eyes. Creeping out beneath the black cuffs of his tailored suit were the ridged white scars that spoke of years of the stele. "I told you I would come to you through a Portal," he said. His voice was resonant, and strangely familiar. "Didn't you believe me?"

"Yes. It's just—I thought you'd send Pangborn or Blackwell, not come yourself."

"You think I would send them to collect the Cup? I am not a fool. I know its lure." Valentine held out his hand, and Clary saw, gleaming on his finger, a ring that was the twin of Jace's. "Give it to me."

But Hodge held the Cup fast. "I want what you promised me first."

"First? You don't trust me, Starkweather?" Valentine smiled, a smile not without humor in it. "I'll do as you asked. A bargain is a bargain. Though I must say I was astonished to get your message. I wouldn't have thought you'd mind a life of hidden contemplation, so to speak. You never were much for the battlefield."

"You don't know what it's like," Hodge said, letting out his breath with a hissing gasp. "Being afraid all the time—"

"That's true. I don't." Valentine's voice was as sorrowful as his eyes, as if he pitied Hodge. But there was dislike in his eyes too, a trace of scorn. "If you did not intend to give the Cup to me," he said, "you should not have summoned me here."

Hodge's face worked. "It is not easy to betray what you believe in—those who trust you."

"Do you mean the Lightwoods, or their children?"

"Both," said Hodge.

"Ah, the Lightwoods." Valentine reached out, and with a hand caressed the brass globe that stood on the desk, his long fingers tracing the outlines of continents and seas. "But what do you owe them, really? Yours is the punishment that should have been theirs. If they had not had such high connections in the Clave, they would have been cursed along with you. As it is, they are free to come and go, to walk in the sunlight like ordinary men. They are free to go home." His voice as he said "home" thrilled with all the meaning of the word. His finger had stopped moving over the globe; Clary was sure he was touching the place where Idris would be.

Hodge's eyes darted away. "They did what anyone would do."

"You would not have done it. I would not have done it. To let a friend suffer in my place? And surely it must engender some bitterness in you, Starkweather, to know that they so easily left this fate to you…"

Hodge's shoulders shook. "But it is not the children's fault. They have done nothing—"

"I never knew you to be so fond of children, Starkweather," Valentine said, as if the idea entertained him.

The breath rattled in Hodge's chest. "Jace—"

"You will not speak of Jace." For the first time Valentine sounded angry. He glanced at the still figure on the floor. "He is bleeding," he observed. "Why?"

Hodge held the Cup against his heart. His knuckles were white. "It's not his blood. He's unconscious, but not injured."

Valentine raised his head with a pleasant smile. "I wonder," he said, "what he will think of you when he wakes. Betrayal is never pretty, but to betray a child—that's a double betrayal, don't you think?"

"You won't hurt him," whispered Hodge. "You swore you wouldn't hurt him."

"I never did that," said Valentine. "Come, now." He moved away from the desk, toward Hodge, who flinched away like a small, trapped animal. Clary could see his misery. "And what would you do if I said I did plan to hurt him? Would you fight me? Keep the Cup from me? Even if you could kill me, the Clave will never lift your curse. You'll hide here till you die, terrified to do so much as open a window too widely. What wouldn't you trade away, not to be afraid any longer? What wouldn't you give up, to go home again?"

Clary tore her eyes away. She could no longer bear the look on Hodge's face. In a choked voice he said, "Tell me you won't hurt him, and I'll give it to you."

"No," said Valentine, even more softly. "You'll give it to me anyway." And he reached out his hand.

Hodge closed his eyes. For a moment his face was the face of one of the marble angels beneath the desk, pained and grave and crushed beneath a terrible weight. Then he swore, pathetically, under his breath, and held the Mortal Cup out for Valentine to take, though his hand shook like a leaf in a high wind.

"Thank you," said Valentine. He took the Cup, and eyed it thoughtfully. "I do believe you've dented the rim."

