City of Fallen Angels

10 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

Simon sat in the armchair in Kyle’s living room and stared at the frozen image on the TV screen in the corner of the room. It had been paused on the game Kyle had been playing with Jace, and the image was one of a dank-looking underground tunnel with a heap of collapsed bodies on the ground and some very realistic-looking pools of blood. It was disturbing, but Simon didn’t have either the energy or the inclination to bother to turn it off. The images that had been running through his head all night were worse.

The light streaming into the room through the windows had strengthened from watery dawn light to the pale illumination of early morning, but Simon barely noticed. He kept seeing Maureen’s limp body on the ground, her blond hair stained with blood. His own staggering progress out into the night, her blood singing through his veins. And then Maia lunging at Kyle, tearing into him with her claws. Kyle had lain there, not lifting a hand to defend himself. He probably would have let her kill him if Isabelle hadn’t interfered, pulling Maia bodily off him and rolling her onto the pavement, holding her there until her rage dissolved into tears. Simon had tried to go to her, but Isabelle had held him off with a furious glare, her arm around the other girl, her hand up to ward him off.

“Get out of here,” she’d said. “And take him with you. I don’t know what he did to her, but it must have been pretty bad.”

And it was. Simon knew that name, Jordan. It had come up before, when he’d asked her how she’d been turned into a werewolf. Her ex-boyfriend had done it, she’d said. He’d done it with a savage and vicious attack, and he’d run off afterward, leaving her to deal with the aftermath alone.

His name had been Jordan.

That was why Kyle had only one name next to his door buzzer. Because it was his last name. His full name must have been Jordan Kyle, Simon realized. He’d been stupid, unbelievably stupid, not to have figured it out before. Not that he needed another reason to hate himself right now.

Kyle—or rather, Jordan—was a werewolf; he healed fast. By the time Simon had hauled him, none too gently, to his feet and had led him back over to his car, the deep slashes in his throat and under the torn rags of his shirt had healed to crusted-over scars. Simon had taken his keys from him and driven them back to Manhattan mostly in silence, Jordan sitting almost motionless in the passenger seat, staring down at his bloody hands.

“Maureen’s fine,” he’d said finally as they drove over the Williamsburg Bridge. “It looked worse than it was. You’re not that good at feeding off humans yet, so she hadn’t lost too much blood. I put her in a cab. She doesn’t remember anything. She thinks she fainted in front of you, and she’s really embarrassed.”

Simon knew he ought to thank Jordan, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You’re Jordan,” he said. “Maia’s old boyfriend. The one who turned her into a werewolf.”

They were on Kenmare now; Simon turned north, heading up the Bowery with its flophouses and lighting stores. “Yeah,” Jordan said at last. “Kyle’s my last name. I started to go by it when I joined the Praetor.”

“She would’ve killed you if Isabelle had let her.”

“She has a perfect right to kill me if she wants to,” said Jordan, and fell silent. He didn’t say anything else as Simon found parking and they trudged up the stairs to the apartment. He’d gone into his room without even taking off his bloody jacket, and slammed the door.

Simon had packed his things into his backpack and had been about to leave the apartment when he’d hesitated. He wasn’t sure why, even now, but instead of leaving he’d dropped his bag by the door and come back to sit in this chair, where he’d stayed all night.

He wished he could call Clary, but it was too early in the morning, and besides, Isabelle had said she and Jace had gone off together, and the thought of interrupting some special moment of theirs wasn’t appealing. He wondered how his mother was. If she could have seen him last night, with Maureen, she would have thought he was every bit the monster she’d accused him of being.

Maybe he was.

He looked up as Jordan’s door cracked open and Jordan emerged. He was barefoot, still in the same jeans and shirt he’d been wearing yesterday. The scars on his throat had faded to red lines. He looked at Simon. His hazel eyes, normally so bright and cheerful, were darkly shadowed. “I thought you would leave,” he said.

“I was going to,” Simon said. “But then I figured I ought to give you a chance to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” Jordan shuffled into the kitchen and dug around in a drawer until he produced a coffee filter. “Whatever Maia said about me, I’m sure it was true.”

“She said you hit her,” Simon said.

Jordan, in the kitchen, went very still. He looked down at the filter as if he were no longer quite sure what it was for.

“She said you guys went out for months and everything was great,” Simon went on. “Then you turned violent and jealous. When she called you on it, you hit her. She broke up with you, and when she was walking home one night, something attacked her and nearly killed her. And you—you took off out of town. No apology, no explanation.”

Jordan set the filter down on the counter. “How did she get here? How did she find Luke Garroway’s pack?”

Simon shook his head. “She hopped a train to New York and tracked them down. She’s a survivor, Maia. She didn’t let what you did to her wreck her. A lot of people would have.”

“Is this why you stayed?” asked Jordan. “To tell me I’m a bastard? Because I already know that.”

“I stayed,” Simon said, “because of what I did last night. If I’d found out about you yesterday, I would have left. But after what I did to Maureen . . .” He chewed his lip. “I thought I had control over what happened to me and I didn’t, and I hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. So that’s why I’m staying.”

“Because if I’m not a monster, then you’re not a monster.”

“Because I want to know how to go on, now, and maybe you can tell me.” Simon leaned forward. “Because you’ve been a good guy to me since I met you. I’ve never seen you be mean or get angry. And then I thought about the Wolf Guard, and how you said you joined it because you’d done bad things. And I thought Maia was maybe the bad thing you’d done that you were trying to make up for.”

“I was,” said Jordan. “She is.”

Clary sat at her desk in Luke’s small spare room, the scrap of cloth she’d taken from the Beth Israel morgue spread out in front of her. She’d weighted it down on either side with pencils and was hovering over it, stele in hand, trying to remember the rune that had come to her in the hospital.

It was hard to concentrate. She kept thinking about Jace, about last night. Where he might have gone. Why he was so unhappy. She hadn’t realized until she had seen him that he was as miserable as she was, and it tore at her heart. She wanted to call him, but had held herself back from doing so several times since she’d gotten home. If he was going to tell her what the problem was, he’d have to do it without being asked. She knew him well enough to know that.

She closed her eyes, and tried to force herself to picture the rune. It wasn’t one she’d invented, she was pretty sure. It was one that actually existed, though she wasn’t sure she’d seen it in the Gray Book. Its shape spoke to her less of translation than of revelation, of showing the shape of something hidden belowground, blowing the dust away from it slowly to read the inscription beneath. . . .

The stele twitched in her fingers, and she opened her eyes to find, to her surprise, that she’d managed to trace a small pattern on the edge of the fabric. It looked almost like a blot, with odd bits going off every which way, and she frowned, wondering if she was losing her skill. But the fabric began to shimmer, like heat rising off hot blacktop. She stared as words unfolded across the cloth as if an invisible hand was writing them:

Property of the Church of Talto. 232 Riverside Drive.

A hum of excitement went through her. It was a clue, a real clue. And she’d found it herself, without any help from anyone else.

232 Riverside Drive. That was on the Upper West Side, she thought, by Riverside Park, just across the water from New Jersey. Not that long a trip at all. The Church of Talto. Clary set the stele down with a worried frown. Whatever that was, it sounded like bad news. She scooted her chair over to Luke’s old desktop computer and pulled up the Internet. She couldn’t say she was surprised that typing in “Church of Talto” produced no comprehensible results. Whatever had been written there on the corner of the cloth had been in Purgatic, or Cthonian, or some other demon language.

One thing she was sure of: Whatever the Church of Talto was, it was secret, and probably bad. If it was mixed up with turning human babies into things with claws for hands, it wasn’t any kind of a real religion. Clary wondered if the mother who’d dumped her baby near the hospital was a member of the church, and if she knew what she’d gotten herself into before her baby was born.

She felt cold all over as she reached for her phone—and paused with it in hand. She had been about to call her mother, but she couldn’t call Jocelyn about this. Jocelyn had only just stopped crying and agreed to go out, with Luke, to look at rings. And while Clary thought her mother was strong enough to handle whatever the truth turned out to be, she’d doubtless get in massive trouble with the Clave for having taken her investigation this far without informing them.

Luke. But Luke was with her mother. She couldn’t call him.

Maryse, maybe. The mere idea of calling her seemed alien and intimidating. Plus, Clary knew—without quite wanting to admit to herself that it was a factor—that if she let the Clave take this over, she’d be benched. Pushed off to the sidelines of a mystery that seemed intensely personal. Not to mention that it felt like betraying her mother to the Clave.

But to go running off on her own, not knowing what she’d find . . . Well, she had training, but not that much training. And she knew she had a tendency to act first, think later. Reluctantly she pulled the phone toward her, hesitated a moment—and sent a quick text: 232 RIVERSIDE DRIVE. YOU NEED TO MEET ME THERE RIGHT AWAY. IT’S IMPORTANT. She hit the send button and sat for a moment until the screen lit up with an answering buzz: OK.

With a sigh Clary set down the phone, and went to get her weapons.

“I loved Maia,” Jordan said. He was sitting on the futon now, having finally managed to make coffee, though he hadn’t drunk any of it. He was just holding the mug in his hands, turning it around and around as he talked. “You have to know that, before I tell you anything else. We both came from this dismal hellhole of a town in New Jersey, and she got endless crap because her dad was black and her mom was white. She had a brother, too, who was a total psychopath. I don’t know if she told you about him. Daniel.”

“Not much,” Simon said.

“With all that, her life was pretty hellish, but she didn’t let it get her down. I met her in a music store, buying old records. Vinyl, right. We got to talking, and I realized she was basically the coolest girl for miles around. Beautiful, too. And sweet.” Jordan’s eyes were distant. “We went out, and it was fantastic. We were totally in love. The way you are when you’re sixteen. Then I got bit. I was in a fight one night, at a club. I used to get into fights a lot. I was used to getting kicked and punched, but bitten? I thought the guy who’d done it was crazy, but whatever. I went to the hospital, got stitched up, forgot about it.

“About three weeks later it started to hit. Waves of uncontrollable rage and anger. My vision would just black out, and I wouldn’t know what was happening. I punched my hand through my kitchen window because a drawer was stuck shut. I was crazy jealous about Maia, convinced she was looking at other guys, convinced . . . I don’t even know what I thought. I just know I snapped. I hit her. I want to say I don’t remember doing it, but I do. And then she broke up with me. . . .” His voice trailed off. He took a swallow of coffee; he looked sick, Simon thought. He must not have told this story much before. Or ever. “A couple nights later I went to a party and she was there. Dancing with another guy. Kissing him like she wanted to prove to me it was over. It was a bad night for her to choose, not that she could have known that. It was the first full moon since I’d been bitten.” His knuckles were white where he gripped the cup. “The first time I ever Changed. The transformation ripped through my body and tore my bones and skin apart. I was in agony, and not just because of that. I wanted her, wanted her to come back, wanted to explain, but all I could do was howl. I took off running through the streets, and that was when I saw her, crossing the park near her house. She was going home. . . .”

“And you attacked her,” Simon said. “You bit her.”

“Yeah.” Jordan stared blindly into the past. “When I woke up the next morning, I knew what I’d done. I tried to go to her house, to explain. I was halfway there when a big guy stepped into my path and stared me down. He knew who I was, knew everything about me. He explained he was a member of the Praetor Lupus and he’d been assigned to me. He wasn’t too happy that he’d gotten there too late, that I’d already bitten someone. He wouldn’t let me go anywhere near her. He said I’d just make it worse. He promised the Wolf Guard would be watching over her. He told me that since I’d bitten a human already, which was strictly forbidden, the only way I’d evade punishment was to join the Guard and get trained to control myself.

“I wouldn’t have done it. I would have spit on him and taken whatever punishment they wanted to hand out. I hated myself that much. But when he explained that I’d be able to help other people like me, maybe stop what had happened to me and Maia from happening again, it was like I saw a light in the darkness, way off in the future. Like maybe it was a chance to fix what I’d done.”

“Okay,” Simon said slowly. “But isn’t it kind of a weird coincidence that you wound up assigned to me? A guy who was dating the girl you once bit and turned into a werewolf?”

“No coincidence,” Jordan said. “Your file was one of a bunch I got handed. I picked you because Maia was mentioned in the notes. A werewolf and a vampire dating. You know, it’s kind of a big deal. It was the first time I realized she’d become a werewolf after I—after what I did.”

“You never checked up to find out? That seems kind of—”

“I tried. The Praetor didn’t want me to, but I did what I could to find out what happened to her. I knew she ran away from home, but she had a crappy home life anyway, so that didn’t tell me anything. And it’s not like there’s some national registry of werewolves where I could look her up. I just . . . hoped she hadn’t Turned.”

“So you took my assignment because of Maia?”

Jordan flushed. “I thought maybe if I met you, I could find out what happened to her. If she was okay.”

“That’s why you told me off for two-timing her,” said Simon, thinking back. “You were being protective.”

Jordan glared at him over the rim of the coffee cup. “Yeah, well, it was a jerk move.”

“And you’re the one who shoved the flyer for the band performance under her door. Aren’t you?” Simon shook his head. “So, was messing with my love life part of the assignment, or just your personal extra touch?”

“I screwed her over,” Jordan said. “I didn’t want to see her screwed over by someone else.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that if she showed up at our performance she’d try to rip your face off? If she hadn’t been late, maybe she even would have done it while you were onstage. That would have been an exciting extra for the audience.”

“I didn’t know,” Jordan said. “I didn’t realize she hated me so much. I mean, I don’t hate the guy who Turned me; I kind of understand that he might not have been in control of himself.”

“Yeah,” said Simon, “but you never loved that guy. You never had a relationship with him. Maia loved you. She thinks you bit her and then you ditched and never thought about her again. She’s going to hate you as much as she loved you once.”

Before Jordan could reply, the doorbell rang—not the buzzer that would have sounded if someone had been downstairs, calling up, but the one that could be rung only if the visitor was standing in the hallway outside their door. The boys exchanged baffled looks. “Are you expecting someone?” Simon asked.

Jordan shook his head and put the coffee cup down. Together they went into the small entryway. Jordan gestured for Simon to stand behind him before he swung the door open.

There was no one there. Instead there was a folded piece of paper on the welcome mat, weighed down by a solid-looking hunk of rock. Jordan bent to free the paper and straightened up with a frown.

“It’s for you,” he said, handing it to Simon.

Puzzled, Simon unfolded the paper. Printed across the center, in childish block letters, was the message:SIMON LEWIS. WE HAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. YOU MUST COME TO 232 RIVERSIDE DRIVE TODAY. BE THERE BEFORE DARK OR WE WILL CUT HER THROAT.

“It’s a joke,” Simon said, staring numbly at the paper. “It has to be.”

Without a word Jordan grabbed Simon’s arm and hauled him into the living room. Letting go of him, he rooted around for the cordless phone until he found it. “Call her,” he said, slapping the phone against Simon’s chest. “Call Maia and make sure she’s all right.”

“But it might not be her.” Simon stared down at the phone as the full horror of the situation buzzed around his brain like a ghoul buzzing around the outside of a house, begging to be let in. Focus, he told himself. Don’t panic. “It might be Isabelle.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Jordan glowered at him. “Do you have any other girlfriends? Do we have to make a list of names to call?”

Simon yanked the phone away from him and turned away, punching in the number.

Maia answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Maia—it’s Simon.”

The friendliness went out of her voice. “Oh. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to check that you were okay,” he said.

“I’m fine.” She spoke stiffly. “It’s not like what was going on with us was all that serious. I’m not happy, but I’ll live. You’re still an ass, though.”

“No,” Simon said. “I mean I wanted to check that you were okay.”

“Is this about Jordan?” He could hear the tense anger when she said his name. “Right. You guys went off together, didn’t you? You’re friends or something, right? Well, you can tell him to stay away from me. In fact, that goes for both of you.”

She hung up. The dial tone buzzed down the phone like an angry bee.

Simon looked at Jordan. “She’s fine. She hates us both, but it really didn’t sound like anything else was wrong.”

“Fine,” Jordan said tightly. “Call Isabelle.”

It took two tries before Izzy picked up; Simon was nearly in a panic by the time her voice came down the line, sounding distracted and annoyed. “Whoever this is, it had better be good.”

Relief poured through his veins. “Isabelle. It’s Simon.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay—”

“Oh, what, I’m supposed to be devastated because you’re a cheating, lying, two-timing son of a—”

“No.” This was really starting to wear on Simon’s nerves. “I meant, are you all right? You haven’t been kidnapped or anything?”

There was a long silence. “Simon,” Isabelle said finally. “This is really, seriously, the stupidest excuse for a whiny makeup call that I have ever, ever heard. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not sure,” Simon said, and hung up before she could hang up on him. He handed the phone to Jordan. “She’s fine too.”

“I don’t get it.” Jordan looked bewildered. “Who makes a threat like that if it’s totally empty? I mean, it’s so easy to check and find out it’s a lie.”

“They must think I’m stupid,” Simon began, and then paused, a horrible thought dawning on him. He snatched the phone back from Jordan and started to dial with numb fingers.

“Who is it?” Jordan said. “Who are you calling?”

Clary’s phone rang just as she turned the corner of Ninety-sixth Street onto Riverside Drive. The rain seemed to have washed away the city’s usual dirt; the sun shone down from a brilliant sky onto the bright green strip of the park running alongside the river, whose water looked nearly blue today.

She dug into her bag for her phone, found it, and flipped it open. “Hello?”

Simon’s voice came down the line. “Oh, thank—” He broke off. “Are you all right? You’re not kidnapped or anything?”

“Kidnapped?” Clary peered up at the numbers of the buildings as she walked uptown. 220, 224. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for. Would it look like a church? Something else, glamoured to look like an abandoned lot? “Are you drunk or something?”

“It’s a little early for that.” The relief in his voice was plain. “No, I just—I got a weird note. Someone threatening to go after my girlfriend.”

“Which one?”

“Har de har.” Simon did not sound amused. “I called Maia and Isabelle already, and they’re both fine. Then I thought of you—I mean, we spend a lot of time together. Someone might get the wrong idea. But now I don’t know what to think.”

“I dunno.” 232 Riverside Drive loomed up in front of Clary suddenly, a big square stone building with a pointed roof. It could have been a church at one point, she thought, though it didn’t look much like one now.

“Maia and Isabelle found out about each other last night, by the way. It wasn’t pretty,” Simon added. “You were right about the playing-with-fire bit.”

Clary examined the facade of number 232. Most of the edifices lining the drive were expensive apartment buildings, with doormen in livery waiting inside. This one, though, had only a set of tall wooden doors with curved tops, and old-fashioned-looking metal handles instead of doorknobs. “Ooh, ouch. Sorry, Simon. Are either of them speaking to you?”

“Not really.”

She took hold of one of the handles, and pushed. The door slid open with a soft hissing noise. Clary dropped her voice. “Maybe one of them left the note?”

“It doesn’t really seem like their style,” said Simon, sounding genuinely puzzled. “Do you think Jace would have done it?”

The sound of his name was like a punch to the stomach. Clary caught her breath and said, “I really don’t think he’d do that, even if he was angry.” She drew the phone away from her ear. Peering around the half-open door, she could see what looked reassuringly like the inside of a normal church—a long aisle, and flickering lights like candles. Surely it couldn’t hurt just to take a peek inside. “I have to go, Simon,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”

She flipped her phone closed and stepped inside.

“You really think it was a joke?” Jordan was prowling up and down the apartment like a tiger pacing its cage at the zoo. “I dunno. It seems like a really sick sort of joke to me.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t sick.” Simon glanced at the note; it lay on the coffee table, the block-printed letters clearly visible even at a distance. Just looking at it gave him a lurching feeling in his stomach, even though he knew it was meaningless. “I’m just trying to think who might have sent it. And why.”

“Maybe I should take the day off watching you and keep an eye on her,” said Jordan. “You know, just in case.”

“I assume you’re talking about Maia,” said Simon. “I know you mean well, but I really don’t think she wants you around. In any capacity.”

Jordan’s jaw tightened. “I’d stay out of the way so she wouldn’t see me.”

“Wow. You’re still really into her, aren’t you?”

“I have a personal responsibility.” Jordan sounded stiff. “Whatever else I feel doesn’t matter.”

“You can do what you want,” Simon said. “But I think—”

The door buzzer sounded again. The two boys exchanged a single look before both bolting down the narrow hallway to the door. Jordan got there first. He grabbed for the coatrack that stood by the door, ripped the coats off it, and flung the door wide, the rack held above his head like a javelin.

On the other side of the door was Jace. He blinked. “Is that a coatrack?”

Jordan slammed the coatrack down on the ground and sighed. “If you’d been a vampire, this would have been a lot more useful.”

“Yes,” said Jace. “Or, you know, just someone with a lot of coats.”

Simon stuck his head around Jordan and said, “Sorry. We’ve had a stressful morning.”

“Yeah, well,” said Jace. “It’s about to get more stressful. I came to bring you to the Institute, Simon. The Conclave wants to see you, and they don’t like having to wait.”

The moment the door of the Church of Talto shut behind Clary, she felt that she was in another world, the noise and bustle of New York City entirely shut out. The space inside the building was big and lofty, with high ceilings soaring above. There was a narrow aisle banked by rows of pews, and fat brown candles burned in sconces bolted along the walls. The interior seemed dimly lit to Clary, but perhaps that was just because she was used to the brightness of witchlight.

She moved along the aisle, the tread of her sneakers soft against the dusty stone. It was odd, she thought, a church with no windows at all. At the end of the aisle she reached the apse, where a set of stone steps led to a podium on which was displayed an altar. She blinked up at it, realizing what else was strange: There were no crosses in this church. Instead there was an upright stone tablet on the altar, crowned by the carved figure of an owl. The words on the tablet read:

FOR HER HOUSE INCLINETH UNTO DEATH,

AND HER PATHS UNTO THE DEAD.

NONE THAT GO UNTO HER RETURN AGAIN,

NEITHER TAKE THEY HOLD OF THE PATHS OF LIFE.

Clary blinked. She wasn’t too familiar with the Bible—she certainly didn’t have anything like Jace’s near-perfect recall of large passages of it—but while that sounded religious, it was also an odd bit of text to feature in a church. She shivered, and drew closer to the altar, where a large closed book had been left out. One of the pages seemed to be marked; when Clary reached to open the book, she realized that what she’d thought was a bookmark was a black-handled dagger carved with occult symbols. She’d seen pictures of these before in her textbooks. It was an athame, often used in demonic summoning rituals.

Her stomach went cold, but she bent to scan the marked page anyway, determined to learn something—only to discover that it was written in a cramped, stylized hand that would have been hard to decipher had the book been in English. It wasn’t; it was in a sharp, spiky-looking alphabet that she was sure she’d never seen before. The words were below an illustration of what Clary recognized as a summoning circle—the kind of pattern warlocks traced on the ground before they enacted spells. The circles were meant to draw down and concentrate magical power. This one, splashed across the page in green ink, looked like two concentric circles, with a square in the center of them. In the space between the circles, runes were scrawled. Clary didn’t recognize them, but she could feel the language of the runes in her bones, and it made her shiver. Death and blood.

She turned the page hastily, and came on a group of illustrations that made her suck in her breath.

It was a progression of pictures that started with the image of a woman with a bird perched on her left shoulder. The bird, possibly a raven, looked sinister and cunning. In the second picture the bird was gone, and the woman was obviously pregnant. In the third image the woman was lying on an altar not unlike the one Clary was standing in front of now. A robed figure was standing in front of her, a jarringly modern-looking syringe in its hand. The syringe was full of dark red liquid. The woman clearly knew she was about to be injected with it, because she was screaming.

In the last picture the woman was sitting with a baby on her lap. The baby looked almost normal, except that its eyes were entirely black, without whites at all. The woman was looking down at her child with a look of terror.

Clary felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Her mother had been right. Someone was trying to make more babies like Jonathan. In fact, they already had.

She stepped back from the altar. Every nerve in her body was screaming that there was something very wrong with this place. She didn’t think she could spend another second here; better to go outside and wait there for the cavalry to arrive. She might have discovered this clue on her own, but the result was way more than she could handle on her own.

It was then that she heard the sound.

A soft susurration, like a slow tide pulling back, that seemed to come from above her. She looked up, the athame gripped firmly in her hand. And stared. All around the upstairs gallery stood rows of silent figures. They wore what looked like gray tracksuits—sneakers, dull gray sweats, and zip-up tops with hoods pulled down over their faces. They were utterly motionless, their hands on the gallery railing, staring down at her. At least, she assumed they were staring. Their faces were hidden entirely in shadow; she couldn’t even tell if they were male or female.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice echoed loudly in the stone room. “I didn’t mean to intrude, or . . .”

There was no answer but silence. Silence like a weight. Clary’s heart began to beat faster.

“I’ll just go, then,” she said, swallowing hard. She stepped forward, laid the athame on the altar, and turned to leave. She caught the scent on the air then, a split second before she turned—the familiar stench of rotting garbage. Between her and the door, rising up like a wall, was a nightmarish mishmash of scaled skin, bladelike teeth, and reaching claws.

For the past seven weeks Clary had trained to face down a demon in battle, even a massive one. But now that it was actually happening, all she could do was scream.

11 OUR KIND

The demon lunged for Clary, and she stopped screaming abruptly and flung herself backward, over the altar—a perfect flip, and for one bizarre moment she wished Jace had been there to see it. She hit the ground in a crouch, just as something struck the altar hard, making the stone vibrate.

A howl sounded through the church. Clary scrambled to her knees and peered over the edge of the altar. The demon wasn’t as big as she’d first thought, but it wasn’t small, either—about the size of a refrigerator, with three heads on swaying stalks. The heads were blind, with enormous gaping jaws from which ropes of greenish drool hung. The demon seemed to have smacked its leftmost head on the altar when it grabbed for her, because it was shaking the head back and forth as if trying to clear it.

Clary glanced up wildly, but the tracksuited figures were still where they had been before. None of them had moved. They seemed to be watching what was going on with a detached interest. She spun and looked behind her, but there appeared to be no exits from the church besides the door she’d come through, and the demon was currently blocking her path back to it. Realizing she was wasting precious seconds, she scrambled to her feet and grabbed for the athame. She yanked it off the altar and ducked back down just as the demon came for her again. She rolled to the side as a head, swaying on a thick stalk of neck, darted over the altar, its thick black tongue flicking out, searching for her. With a scream she jammed the athame into the creature’s neck once, then jerked it free, scrambling backward and out of the way.

The thing screamed, its head rearing back, black blood spraying from the wound she’d made. But it wasn’t a killing blow. Even as Clary watched, the wound began to heal slowly, the demon’s blackish green flesh knitting together like fabric being sewed up. Her heart sank. Of course. The whole reason Shadowhunters used runed weapons was that the runes prevented demons from healing.

She reached for the stele in her belt with her left hand, and yanked it free just as the demon came for her again. She leaped to the side and threw herself painfully down the stairs, rolling until she fetched up against the first row of pews. The demon turned, lumbering a bit as it moved, and made for her again. Realizing she was still clutching both the stele and the dagger—in fact, the dagger had cut her as she had rolled, and blood was quickly staining the front of her jacket—she transferred the dagger to her left hand, the stele to her right, and with a desperate swiftness, cut an enkeli rune into the athame’s hilt.

The other symbols on the hilt began to melt and run as the rune of angelic power took hold. Clary looked up; the demon was almost on her, its three heads reaching, their mouths gaping. Propelling herself to her feet, she drew her arm back and flung the dagger as hard as she could. To her great surprise, it struck the middle head right in the center of the skull, sinking in up to the hilt. The head thrashed as the demon screamed—Clary’s heart lifted—and then the head simply dropped, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. The demon kept coming anyway, dragging the now-dead head on its limp neck after it as it moved toward Clary.

The sound of many footsteps came from above. Clary looked up. The tracksuited figures were gone, the gallery empty. The sight was not reassuring. Her heart doing a wild tango in her chest, Clary turned and ran for the front door, but the demon was faster than she was. With a grunt of effort it launched itself over her and landed in front of the doors, blocking her way out. Making a hissing noise, it moved toward her, its two living heads swaying, then rising, stretching to their full length in order to strike at her—

Something flashed through the air, a darting flame of silvery gold. The demon’s heads whipped around, the hissing rising to a scream, but it was too late—the silvery thing that encircled them pulled tight, and with a spray of blackish blood, its remaining two heads sheared away. Clary rolled out of the way as flying blood splattered her, searing her skin. Then she ducked her head as the headless body swayed, fell toward her—

And was gone. As it was collapsing, the demon vanished, sucked back to its home dimension. Clary raised her head cautiously. The front doors of the church were open, and in the entranceway stood Isabelle, in boots and a black dress, her electrum whip in hand. She was winding it back slowly around her wrist, glancing around the church as she did so, her dark eyebrows drawn together in a curious frown. As her gaze fell on Clary, she grinned.

“Damn, girl,” she said. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

The touch of the vampire servants’ hands on Simon’s skin was cold and light, like the touch of icy wings. He shuddered a little as they unwound the blindfold from around his head, their withered skin rough on his, before they stepped back, bowing as they retreated.

He looked around, blinking. Moments ago, he had been standing in the sunlight on the corner of Seventy-Eighth Street and Second Avenue—enough of a distance from the Institute that he had judged it safe to use the grave-dirt to contact Camille without arousing her suspicions. Now he was in a dimly lit room, quite large, with a smooth marble floor and elegant marble pillars holding up a high ceiling. Along the left wall ran a row of glass-fronted cubicles, each with a brass-lettered plaque hanging over it that read TELLER. Another brass plaque on the wall proclaimed this to be the DOUGLAS NATIONAL BANK. Thick layers of dust padded the floor and the counters where people had once stood to write out checks or withdrawal slips, and the brass-bound lamps that hung from the ceiling were coated with verdigris.

In the center of the room was a high armchair, and in the chair sat Camille. Her silvery-blond hair was undone, and rained down over her shoulders like tinsel. Her beautiful face had been wiped clean of makeup, but her lips were still very red. In the dimness of the bank, they were almost the only color Simon could see.

“I would not normally agree to meet during sunlight hours, Daylighter,” she said. “But since it is you, I have made an exception.”

“Thank you.” He noticed no chair had been provided for him, so he continued awkwardly standing. If his heart still beat, he thought, it would have been pounding. When he had agreed to do this for the Conclave, he had forgotten how much Camille scared him. Maybe it was illogical—what could she really do to him?—but there it was.

“I suppose this means that you have considered my offer,” said Camille. “And that you agree to it.”

“What makes you think I agree?” Simon said, very much hoping that she wouldn’t put down the fatuousness of the question to the fact that he was stalling for time.

She looked mildly impatient. “You would hardly deliver in person the news that you had decided to refuse me. You would be afraid of my temper.”

“Should I be afraid of your temper?”

Camille sat back in the wing-back chair, smiling. The chair was modern-looking and luxurious, unlike anything else in the abandoned bank. It must have been hauled here from somewhere else, probably by Camille’s servants, who were currently standing off to each side like silent statues. “Many are,” she said. “But you have no reason to be. I am very pleased with you. Though you waited until the last moment to contact me, I sense you have made the right decision.”

Simon’s phone chose that minute to begin buzzing insistently. He jumped, feeling a trickle of cold sweat going down his back, then fished it hastily out of the pocket of his jacket. “Sorry,” he said, flipping it open. “Phone.”

Camille looked horrified. “Do not answer that.”

Simon began lifting the phone to his ear. As he did, he managed to hit the camera button several times with his finger. “It’ll just take a second.”

“Simon.”

He hit the send button and then quickly flipped the phone closed. “Sorry. I didn’t think.”

Camille’s chest was rising and falling with rage, despite the fact that she didn’t actually breathe. “I demand more respect than that from my servants,” she hissed. “You will never do that again, or—”

“Or what?” Simon said. “You can’t hurt me, any more than anyone else can. And you told me I wouldn’t be a servant. You told me I’d be your partner.” He paused, letting just the right note of arrogance into his voice. “Maybe I ought to reconsider my acceptance of your offer.”

Camille’s eyes darkened. “Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t be a little fool.”

“How can you say that word?” Simon demanded.

Camille raised delicate eyebrows. “Which word? Are you annoyed that I called you a fool?”

“No. Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. You said ‘Oh, for—’” He broke off, his voice cracking. He still couldn’t say it. God.

“Because I do not believe in him, silly boy,” said Camille. “And you still do.” She tilted her head to the side, regarding him the way a bird might regard a worm on the sidewalk that it was considering eating. “I think perhaps it is time for a blood oath.”

“A . . . blood oath?” Simon wondered if he’d heard right.

“I forget that your knowledge of the customs of our kind is so limited.” Camille shook her silvery head. “I will have you sign an oath, in blood, that you are loyal to me. It will prevent you from disobeying me in the future. Consider it a sort of . . . prenuptial agreement.” She smiled, and he saw the glint of her fangs. “Come.” She snapped her fingers imperiously, and her minions scurried toward her, their gray heads bent. The first to reach her handed her something that looked like an old-fashioned glass pen, the kind with a whorled tip meant to catch and hold ink. “You will have to cut yourself and draw your own blood,” said Camille. “Normally I would do it myself, but the Mark prevents me. Therefore we must improvise.”

Simon hesitated. This was bad. Very bad. He knew enough about the supernatural world to know what oaths meant to Downworlders. They were not just empty promises that could be broken. They truly bound the promiser, like virtual manacles. If he signed the oath, he really would be loyal to Camille. Possibly forever.

“Come along,” Camille said, a touch of impatience creeping into her voice. “There is no need to dawdle.”

Swallowing, Simon took a reluctant step forward, and then another. A servant stepped in front of him, blocking his way. He was holding out a knife to Simon, a wicked-looking thing with a needle blade. Simon took it, and raised it above his wrist. Then he lowered it. “You know,” he said, “I really don’t like pain very much. Or knives—”

“Do it,” Camille growled.

“There has to be some other way.”

Camille rose from her chair, and Simon saw that her fangs were fully extended. She was truly enraged. “If you do not stop wasting my time—”

There was a soft implosion, a sound like something enormous tearing down the middle. A great shimmering panel appeared against the opposite wall. Camille turned toward it, her lips parting in shock as she saw what it was. Simon knew she recognized it, just as he did. There was only one thing it could be.

A Portal. And through it were pouring at least a dozen Shadowhunters.

“Okay,” said Isabelle, putting away the first aid kit with a brisk gesture. They were in one of the Institute’s many spare rooms, meant to house visiting Clave members. Each was plainly furnished with a bed, a dresser and a wardrobe, and a small bathroom. And, of course, each one had a first aid kit, with bandages, poultices, and even spare steles included. “You’re pretty well iratze’d up, but it’s going to take a little while for some of those bruises to fade. And these”—she ran her hand over the burn marks on Clary’s forearm where the demon blood had splashed her—“probably won’t go away totally till tomorrow. If you rest, they’ll heal faster, though.”

“That’s fine. Thanks, Isabelle.” Clary looked down at her hands; there were bandages around the right one, and her shirt was still torn and bloodstained, though Izzy’s runes had healed the cuts beneath. She supposed she could have done the iratzes herself, but it was nice to have someone take care of her, and Izzy, while not the warmest person Clary knew, could be capable and kind when she felt like it. “And thanks for showing up and, you know, saving my life from whatever that was—”

“A Hydra demon. I told you. They have a lot of heads, but they’re pretty dumb. And you weren’t doing such a bad job with it before I showed up. I like what you did with the athame. Good thinking under pressure. That’s as much a part of being a Shadowhunter as learning how to punch holes in things.” Isabelle flopped down onto the bed next to Clary and sighed. “I should probably go look up what I can find out about the Church of Talto before the Conclave gets back. Maybe it’ll help us figure out what’s going on. The hospital stuff, the babies—” She shuddered. “I don’t like it.”

Clary had told Isabelle as much as she could about why she’d been at the church, even about the demon baby at the hospital, though she’d pretended she was the one who’d been suspicious, and had kept her mother out of the story. Isabelle had looked sick when Clary had described the way the baby had looked exactly like a normal baby except for its open black eyes and the little claws it had instead of hands. “I think they were trying to make another baby like—like my brother. I think they experimented on some poor mundane woman,” Clary said. “But she couldn’t take it when the baby was born, and she lost her mind. It’s just—who would do something like that? One of Valentine’s followers? The ones who never got caught, maybe trying to carry on what he was doing?”

“Maybe. Or just some demon-worshipping cult. There are plenty of them. Although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make more creatures like Sebastian.” Her voice gave a little jump of hatred when she said his name.

“His name’s really Jonathan—”

“Jonathan is Jace’s name,” said Isabelle tightly. “I won’t call that monster by the same name my brother has. He’s always going to be Sebastian to me.”

Clary had to admit Isabelle had a point. She had a hard time thinking of him as Jonathan too. She supposed it wasn’t fair to the true Sebastian, but none of them had really known him. It was easier to slap a stranger’s name onto Valentine’s vicious son than call him something that made him feel closer to her family, closer to her life.

Isabelle spoke lightly, but Clary could tell that her mind was working, ticking over various possibilities: “Anyway, I’m glad you texted me when you did. I could tell from your message that something weird was going on, and frankly I was bored. Everyone’s off doing some secret thing with the Conclave, and I didn’t want to go, because Simon was going to be there, and I hate him now.”

“Simon is with the Conclave?” Clary was astonished. She had noticed that the Institute had seemed even more empty than usual when they’d arrived. Jace, of course, wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be—though she hadn’t known why. “I talked to him this morning and he didn’t say anything about doing something for them,” Clary added.

Isabelle shrugged. “It has something to do with vampire politics. That’s all I know.”

“Do you think he’s all right?”

Isabelle sounded exasperated. “He doesn’t need you to protect him anymore, Clary. He has the Mark of Cain. He could get blown up, shot at, drowned, and stabbed and he’d be just fine.” She looked at Clary hard. “I notice you didn’t ask me why I hate Simon,” she said. “I assume you knew about the two-timing thing?”

“I knew,” Clary admitted. “I’m sorry.”

Isabelle waved her confession away. “You’re his best friend. It would have been weird if you didn’t know.”

“I should have told you,” Clary said. “It’s just—I never got the sense you were that serious about Simon, you know?”

Isabelle scowled. “I wasn’t. It’s just—I thought he would take it seriously, at least. Since I was so out of his league and everything. I guess I expected better from him than I do from other guys.”

“Maybe,” Clary said quietly, “Simon shouldn’t be dating someone who thinks they’re out of his league.” Isabelle looked at her, and Clary felt herself flush. “Sorry. Your relationship is really none of my business.”

Isabelle was twisting her dark hair up into a knot, something she did when she felt tense. “No, it isn’t. I mean, I could ask you why you texted me to come to the church and meet you, and not Jace, but I haven’t. I’m not stupid. I know something’s wrong between you two, passionate alley make-out sessions notwithstanding.” She looked keenly at Clary. “Have the two of you slept together yet?”

Clary felt the blood rush into her face. “What—I mean, no, we haven’t, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“It doesn’t,” said Isabelle, patting her knotted hair into place. “That was just prurient curiosity. What’s holding you back?”

“Isabelle—” Clary pulled up her legs, wrapped her arms around her knees, and sighed. “Nothing. We were just taking our time. I’ve never—you know.”

“Jace has,” said Isabelle. “I mean, I assume he has. I don’t know for sure. But if you ever need anything . . .” She let the sentence hang in the air.

“Need anything?”

“Protection. You know. So you can be careful,” Isabelle said. She sounded as practical as if she were talking about extra buttons. “You’d think the Angel would have been foresighted enough to give us a birth-control rune, but no dice.”

“Of course I’d be careful,” Clary spluttered, feeling her cheeks turn red. “Enough. This is awkward.”

“This is girl talk,” said Isabelle. “You just think it’s awkward because you’ve spent your whole life with Simon as your only friend. And you can’t talk to him about Jace. That would be awkward.”

“And Jace really hasn’t said anything to you? About what’s bothering him?” Clary said, in a small voice. “You promise?”

“He didn’t have to,” Isabelle said. “The way you’ve been acting, and with Jace going around looking like someone just died, it’s not like I wouldn’t notice something was wrong. You should have come to talk to me sooner.”

“Is he at least all right?” Clary asked very quietly.

Isabelle stood up from the bed and looked down at her. “No,” she said. “He is very much not all right. Are you?”

Clary shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” Isabelle said.