Hodge said nothing. His face was gray. Valentine bent down and gathered up Jace; as he lifted him up lightly, Clary saw the impeccably cut jacket tighten over his arms and back, and she realized that he was a deceptively massive man, with a torso like the trunk of an oak tree. Jace, limp in his arms, looked like a child by comparison.

"He'll be with his father soon," said Valentine, looking down at Jace's white face. "Where he belongs."

Hodge flinched. Valentine turned away from him and walked back toward the shimmering curtain of air that he had come through. He must have left the Portal door open behind him, Clary realized. Looking at it was like looking at sunlight bouncing off the surface of a mirror.

Hodge reached out an imploring hand. "Wait!" he cried. "What of your promise to me? You swore to end my curse."

"That is true," said Valentine. He paused, and looked hard at Hodge, who gasped and stepped back, his hand flying to his chest as if something had struck him in the heart. Black fluid seeped out around his splayed fingers and trickled to the floor. Hodge lifted his scarred face to Valentine. "Is it done?" he asked wildly. "The curse—it is lifted?"

"Yes," said Valentine. "And may your bought freedom bring you joy." And with that he stepped through the curtain of glowing air. For a moment he himself seemed to shimmer, as if he stood underwater. Then he vanished, taking Jace with him.

20 In Rats' Alley

Hodge, gasping, stared after him, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. His left hand was gloved with the wet dark fluid that had seeped from his chest. The look on his face was a mixture of exultation and self-loathing.

"Hodge!" Clary slammed her hand into the invisible wall between them. Pain shot up her arm, but it was nothing compared to the searing pain inside her chest. She felt as if her heart were going to slam its way out of her rib cage. Jace,Jace, Jace—the words echoed in her mind, wanting to be screamed out loud. She bit them back. "Hodge, let me out!"

Hodge turned, shaking his head. "I can't," he said, using his immaculately folded handkerchief to rub at his stained hand. He sounded genuinely regretful. "You'll only try to kill me."

"I won't," she said. "I promise."

"But you were not raised a Shadowhunter," he said, "and your promises mean nothing." The edge of his handkerchief was smoking now, as if he'd dipped it in acid, and his hand was no less blackened. Frowning, he abandoned the project.

"But Hodge," she said desperately, "didn't you hear him? He's going to kill Jace."

"He didn't say that." Hodge was at the desk now, opening a drawer, taking out a piece of paper. He drew a pen from his pocket, tapping it sharply against the edge of the desk to make the ink flow. Clary stared at him. Was he writing a letter?

"Hodge," she said carefully, "Valentine said Jace would be with his father soon. Jace's father is dead. What else could he have meant?"

Hodge didn't look up from the paper he was scribbling on. "It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."

"I understand enough." Her bitterness felt like it might burn through her tongue. "I understand that Jace trusted you and you traded him away to a man who hated his father and probably hates Jace, too, just because you're too cowardly to live with a curse you deserved."

Hodge's head jerked up. "Is that what you think?"

"It's what I know."

He laid his pen down, shaking his head. He looked tired, and so old, so much older than Valentine had looked, though they were the same age. "You only know bits and fragments, Clary. And you're better off that way." He folded the paper he'd been writing on into a neat square and tossed it into the fire, which flared up a bright acidic green before subsiding.

"What are you doing?" Clary demanded.

"Sending a message." Hodge turned away from the fire. He was standing close to her, separated only by the invisible wall. She pressed her fingers against it, wishing she could dig them into his eyes—though they were as sad as Valentine's had been angry. "You are young," he said. "The past is nothing to you, not even another country as it is to the old, or a nightmare as it is to the guilty. The Clave laid this curse on me because I aided Valentine. But I was hardly the only member of the Circle to serve him—were the Lightwoods not as guilty as I was? Were not the Waylands? Yet I was the only one cursed to live out my life without being able to set so much as a foot outdoors, not so much as a hand through the window."