To Simon’s surprise, Camille, upon seeing the Shadowhunters, didn’t even try to stand her ground. She screamed and ran for the door, only to freeze when she realized that it was daylight outside, and that exiting the bank would quickly incinerate her. She gasped and cowered back against a wall, her fangs bared, a low hiss coming from her throat.

Simon stepped back as the Shadowhunters of the Conclave swarmed around him, all in black like a murder of crows; he saw Jace, his face pale and set like white marble, slide a broadsword blade through one of the human servants as he passed him, as casually as a pedestrian might swat a fly. Maryse stalked ahead, her flying black hair reminding Simon of Isabelle. She dispatched the second cowering minion with a whipsaw movement of her seraph blade, and advanced on Camille, her shining blade outstretched. Jace was beside her, and another Shadowhunter—a tall man with black runes twining his forearms like vines—was on her other side.

The rest of the Shadowhunters had spread out and were canvassing the bank, sweeping it with those odd things they used—Sensors—checking every corner for demon activity. They ignored the bodies of Camille’s human servants, lying motionless in their pools of drying blood. They ignored Simon as well. He might as well have been another pillar, for all the attention they paid him.

“Camille Belcourt,” said Maryse, her voice echoing off the marble walls. “You have broken the Law and are subject to the Law’s punishments. Will you surrender and come with us, or will you fight?”

Camille was crying, making no attempt to cover her tears, which were tinged with blood. They streaked her white face with red lines as she choked, “Walker—and my Archer—”

Maryse looked baffled. She turned to the man on her left. “What is she saying, Kadir?”

“Her human servants,” he replied. “I believe she is mourning their deaths.”

Maryse flipped her hand dismissively. “It is against the Law to make servants of human beings.”

“I made them before Downworlders were subject to your accursed laws, you bitch. They have been with me two hundred years. They were like children to me.”

Maryse’s hand tightened on the hilt of her blade. “What would you know of children?” she whispered. “What does your kind know of anything but destroying?”

Camille’s tear-streaked face flashed for a moment with triumph. “I knew it,” she said. “Whatever else you might say, whatever lies you tell, you hate our kind. Don’t you?”

Maryse’s face tightened. “Take her,” she said. “Bring her to the Sanctuary.”

Jace moved swiftly to one side of Camille and took hold of her; Kadir seized her other arm. Together, they pinioned her between them.

“Camille Belcourt, you stand accused of the murder of humans,” Maryse intoned. “And of the murder of Shadowhunters. You will be taken to the Sanctuary, where you will be questioned. The sentence for the murder of Shadowhunters is death, but it is possible that if you cooperate with us, your life will be spared. Do you understand?” asked Maryse.

Camille tossed her head defiantly. “There is only one man I will answer to,” she said. “If you do not bring him to me, I will tell you nothing. You can kill me, but I will tell you nothing.”

“Very well,” said Maryse. “What man is that?”

Camille bared her teeth. “Magnus Bane.”

“Magnus Bane?” Maryse looked flabbergasted. “The High Warlock of Brooklyn? Why do you want to talk to him?”

“I will answer to him,” Camille said again. “Or I will answer to no one.”

And that was that. She said not another word. As she was dragged away by Shadowhunters, Simon watched her go. He did not feel, as he had thought he would, triumphant. He felt hollow, and strangely sick to his stomach. He looked down at the bodies of the slain servants; he hadn’t liked them much either, but they hadn’t asked to be what they were, not really. In a way, maybe neither had Camille. But she was a monster to Nephilim anyway. And maybe not just because she had killed Shadowhunters; maybe there was no way, really, for them to think of her as anything else.

Camille had been pushed through the Portal; Jace stood on the other side of it, gesturing impatiently for Simon to follow. “Are you coming or not?” he called.

Whatever else you might say, whatever lies you tell, you hate our kind.

“Coming,” Simon said, and moved reluctantly forward.

12 SANCTUARY

“What do you think Camille wants to see Magnus for?” Simon asked.

He and Jace were standing against the back wall of the Sanctuary, which was a massive room attached to the main body of the Institute through a narrow passageway. It wasn’t part of the Institute per se; it had been left deliberately unconsecrated in order that it might be used as a holding place for demons and vampires. Sanctuaries, Jace had informed Simon, had gone out of fashion somewhat since Projecting had been invented, but every once in a while they found a use for theirs. Apparently, this was one of those times.

It was a big room, stone-bound and pillared, with an equally stone-bound entryway beyond a wide set of double doors; the entryway led to the corridor connecting the room to the Institute. Huge gouges in the stone floor indicated that whatever had been caged here over the years had been pretty nasty—and big. Simon couldn’t help wondering how many enormous rooms full of pillars he was going to have to spend time in. Camille was standing against one of the pillars, her arms behind her, guarded on either side by Shadowhunter warriors. Maryse was pacing back and forth, occasionally conferring with Kadir, clearly trying to sort out some kind of plan. There were no windows in the room, for obvious reasons, but witchlight torches burned everywhere, giving the whole scene a peculiar whitish cast.

“I don’t know,” Jace said. “Maybe she wants fashion tips.”

“Ha,” Simon said. “Who’s that guy, with your mother? He looks familiar.”

“That’s Kadir,” said Jace. “You probably met his brother. Malik. He died in the attack on Valentine’s ship. Kadir’s the second most important person in the Conclave, after my mom. She relies on him a lot.”

As Simon watched, Kadir pulled Camille’s arms behind her back, so they circled the pillar, and chained them at her wrists. The vampire gave a little scream.

“Blessed metal,” said Jace without a flicker of emotion. “It burns them.”

Them, Simon thought. You mean “you.” I’m just like her. I’m not different just because you know me.

Camille was whimpering. Kadir stood back, his face impassive. Runes, dark against his dark skin, twined the entirety of his arms and throat. He turned to say something to Maryse; Simon caught the words “Magnus” and “fire-message.”

“Magnus again,” said Simon. “But isn’t he traveling?”

“Magnus and Camille are both really old,” said Jace. “I suppose it’s not that odd that they know each other.” He shrugged, seemingly uninterested in the topic. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re going to wind up summoning Magnus back here. Maryse wants information, and she wants it bad. She knows Camille wasn’t killing those Shadowhunters just for blood. There are easier ways to get blood.”

Simon thought fleetingly of Maureen, and felt sick. “Well,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned. “I guess that means Alec will be back. So that’s good, right?”

“Sure.” Jace’s voice sounded lifeless. He didn’t look all that great either; the whitish light in the room cast the angles of his cheekbones into a new and sharper relief, showing that he’d lost weight. His fingernails were bitten down to bloody stumps, and there were dark shadows under his eyes.

“At least your plan worked,” Simon added, trying to inject some cheer into Jace’s misery. It had been Jace’s idea to have Simon take a picture with his cell phone and send it to the Conclave, which would allow them to Portal to where he was. “It was a good idea.”

“I knew it would work.” Jace sounded bored by the compliment. He looked up as the double doors to the Institute swung open, and Isabelle came through them, her black hair swinging. She looked around the room—giving Camille and the other Shadowhunters barely a glance—and came toward Jace and Simon, her boots clattering against the stone floor.

“What’s all this about yanking poor Magnus and Alec back from their vacation?” Isabelle demanded. “They have opera tickets!”

Jace explained, while Isabelle stood with her hands on her hips, ignoring Simon completely.

“Fine,” she said when he was done. “But the whole thing’s ridiculous. She’s just stalling for time. What could she possibly have to say to Magnus?” She glanced back over her shoulder at Camille, who was now not just manacled but bound to the pillar with lengths of silvery-gold chain. It crisscrossed her body across her torso, her knees, and even her ankles, holding her totally immobile. “Is that blessed metal?”

Jace nodded. “The manacles are lined to protect her wrists, but if she moves too much . . .” He made a sizzling sound. Simon, remembering the way his hands had burned when he’d touched the Star of David in his cell in Idris, the way his skin had run with blood, had to fight the urge to snap at him.

“Well, while you were off trapping vampires, I was uptown fighting off a Hydra demon,” Isabelle said. “With Clary.”

Jace, who had evinced only the barest interest in anything going on around him until now, jerked upright. “With Clary? You took her demon-hunting with you? Isabelle—”

“Of course not. She was already well into the fight by the time I got there.”

“But how did you know—?”

“She texted me,” Isabelle said. “So I went.” She examined her nails, which were, as usual, perfect.

“She texted you?” Jace grabbed Isabelle by the wrist. “Is she all right? Did she get hurt?”

Isabelle looked down at his hand gripping her wrist, and then back up at his face. If he was hurting her, Simon couldn’t tell, but the look on her face could have cut glass, as could the sarcasm in her voice. “Yes, she’s bleeding to death upstairs, but I thought I’d avoid telling you right away, because I like to draw the suspense out.”

Jace, as if suddenly conscious of what he was doing, let go of Isabelle’s wrist. “She’s here?”

“She’s upstairs,” Isabelle said. “Resting—”

But Jace was already gone, running for the entryway doors. He burst through them and vanished. Isabelle, looking after him, shook her head.

“You can’t really have thought he was going to do anything else,” said Simon.

For a moment she said nothing. He wondered if maybe she was just planning to ignore anything he said for the rest of eternity. “I know,” she said finally. “I just wish I knew what was going on with them.”

“I’m not sure they know.”

Isabelle was worrying at her bottom lip. She looked very young all of a sudden, and unusually conflicted, for Isabelle. Something was clearly going on with her, and Simon waited quietly while she appeared to come to a decision. “I don’t want to be like that,” she said. “Come on. I want to talk to you.” She started to head toward the Institute doors.

“You do?” Simon was astonished.

She spun and glared at him. “Right now I do. But I can’t promise how long it’ll last.”

Simon held his hands up. “I want to talk to you, Iz. But I can’t go into the Institute.”

A line appeared between her eyebrows. “Why?” She broke off, looking from him to the doors, to Camille, and back again. “Oh. Right. How did you get in here, then?”

“Portaled,” said Simon. “But Jace said there’s an entryway that leads to a set of doors that go outside. So vampires can enter here at night.” He pointed to a narrow door set in the wall a few feet away. It was secured with a rusting iron bolt, as if it hadn’t been used in a while.

Isabelle shrugged. “Fine.”

The bolt made a screeching noise when she yanked it back, sending flakes of rust into the air in a fine red spray. Beyond the door was a small stone room, like the vestry of a church, and a set of doors that most likely led outside. There were no windows, but cold air crept around the edges of the doors, making Isabelle, in her short dress, shiver.

“Look, Isabelle,” Simon said, figuring that the onus was on him to start the discussion. “I really am sorry about what I did. There’s no excuse—”

“No, there isn’t,” Isabelle said. “And while you’re at it, you might want to tell me why you’re hanging around with the guy who Turned Maia into a werewolf.”

Simon told her the story Jordan had recounted to him, trying to keep his explanation as evenhanded as he could. He felt like it was at least important to explain to Isabelle that he hadn’t known who Jordan really was at first, and also, that Jordan regretted what he’d done. “Not that that makes it okay,” he finished. “But, you know—” We’ve all done bad things. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about Maureen. Not right now.

“I know,” Isabelle said. “And I’ve heard of the Praetor Lupus. If they’re willing to have him as a member, he can’t be a complete washout, I guess.” She looked at Simon a little more closely. “Although I don’t get why you need someone to protect you. You have . . .” She pointed at her forehead.

“I can’t go through the rest of my life with people running at me every day and the Mark blowing them up,” Simon said. “I need to know who’s trying to kill me. Jordan’s helping with that. Jace too.”

“Do you really think Jordan’s helping you? Because the Clave has some pull with the Praetor. We could get him replaced.”

Simon hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “I really do think he’s helping. And I can’t always rely on the Clave.”

“Okay.” Isabelle leaned back against the wall. “Did you ever wonder why I’m so different from my brothers?” she asked without preamble. “Alec and Jace, I mean.”

Simon blinked. “You mean aside from the whole thing where you’re a girl and they . . . aren’t?”

“No. Not that, idiot. I mean, look at the two of them. They have no problem falling in love. They’re both in love. The forever kind. They’re done. Look at Jace. He loves Clary like—like there’s nothing else in the world and there never will be. Alec’s the same. And Max—” Her voice caught. “I don’t know what it would have been like for him. But he trusted everyone. And as you might have noticed, I don’t trust anyone.”

“People are different,” Simon said, trying to sound understanding. “It doesn’t mean they’re happier than you—”

“Sure it does,” Isabelle said. “You think I don’t know that?” She looked at Simon, hard. “You know my parents.”

“Not well.” They had never been terribly eager to meet Isabelle’s vampire boyfriend, a situation that hadn’t done much to ameliorate Simon’s feeling that he was merely the latest in a long line of undesirable suitors.

“Well, you know they were both in the Circle. But I bet you didn’t know it was all my mom’s idea. My dad was never really enthusiastic about Valentine or any of it. And then when everything happened, and they got banished, and they realized they’d practically wrecked their lives, I think he blamed her. But they already had Alec and were going to have me, so he stayed, even though I think he kind of wanted to leave. And then, when Alec was about nine, he found someone else.”

“Whoa,” Simon said. “Your dad cheated on your mom? That’s—that’s awful.”

“She told me,” said Isabelle. “I was about thirteen. She told me that he would have left her but they found out she was pregnant with Max, so they stayed together and he broke it off with the other woman. My mom didn’t tell me who she was. She just told me that you couldn’t really trust men. And she told me not to tell anyone.”

“And did you? Tell anyone?”

“Not until now,” Isabelle said.

Simon thought of a younger Isabelle, keeping the secret, never telling anyone, hiding it from her brothers. Knowing things about their family that they would never know. “She shouldn’t have asked you to do that,” he said, suddenly angry. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Maybe,” said Isabelle. “I thought it made me special. I didn’t think about how it might have changed me. But I watch my brothers give their hearts away and I think, Don’t you know better? Hearts are breakable. And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before.”

“Maybe you’re better,” said Simon. “I know I’m better.”

“You mean Clary,” said Isabelle. “Because she broke your heart.”

“Into little pieces. You know, when someone prefers their own brother over you, it isn’t a confidence booster. I thought maybe once she realized it would never work out with Jace, she’d give up and come back to me. But I finally figured out that she’d never stop loving Jace, whether it was going to work out with him or not. And I knew that if she was only with me because she couldn’t have him, I’d rather be alone, so I ended it.”

“I didn’t know you broke it off with her,” said Isabelle. “I assumed . . .”

“That I had no self-respect?” Simon smiled wryly.

“I thought that you were still in love with Clary,” Isabelle said. “And that you couldn’t be serious about anyone else.”

“Because you pick guys who will never be serious about you,” said Simon. “So you never need to be serious about them.”

Isabelle’s eyes shone when she looked at him, but she said nothing.

“I care about you,” Simon said. “I always cared about you.”

She took a step toward him. They were standing fairly close together in the small room, and he could hear the sound of her breathing, and the fainter pulse of her heartbeat underneath. She smelled of shampoo and sweat and gardenia perfume and Shadowhunter blood.

The thought of blood made him remember Maureen, and his body tensed. Isabelle noticed—of course she noticed, she was a warrior, her senses finely tuned to even the slightest movement in others—and drew back, her expression tightening. “All right,” she said. “Well, I’m glad we talked.”

“Isabelle—”

But she was already gone. He went after her into the Sanctuary, but she was moving fast. By the time the vestry door shut behind him, she was halfway across the room. He gave up and watched as she disappeared through the double doors into the Institute, knowing he couldn’t follow.

Clary sat up, shaking her head to clear the grogginess. It took her a moment to remember where she was—in a spare bedroom in the Institute, the only light in the room the illumination that streamed in through the single high window. It was blue light—twilight light. She lay twisted in the blanket; her jeans, jacket, and shoes were stacked neatly on a chair near the bed. And beside her was Jace, looking down at her, as if she had conjured him up by dreaming of him.

He was sitting on the bed, wearing his gear, as if he had just come from a fight, and his hair was tousled, the dim light from the window illuminating shadows under his eyes, the hollows of his temples, the bones of his cheeks. In this light he had the extreme and almost unreal beauty of a Modigliani painting, all elongated planes and angles.

She rubbed at her eyes, blinking away sleep. “What time is it?” she said. “How long—”

He pulled her toward him and kissed her, and for a moment she froze, suddenly very conscious that all she was wearing was a thin T-shirt and underwear. Then she went boneless against him. It was the sort of lingering kiss that turned her insides to water. The sort of kiss that might have made her feel that nothing was wrong, that things were as they had been before, and he was only glad to see her. But when his hands went to lift the hem of her T-shirt, she pushed them away.

“No,” she said, her fingers wrapped around his wrists. “You can’t just keep grabbing at me every time you see me. It’s not a substitute for actually talking.”

He took a ragged breath and said, “Why did you text Isabelle instead of me? If you were in trouble—”

“Because I knew she’d come,” said Clary. “And I don’t know that about you. Not right now.”

“If something had happened to you—”

“Then I guess you would have heard about it eventually. You know, when you deigned to actually pick up the phone.” She was still holding his wrists; she let go of them now, and sat back. It was hard, physically hard, to be close to him like this and not touch him, but she forced her hands down by her sides and kept them there. “Either you tell me what’s wrong, or you can get out of the room.”

His lips parted, but he said nothing; she didn’t think she’d spoken to him this harshly in a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I mean, I know, with the way I’ve been acting, you’ve got no reason to listen to me. And I probably shouldn’t have come in here. But when Isabelle said you were hurt, I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Some burns,” Clary said. “Nothing that matters.”

“Everything that happens to you matters to me.”

“Well, that certainly explains why you haven’t called me back once. And the last time I saw you, you ran away without telling me why. It’s like dating a ghost.”

Jace’s mouth quirked up slightly at the side. “Not exactly. Isabelle actually dated a ghost. She could tell you—”

“No,” Clary said. “It was a metaphor. And you know exactly what I mean.”

For a moment he was silent. Then he said, “Let me see the burns.”

She held out her arms. There were harsh red splotches on the insides of her wrists where the demon’s blood had spattered. He took her wrists, very lightly, looking at her for permission first, and turned them over. She remembered the first time he had touched her, in the street outside Java Jones, searching her hands for Marks she didn’t have. “Demon blood,” he said. “They’ll go away in a few hours. Do they hurt?”

Clary shook her head.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know you needed me.”

Her voice shook. “I always need you.”

He bent his head and kissed the burn on her wrist. A flare of heat coursed through her, like a hot spike that went from her wrist to the pit of her stomach. “I didn’t realize,” he said. He kissed the next burn, on her forearm, and then the next, moving up her arm to her shoulder, the pressure of his body bearing her back until she was lying against the pillows, looking up at him. He propped himself on his elbows so as not to crush her with his weight and looked down at her.

His eyes always darkened when they kissed, as if desire changed their color in some fundamental way. He touched the white star mark on her shoulder, the one they both had, that marked them as the children of those who had had contact with angels. “I know I’ve been acting strange lately,” he said. “But it’s not you. I love you. That never changes.”

“Then what—?”

“I think everything that happened in Idris—Valentine, Max, Hodge, even Sebastian—I kept shoving it all down, trying to forget, but it’s catching up with me. I . . . I’ll get help. I’ll get better. I promise.”

“You promise.”

“I swear on the Angel.” He ducked his head down, kissed her cheek. “The hell with that. I swear on us.”

Clary wound her fingers into the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Why us?”

“Because there isn’t anything I believe in more.” He tilted his head to the side. “If we were to get married,” he began, and he must have felt her tense under him, because he smiled. “Don’t panic, I’m not proposing on the spot. I was just wondering what you knew about Shadowhunter weddings.”

“No rings,” Clary said, brushing her fingers across the back of his neck, where the skin was soft. “Just runes.”

“One here,” he said, gently touching her arm, where the scar was, with a fingertip. “And another here.” He slid his fingertip up her arm, across her collarbone, and down until it rested over her racing heart. “The ritual is taken from the Song of Solomon. ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.’”

“Ours is stronger than that,” Clary whispered, remembering how she had brought him back. And this time, when his eyes darkened, she reached up and drew him down to her mouth.

They kissed for a long time, until most of the light had bled out of the room and they were just shadows. Jace didn’t move his hands or try to touch her, though, and she sensed he was waiting for permission.

She realized she would have to be the one to take it further, if she wanted to—and she did want to. He’d admitted something was wrong and that it had nothing to do with her. This was progress: positive progress. He ought to be rewarded, right? A little grin crooked the edge of her mouth. Who was she kidding; she wanted more on her own behalf. Because he was Jace, because she loved him, because he was so gorgeous that sometimes she felt the need to poke him in the arm just to make sure he was real.

She did just that.

“Ow,” he said. “What was that for?”

“Take your shirt off,” she whispered. She reached for the hem of it but he was already there, lifting it over his head and tossing it casually to the floor. He shook his hair out, and she almost expected the bright gold strands to scatter sparks in the darkness of the room.

“Sit up,” she said softly. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t usually take the lead in these sort of situations, but he didn’t seem to mind. He sat up slowly, pulling her up with him, until they were both sitting among the welter of blankets. She crawled into his lap, straddling his hips. Now they were face-to-face. She heard him suck his breath in and he raised his hands, reaching for her shirt, but she pushed them back down again, gently, to his sides, and put her own hands on him instead. She watched her fingers slide over his chest and arms, the swell of his biceps where the black Marks twined, the star-shaped mark on his shoulder. She traced her index finger down the line between his pectoral muscles, across his flat washboard stomach. They were both breathing hard when she reached the buckle on his jeans, but he didn’t move, just looked at her with an expression that said: Whatever you want.

Her heart thudding, she dropped her hands to the hem of her own shirt and pulled it off over her head. She wished she’d worn a more exciting bra—this one was plain white cotton—but when she looked up again at Jace’s expression, the thought evaporated. His lips were parted, his eyes nearly black; she could see herself reflected in them and knew he didn’t care if her bra was white or black or neon green. All he was seeing was her.

She reached for his hands, then, freeing them, and put them on her waist, as if to say, You can touch me now. He tilted his head up, her mouth came down over his, and they were kissing again, but it was fierce instead of languorous, a hot and fast-burning fire. His hands were feverish: in her hair, on her body, pulling her down so that she lay under him, and as their bare skin slid together she was acutely conscious that there really was nothing between them but his jeans and her bra and panties. She tangled her hands in his silky, disheveled hair, holding his head as he kissed down her throat. How far are we going? What are we doing? a small part of her brain was asking, but the rest of her mind was screaming at that small part to shut up. She wanted to keep touching him, kissing him; she wanted him to hold her and to know that he was real, here with her, and that he would never leave again.

His fingers found the clasp of her bra. She tensed. His eyes were large and luminous in the darkness, his smile slow. “Is this all right?”

She nodded. Her breath was coming fast. No one in her entire life had ever seen her topless—no boy, anyway. As if sensing her nervousness, he cupped her face gently with one hand, his lips teasing hers, brushing gently across them until her whole body felt as if it were shattering with tension. His long-fingered, callused right hand stroked along her cheek, then her shoulder, soothing her. She was still on edge, though, waiting for his other hand to move back to her bra clasp, to touch her again, but he seemed to be reaching for something behind him—What was he doing?

Clary thought suddenly of what Isabelle had said about being careful. Oh, she thought. She stiffened a little and drew back. “Jace, I’m not sure I—”

There was a flash of silver in the darkness, and something cold and sharp lanced across the side of her arm. All she felt for a moment was surprise—then pain. She drew her hands back, blinking, and saw a line of dark blood beading on her skin where a shallow cut ran from her elbow to her wrist. “Ouch,” she said, more in annoyance and surprise than hurt. “What—”

Jace launched himself off her, off the bed, in a single motion. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the room, shirtless, his face as white as bone.

Hand clasped across her injured arm, Clary started to sit up. “Jace, what—”

She broke off. In his left hand he was clutching a knife—the silver-handled knife she had seen in the box that had belonged to his father. There was a thin smear of blood across the blade.

She looked down at her hand, and then up again, at him. “I don’t understand. . . .”

He opened his hand, and the knife clattered to the floor. For a moment he looked as if he might run again, the way he had outside the bar. Then he sank to the ground and put his head in his hands.

“I like her,” said Camille as the doors shut behind Isabelle. “She rather reminds me of me.”

Simon turned to look at her. It was very dim in the Sanctuary, but he could see her clearly, her back against the pillar, her hands bound behind her. There was a Shadowhunter guard stationed near the doors to the Institute, but either he hadn’t heard Camille or he wasn’t interested.

Simon moved a bit closer to Camille. The bonds that constrained her held an odd fascination for him. Blessed metal. The chain seemed to gleam softly against her pale skin, and he thought he could see a few threads of blood seeping around the manacles at her wrists. “She isn’t at all like you.”

“So you think.” Camille tilted her head to the side; her blond hair seemed artfully arranged around her face, though he knew she couldn’t have touched it. “You love them so,” she said, “your Shadowhunter friends. As the falcon loves the master who binds and blinds it.”

“Things aren’t like that,” Simon said. “Shadowhunters and Downworlders aren’t enemies.”

“You can’t even go with them into their home,” she said. “You are shut out. Yet so eager to serve them. You would stand on their side against your own kind.”

“I have no kind,” Simon said. “I’m not one of them. But I’m not one of you, either. And I’d rather be like them than like you.”

“You are one of us.” She moved impatiently, rattling her chains, and gave a little gasp of pain. “There is something I didn’t say to you, back at the bank. But it is true.” She smiled tightly through the pain. “I can smell human blood on you. You fed recently. On a mundane.”

Simon felt something inside him jump. “I . . .”

“It was wonderful, wasn’t it?” Her red lips curved. “The first time since you’ve been a vampire that you haven’t been hungry.”

“No,” Simon said.

“You’re lying.” There was conviction in her voice. “They try to make us fight against our natures, the Nephilim. They will accept us only if we pretend to be other than we are—not hunters, not predators. Your friends will never accept what you are, only what you pretend to be. What you do for them, they would never do for you.”

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with this,” said Simon. “What’s done is done. I’m not going to let you go. I made my choice. I don’t want what you offered me.”

“Maybe not now,” Camille said softly. “But you will. You will.”

The Shadowhunter guard stepped back as the door opened, and Maryse came into the room. She was followed by two figures immediately familiar to Simon: Isabelle’s brother Alec, and his boyfriend, the warlock Magnus Bane.

Alec was dressed in a sober black suit; Magnus, to Simon’s surprise, was similarly dressed, with the addition of a long white silk scarf with tasseled ends and a pair of white gloves. His hair stood up like it always did, but for a change he was devoid of glitter. Camille, upon seeing him, went very still.

Magnus didn’t seem to see her yet; he was listening to Maryse, who was saying, rather awkwardly, that it was good of them to come so quickly. “We really didn’t expect you until tomorrow, at the earliest.”

Alec made a muffled noise of annoyance and gazed off into space. He seemed as if he wasn’t happy to be there at all. Beyond that, Simon thought, he looked much the same as he always had—same black hair, same steady blue eyes—although there was something more relaxed about him than there had been before, as if he had grown into himself somehow.

“Fortunately there’s a Portal located near the Vienna Opera House,” Magnus said, flinging his scarf back over his shoulder with a grand gesture. “The moment we got your message, we hurried to be here.”

“I still really don’t see what any of this has to do with us,” Alec said. “So you caught a vampire who was up to something nasty. Aren’t they always?”

Simon felt his stomach turn. He looked toward Camille to see if she was laughing at him, but her gaze was fixed on Magnus.

Alec, looking at Simon for the first time, flushed. It was always very noticeable on him because his skin was so pale. “Sorry, Simon. I didn’t mean you. You’re different.”

Would you think that if you had seen me last night, feeding on a fourteen-year-old girl? Simon thought. He didn’t say that, though, just dropped Alec a nod.

“She is of interest in our current investigation into the deaths of three Shadowhunters,” said Maryse. “We need information from her, and she will only talk to Magnus Bane.”

“Really?” Alec looked at Camille with puzzled interest. “Only to Magnus?”

Magnus followed his gaze, and for the first time—or so it seemed to Simon—looked at Camille directly. Something crackled between them, a sort of energy. Magnus’s mouth quirked up at the corners into a wistful smile.

“Yes,” Maryse said, a look of puzzlement passing over her face as she caught the look between the warlock and the vampire. “That is, if Magnus is willing.”

“I am,” Magnus said, drawing off his gloves. “I’ll talk to Camille for you.”

“Camille?” Alec looked at Magnus with his eyebrows raised. “You know her, then? Or—she knows you?”

“We know each other.” Magnus shrugged, very slightly, as if to say, What can you do? “Once upon a time she was my girlfriend.”

13 GIRL FOUND DEAD

“Your girlfriend?” Alec looked astonished. So did Maryse. Simon couldn’t say he was unastonished himself. “You dated a vampire? A girl vampire?”

“It was a hundred and thirty years ago,” said Magnus. “I haven’t seen her since.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alec demanded.

Magnus sighed. “Alexander, I’ve been alive for hundreds of years. I’ve been with men, been with women—with faeries and warlocks and vampires, and even a djinn or two.” He looked sideways at Maryse, who looked mildly horrified. “Too much information?”

“It’s all right,” she said, though she sounded a little wan. “I have to discuss something with Kadir for a moment. I’ll be back.” She stepped aside, joining Kadir; they disappeared through the doorway. Simon took a few steps back as well, pretending to study one of the stained-glass windows intently, but his vampire hearing was good enough that he could hear everything Magnus and Alec were saying to each other, whether he wanted to or not. Camille, he knew, could hear it too. She had her head cocked to the side as she listened, her eyes heavy-lidded and thoughtful.

“How many other people?” Alec asked. “Roughly.”

Magnus shook his head. “I can’t count, and it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how I feel about you.”

“More than a hundred?” Alec asked. Magnus looked blank. “Two hundred?”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation now,” Magnus said, to no one in particular. Simon was inclined to agree, and wished they weren’t having it in front of him.

“Why so many?” Alec’s blue eyes were very bright in the dimness. Simon couldn’t tell if he was angry. He didn’t sound angry, just very intense, but Alec was a shut-down person, and perhaps this was as angry as he ever got. “Do you get bored with people fast?”

“I live forever,” Magnus said quietly. “But not everyone does.”

Alec looked as if someone had hit him. “So you just stay with them as long as they live, and then you find someone else?”

Magnus didn’t say anything. He looked at Alec, his eyes shining like a cat’s. “Would you rather I spent all of eternity alone?”

Alec’s mouth twitched. “I’m going to find Isabelle,” he said, and without another word he turned and walked back into the Institute.

Magnus watched him go with sad eyes. Not a human sort of sad, Simon thought. His eyes seemed to contain the sadness of great ages, as if the sharp edges of human sadness had been worn down to something softer by the passing of years, the way sea water wore away the sharp edges of glass.

As if he could tell Simon was thinking about him, Magnus looked at him sideways. “Eavesdropping, vampire?”

“I really don’t love it when people call me that,” Simon said. “I have a name.”

“I suppose I’d better remember it. After all, in a hundred, two hundred, years, it’ll be just you and me.” Magnus regarded Simon thoughtfully. “We’ll be all that’s left.”

The thought made Simon feel as if he were in an elevator that had suddenly broken free of its moorings and started plunging toward the ground, a thousand stories down. The thought had passed through his mind before, of course, but he had always pushed it away. The thought that he would stay sixteen while Clary got older, Jace got older, everyone he knew got older, grew up, had children, and nothing ever changed for him was too enormous and horrible to contemplate.

Being sixteen forever sounded good until you really thought about it. Then it didn’t seem like such a great prospect anymore.

Magnus’s cat eyes were a clear gold-green. “Staring eternity in the face,” he said. “Not so much fun, is it?”

Before Simon could reply, Maryse had returned. “Where’s Alec?” she asked, looking around in puzzlement.

“He went to see Isabelle,” said Simon, before Magnus had to say anything.

“Very well.” Maryse smoothed the front of her jacket down, though it wasn’t wrinkled. “If you wouldn’t mind . . .”

“I’ll talk to Camille,” said Magnus. “But I want to do it alone. If you’d like to wait for me in the Institute, I’ll join you there when I’m finished.”

Maryse hesitated. “You know what to ask her?”

Magnus’s gaze was unwavering. “I know how to talk to her, yes. If she is willing to say anything, she’ll say it to me.”

Both of them seemed to have forgotten that Simon was there. “Should I go too?” he asked, interrupting their staring contest.

Maryse looked at him, half-distracted. “Oh, yes. Thank you for your help, Simon, but you’re no longer needed. Go home if you like.”

Magnus said nothing at all. With a shrug Simon turned and went toward the door that led to the vestry and the exit that would take him outside. At the door he paused and looked back. Maryse and Magnus were still talking, though the guard was already holding open the Institute door, ready to leave. Only Camille seemed to remember that Simon was there at all. She was smiling at him from her pillar, her lips curved up at the corners, her eyes shining like a promise.

Simon went out, and closed the door behind him.

“It happens every night.” Jace was sitting on the floor, his legs drawn up, his hands dangling between his knees. He had put the knife on the bed next to Clary; she kept one hand on it while he talked—more to reassure him than because she needed it to defend herself. All the energy seemed to have drained out of Jace; even his voice sounded empty and far away while he talked, as if he were speaking to her from a great distance. “I dream that you come into my room and we . . . start doing what we were just doing. And then I hurt you. I cut you or strangle or stab you, and you die, looking up at me with those green eyes of yours while your life bleeds away between my hands.”

“They’re only dreams,” Clary said gently.

“You just saw that they aren’t,” said Jace. “I was wide awake when I picked up that knife.”

Clary knew he was right. “Are you worried that you’re going crazy?”

He shook his head slowly. Hair fell into his eyes; he pushed it back. His hair had gotten a little too long; he hadn’t cut it in a while, and Clary wondered if it was because he couldn’t be bothered. How could she not have paid more attention to the shadows under his eyes, the bitten nails, the drawn exhausted look of him? She had been so concerned about whether he still loved her that she had not thought about anything else. “I’m not so worried about that, really,” he said. “I’m worried about hurting you. I’m worried that whatever poison it is that’s eating its way into my dreams will bleed through into my waking life and I’ll . . .” His throat seemed to close up.

“You would never hurt me.”

“I had that knife in my hand, Clary.” He looked up at her, and then away. “If I hurt you . . .” His voice trailed off. “Shadowhunters die young, a lot of the time,” he said. “We all know that. And you wanted to be a Shadowhunter, and I would never stop you because it isn’t my job to tell you what to do with your life. Especially when I’m taking the same kind of risks. What kind of person would I be if I told you it was all right for me to risk my life, but not for you? So I’ve thought about what it would be like for me if you died. I bet you’ve thought about the same thing.”

“I know what it would be like,” Clary said, remembering the lake, the sword, and Jace’s blood spreading over the sand. He had been dead, and the Angel had brought him back, but those had been the worst minutes of her life. “I wanted to die. But I knew how disappointed in me you’d have been if I’d just given up.”

He smiled, the ghost of a smile. “And I’ve thought the same thing. If you died, I wouldn’t want to live. But I wouldn’t kill myself, because whatever happens after we die, I want to be with you there. And if I killed myself, I know you’d never talk to me again. In any life. So I’d live, and I’d try to make something out of my life, until I could be with you again. But if I hurt you—if I was the cause of your death—there’s nothing that would keep me from destroying myself.”

“Don’t say that.” Clary felt chilled to the bone. “Jace, you should have told me.”

“I couldn’t.” His voice was flat, final.

“Why not?”

“I thought I was Jace Lightwood,” he said. “I thought it was possible that my upbringing hadn’t touched me. But now I wonder if maybe people can’t change. Maybe I’ll always be Jace Morgenstern, Valentine’s son. He raised me for ten years, and maybe that’s a stain that won’t ever bleach out.”

“You think this is because of your father,” Clary said, and the bit of story that Jace had told her once ran through her head, to love is to destroy. And then she thought how strange it was that she would call Valentine Jace’s father, when his blood ran in her veins, not Jace’s. But she had never felt about Valentine the way you might feel about a father. And Jace had. “And you didn’t want me to know?”

“You’re everything I want,” Jace said. “And maybe Jace Lightwood deserves to get everything he wants. But Jace Morgenstern doesn’t. Somewhere inside I must know that. Or I wouldn’t be trying to destroy what we have.”

Clary took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I don’t think you are.”

He raised his head and blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You think this is psychological,” Clary said. “That there’s something wrong with you. Well, I don’t. I think someone is doing this to you.”

“I don’t—”

“Ithuriel sent me dreams,” Clary said. “Maybe someone is sending you dreams.”

“Ithuriel sent you dreams to try to help you. To guide you to the truth. What’s the point of these dreams? They’re sick, meaningless, sadistic—”

“Maybe they have a meaning,” Clary said. “Maybe the meaning just isn’t what you think. Or maybe whoever’s sending them is trying to hurt you.”

“Who would do that?”

“Someone who doesn’t like us very much,” said Clary, and pushed away an image of the Seelie Queen.

“Maybe,” Jace said softly, looking down at his hands. “Sebastian—”

So he doesn’t want to call him Jonathan either, Clary thought. She didn’t blame him. It was his own name too. “Sebastian’s dead,” she said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. “And if he had had this sort of power, he would have used it before.”

Doubt and hope chased each other across Jace’s face. “You really think someone else could be doing this?”

Clary’s heart beat hard against her rib cage. She wasn’t sure; she wanted it so badly to be true, but if it wasn’t, she would have gotten Jace’s hopes up for nothing. Both their hopes.

But then she got the feeling it had been a while since Jace had felt hopeful about anything.

“I think we should go to the Silent City,” she said. “The Brothers can get into your head and find out if someone’s been messing around in there. The way they did with me.”

Jace opened his mouth and closed it again. “When?” he said finally.

“Now,” Clary said. “I don’t want to wait. Do you?”

He didn’t reply, just got up off the floor and picked up his shirt. He looked at Clary, and almost smiled. “If we’re going to the Silent City, you might want to get dressed. I mean, I appreciate the bra-and-panties look, but I don’t know if the Silent Brothers will. There are only a few of them left, and I don’t want them to die of excitement.”

Clary got up off the bed and threw a pillow at him, mostly out of relief. She reached for her clothes and began to pull her shirt on. Just before it went over her head, she caught sight of the knife lying on the bedspread, gleaming like a fork of silvery flame.

“Camille,” Magnus said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver, and her eyes were still as green as a cat’s. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec’s. A girl with long brown curls and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants.

And then there was Camille.

“I’ve missed you, Magnus,” she said.

“No, you haven’t.” He sat down on the floor of the Sanctuary. He could feel the cold of the stone through his clothes. He was glad he had worn the scarf. “So why the message for me? Just stalling for time?”

“No.” She leaned forward, the chains rattling. He could almost hear the hissing where the blessed metal touched the skin of her wrists. “I have heard things about you, Magnus. I have heard that you are under the wing of the Shadowhunters these days. I had heard that you have won the love of one of them. That boy you were just talking to, I imagine. But then your tastes were always diverse.”

“You have been listening to rumors about me,” Magnus said. “But you could simply have asked me. All these years I was in Brooklyn, not far away at all, and I never heard from you. Never saw you at one of my parties. There has been a wall of ice between us, Camille.”

“I did not build it.” Her green eyes widened. “I have loved you always.”

“You left me,” he said. “You made a pet out of me, and then you left me. If love were food, I would have starved on the bones you gave me.” He spoke matter-of-factly. It had been a long time.

“But we had all of eternity,” she protested. “You must have known I would come back to you—”

“Camille.” Magnus spoke with infinite patience. “What do you want?”

Her chest rose and fell quickly. Since she had no need to breathe, Magnus knew this was mainly for effect. “I know you have the ear of the Shadowhunters,” she said. “I want you to speak to them on my behalf.”

“You want me to cut a deal for you,” Magnus translated.

She cut her eyes at him. “Your diction has always been so regrettably modern.”

“They’re saying you killed three Shadowhunters,” said Magnus. “Did you?”

“They were Circle members,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “They had tortured and killed my kind in the past. . . .”

“Is that why you did it? Revenge?” When she was silent, Magnus said, “You know what they do to those who kill Nephilim, Camille.”

Her eyes shone. “I need you to intercede for me, Magnus. I want immunity. I want a signed promise from the Clave that if I give them information, they will spare my life and set me free.”

“They’ll never set you free.”

“Then they’ll never know why their colleagues had to die.”