"That's not my fault," said Clary. "It's not Jace's fault. Why punish him for what the Clave did? I can understand giving Valentine the Cup, but Jace? He'll kill Jace, just like he killed Jace's father—"

"Valentine," said Hodge, "did not kill Jace's father."

A sob broke free from Clary's chest. "I don't believe you! All you do is tell lies! Everything you've ever said was a lie!"

"Ah," he said, "the moral absolutism of the young, which allows for no concessions. Can't you see, Clary, that in my own way I'm trying to be a good man?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't work that way. The good things you do don't cancel out the bad ones. But—" She bit her lip. "If you told me where Valentine was—"

"No." He breathed the word. "It is said that the Nephilim are the children of men and angels. All that this angelic heritage has given to us is a longer distance to fall." He touched the invisible surface of the wall with his fingertips. "You were not raised as one of us. You have no part of this life of scars and killing. You can still get away. Leave the Institute, Clary, as soon as you can. Leave, and never come back."

She shook her head. "I can't," she said. "I can't do that."

"Then you have my condolences," he said, and walked out of the room.

The door closed behind Hodge, leaving Clary in silence. There was only her own harsh breathing and the scrabble of her fingertips against the ungiving transparent barrier between her and the door. She did exactly what she'd told herself she wouldn't do, and flung herself against it, again and again, until she was exhausted and her sides ached. Then she sank to the floor and tried not to cry.

Somewhere on the other side of this barrier Alec was dying, while Isabelle waited for Hodge to come and save him. Somewhere beyond this room Jace was being shaken roughly awake by Valentine. Somewhere her mother's chances were ebbing away, moment by moment, second by second. And she was trapped here, as useless and helpless as the child she was.

She sat bolt upright then, remembering the moment at Madame Dorothea's when Jace had pressed the stele into her hand. Had she ever given it back to him? Holding her breath, she felt in her left jacket pocket; it was empty. Slowly her hand crept into the right pocket, her sweaty fingers picking up lint and then skidding across something hard, smooth, and round—the stele.

She bounded to her feet, her heart pounding, and felt with her left hand for the invisible wall. Finding it, she braced herself, inching the tip of the stele forward with her other hand until it rested against the smooth, level air. Already an image was forming in her mind, like a fish rising up through cloudy water, the pattern of its scales growing clearer and clearer as it neared the surface. Slowly at first, and then more confidently, she moved the stele across the wall, leaving searingly bright ash-white lines hovering in the air before her.

She felt when the rune was done, and lowered her hand, breathing hard. For a moment everything was motionless and silent and the rune hung like glowing neon, burning her eyes. Then came a sound like the loudest shattering she had ever heard, as if she were standing under a waterfall of stones listening to them crash to the ground all around her. The rune she had drawn turned black and sifted away like ash; the floor trembled under her feet; then it was over, and she knew, without a doubt, that she was free.

Still holding the stele, she raced to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Twilight was falling and the streets below were bathed in a reddish purple glow. She caught a clear glimpse of Hodge crossing a street, his gray head bobbing above the crowd.

She dashed out of the library and down the stairs, pausing only to shove the stele back into her jacket pocket. She took the stairs running and hit the street with a stitch already forming in her side. People walking their dogs in the humid twilight jumped aside as she barreled down the walkway alongside the East River. She caught sight of herself in the darkened window of an apartment building as she careened around a corner. Her sweaty hair was plastered to her forehead, her face crusted with dried blood.

She reached the intersection where she had seen Hodge. For a moment she thought she'd lost him. She darted through the crowd near the subway entrance, shouldering people aside, using her knees and elbows as weapons. Sweaty and bruised, Clary pulled free of the crowd just in time to see a flash of tweed suit disappear around the corner of a narrow service alley between two buildings.

She wriggled around a Dumpster and into the mouth of the alley. The back of her throat felt like it was burning every time she breathed. Though it had been twilight on the street, here in the alley it was as dark as nightfall. She could just see Hodge, standing at the far end of the alley, where it dead-ended into the back of a fast-food restaurant. Restaurant trash was piled outside: heaping bags of food, dirty paper plates, and plastic cutlery that crunched unpleasantly under his boots as he turned to look at her. She remembered a poem she'd read in English class: I think we are in rats' alley/Where the dead men lost their bones. "You followed me," he said. "You shouldn't have."

"I'll leave you alone if you just tell me where Valentine is."

"I can't do that," he said. "He'll know I told you, and my freedom will be as short as my life."

"It will be anyway when the Clave finds out that you gave the Mortal Cup to Valentine," Clary pointed out. "After tricking us into finding it for you. How can you live with yourself, knowing what he plans to do with it?"

He cut her off with a short laugh. "I fear Valentine more than the Clave, and so would you, if you were wise," he said. "He would have found the Cup eventually, whether I helped him or not."

"And you don't care that he's going to use it to kill children?"

A spasm crossed his face as he took a step forward; she saw something shine in his hand. "Does all this really matter to you this much?"

"I told you before," she said. "I can't just walk away."

"That's too bad," he said, and she saw him raise his arm— and remembered suddenly Jace saying that Hodge's weapon had been the chakram, the flying disk. She ducked even before she saw the bright circle of metal spin singing toward her head; it passed, humming, inches from her face and embedded itself in the metal fire escape on her left.

She looked up. Hodge was gazing at her, the second metal disk held lightly in his right hand. "You can still run," he said.

Instinctively she raised her hands, though logic told her the chakram would just slice them to pieces. "Hodge—"

Something hurtled in front of her, something big, gray-black, and alive. She heard Hodge shout in horror. Stumbling backward, Clary saw the thing more clearly as it paced between her and Hodge. It was a wolf, six feet in length, with a jet-black coat shot through with a single stripe of gray.

Hodge, the metal disc gripped in his hand, was white as a bone. "You," he breathed, and with a sense of distant astonishment Clary realized he was talking to the wolf. "I thought that you had fled—"

The wolf's lips drew back from its teeth, and she saw its lolling red tongue. There was hatred in its eyes as it looked at Hodge, a pure and human hatred.

"Did you come for me, or for the girl?" said Hodge. Sweat streamed from his temples, but his hand was steady.

The wolf paced toward him, growling low in its throat.

"There's still time," said Hodge. "Valentine would take you back—"

With a howl the wolf sprang. Hodge cried out again, then there was a flash of silver, and a sickening noise as the chakram embedded itself in the wolf's side. The wolf reared back on its hind legs, and Clary saw the disk's edge jutting from the wolf's fur, blood streaming, just as it struck Hodge.

Hodge screamed once as he went down, the wolf's jaws clamping shut over his shoulder. Blood flew into the air like the spray of paint from a broken can, splattering the cement wall with red. The wolf lifted its head from the tutor's limp body and turned its gray, lupine gaze on Clary, teeth dripping scarlet.

She didn't scream. There was no air in her lungs that she could have dragged up to make a sound; she scrambled to her feet and ran, ran for the mouth of the alley and the familiar neon lights of the street, ran for the safety of the real world. She could hear the wolf growling behind her, feel its hot breath on the bare backs of her legs. She put on one last burst of speed, flinging herself toward the street—

The wolf's jaws closed on her leg, jerking her backward. Just before her head struck the hard pavement, plunging her into blackness, she discovered that she did have enough air to scream, after all.

The sound of dripping water woke her. Slowly Clary peeled her eyes open. There wasn't much to see. She lay on a wide cot that had been placed on the floor of a small dingy-walled room. There was a rickety table propped against one wall. On it was a cheap-looking brass candleholder sporting a fat red candle that cast the only light in the room. The ceiling was cracked and damp, wetness seeping down through the fissures in the stone. Clary felt a vague sense that something was missing from the room, but this concern was overwhelmed by the strong smell of wet dog.

She sat up and immediately wished she hadn't. Hot pain drove through her head like a spike, followed by a racking wave of nausea. If there had been anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.