“Had to die?” Magnus mused. “Interesting wording, Camille. Am I correct that there is more to this than meets the eye? More than blood or revenge?”

She was silent, looking at him, her chest rising and falling artfully. Everything about her was artful—the fall of her silvery hair, the curve of her throat, even the blood on her wrists.

“If you want me to speak to them for you,” Magnus said, “you have to tell me at least some small thing. A show of good faith.”

She smiled brilliantly. “I knew you would speak to them for me, Magnus. I knew the past was not entirely dead for you.”

“Consider it undead if you like,” Magnus said. “The truth, Camille?”

She ran her tongue across her lower lip. “You can tell them,” she said, “that I was under orders when I killed those Shadowhunters. It did not disturb me to do it, for they had killed my kin, and their deaths were deserved. But I would not have done it unless requested to do so by someone else, someone much more powerful than myself.”

Magnus’s heart beat a little faster. He didn’t like the sound of this. “Who?”

But Camille shook her head. “Immunity, Magnus.”

“Camille—”

“They will stake me out in the sun and leave me to die,” she said. “That is what they do to those who slay Nephilim.”

Magnus got to his feet. His scarf was dusty from lying on the ground. He looked at the stains mournfully. “I’ll do what I can, Camille. But I make no promises.”

“You never would,” she murmured, her eyes half-lidded. “Come here, Magnus. Come close to me.”

He did not love her, but she was a dream out of the past, so he moved toward her, until he was standing close enough to touch her. “Remember,” she said softly. “Remember London? The parties at de Quincey’s? Remember Will Herondale? I know you do. That boy of yours, that Lightwood. They even look alike.”

“Do they?” Magnus said, as if he had never thought about it.

“Pretty boys have always been your undoing,” she said. “But what can some mortal child give you? Ten years, twenty, before dissolution begins to claim him. Forty years, fifty, before death takes him. I can give you all of eternity.”

He touched her cheek. It was colder than the floor had been. “You could give me the past,” he said a little sadly. “But Alec is my future.”

“Magnus—,” she began.

The Institute door opened, and Maryse stood in the doorway, outlined by the witchlight behind her. Beside her was Alec, his arms crossed over his chest. Magnus wondered if Alec had heard any of the conversation between him and Camille through the door—surely not?

“Magnus,” said Maryse Lightwood. “Have you come to some agreement?”

Magnus dropped his hand. “I’m not sure I’d call it an agreement,” he said, turning to Maryse. “But I do think we have some things to talk about.”

Dressed, Clary went with Jace to his room, where he packed a small canvas bag with things to bring with him to the Silent City, as if, she thought, he were going to some grim sleepover party. Weapons mostly—a few seraph blades; his stele; and almost as an afterthought, the silver-handled knife, its blade now cleaned of blood. He slid on a black leather jacket, and she watched as he zipped it, pulling loose strands of blond hair free of his collar. When he turned to look at her, slinging his bag across his shoulder, he smiled faintly, and she saw the slight chip in his front left incisor that she had always thought was endearing, a little flaw in looks that would otherwise be too perfect. Her heart contracted, and for a moment she looked away from him, hardly able to breathe.

He held out his hand to her. “Let’s go.”

There was no way to summon the Silent Brothers to come and get them, so Jace and Clary took a taxi heading downtown toward Houston and the Marble Cemetery. Clary supposed they could just have Portaled into the Bone City—she’d been there before; she knew what it looked like—but Jace said there were rules about that sort of thing, and Clary couldn’t shake the feeling that the Silent Brothers might find it rather rude.

Jace sat beside her in the back of the taxi, holding one of her hands and tracing patterns on the back of it with his fingers. This was distracting, but not so distracting that she couldn’t concentrate while he filled her in on what had been going on with Simon, the story of Jordan, their capture of Camille, and her demand to speak to Magnus.

“Simon’s all right?” she said worriedly. “I didn’t realize. He was in the Institute, and I didn’t even see him—”

“He wasn’t in the Institute; he was in the Sanctuary. And he seems to be holding his own. Better than I would have thought for someone who was so recently a mundane.”

“But the plan sounds dangerous. I mean Camille, she’s absolutely crazy, isn’t she?”

Jace traced his fingers over her knuckles. “You have to stop thinking of Simon as the mundane boy you used to know. The one who required so much saving. He’s almost beyond being harmed now. You haven’t seen that Mark you gave him in action. I have. Like the wrath of God being visited upon the world. I suppose you should be proud.”

She shivered. “I don’t know. I did it because I had to do it, but it’s still a curse. And I didn’t know he was going through all this. He didn’t say. I knew Isabelle and Maia had found out about each other, but I didn’t know about Jordan. That he was really Maia’s ex, or—any of it.” Because you haven’t asked. You were too busy worrying about Jace. Not good.

“Well,” Jace said, “have you been telling him what you’re up to? Because it has to go both ways.”

“No. I haven’t really told anyone,” Clary said, and filled Jace in on her trip to the Silent City with Luke and Maryse, what she had found at the morgue at Beth Israel, and her subsequent discovery of the Church of Talto.

“Never heard of it,” Jace said. “But Isabelle’s right, there are all sorts of bizarro demon-worshipping sects out there. Most of them never actually succeed in summoning up a demon. Sounds like this one did.”

“Do you think the demon we killed was the one they were worshipping? Do you think now they might—stop?”

Jace shook his head. “That was just a Hydra demon, a sort of guard dog. Besides, ‘Her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.’ Sounds like a female demon to me. And it’s the cults that worship female demons that often do horrible stuff with babies. They have all sorts of twisted ideas about fertility and infants.” He sat back against the seat, half-closing his eyes. “I’m sure the Conclave will go to the church and check it out, but twenty to one they don’t find anything. You killed their guard demon, so the cult’s going to clear out and ditch the evidence. We might have to wait until they set up shop again somewhere else.”

“But—” Clary’s stomach clenched. “That baby. And the pictures in the book I saw. I think they’re trying to make more children like—like Sebastian.”

“They can’t,” said Jace. “They shot up a human baby with demon blood, which is pretty bad, yes. But you get something like Sebastian only if what you’re doing is using demon blood on Shadowhunter children. Instead the baby died.” He squeezed her hand lightly, as if for reassurance. “They’re not nice people, but I can’t imagine they’d try the same thing again, since it didn’t work.”

The taxi came to a screeching halt at the corner of Houston and Second Avenue. “Meter’s broken,” said the cabbie. “Ten bucks.”

Jace, who under other circumstances would probably have made a sarcastic remark, tossed the cabbie a twenty and got out of the car, holding the door open for Clary to follow. “You ready?” he asked as they headed toward the iron gate that led to the City.

She nodded. “I can’t say my last trip here was much fun, but yes, I’m ready.” She took his hand. “As long as we’re together, I’m ready for anything.”

The Silent Brothers were waiting for them in the entryway of the City, almost as if they had been expecting them. Clary recognized Brother Zachariah among the group. They stood in a silent line, blocking Clary and Jace’s farther ingress into the City.

Why have you come here, daughter of Valentine and son of the Institute? Clary wasn’t sure which of them was speaking to her inside her head, or if all of them were. It is unusual for children to enter the Silent City unsupervised.

The appellation “children” stung, though Clary was aware that as far as Shadowhunters were concerned, everyone under eighteen was a child and subject to different rules.

“We need your help,” Clary said when it became apparent Jace wasn’t going to say anything. He was looking from one of the Silent Brothers to the other with a curious listlessness, like someone who had received countless terminal diagnoses from different doctors and now, having reached the end of the line, waited without much hope for a specialist’s verdict. “Isn’t that your job—helping Shadowhunters?”

And yet we are not servants, at your beck and call. Nor does every problem fall under our jurisdiction.

“But this one does,” Clary said firmly. “I believe someone is reaching into Jace’s mind—someone with power—and messing with his memories and dreams. Making him do things he doesn’t want to do.”

Hypnomancy, said one of the Silent Brothers. The magic of dreams. That is the province of only the greatest and most powerful users of magic.

“Like angels,” said Clary, and she was rewarded by a stiff, surprised silence.

Perhaps, said Brother Zachariah finally, you should come with us to the Speaking Stars. This was not an invitation, clearly, but an order, for they turned immediately and began walking into the heart of the City, not waiting to see if Jace and Clary followed.

They reached the pavilion of the Speaking Stars, where the Brothers took their places behind their black basalt table. The Mortal Sword was back in its place, gleaming on the wall behind them like the wing of a silver bird. Jace moved to the center of the room and stared down at the pattern of metallic stars burned into the red and gold tiles of the floor. Clary watched him, feeling her heart ache. It was hard to see him like this, all his usual burning energy gone, like witchlight suffocating under a covering of ash.

He raised his blond head then, blinking, and Clary knew that the Silent Brothers were speaking inside his mind, saying words she couldn’t hear. She saw him shake his head and heard him say, “I don’t know. I thought they weren’t anything but ordinary dreams.” His mouth tightened then, and she couldn’t help wondering what they were asking him. “Visions? I don’t think so. Yes, I did encounter the Angel, but it’s Clary who had the prophetic dreams. Not me.”

Clary tensed. They were getting awfully close to asking about what had happened with Jace and the Angel that night by Lake Lyn. She hadn’t thought about that. When the Silent Brothers pried into your mind, just what did they see? Only what they were looking for? Or everything?

Jace nodded then. “Fine. I’m ready if you are.”

He closed his eyes, and Clary, watching, relaxed slightly. This must have been what it had been like for Jace to watch her, she thought, the first time the Silent Brothers had delved into her mind. She saw details she hadn’t noticed then, for she had been caught inside the nets of their minds and her own, reeling back into her memories, lost to the world.

She saw Jace stiffen all over as if they had touched him with their hands. His head went back. His hands, at his sides, opened and closed, as the stars on the floor at his feet flared up with a blinding silver light. She blinked away tears from the brightness; he was a graceful dark outline against a sheet of blinding silver, as if he stood in the heart of a waterfall. All around them was noise, a soft, incomprehensible whispering.

As she watched, he went to his knees, his hands braced against the ground. Her heart tightened. Having the Silent Brothers in her head had nearly made her faint, but Jace was stronger than that, wasn’t he? Slowly he doubled in on himself, hands gripped against his stomach, agony in every line of him, though he never cried out. Clary could take it no longer—she darted toward him, through the sheets of light, and went on her knees next to him, throwing her arms around his body. The whispering voices around her rose to a storm of protest as he turned his head and looked at her. The silver light had washed out his eyes, and they looked flat and as white as marble tiles. His lips shaped her name.

And then it was gone—the light, the sound, all of it, and they knelt together on the bare floor of the pavilion, silence and shadow all around them. Jace was shaking, and when his hands released each other, she saw that they were bloody where his nails had torn the skin. Still holding him by the arm, she looked up at the Silent Brothers, fighting back her anger. She knew it was like being furious at a doctor who had to administer a painful but lifesaving treatment, but it was hard—so hard—to be reasonable when it was someone that you loved.

There is something you have not told us, Clarissa Morgenstern, said Brother Zachariah. A secret you both have been keeping.

An icy hand closed around Clary’s heart. “What do you mean?”

The mark of death is on this boy. It was another of the Brothers speaking—Enoch, she thought.

“Death?” said Jace. “Do you mean I’m going to die?” He didn’t sound surprised.

We mean that you were dead. You had passed beyond the portal into the shadow realms, your soul untethered from your body.

Clary and Jace exchanged a look. She swallowed. “The Angel Raziel—,” she began.

Yes, his mark is all over the boy as well. Enoch’s voice was without emotion. There are only two ways to bring back the dead. The way of necromancy, the black sorcery of bell, book, and candle. That will return a semblance of life. But only an Angel of God’s own right hand could place a human’s soul back into their body as easily as life was breathed into the first of men. He shook his head. The balance of life and death, of good and evil, is a delicate one, young Shadowhunters. You have upset it.

“But Raziel’s the Angel,” said Clary. “He can do whatever he wants. You worship him, don’t you? If he chose to do this—”

Did he? asked another of the Brothers. Did he choose?

“I . . .” Clary looked at Jace. She thought, I could have asked for anything else in the universe. World peace, a cure to disease, to live forever. But all I wanted was you.

We know the ritual of the Instruments, said Zachariah. We know that he who possesses them all, who is their Lord, may request of the Angel one thing. I do not think he could have refused you.

Clary set her chin. “Well,” she said, “it’s done now.”

Jace gave the ghost of a laugh. “They could always kill me, you know,” he said. “Bring things back into balance.”

Her hands tightened on his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was thin. She tensed further as Brother Zachariah broke away from the tight group of Silent Brothers and approached them, his feet gliding silently over the Speaking Stars. He reached Jace, and Clary had to fight the urge to push him away as he bent down and placed his long fingers under Jace’s chin, raising the boy’s face to his. Zachariah’s fingers were slim, unlined—a young man’s fingers. She had never given much thought to the ages of the Silent Brothers before, assuming them to be all some species of wizened and old.

Jace, kneeling, gazed up at Zachariah, who looked down at him with his blind, impassive expression. Clary could not help but think of medieval paintings of saints on their knees, gazing upward, their faces suffused with shining golden light. Would that I had been here, he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle, when you were growing up. I would have seen the truth in your face, Jace Lightwood, and known who you were.

Jace looked puzzled but didn’t move to pull away.

Zachariah turned to the others. We cannot and should not harm the boy. Old ties exist between the Herondales and the Brothers. We owe him help.

“Help with what?” Clary demanded. “Can you see something wrong with him—something inside his head?”

When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters.

The Iron Sisters, Clary knew from her studies, were the sister sect of the Silent Brothers; even more retiring than their brethren, they were in charge of crafting Shadowhunter weapons.

Brother Zachariah went on. When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as an unlocked door—open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence.

Clary licked her dry lips. “Possession, you mean?”

Not possession. Influence. I suspect that a powerful demonic power whispers into your ears, Jonathan Herondale. You are strong, you fight it, but it wears you down as the sea wears down the sand.

“Jace,” he whispered through white lips. “Jace Lightwood, not Herondale.”

Clary, clinging to practicalities, said, “How can you be sure it’s a demon? And what can we do to get it to leave him alone?”

Enoch, sounding thoughtful, said, The ritual must be performed again, the protections laid upon him a second time, as if he had just been born.

“Can you do it?” Clary asked.

Zachariah inclined his head. It can be done. The preparations must be made, one of the Iron Sisters called on, an amulet crafted. . . . He trailed off. Jonathan must remain with us until the ritual is finished. This is the safest place for him.

Clary looked at Jace again, searching for an expression—any expression—of hope, relief, delight, anything. But his face was impassive. “For how long?” he said.

Zachariah spread his thin hands wide. A day, perhaps two. The ritual is meant for infants; we will have to change it, alter it to fit an adult. If he were older than eighteen, it would be impossible. As it is, it will be difficult. But he is not beyond saving.

Not beyond saving. It was not what Clary had hoped for; she had wanted to be told that the problem was simple, easily solved. She looked at Jace. His head was bowed, his hair falling forward; the back of his neck looked so vulnerable to her, it made her heart ache.

“It’s fine,” she said softly. “I’ll stay here with you—”

No. The Brothers spoke as a group, their voices inexorable. He must remain here alone. For what we must do, he cannot afford to be distracted.

She felt Jace’s body tighten. The last time he had been alone in the Silent City, he had been unfairly imprisoned, present for the horrible deaths of most of the Silent Brothers, and tormented by Valentine. She could not imagine that the idea of another night alone in the City would be anything but awful for him.

“Jace,” she whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. If you want to go . . .”

“I’ll stay,” he said. He had raised his head, and his voice was strong and clear. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever I have to do to fix this. I just need you to call Izzy and Alec. Tell them—tell them I’m staying at Simon’s to keep an eye on him. Tell them I’ll see them tomorrow or the next day.”

“But . . .”

“Clary.” Gently he took both her hands and held them between his. “You were right. This isn’t coming from inside me. Something is doing this to me. To us. You know what that means? If I can be . . . cured . . . then I don’t have to be afraid of myself when I’m around you anymore. I’d spend a thousand nights in the Silent City for that.”

She leaned forward, heedless of the presence of the Silent Brothers, and kissed him, a quick press of her lips against his. “I’ll be back,” she whispered. “Tomorrow night, after the Ironworks party, I’ll come back and see you.”

The hopefulness in his eyes was enough to break her heart. “Maybe I’ll be cured by then.”

She touched his face with her fingertips. “Maybe you will be.”

Simon woke still feeling exhausted after a long night of bad dreams. He rolled onto his back and stared at the light coming in the single window in his bedroom.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d sleep better if he did what other vampires did, and slept during the day. Despite the fact that the sun didn’t harm him, he could feel the pull of the nights, the desire to be out under the dark sky and the glimmering stars. There was something in him that wanted to live in shadows, that felt the sunlight like a thin, knifelike pain—just like there was something in him that wanted blood. And look how fighting that had turned out for him.

He staggered upright and threw on some clothes, then made his way out into the living room. The place smelled like toast and coffee. Jordan was sitting on one of the counter stools, his hair sticking out every which way as usual, his shoulders hunched.

“Hey,” Simon said. “What’s up?”

Jordan looked over at him. He was pale under his tan. “We have a problem,” he said.

Simon blinked. He hadn’t seen his werewolf roommate since the day before. He’d come home from the Institute last night and collapsed in exhaustion. Jordan hadn’t been here, and Simon had figured he was out working. But maybe something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

“This was shoved under our door.” Jordan pushed a folded newspaper toward Simon. It was the New York Morning Chronicle, folded open to one of the pages. There was a grisly picture up toward the top, a grainy image of a body sprawled on some pavement, stick-skinny limbs bent at odd angles. It hardly looked human, the way dead bodies sometimes didn’t. Simon was about to ask Jordan why he had to look at this, when the text under the photo jumped out at him.

GIRL FOUND DEADPolice say they are pursuing leads in the death of fourteen-year-old Maureen Brown, whose body was discovered Sunday night at eleven p.m. stuffed into a trash can outside the Big Apple Deli on Third Avenue. Though no official cause of death has been released by the coroner’s office, the deli owner who found the body, Michael Garza, says her throat was cut open. Police have not yet located a weapon . . .

Unable to read on, Simon sat down heavily in a chair. Now that he knew, the photo was unmistakably Maureen. He recognized her rainbow arm warmers, the stupid pink hat she’d been wearing when he’d seen her last. My God, he wanted to say. Oh, God. But no words came out.

“Didn’t that note say,” Jordan said in a bleak voice, “that if you didn’t go to that address, they’d cut your girlfriend’s throat?”

“No,” Simon whispered. “It’s not possible. No.”

But he remembered.

Eric’s little cousin’s friend. What’s her name? The one who has a crush on Simon. She comes to all our gigs and tells everyone she’s his girlfriend.

Simon remembered her phone, her little pink phone with the stickers on it, the way she’d held it up to take a photo of them. The feeling of her hand on his shoulder, as light as a butterfly. Fourteen years old. He curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, as if he could make himself small enough to vanish completely.

14 WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

Jace tossed uneasily on the narrow bed in the Silent City. He didn’t know where the Brothers slept, and they didn’t seem inclined to reveal it. The only place there seemed to be for him to lie down was in one of the cells below the City where they usually kept prisoners. They’d left the door open for him so he didn’t feel too much like he was in jail, but the place couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called pleasant.

The air was close and thick; he’d taken off his shirt and lay atop the covers in just his jeans, but he was still too hot. The walls were dull gray. Someone had carved the letters JG into the stone just above the bedstead, leaving him to wonder what that was about—and there was nothing else in the room but the bed, a cracked mirror that gave him back his own reflection in twisted pieces, and the sink. Not to mention the more than unpleasant memories the room stirred up.

The Brothers had been in and out of his mind all night, till he felt like a wrung-out rag. Since they were so secretive about everything, he had no idea if they were making any progress. They didn’t seem pleased, but then, they never did.

The real test, he knew, was sleeping. What would he dream? To sleep: perchance to dream. He flipped over, burying his face in his arms. He didn’t think he could stand even one more dream about hurting Clary. He thought he might actually lose his mind, and the idea frightened him. The prospect of dying had never frightened him much, but the thought of going insane was nearly the worst thing he could imagine. But going to sleep was the only way to know. He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

He slept, and he dreamed.