A mirror hung over the cot, dangling from a nail driven between two stones. She glanced in it and was appalled. No wonder her face hurt—long parallel scratches ran from the corner of her right eye down to the edge of her mouth. Her right cheek was crusted with blood, and blood was smeared on her neck and all down the front of her shirt and jacket. In a sudden panic she grabbed for her pocket, then relaxed. The stele was still there.

It was then that she realized what was odd about the room. One wall of it was bars: thick iron floor-to-ceiling bars. She was in a jail cell.

Veins surging with adrenaline, Clary staggered to her feet. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she caught at the table to steady herself. I will not faint, she told herself grimly. Then she heard the footsteps.

Someone was coming down the hallway outside the cell. Clary backed up against the table.

It was a man. He was carrying a lamp, its light brighter than the candle, which made her blink and turned him into a back-lit shadow. She saw height, square shoulders, ragged hair; it was only when he pushed the door of the cell open and came inside that she realized who he was.

He looked the same: worn jeans, denim shirt, work boots, same uneven hair, same glasses pushed down to the bridge of his nose. The scars she'd noticed along the side of his throat last time she'd seen him were healing patches of shiny skin now.

Luke.

It was all too much for Clary. Exhaustion, lack of sleep and food, terror and blood-loss, caught up with her in a rushing wave. She felt her knees buckle as she slid toward the ground.

In seconds Luke was across the room. He moved so fast, she didn't have time to hit the floor before he caught her, swinging her up the way he'd done when she was a little girl. He set her down on the cot and stepped back, eyes anxious. "Clary?" he said, reaching for her. "Are you all right?"

She flinched away, throwing up her hands to ward him off. "Don't touch me."

An expression of profound hurt crossed his face. Wearily he drew a hand across his forehead. "I guess I deserve that."

"Yeah. You do."

The look on his face was troubled. "I don't expect you to trust me—"

"That's good. Because I don't."

"Clary…" He began to pace the length of the cell. "What I did … I don't expect you to understand. I know you feel that I abandoned you—"

"You did abandon me," she said. "You told me never to call you again. You never cared about me. You never cared about my mother. You lied about everything."

"Not," he said, "about everything."

"So your name really is Luke Garroway?"

His shoulders drooped perceptibly. "No," he said, then glanced down. A dark red patch was spreading across the front of his blue denim shirt.

Clary sat up straight. "Is that blood?" she demanded. She forgot for a moment to be furious.

"Yes," said Luke, his hand against his side. "The wound must have torn open when I lifted you."

"What wound?" Clary couldn't help asking.

He said with deliberation: "Hodge's discs are still sharp, though his throwing arm is not what it once was. I think he may have nicked a rib."

"Hodge?" Clary said. "When did you… ?"

He looked at her, not saying anything, and she remembered suddenly the wolf in the alley, all black except for that one gray streak down its side, and she remembered the disc hitting it, and she realized.

"You're a werewolf."

He took his hand away from his shirt; his fingers were stained red. "Yep," he said laconically. He moved to the wall and rapped sharply on it: once, twice, three times. Then he turned back to her. "I am."

"You killed Hodge," she said, remembering.

"No." He shook his head. "I hurt him pretty badly, I think, but when I went back for the body, it was gone. He must have dragged himself away."

"You tore at his shoulder," she said. "I saw you."

"Yes. Though it's worth noting that he was trying to kill you at the time. Did he hurt anyone else?"

Clary sank her teeth into her lip. She tasted blood, but it was old blood from where Hugo had attacked her. "Jace," she said in a whisper. "Hodge knocked him out and handed him over to… to Valentine."

"To Valentine?" Luke said, looking astonished. "I knew Hodge had given Valentine the Mortal Cup, but I hadn't realized—"

"How did you know that?" Clary began, before remembering. "You heard me talking to Hodge in the alley," she said. "Before you jumped him."

"I jumped him, as you put it, because he was about to slice your head off," Luke said, then looked up as the cell door opened again and a tall man came in, followed by a tiny woman, so short she looked like a child. Both of them wore plain, casual clothes: jeans and cotton shirts, and both had the same untidy, flyaway hair, though the woman's was fair and the man's was a badgery gray and black. Both had the same young-old faces, unlined but with tired eyes. "Clary," said Luke, "meet my second and third, Gretel and Alaric."

Alaric inclined his massive head to her. "We have met."

Clary stared, alarmed. "Have we?"

"At the Hotel Dumort," he said. "You put your knife in my ribs."

She shrank against the wall. "I, ah… I'm sorry?"

"Don't be," he said. "It was an excellent throw." He slid a hand into his breast pocket and removed Jace's dagger, with its winking red eye. He held it out to her. "I think this is yours?"

Clary stared. "But—"

"Don't worry," he assured her. "I cleaned the blade."

Wordlessly, she took it. Luke was chuckling under his breath. "In retrospect," he said, "perhaps the raid on the Dumort was not as well-planned as it might have been. I had set a group of my wolves to watch you, and go after you if you seemed to be in any danger. When you went into the Dumort…"

"Jace and I could have handled it." Clary slid the dagger into her belt.

Gretel aimed a tolerant smile at her. "Is that what you summoned us for, sir?"

"No," said Luke. He touched his side. "My wound's opened up, and Clary here has some injuries of her own that could use a bit of tending. If you wouldn't mind getting the supplies …"

Gretel inclined her head. "I will return with the healing kit," she said, and left, Alaric trailing her like an outsize shadow.

"She called you 'sir,'" said Clary, the moment the cell door closed behind them. "And what do you mean by your second and your third? Second and third what?"

"In command," said Luke slowly. "I am the leader of this particular wolf pack. That's why Gretel called me 'sir.' Believe me, it took a fair bit of work to break her of the habit of calling me 'master.'"

"Did my mother know?"

"Know what?"

"That you're a werewolf."

"Yes. She's known since it happened."

"Neither of you, of course, thought to mention this to me."

"I would have told you," said Luke. "But your mother was adamant that you know nothing of Shadowhunters or the Shadow World. I couldn't explain away my being a werewolf as some kind of isolated incident, Clary. It's all part of the larger pattern that your mother didn't want you to see. I don't know what you've learned—"

"A lot," Clary said flatly. "I know my mother was a Shadowhunter. I know she was married to Valentine and that she stole the Mortal Cup from him and went into hiding. I know that after she had me, she took me to Magnus Bane every two years to have my Sight taken away. I know that when Valentine tried to get you to tell him where the Cup was in exchange for my mom's life, you told him she didn't matter to you."

Luke stared at the wall. "I didn't know where the Cup was," he said. "She'd never told me."

"You could have tried to bargain—"

"Valentine doesn't bargain. He never has. If the advantage isn't his, he won't even come to the table. He's entirely single-minded and totally without compassion, and though he may have loved your mother once, he wouldn't hesitate to kill her. No, I wasn't going to bargain with Valentine."

"So you just decided to abandon her?" Clary demanded furiously. "You're the leader of a whole pack of werewolves and you just decided she didn't even really need your help? You know, it was bad enough when I thought you were another Shadowhunter and you'd turned your back on her because of some stupid Shadowhunter vow or something, but now I know you're just a slimy Downworlder who didn't even care that all those years she treated you like a friend—like an equal—and this is how you paid her back!"

"Listen to you," Luke said quietly. "You sound like a Lightwood."

She narrowed her eyes. "Don't talk about Alec and Isabelle like you know them."

"I meant their parents," said Luke. "Whom I did know, very well in fact, when we were all Shadowhunters together."

She felt her lips part in surprise. "I know you were in the Circle, but how did you keep them from finding out you were a werewolf? Didn't they know?"

"No," said Luke. "Because I wasn't born a werewolf. I was made one. And I can already see that if you're going to be persuaded to listen to anything I have to say, you're going to have to hear the whole story. It's a long tale, but I think we have the time for it."