He was back in the valley—the valley in Idris where he had fought Sebastian and nearly died. It was autumn in the valley, not high summer as it had been the last time he had been there. The leaves were exploding in gold and russet and orange and red. He was standing by the bank of the small river—a stream, really—that cut the valley in half. In the distance, coming toward him, was someone, someone he couldn’t see very clearly yet, but the person’s stride was direct and purposeful.

He was so sure it was Sebastian that it was not until the figure had come close enough to see clearly that he realized it couldn’t possibly be. Sebastian had been tall, taller than Jace, but this person was small—the face in shadow, but a head or two shorter than Jace—and skinny, with the thin shoulders of childhood, and bony wrists sticking out of the too-short sleeves of his shirt.

Max.

The sight of his little brother hit Jace like a blow, and he went down on his knees on the green grass. The fall didn’t hurt. Everything had the padded edges of the dream that it was. Max looked as he always had. A knobby-kneed boy just on the verge of growing up and out of that little-kid stage. Now he never would.

“Max,” Jace said. “Max, I’m so sorry.”

“Jace.” Max stood where he was. A little wind had come up and lifted his brown hair off his face. His eyes, behind their glasses, were serious. “I’m not here because of me,” he said. “I’m not here to haunt you or make you feel guilty.”

Of course he isn’t, said a voice in Jace’s head. Max has only ever loved you, looked up to you, thought you were wonderful.

“The dreams you’ve been having,” Max said. “They’re messages.”

“The dreams are a demon’s influence, Max. The Silent Brothers said—”

“They’re wrong,” Max said quickly. “There are only a few of them now, and their powers are weaker than they used to be. These dreams are meant to tell you something. You’ve been misunderstanding them. They’re not telling you to hurt Clary. They’re warning you that you already are.”

Jace shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand.”

“The angels sent me to talk to you because I know you,” Max said, in his clear child’s voice. “I know how you are with the people you love, and you’d never hurt them willingly. But you haven’t destroyed all of Valentine’s influence inside you yet. His voice still whispers to you, and you don’t think you hear it, but you do. The dreams are telling you that until you kill that part of yourself, you can’t be with Clary.”

“Then I’ll kill it,” Jace said. “I’ll do whatever I have to do. Just tell me how.”

Max smiled a clear bright smile and held out something in his hand. It was a silver-handled dagger—Stephen Herondale’s silver-handled dagger, the one from the box. Jace recognized it at once. “Take this,” Max said. “And turn it against yourself. The part of you that is here in the dream with me must die. What will rise up afterward will be cleansed.”

Jace took the knife.

Max smiled. “Good. There are many of us here on the other side who are worried about you. Your father is here.”

“Not Valentine—”

“Your real father. He told me to tell you to use this. It will cut away everything rotten in your soul.”

Max smiled like an angel as Jace turned the knife toward himself, blade inward. Then at the last moment Jace hesitated. It was too close to what Valentine had done to him, piercing him through the heart. He took the blade and cut a long incision into his right forearm, from elbow to wrist. There was no pain. He switched the knife to the right hand and did the same to his other arm. Blood exploded from the long cuts on his arms, brighter red than blood in real life, blood the color of rubies. It spilled down his skin and pattered onto the grass.

He heard Max breathe out softly. The boy bent down and touched the fingers of his right hand to the blood. When he raised them, they were glittering scarlet. He took a step toward Jace, and then another. This close up, Jace could see Max’s face clearly—his poreless child’s skin, the translucence of his eyelids, his eyes—Jace didn’t remember him having such dark eyes. Max put his hand to the skin of Jace’s chest, just over his heart, and with the blood he began to trace a design there, a rune. Not one Jace had ever seen before, with overlapping corners and strange angles to its shape.

Done, Max dropped his hand and stepped back, head cocked to the side, an artist examining his latest work. A sudden spear of agony went through Jace. It felt as if the skin on his chest were burning. Max stood watching him, smiling, flexing his bloody hand. “Does it hurt you, Jace Lightwood?” he said, and his voice was no longer Max’s voice, but something else, high and husky and familiar.

“Max—,” Jace whispered.

“As you have dealt pain, so shall you be dealt pain,” said Max, whose face had begun to shimmer and change. “As you have caused grief, so shall you feel grief. You are mine now, Jace Lightwood. You are mine.”

The agony was blinding. Jace crumpled forward, hands clawing at his chest, and he tumbled into darkness.

Simon sat on the couch, his face in his hands. His mind was buzzing. “This is my fault,” he said. “I might as well have killed Maureen when I drank her blood. She’s dead because of me.”

Jordan sprawled in the armchair opposite him. He was wearing jeans and a green tee over a long-sleeved thermal shirt with holes in the cuffs; he had his thumbs stuck through them, and was worrying at the material. The gold Praetor Lupus medal around his neck glinted. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no way you could have known. She was fine when I put her in the cab. These guys must have grabbed her and killed her later.”

Simon felt light-headed. “But I bit her. She’s not going to come back, right? She’s not going to be a vampire?”

“No. Come on, you know this stuff as well as I do. You’d have to have given her some of your blood for her to become a vampire. If she’d drunk your blood and then died, yeah, we’d be out in the graveyard on stake watch. But she didn’t. I mean, I assume you’d remember something like that.”

Simon tasted sour blood in the back of his throat. “They thought she was my girlfriend,” he said. “They warned me they’d kill her if I didn’t show up, and when I didn’t come, they cut her throat. She must have waited there all day, wondering if I’d come. Hoping I’d show up . . .” His stomach revolted, and he bent over, breathing hard, trying to keep from gagging.

“Yeah,” said Jordan, “but the question is, who is they?” He gave Simon a hard look. “I think it might be time for you to call the Institute. I don’t love the Shadowhunters, but I’ve always heard their archives are incredibly thorough. Maybe they’ve got something on that address from the note.”

Simon hesitated.

“Come on,” Jordan said. “You do enough crap for them. Let them do something for you.”

With a shrug Simon went to get his phone. Heading back to the living room, he dialed Jace’s number. Isabelle picked up on the second ring. “You again?”

“Sorry,” Simon said awkwardly. Apparently their little interlude in the Sanctuary hadn’t softened her toward him as much as he had hoped. “I was looking for Jace, but I guess I can talk to you—”

“Charming as always,” said Isabelle. “I thought Jace was with you.”

“No.” Simon felt a stirring of unease. “Who told you that?”

“Clary,” Isabelle said. “Maybe they’re sneaking some time together or something.” She sounded unworried, which made sense; the last person who’d lie about Jace’s whereabouts if he was in any sort of trouble was Clary. “Anyway, Jace left his phone in his room. If you do see him, remind him he’s supposed to be at the party at the Ironworks tonight. If he doesn’t show, Clary will kill him.”

Simon had nearly forgotten that he was supposed to be at the party that night.

“Right,” he said. “Look, Isabelle. I’ve got a problem here.”

“Spill. I love problems.”

“I don’t know if you’re going to love this one,” he said dubiously, and filled her in quickly on the situation. She gave a little gasp when he got to the part where he’d bitten Maureen, and he felt his throat tighten.

“Simon,” she whispered.

“I know, I know,” he said wretchedly. “You think I’m not sorry? I’m beyond sorry.”

“If you’d killed her, you’d have broken the Law. You’d be an outlaw. I’d have to kill you.”

“But I didn’t,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “I didn’t do this. Jordan swears that she was fine when he put her into the cab. And the newspaper says her throat was cut. I didn’t do that. Someone did it to get to me. I just don’t know why.”

“We’re not done with this issue.” Her voice was stern. “But first go get the note they left. Read it out to me.”

Simon did as asked, and was rewarded by a sharp intake of breath on Isabelle’s part.

“I thought that address sounded familiar,” she said. “That’s where Clary told me to meet her yesterday. It’s a church, uptown. The headquarters of some sort of demon-worshipping cult.”

“What would a demon-worshipping cult want with me?” Simon said, and received a curious look from Jordan, who was only hearing half the conversation.

“I don’t know. You’re a Daylighter. You’ve got crazy powers. You’re going to be a target for lunatics and black magicians. That’s just how it is.” Isabelle, Simon felt, could have sounded a bit more sympathetic. “Look, you’re going to the Ironworks party, right? We can meet there and talk next steps. And I’ll tell my mom about what’s been going on with you. They’re already investigating the Church of Talto, so they can add that to the info pile.”

“I guess,” Simon said. The last thing in the world he felt like was going to a party.

“And bring Jordan with you,” Isabelle said. “You can use a bodyguard.”

“I can’t do that. Maia’s going to be there.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Isabelle said. She sounded a lot more confident than Simon would have felt in her place. “See you there.”

She clicked off. Simon turned to Jordan, who was lying down across the futon, his head propped against one of the woven throw pillows. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to gather that we’re going to a party tonight,” said Jordan. “I heard about the Ironworks event. I’m not in the Garroway pack, so I wasn’t invited.”

“I guess you’re coming as my date now.” Simon shoved the phone back into his pocket.

“I’m secure enough in my masculinity to accept that,” said Jordan. “We’d better get you something nice to wear, though,” he called as Simon headed back into his room. “I want you to look pretty.”

Years previously, when Long Island City had been a center of industry instead of a trendy neighborhood full of art galleries and coffee shops, the Ironworks was a textile factory. Now it was an enormous brick shell whose inside had been transformed into a spare but beautiful space. The floor was made up of overlapping squares of brushed steel; slender steel beams arced overhead, wrapped with ropes of tiny white lights. Ornate wrought iron staircases spiraled up to catwalks decorated with hanging plants. A massive cantilevered glass ceiling opened onto a view of the night sky. There was even a terrace outside, built out over the East River, with a spectacular view of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, which loomed overhead, stretching from Queens to Manhattan like a spear of tinseled ice.

Luke’s pack had outdone themselves making the place look nice. There were artfully placed huge pewter vases holding long-stemmed ivory flowers, and tables covered in white linen arranged in a circle around a raised stage on which a werewolf string quartet provided classical music. Clary couldn’t help wishing Simon were there; she was pretty sure he’d think Werewolf String Quartet was a good name for a band.

Clary wandered from table to table, arranging things that didn’t need arranging, fiddling with flowers and straightening silverware that wasn’t actually crooked. Only a few of the guests had arrived so far, and none of them were people she knew. Her mother and Luke stood near the door, greeting people and smiling, Luke looking uncomfortable in a suit, and Jocelyn radiant in a tailored blue dress. After the events of the past few days, it was good to see her mother looking happy, though Clary wondered how much of it was real and how much was for show. There was a certain tightness about Jocelyn’s mouth that made Clary worry—was she actually happy, or just smiling through the pain?

Not that Clary didn’t know how she felt. Whatever else was going on, she couldn’t put Jace out of her mind. What were the Silent Brothers doing to him? Was he all right? Were they going to be able to fix what was wrong with him, to block out the demon influence? She had spent a sleepless night the evening before staring into the darkness of her bedroom and worrying until she felt literally sick.

More than anything else, she wished he was here. She had picked out the dress she was wearing tonight—pale gold and more fitted to her body than anything she usually wore—with the express hope that Jace would like it; now he wasn’t going to see her in it. That was a shallow thing to worry about, she knew; she’d go around dressed in a barrel for the rest of her life if it meant Jace would get better. Besides, he was always telling her she was beautiful, and he never complained about the fact that she mostly wore jeans and sneakers, but she had thought he would like this.

Standing in front of her mirror tonight, she had almost felt beautiful. Her mother had always said that she herself had been a late bloomer, and Clary, looking at her own reflection, had wondered if the same thing might happen to her. She wasn’t flat as a board anymore—she’d had to go up a bra size this past year—and if she squinted, she thought she could see—yes, those were definitely hips. She had curves. Small ones, but you had to start somewhere.

She’d kept her jewelry simple—very simple.

She put her hand up and touched the Morgenstern ring on its chain around her throat. She had put it on again, for the first time in days, that morning. She felt as if it were a silent gesture of confidence in Jace, a way of signaling her loyalty, whether he knew about it or not. She had decided she would wear it until she saw him again.

“Clarissa Morgenstern?” said a soft voice at her shoulder.

Clary turned in surprise. The voice wasn’t familiar. Standing there was a slim tall girl who looked about twenty. Her skin was milk-pale, threaded with veins the clear green of sap, and her blond hair had the same greenish tint. Her eyes were solid blue, like marbles, and she wore a slip of a blue dress, so thin that Clary thought she had to be freezing. Memory swam up slowly from the depths.

“Kaelie,” Clary said slowly, recognizing the faerie waitress from Taki’s who had served her and the Lightwoods more than once. A flicker reminded her that there had been some intimation that Kaelie and Jace had once had a fling, but the fact seemed so minor in the face of everything else that she couldn’t bring herself to mind it. “I didn’t realize—do you know Luke?”

“Do not mistake me for a guest at this occasion,” said Kaelie, her thin hand tracing a casually indifferent gesture on the air. “My lady sent me here to find you—not to attend the festivities.” She glanced curiously over her shoulder, her all-blue eyes shining. “Though I had not realized that your mother was marrying a werewolf.”

Clary raised her eyebrows. “And?”

Kaelie looked her up and down with some amusement. “My lady said you were quite flinty, despite your small size. In the Court you would be looked down on for having such short stature.”

“We’re not in the Court,” said Clary. “And we’re not in Taki’s, which means you came to me, which means you have five seconds to tell me what the Seelie Queen wants. I don’t like her much, and I’m not in the mood for her games.”

Kaelie pointed a thin green-nailed finger at Clary’s throat. “My lady said to ask you,” she said, “why you wear the Morgenstern ring. Is it to acknowledge your father?”

Clary’s hand stole to her throat. “It’s for Jace—because Jace gave it to me,” she said before she could help herself, and then cursed herself quietly. It wasn’t smart to tell the Seelie Queen more than you had to.

“But he is not a Morgenstern,” said Kaelie, “but a Herondale, and they have their own ring. A pattern of herons, rather than morning stars. And does that not suit him better, a soul that soars like a bird in flight, rather than falling like Lucifer?”

“Kaelie,” Clary ground out between her teeth. “What does the Seelie Queen want?”

The faerie girl laughed. “Why,” she said, “only to give you this.” She held out something in her hand, a tiny silver bell pendant, with a loop at the end of the handle so that it could be strung on a chain. As Kaelie moved her hand forward, the bell chimed, light and as sweet as rain.

Clary shrank back. “I do not want the gifts of your lady,” she said, “for they come freighted with lies and expectations. I will not owe the Queen anything.”

“It is not a gift,” Kaelie said impatiently. “It is a means of summoning. The Queen forgives you for your earlier stubbornness. She expects there is a time soon in which you will want her help. She is willing to offer it to you, should you choose to ask. Simply ring that bell, and a servant of the Court will come and bring you to her.”

Clary shook her head. “I will not ring it.”

Kaelie shrugged. “Then it should cost you nothing to take it.”

As if in a dream Clary saw her own hand reach out, her fingers hover over the bell.

“You would do anything to save him,” said Kaelie, her voice thin and as sweet as the bell’s ring, “whatever it cost you, whatever you might owe to Hell or Heaven, would you not?”

Remembered voices chimed in Clary’s head. Did you ever stop to wonder what untruths might have been in the tale your mother told you, that served her purpose in telling it? Do you truly think you know each and every secret of your past?

Madame Dorothea told Jace he would fall in love with the wrong person.

He is not beyond saving. But it will be difficult.

The bell clanged as Clary took it, folding it into her palm. Kaelie smiled, her blue eyes shining like glass beads. “A wise choice.”

Clary hesitated. But before she could thrust the bell back at the faerie girl, she heard someone call her name, and turned to see her mother making her way through the crowd toward her. She turned back hastily, but was not surprised to see that Kaelie was gone, having melted away into the crowd like mist burning away in the morning sun.

“Clary,” Jocelyn said, reaching her, “I was looking for you, and then Luke pointed you out, just standing over here by yourself. Is everything okay?”

Just standing over here by yourself. Clary wondered what kind of glamour Kaelie had been using; her mother ought to be able to see through most. “I’m fine, Mom.”

“Where’s Simon? I thought he was coming.”

Of course she would think of Simon first, Clary thought, not Jace. Even though Jace had been supposed to come, and as Clary’s boyfriend, he probably ought to even have been there early. “Mom,” she said, and then paused. “Do you think you’ll ever like Jace?”

Jocelyn’s green eyes softened. “I did notice he wasn’t here, Clary. I just didn’t know if you’d want to talk about it.”

“I mean,” Clary went on doggedly, “do you think there’s something he could do to make you like him?”

“Yes,” Jocelyn said. “He could make you happy.” She touched Clary’s face lightly, and Clary clenched her own hand, feeling the bell press into her skin.

“He does make me happy,” Clary said. “But he can’t control everything in the world, Mom. Other things happen—” She fumbled for words. How could she explain that it wasn’t Jace making her unhappy, but what was happening to him, without revealing what that was?

“You love him so much,” Jocelyn said gently. “It scares me. I’ve always wanted to keep you protected.”

“And look how that worked out,” Clary began, and then softened her voice. This wasn’t the time to blame her mother or fight with her, not now. Not with Luke looking over at them from the doorway, his face alight with love and anxiety. “If you just knew him,” she said, a little hopelessly. “But I guess everyone says that about their boyfriend.”

“You’re right,” Jocelyn said, surprising her. “I don’t know him, not really. I see him, and he reminds me a little of his mother somehow. I don’t know why—he doesn’t look like her, except that she was also beautiful, and she had that terrible vulnerability that he has—”

“Vulnerability?” Clary was astonished. She had never thought anyone but herself thought of Jace as vulnerable.

“Oh, yes,” said Jocelyn. “I wanted to hate her for taking Stephen away from Amatis, but you just couldn’t help wanting to protect Céline. Jace has a little of that.” She sounded lost in thought. “Or maybe it’s just that beautiful things are so easily broken by the world.” She lowered her hand. “It doesn’t matter. I have my memories to contend with, but they’re my memories. Jace shouldn’t bear the weight of them. I will tell you one thing, though. If he didn’t love you like he does—and it’s written all over his face whenever he looks at you—I wouldn’t tolerate him for even a moment. So keep that in mind when you’re being angry with me.”

She waved off Clary’s protestation that she wasn’t angry with a smile and a pat on the cheek, and headed back toward Luke with a last appeal for Clary to get out among the crowd and mingle. Clary nodded and said nothing, looking after her mother as she went, and feeling the bell sear against the inside of her hand where she clutched it, like the tip of a burning match.

The area around the Ironworks was mostly warehouses and art galleries, the kind of neighborhood that emptied out at night, so it didn’t take too long for Jordan and Simon to find a parking space. Simon jumped down out of the truck, only to find Jordan already on the sidewalk, looking at him critically.

Simon hadn’t packed any nice clothes when he’d left his house—he didn’t have anything on him fancier than a bomber jacket that had once belonged to his dad—so he and Jordan had spent the afternoon prowling the East Village for a decent outfit for him to wear. They’d finally found an old Zegna suit in a consignment shop called Love Saves the Day that mostly sold glitter platform boots and sixties Pucci scarves. Simon suspected it was where Magnus got most of his clothes.

“What?” he said now, self-consciously pulling down the sleeves of his suit jacket. It was a little too small for him, though Jordan had opined that if he never buttoned it, no one would notice. “How bad do I look?”

Jordan shrugged. “You won’t crack any mirrors,” he said. “I was just wondering if you were armed. You want anything? Dagger, maybe?” He opened his own suit jacket just a bit, and Simon saw something long and metallic glinting against the inside lining.

“No wonder you and Jace like each other so much. You’re both crazy walking arsenals.” Simon shook his head in weariness and turned to head toward the Ironworks entrance. It was across the street, a wide gold awning shadowing a rectangle of sidewalk that had been decorated with a dark red carpet with the gold image of a wolf stamped into it. Simon couldn’t help being slightly amused.

Leaning against one of the poles holding up the awning was Isabelle. She had her hair up and was wearing a long red dress, slit up the side to show most of her leg. Loops of gold laddered her right arm. They looked like bracelets, but Simon knew they were really her electrum whip. She was covered in Marks. They twined her arms, threaded their way up her thigh, necklaced her throat, and decorated her chest, a great deal of which was visible, thanks to the plunging neckline of her dress. Simon tried not to stare.

“Hey, Isabelle,” he said.

Beside him Jordan was also trying not to stare. “Um,” he said. “Hi. I’m Jordan.”

“We met,” Isabelle said coldly, ignoring his proffered hand. “Maia was trying to rip your face off. Quite rightly, too.”

Jordan looked worried. “Is she here? Is she okay?”

“She’s here,” said Isabelle. “Not that how she feels is any of your business . . .”

“I feel a sense of responsibility,” said Jordan.

“And where is this feeling located? In your pants, perhaps?”

Jordan looked indignant.

Isabelle waved a slim decorated hand. “Look, whatever you did in the past, it’s past. I know you’re Praetor Lupus now, and I told Maia what that means. She’s willing to accept that you’re here and ignore you. But that’s all you get. Don’t bother her, don’t try to talk to her, don’t even look at her, or I’ll fold you in half so many times you’ll look like a tiny little origami werewolf.”

Simon snorted.

“Laugh away.” Isabelle pointed at him. “She doesn’t want to talk to you, either. So despite the fact that she looks totally babelicious tonight—and if I were into chicks I would completely go for her—neither of you are allowed to talk to her. Got it?”

They nodded, looking at their shoes like middle schoolers who’d just been handed detention slips.

Isabelle unpeeled herself from the pole. “Great. Let’s go on in.”

15 BEATI BELLICOSI

The inside of the Ironworks was alive with ropes of shimmering multicolored lights. Quite a few guests were already sitting, but just as many were milling around, carrying champagne glasses full of pale, fizzing liquid. Waiters—who were also werewolves, Simon noted; the whole event seemed to be staffed by members of Luke’s pack—moved among the guests, handing out champagne flutes. Simon declined one. Ever since his experience at Magnus’s party, he hadn’t felt safe drinking anything that he hadn’t prepared himself, and besides, he never knew which non-blood liquids were going to stay down and which would make him sick.

Maia was standing over by one of the brick pillars, talking to two other werewolves and laughing. She wore a brilliant orange satin sheath dress that set off her dark skin, and her hair was a wild halo of brown-gold curls around her face. She caught sight of Simon and Jordan and deliberately turned away. The back of her dress was a low V that showed a lot of bare skin, including a tattoo of a butterfly across her lower spine.

“I don’t think she had that when I knew her,” Jordan said. “That tattoo, I mean.”

Simon looked at Jordan. He was goggling at his ex-girlfriend with the sort of obvious longing that, Simon suspected, was going to get him punched in the face by Isabelle if he wasn’t careful. “Come on,” he said, putting his hand against Jordan’s back and shoving lightly. “Let’s go see where we’re sitting.”

Isabelle, who had been watching them over her shoulder, smiled a catlike smile. “Good idea.”

They made their way through the crowd to the area where the tables were, only to find that their table was already half-occupied. Clary sat in one of the seats, looking down into a champagne glass full of what was most likely ginger ale. Next to her were Alec and Magnus, both in the dark suits they’d worn when they’d come from Vienna. Magnus seemed to be playing with the fringed edges of his long white scarf. Alec, his arms crossed over his chest, was staring ferociously into the distance.

Clary, on seeing Simon and Jordan, bounced to her feet, relief evident on her face. She came around the table to greet Simon, and he saw that she was wearing a very plain gold silk dress and low gold sandals. Without heels to give her height, she looked tiny. The Morgenstern ring was around her neck, its silver glinting against the chain that held it. She reached up to hug him and muttered, “I think Alec and Magnus are fighting.”

“Looks like it,” he muttered back. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

At that, she detached her arms from his neck. “He got held up at the Institute.” She turned. “Hey, Kyle.”

He smiled a little awkwardly. “It’s Jordan, actually.”

“So I’ve heard.” Clary gestured toward the table. “Well, we might as well sit. I think pretty soon there’s going to be toasting and stuff. And then, hopefully, food.”

They all sat. There was a long, awkward silence.

“So,” Magnus said finally, running a long white finger around the rim of his champagne glass. “Jordan. I hear you’re in the Praetor Lupus. I see you’re wearing one of their medallions. What does it say on it?”

Jordan nodded. He was flushed, his hazel eyes sparkling, his attention clearly only partly on the conversation. He was following Maia around the room with his eyes, his fingers nervously clenching and unclenching on the edge of the tablecloth. Simon doubted he was even aware of it. “Beati bellicosi: Blessed are the warriors.”

“Good organization,” said Magnus. “I knew the man who founded it, back in the 1800s. Woolsey Scott. Respectable old werewolf family.”

Alec made an ugly sound in the back of his throat. “Did you sleep with him, too?”

Magnus’s cat eyes widened. “Alexander!”

“Well, I don’t know anything about your past, do I?” Alec demanded. “You won’t tell me anything; you just say it doesn’t matter.”

Magnus’s face was expressionless, but there was a dark tinge of anger to his voice. “Does this mean every time I mention anyone I’ve ever met, you’re going to ask me if I had an affair with them?”

Alec’s expression was stubborn, but Simon couldn’t help having a flash of sympathy; the hurt behind his blue eyes was clear. “Maybe.”

“I met Napoleon once,” said Magnus. “We didn’t have an affair, though. He was shockingly prudish for a Frenchman.”

“You met Napoleon?” Jordan, who appeared to be missing most of the conversation, looked impressed. “So it’s true what they say about warlocks, then?”

Alec gave him a very unpleasant look. “What’s true?”

“Alexander,” said Magnus coldly, and Clary met Simon’s eyes across the table. Hers were wide, green, and full of an expression that said Uh-oh. “You can’t be rude to everyone who talks to me.”

Alec made a wide, sweeping gesture. “And why not? Cramping your style, am I? I mean, maybe you were hoping to flirt with werewolf boy here. He’s pretty attractive, if you like the messy-haired, broad-shouldered, chiseled-good-looks type.”

“Hey, now,” said Jordan mildly.

Magnus put his head in his hands.

“Or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways. Is there anything you aren’t into?”

“Mermaids,” said Magnus into his fingers. “They always smell like seaweed.”

“It’s not funny,” Alec said savagely, and kicking back his chair, he got up from the table and stalked off into the crowd.

Magnus still had his head in his hands, the black spikes of his hair sticking out between his fingers. “I just don’t see,” he said to no one in particular, “why the past has to matter.”

To Simon’s surprise it was Jordan who answered. “The past always matters,” he said. “That’s what they tell you when you join the Praetor. You can’t forget the things you did in the past, or you’ll never learn from them.”

Magnus looked up, his gold-green eyes glinting through his fingers. “How old are you?” he demanded. “Sixteen?”

“Eighteen,” said Jordan, looking slightly frightened.

Alec’s age, thought Simon, suppressing an interior grin. He didn’t really find Alec and Magnus’s drama funny, but it was hard not to feel a certain bitter amusement at Jordan’s expression. Jordan had to be twice Magnus’s size—despite being tall, Magnus was slender to the point of skinniness—but Jordan was clearly afraid of him. Simon turned to share a glance with Clary, but she was staring off toward the front door, her face gone suddenly bone white. Dropping her napkin onto the table, she murmured, “Excuse me,” and got to her feet, practically fleeing the table.

Magnus threw his hands up. “Well, if there’s going to be a mass exodus . . . ,” he said, and got up gracefully, flinging his scarf around his neck. He vanished into the crowd, presumably looking for Alec.

Simon looked at Jordan, who was looking at Maia again. She had her back to them and was talking to Luke and Jocelyn, laughing, flinging her curly hair back. “Don’t even think about it,” Simon said, and got up. He pointed at Jordan. “You stay here.”

“And do what?” Jordan demanded.

“Whatever Praetor Lupus do in this situation. Meditate. Contemplate your Jedi powers. Whatever. I’ll be back in five minutes, and you better still be here.”

Jordan leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest in a clearly mutinous manner, but Simon had already stopped paying attention. He turned and moved into the crowd, following Clary. She was a speck of red and gold among the moving bodies, crowned with her twist of bright hair.

He caught up to her by one of the light-wrapped pillars, and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned with a startled exclamation, eyes wide, hand raised as if to fend him off. She relaxed when she saw who it was. “You scared me!”

“Obviously,” Simon said. “What’s going on? What are you so freaked out about?”

“I . . .” She lowered her hand with a shrug; despite her forced look of casual dismissal, the pulse was going in her neck like a hammer. “I thought I saw Jace.”

“I figured,” Simon said. “But . . .”

“But?”

“You look really frightened.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it exactly, or what he was hoping she’d say back. She bit her lip, the way she always did when she was nervous. Her gaze for a moment was far away; it was a look familiar to Simon. One of the things he’d always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic. Once he had been able to do the same, had been able to inhabit imaginary worlds all the more exciting for being safe—for being fictional. Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn’t realize was precious until you lost it.

“He’s having a hard time,” she said in a low voice. “I’m scared for him.”

“I know,” Simon said. “Look, not to pry, but—has he figured out what’s wrong with him? Has anyone?”

“He—” She broke off. “He’s all right. He’s just having a hard time coming to terms with some of the Valentine stuff. You know.” Simon did know. He also knew she was lying. Clary, who hardly ever hid anything from him. He gave her a hard look.

“He’s been having bad dreams,” she said. “He was worried that there was some demon involvement—”

“Demon involvement?” Simon echoed in disbelief. He’d known that Jace was having bad dreams—he’d said as much—but Jace had never mentioned demons.

“Well, apparently there are kinds of demons that try to reach you through your dreams,” Clary said, sounding as if she were sorry she’d brought it up at all, “but I’m sure it’s nothing. Everyone has bad dreams sometimes, don’t they?” She put a hand on Simon’s arm. “I’m just going to see how he is. I’ll come back.” Her gaze was already sliding past him, toward the doors that led onto the terrace; he stood back with a nod and let her go, watching her as she moved off into the crowd.

She looked so small—small the way she had in first grade when he’d walked her to the front door of her house and watched her go up the stairs, tiny and determined, her lunch box banging against her knee as she went. He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.

“You look sick,” said a voice at his elbow. Husky, familiar. “Thinking about what a horrible person you are?”

Simon turned and saw Maia leaning against the pillar behind him. She had a strand of the small, glowing white lights wound around her neck, and her face was flushed with champagne and the warmth of the room.

“Or maybe I should say,” she went on, “what a horrible vampire you are. Except that makes it sound like you’re bad at being a vampire.”

“I am bad at being a vampire,” Simon said. “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bad at being a boyfriend, too.”

She smiled crookedly. “Bat says I shouldn’t be so hard on you,” she said. “He says guys do stupid things when girls are involved. Especially geeky ones who previously haven’t had much luck with women.”

“It’s like he can see into my soul.”

Maia shook her head. “It’s hard to stay mad at you,” she said. “But I’m working on it.” She turned away.

“Maia,” Simon said. His head had started to ache, and he felt a little dizzy. If he didn’t talk to her now, though, he never would. “Please. Wait.”

She turned back and looked at him, both eyebrows raised questioningly.

“I’m sorry about what I did,” he said. “I know I said that before, but I really do mean it.”

She shrugged, expressionless, giving him nothing.

He swallowed past the pain in his head. “Maybe Bat’s right,” he said. “But I think there’s more to it than that. I wanted to be with you because—and this is going to sound so selfish—you made me feel normal. Like the person I was before.”

“I’m a werewolf, Simon. Not exactly normal.”

“But you—you are,” he said, stumbling over his words a little. “You’re genuine and real—one of the realest people I’ve ever known. You wanted to come over and play Halo. You wanted to talk about comics and check out concerts and go dancing and just do normal things. And you treated me like I was normal. You’ve never called me ‘Daylighter’ or ‘vampire’ or anything but Simon.”

“That’s all friend stuff,” Maia said. She was leaning against the pillar again, her eyes glinting softly as she spoke. “Not girlfriend stuff.”

Simon just looked at her. His headache pulsed like a heartbeat.

“And then you come around,” she added, “bringing Jordan with you. What were you thinking?”

“That’s not fair,” Simon protested. “I had no idea he was your ex—”

“I know. Isabelle told me,” Maia interrupted. “I just feel like giving you hell about it anyway.”

“Oh, yeah?” Simon glanced over at Jordan, who was sitting alone at the round linen-draped table, like a guy whose prom date hadn’t showed up. Simon suddenly felt very tired—tired of worrying about everyone, tired of feeling guilty for the things he’d done and would probably do in the future. “Well, did Izzy tell you that Jordan got himself assigned to me so he could be near you? You should hear the way he asks about you. The way he says your name, even. Man, the way he ripped into me when he thought I was cheating on you—”

“You weren’t cheating. We weren’t exclusively dating. Cheating is different—”

Simon smiled as Maia broke off, blushing. “I guess it’s good that you dislike him so much that you’ll take my side against him no matter what,” he said.

“It’s been years,” she said. “He’s never tried to get in touch with me. Not once.”

“He did try,” Simon said. “Did you know the night he bit you was the first time he ever Turned?”

She shook her head, her curls bouncing, her wide amber eyes very serious. “No. I thought he knew—”

“That he was a werewolf? No. He knew he was losing control in some way, but who guesses they’re turning into a werewolf? The day after he bit you he went looking for you, but the Praetor stopped him. They kept him away from you. Even then he didn’t stop looking. I don’t think a day’s gone by in the past two years that he hasn’t wondered where you were—”

“Why are you defending him?” she whispered.

“Because you should know,” said Simon. “I sucked at being a boyfriend, and I owe you. You should know he didn’t mean to abandon you. He only took me on as an assignment because your name was mentioned in the notes on my case.”

Her lips parted. As she shook her head, the glittering lights of her necklace winked like stars. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, Simon. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said. His head felt like nails were being pounded into it. “But I can tell you one thing. I’m the last guy in the world you should be asking for relationship advice from.” He pressed a hand to his forehead. “I’m going to go outside. Get some air. Jordan’s over at that table there if you want to talk to him.”

He gestured over toward the tables and then turned away, away from her questioning eyes, from the eyes of everyone in the room, the sound of raised voices and laughter, and stumbled toward the doors.

Clary pushed open the doors that led out onto the terrace and was greeted by a rush of cold air. She shivered, wishing she had her coat but unwilling to take up any time going back to the table to get it. She stepped out onto the terrace and shut the door behind her.

The terrace was a wide expanse of flagstones, surrounded by ironwork railings. Tiki torches burned in big pewter holders, but they did little to warm the air—which probably explained why no one was out here but Jace. He was standing by the railing, looking out over the river.

She wanted to run over to him, but she couldn’t help hesitating. He was wearing a dark suit, the jacket open over a white shirt, and his head was turned to the side, away from her. She had never seen him dressed like this before, and it made him look older and a little remote. The wind off the river lifted his fair hair, and she saw the little scar across the side of his throat where Simon had bitten him once, and she remembered that Jace had let himself be bitten, had risked his life, for her.

“Jace,” she said.

He turned and looked at her and smiled. The smile was familiar and seemed to unlock something inside her, freeing her to run across the flagstones to him and throw her arms around him. He picked her up and held her off the ground for a long time, his face buried in her neck.

“You’re all right,” she said finally, when he set her down. She scrubbed fiercely at the tears that had spilled out of her eyes. “I mean—the Silent Brothers wouldn’t have let you go if you weren’t all right—but I thought they said the ritual was going to take a long time? Days, even?”

“It didn’t.” He put his hands on either side of her face and smiled down at her. Behind him the Queensboro Bridge arced out over the water. “You know the Silent Brothers. They like to make a big deal out of everything they do. But it’s actually a pretty simple ceremony.” He grinned. “I felt kind of stupid. It’s a ceremony meant for little kids, but I just kept thinking that if I got it over with fast, I’d get to see you in your sexy party dress. It got me through.” His eyes raked her up and down. “And let me tell you, I am not disappointed. You’re gorgeous.”

“You look pretty good yourself.” She laughed a little through the tears. “I didn’t even think you owned a suit.”

“I didn’t. I had to buy one.” He slid his thumbs over her cheekbones where the tears had made them damp. “Clary—”

“Why did you come out here?” she asked. “It’s freezing. Don’t you want to go back inside?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“So talk,” Clary said in a half whisper. She took his hands away from her face and put them on her waist. Her need to be held against him was almost overwhelming. “Is something else wrong? Are you going to be okay? Please don’t hold anything back from me. After everything that’s happened, you should know I can handle any bad news.” She knew she was nervously chattering, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart felt as if it were beating a thousand miles a minute. “I just want you to be all right,” she said as calmly as she could.

His gold eyes darkened. “I keep going through that box. The one that belonged to my father. I don’t feel anything about it. The letters, the photos. I don’t know who those people were. They don’t feel real to me. Valentine was real.”

Clary blinked; it wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. “Remember, I said that it would take time—”

He didn’t even seem to hear her. “If I really were Jace Morgenstern, would you still love me? If I were Sebastian, would you love me?”

She squeezed his hands. “You could never be like that.”

“If Valentine did to me what he did to Sebastian, would you love me?”

There was an urgency to the question that she didn’t understand. Clary said, “But then you wouldn’t be you.”

His breath caught, almost as if what she’d said had hurt him—but how could it have? It was the truth. He wasn’t like Sebastian. He was like himself. “I don’t know who I am,” he said. “I look at myself in the mirror and I see Stephen Herondale, but I act like a Lightwood and talk like my father—like Valentine. So I see who I am in your eyes, and I try to be that person, because you have faith in that person and I think faith might be enough to make me what you want.”

“You’re already what I want. You always have been,” Clary said, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she were calling into an empty room. It was as if Jace couldn’t hear her, no matter how many times she told him she loved him. “I know you feel like you don’t know who you are, but I do. I know. And someday you will too. And in the meantime you can’t keep worrying about losing me, because it’ll never happen.”

“There is a way . . .” Jace raised his eyes to hers. “Give me your hand.”

Surprised, Clary reached her hand out, remembering the first time he’d ever taken her hand like that. She had the rune now, the open-eye rune, on the back of her hand, the one he’d been looking for then and hadn’t found. Her first permanent rune. He turned her hand over, baring her wrist, the vulnerable skin of her forearm.

She shivered. The wind off the river felt as if it were driving into her bones. “Jace, what are you doing?”

“Remember what I said about Shadowhunter weddings? How instead of exchanging rings, we Mark each other with runes of love and commitment?” He looked at her, his eyes wide and vulnerable under their thick gold lashes. “I want to Mark you in a way that will bind us together, Clary. It’s just a small Mark, but it’s permanent. Are you willing?”

She hesitated. A permanent rune, when they were so young—her mother would be incensed. But nothing else seemed to be working; nothing she said convinced him. Maybe this would. Silently, she drew out her stele and handed it to him. He took it, brushing her fingers as he did. She was shivering harder now, cold everywhere except where he touched her. He cradled her arm against him and lowered the stele, touching it softly to her skin, moving it gently up and down, and then, when she didn’t protest, with more force. As cold as she was, the burn of the stele was almost welcome. She watched as the dark lines spiraled out from the tip of it, forming a pattern of hard, angular lines.

Her nerves tingled with a sudden alarm. The pattern didn’t speak of love and commitment to her; there was something else there, something darker, something that spoke of control and submission, of loss and darkness. Was he drawing the wrong rune? But this was Jace; surely he knew better than that. And yet a numbness was beginning to spread up her arm from the place the stele touched—a painful tingling, like nerves waking up—and she felt dizzy, as if the ground were moving under her—

“Jace.” Her voice rose, tinged with anxiety. “Jace, I don’t think that’s right—”

He let her arm go. He held the stele balanced lightly in his hand, with the same grace with which he would hold any weapon. “I’m sorry, Clary,” he said. “I do want to be bound to you. I would never lie about that.”

She opened her mouth to ask him what on earth he was talking about, but no words came. The darkness was rushing up too fast. The last thing she felt was Jace’s arms around her as she fell.

After what seemed like an eternity of wandering around what he considered to be an extremely boring party, Magnus finally found Alec, sitting alone at a table in a corner, behind a spray of artificial white roses. There were a number of champagne glasses on the table, most half-full, as if passing partygoers had abandoned them there. Alec was looking rather abandoned himself. He had his chin in his hands and was staring moodily into space. He didn’t look up, even when Magnus hitched a foot around the chair opposite his, spun it toward him, and sat down, resting his arms along the back.

“Do you want to go back to Vienna?” he said.

Alec didn’t answer, just stared into space.

“Or we could go somewhere else,” said Magnus. “Anywhere you want. Thailand, South Carolina, Brazil, Peru—Oh, wait, no, I’m banned from Peru. I’d forgotten about that. It’s a long story, but amusing if you want to hear it.”

Alec’s expression said that he very much did not want to hear it. Pointedly he turned and looked out over the room as if the werewolf string quartet fascinated him.

Since Alec was ignoring him, Magnus decided to amuse himself by changing the colors of the champagne in the glasses on the table. He made one blue, the next pink, and was working on green when Alec reached across the table and hit him on the wrist.

“Stop that,” he said. “People are looking.”

Magnus looked down at his fingers, which were spraying blue sparks. Maybe it was a bit obvious. He curled his fingers under. “Well,” he said. “I have to do something to keep myself from dying of boredom, since you’re not talking to me.”

“I’m not,” said Alec. “Not talking to you, I mean.”

“Oh?” said Magnus. “I just asked you if you wanted to go to Vienna, or Thailand, or the moon, and I don’t recall you saying anything in response.”

“I don’t know what I want.” Alec, his head bent, was playing with an abandoned plastic fork. Though his eyes were defiantly cast down, their pale blue color was visible even through his lowered eyelids, which were pale and as fine as parchment. Magnus had always found humans more beautiful than any other creatures alive on the earth, and had often wondered why. Only a few years before dissolution, Camille had said. But it was mortality that made them what they were, the flame that blazed brighter for its flickering. Death is the mother of beauty, as the poet said. He wondered if the Angel had ever considered making his human servants, the Nephilim, immortal. But no, for all their strength, they fell as humans had always fallen in battle through all the ages of the world.

“You’ve got that look again,” Alec said peevishly, glancing up through his lashes. “Like you’re staring at something I can’t see. Are you thinking about Camille?”

“Not really,” Magnus said. “How much of the conversation I had with her did you overhear?”

“Most of it.” Alec prodded the tablecloth with his fork. “I was listening at the door. Enough.”

“Not at all enough, I think.” Magnus glared at the fork, and it skidded out of Alec’s grasp and across the table toward him. He slammed his hand down on top of it and said, “Stop fidgeting. What was it I said to Camille that bothered you so much?”

Alec raised his blue eyes. “Who’s Will?”

Magnus exhaled a sort of laugh. “Will. Dear God. That was a long time ago. Will was a Shadowhunter, like you. And yes, he did look like you, but you’re not anything like him. Jace is much more the way Will was, in personality at least—and my relationship with you is nothing like the one I had with Will. Is that what’s bothering you?”

“I don’t like thinking you’re only with me because I look like some dead guy you liked.”

“I never said that. Camille implied it. She is a master of implication and manipulation. She always has been.”

“You didn’t tell her she was wrong.”

“If you let Camille, she will attack you on every front. Defend one front, and she will attack another. The only way to deal with her is to pretend she isn’t getting to you.”

“She said pretty boys were your undoing,” Alec said. “Which makes it sound like I’m just one in a long line of toys for you. One dies or goes away, you get another one. I’m nothing. I’m—trivial.”

“Alexander—”

“Which,” Alec went on, staring down at the table again, “is especially unfair, because you are anything but trivial for me. I changed my whole life for you. But nothing ever changes for you, does it? I guess that’s what it means to live forever. Nothing ever really has to matter all that much.”

“I’m telling you that you do matter—”

“The Book of the White,” Alec said, suddenly. “Why did you want it so badly?”

Magnus looked at him, puzzled. “You know why. It’s a very powerful spellbook.”

“But you wanted it for something specific, didn’t you? A spell that was in it?” Alec took a ragged breath. “You don’t have to answer; I can tell by your face that you did. Was it—was it a spell for making me immortal?”

Magnus felt shaken to his core. “Alec,” he whispered. “No. No, I—I wouldn’t do that.”

Alec fixed him with his piercing blue gaze. “Why not? Why through all the years of all the relationships you’ve ever had have you never tried to make any of them immortal like you? If you could have me with you forever, wouldn’t you want to?”

“Of course I would!” Magnus, realizing he was almost shouting, lowered his voice with an effort. “But you don’t understand. You don’t get something for nothing. The price for living forever—”

“Magnus.” It was Isabelle, hurrying toward them, her phone in her hand. “Magnus, I need to talk to you.”

“Isabelle.” Normally Magnus liked Alec’s sister. Not so much at the moment. “Lovely, wonderful Isabelle. Could you please go away? Now is a really bad time.”

Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother, and back again. “Then, you don’t want me to tell you that Camille’s just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?”

“No,” Magnus said. “I don’t want you to tell me that.”

“Well, too bad,” Isabelle said. “Because it’s true. I mean, I guess you don’t have to go, but—”

The rest of the sentence hung in the air, but Magnus knew what she wasn’t saying. If he didn’t go, the Clave would be suspicious that he’d had something to do with Camille’s escape, and that was the last thing he needed. Maryse would be furious, complicating his relationship with Alec even further. And yet—

“She escaped?” Alec said. “No one’s ever escaped from the Sanctuary.”

“Well,” said Isabelle, “now someone has.”

Alec slunk down lower in his seat. “Go,” he said. “It’s an emergency. Just go. We can talk later.”

“Magnus . . .” Isabelle sounded half-apologetic, but there was no mistaking the urgency in her voice.

“Fine.” Magnus stood up. “But,” he added, pausing by Alec’s chair and leaning in close to him, “you are not trivial.”

Alec flushed. “If you say so,” he said.

“I say so,” said Magnus, and he turned to follow Isabelle out of the room.

Outside on the deserted street, Simon leaned against the wall of the Ironworks, against the ivy-covered brick, and stared up at the sky. The lights of the bridge washed out the stars so there was nothing to see but a sheet of velvety blackness. He wished with a sudden fierceness that he could breathe in the cold air to clear his head, that he could feel it on his face, on his skin. All he was wearing was a thin shirt, and it made no difference. He couldn’t shiver, and even the memory of what it felt like to shiver was going away from him, little by little, every day, slipping away like the memories of another life.

“Simon?”

He froze where he stood. That voice, small and familiar, drifting like a thread on the cold air. Smile. That was the last thing she had said to him.

But it couldn’t be. She was dead.

“Won’t you look at me, Simon?” Her voice was as small as ever, barely a breath. “I’m right here.”

Dread clawed its way up his spine. He opened his eyes, and turned his head slowly.

Maureen stood in the circle of light cast by a streetlamp just at the corner of Vernon Boulevard. She wore a long white virginal dress. Her hair was brushed straight down over her shoulders, shining yellow in the lamplight. There was still some grave dirt caught in it. There were little white slippers on her feet. Her face was dead white, circles of rouge painted on her cheekbones, and her mouth colored a dark pink as if it had been drawn on with a felt-tip marker.

Simon’s knees gave out. He slid down the wall he had been leaning against, until he was sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up. His head felt like it was going to explode.

Maureen gave a girlish little giggle and stepped out of the lamplight. She moved toward him and looked down; her face wore a look of amused satisfaction.

“I thought you’d be surprised,” she said.

“You’re a vampire,” Simon said. “But—how? I didn’t do this to you. I know I didn’t.”

Maureen shook her head. “It wasn’t you. But it was because of you. They thought I was your girlfriend, you know. They took me out of my bedroom at night, and they kept me in a cage for the whole next day. They told me not to worry because you’d come for me. But you didn’t come. You never came.”

“I didn’t know.” Simon’s voice cracked. “I would have come if I’d known.”

Maureen flung her blond hair back over her shoulder in a gesture that reminded Simon suddenly and painfully of Camille. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in her girlish little voice. “When the sun went down, they told me I could die or I could choose to live like this. As a vampire.”

“So you chose this?”

“I didn’t want to die,” she breathed. “And now I’ll be pretty and young forever. I can stay out all night, and I never need to go home. And she takes care of me.”

“Who are you talking about? Who’s she? Do you mean Camille? Look, Maureen, she’s crazy. You shouldn’t listen to her.” Simon staggered to his feet. “I can get you help. Find you a place to stay. Teach you how to be a vampire—”

“Oh, Simon.” She smiled, and her little white teeth showed in a precise row. “I don’t think you know how to be a vampire either. You didn’t want to bite me, but you did. I remember. Your eyes went all black like a shark’s, and you bit me.”

“I’m so sorry. If you’ll let me help you—”

“You could come with me,” she said. “That would help me.”

“Come with you where?”

Maureen looked up and down the empty street. She looked like a ghost in her thin white dress. The wind blew it around her body, but she clearly didn’t feel the cold. “You have been chosen,” she said. “Because you are a Daylighter. Those who did this to me want you. But they know you bear the Mark now. They can’t get to you unless you choose to come to them. So they sent me as a messenger.” She cocked her head to the side, like a bird’s. “I might not be anyone who matters to you,” she said, “but the next time it will be. They will keep coming for the people you love until there is no one left, so you might as well come with me and find out what they want.”

“Do you know?” Simon asked. “Do you know what they want?”

She shook her head. She was so pale under the diffuse lamplight that she looked almost transparent, as if Simon could have looked right through her. The way, he supposed, he always had.

“Does it matter?” she said, and reached out her hand.

“No,” he said. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” And he took her hand.

16 NEW YORK CITY ANGELS

“We’re here,” Maureen said to Simon.

She had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and was looking up at a massive glass-and-stone building that rose above them. It was clearly designed to look like one of the luxury apartment complexes that had been built on Manhattan’s Upper East Side before the Second World War, but the modern touches gave it away—the high sheets of windows, the copper roof untouched by verdigris, the banner signs draping themselves down the front of the edifice, promising LUXURY CONDOS STARTING AT $750,000. Apparently the purchase of one would entitle you to the use of a roof garden, a fitness center, a heated pool, and twenty-four-hour doorman service, starting in December. At the moment the place was still under construction, and KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY signs were tacked to the scaffolding that surrounded it.

Simon looked at Maureen. She seemed to be getting used to being a vampire pretty fast. They had run over the Queensboro Bridge and up Second Avenue to get here, and her white slippers were shredded. But she had never slowed, and had never seemed surprised not to have gotten tired. She was looking up at the building now with a beatific expression, her small face aglow with what Simon could only guess was anticipation.

“This place is closed,” he said, knowing he was stating the obvious. “Maureen—”

“Hush.” She reached out a small hand to pull at a placard attached to a corner of the scaffolding. It came away with a sound of tearing plasterboard and ripped-out nails. Some of them rattled to the ground at Simon’s feet. Maureen tossed the square of plasterboard aside and grinned at the hole she’d made.

An old man who’d been passing by, walking a small plaid-jacketed poodle on a leash, stopped and stared. “You ought to get a coat on your little sister there,” he said to Simon. “Skinny thing like that, she’ll freeze in this weather.”

Before Simon could reply, Maureen turned on the man with a ferocious grin, showing all her teeth, including her needle fangs. “I am not his sister,” she hissed.

The man blanched, picked up his dog, and hurried away.

Simon shook his head at Maureen. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Her fangs had pierced her lower lip, something that had happened to Simon often before he’d gotten used to them. Thin trickles of blood ran down her chin. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said peevishly, but her fangs retracted. She wiped the back of her hand across her chin, a childish gesture, smearing the blood. Then she turned back to the hole she’d made. “Come on.”

She ducked through, and he followed her. They passed through an area where the construction crew had clearly dumped their junk. There were broken tools lying around, smashed bricks, old plastic bags, and Coke cans littering the ground. Maureen lifted her skirts and picked her way daintily through the wreckage, a look of disgust on her face. She hopped over a narrow trench, and up a row of cracked stone steps. Simon followed.

The steps led to a set of glass doors, propped open. Through the doors was an ornate marble lobby. A massive unlit chandelier hung from the ceiling, though there was no light to spark off its pendant crystals. It would have been too dark in the room for a human to see at all. There was a marble desk for a doorman to sit at, a green chaise longue beneath a gilt-edged mirror, and banks of elevators on either side of the room. Maureen hit the button for the elevator, and to Simon’s surprise, it lit.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

The elevator pinged, and Maureen stepped in, Simon behind her. The elevator was paneled in gold and red, with frosted glass mirrors on each of the walls. “Up.” She hit the button for the roof and giggled. “Up to Heaven,” she said, and the doors closed.

“I can’t find Simon.”

Isabelle, who had been leaning against a pillar in the Ironworks and trying not to brood, looked up to see Jordan looming over her. He really was most unreasonably tall, she thought. He had to be at least six foot two. She had thought he was very attractive the first time she’d seen him, with his tousled dark hair and greenish eyes, but now that she knew he was Maia’s ex, she had moved him firmly into the mental space she reserved for boys who were off-limits.

“Well, I haven’t seen him,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be his keeper.”

“He told me he was going to be right back. That was forty minutes ago. I figured he was going to the bathroom.”

“What kind of guardian are you? Shouldn’t you have gone to the bathroom with him?” Isabelle demanded.

Jordan looked horrified. “Dudes,” he said, “do not follow other dudes to the bathroom.”

Isabelle sighed. “Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time,” she said. “Come on. Let’s look for him.”

They circled the party, moving in and out among the guests. Alec was sulking alone at a table, playing with an empty champagne glass. “No, I haven’t seen him,” he said in response to their question. “Though admittedly I haven’t been looking.”

“Well, you can search along with us,” said Isabelle. “It’ll give you something to do besides look miserable.”

Alec shrugged and joined them. They decided to split up and fan out across the party. Alec headed upstairs to search the catwalks and the second level. Jordan went outside to check the terraces and the entryway. Isabelle took the party area. She was just wondering whether glancing under the tables would actually be ridiculous, when Maia came up behind her. “Everything all right?” she inquired. She glanced up toward Alec, and then in the direction Jordan had gone. “I know a searching formation when I see one. What are you guys looking for? Is there trouble?”

Isabelle filled her in on the Simon situation.

“I just talked to him about half an hour ago.”

“So did Jordan, but he’s gone now. And since people have been trying to kill him lately . . .”

Maia set her glass down on the table. “I’ll help you look.”

“You don’t have to. I know you’re not feeling super-fond of Simon right now—”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help out if he’s in trouble,” Maia said, as if Isabelle were being ridiculous. “Wasn’t Jordan supposed to be watching him?”

Isabelle threw up her hands. “Yeah, but apparently dudes don’t follow other dudes to the bathroom or something. He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

“Guys never do,” Maia said, and followed her. They glided in and out through the crowd, though Isabelle was already pretty sure they weren’t going to find Simon. She had a small cold spot in the middle of her stomach that was growing bigger and colder. By the time they’d all convened back at their original table, she felt as if she’d swallowed a glass of ice water.

“He isn’t here,” she said.

Jordan swore, then stared guiltily at Maia. “Sorry.”

“I’ve heard worse,” she said. “So what’s the next step? Anyone tried calling him?”

“Straight to voice mail,” Jordan said.

“Any idea where he might have gone?” asked Alec.

“Best-case scenario, maybe back to the apartment,” said Jordan. “Worst, those people who’ve been after him finally got him.”

“People who what?” Alec looked bewildered; while Isabelle had told Maia Simon’s story, she hadn’t had a chance to fill her brother in yet.

“I’m going to head back to the apartment and look for him,” said Jordan. “If he’s there, great. If not, that’s still where I should start. They know where he lives; they’ve been sending us messages there. Maybe there’ll be a message.” He didn’t sound too hopeful.

Isabelle made a split-second decision. “I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. I told Simon he should come here tonight; I’m responsible. Besides, I’m having a crap time at this party anyway.”

“Yeah,” Alec said, looking relieved at the prospect of getting out of there. “Me too. Maybe we should all go. Should we tell Clary?”

Isabelle shook her head. “It’s her mom’s party. It wouldn’t be fair. Let’s see what we can do just the three of us.”

“Three of you?” Maia asked, a tone of delicate annoyance shading her voice.

“Do you want to come with us, Maia?” It was Jordan. Isabelle froze; she wasn’t sure how Maia would respond to having her ex-boyfriend speak to her directly. The other girl’s mouth tightened a little, and for just a moment she looked at Jordan—not as if she hated him, but thoughtfully.

“It’s Simon,” she said finally, as if that decided everything. “I’ll go get my coat.”

The elevator doors opened onto a swirl of dark air and shadows. Maureen gave another high-pitched giggle and danced out into the darkness, leaving Simon to follow her with a sigh.

They stood in a large marble windowless room. There were no lights, but the wall to the left of the elevator was fitted with a towering set of double glass doors. Through them Simon could see the flat surface of the roof, and above it the black night sky overhead pinpointed with faintly glowing stars.

The wind was blowing hard again. He followed Maureen through the doors and out into the cold, gusting air, her dress fluttering around her like a moth beating its wings against a gale. The roof garden was as elegant as the signs had promised. Smooth hexagonal stone tiles made up the flooring; there were banks of flowers blooming under glass, and carefully clipped topiary hedges in the shapes of monsters and animals. The walkway they followed was lined with tiny gleaming lights. All around them rose high glass-and-steel apartment buildings, their windows aglow with electricity.

The path dead-ended at a row of raised, tiled steps, atop which was a wide square bordered on three sides by the high wall that encircled the garden. It was clearly intended to be an area where the building’s eventual residents would socialize. There was a big concrete block in the center of the square, which would probably someday hold a grill, Simon guessed, and the area was encircled by neatly clipped rosebushes that in June would bloom, just as the bare trellises adorning the walls would one day vanish under a covering of leaves. It would be an attractive space eventually, a luxury Upper East Side penthouse garden where you could relax on a lounge chair, with the East River glittering under the sunset, and the city stretched out before you, a mosaic of shimmering light.

Except. The tile floor had been defaced, splattered with some sort of black, sticky fluid that had been used to draw a rough circle, inside a larger circle. The space between the two circles was filled with scrawled runes. Though Simon wasn’t a Shadowhunter, he’d seen enough Nephilim runes to recognize what came from the Gray Book. These didn’t. They looked menacing and wrong, like a curse scrawled in an unfamiliar language.

In the very center of the circle was the concrete block. On top of it a bulky rectangular object sat, draped with a dark cloth. The shape of it was not unlike that of a coffin. More runes were scribbled around the base of the block. If Simon’s blood had run, it would have run cold.

Maureen clapped her hands together. “Oh,” she said in her elfin little voice. “It’s pretty.”

“Pretty?” Simon looked quickly at the hunched shape on top of the concrete block. “Maureen, what the hell—”

“So you brought him.” It was a woman’s voice that spoke, cultured, strong, and—familiar. Simon turned. Standing on the pathway behind him was a tall woman with short dark hair. She was very slender, wearing a long dark coat, belted around the middle like a femme fatale from a forties spy movie. “Maureen, thank you,” she went on. She had a hard, beautiful face, sharply planed, with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes. “You’ve done very well. You may go now.” She turned her gaze on Simon. “Simon Lewis,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

The moment she said his name he recognized her. The last time he’d seen her she’d been standing in pouring rain outside the Alto Bar. “You. I remember you. You gave me your card. The music promoter. Wow, you must really want to promote my band. I didn’t even think we were that good.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” the woman said. “There’s no point in it.” She glanced sideways. “Maureen. You may go.” Her voice was firm this time, and Maureen, who had been hovering like a little ghost, gave a tiny squeak and darted back the way they’d come. He watched as she vanished through the doors that led to the elevators, feeling almost sorry to see her go. Maureen wasn’t much company, but without her he felt very alone. Whoever this strange woman was, she gave off a clear aura of dark power he’d been too blood-drugged to notice before.

“You led me a dance, Simon,” she said, and now her voice was coming from another direction, several feet away. Simon spun, and saw that she was standing beside the concrete block, in the center of the circle. The clouds were blowing swiftly across the moon, casting a moving pattern of shadows across her face. Because he was at the foot of the steps, he had to crane his head back to look up at her. “I thought getting hold of you would be easy. Dealing with a simple vampire. A newly made one, at that. Even a Daylighter is nothing I haven’t encountered before, though there has not been one for a hundred years. Yes,” she added, with a smile at his glance, “I am older than I look.”

“You look pretty old.”

She ignored the insult. “I sent my best people after you, and only one returned, with some babbled tale about holy fire and the wrath of God. He was quite useless to me after that. I had to have him put down. It was most annoying. After that I decided I ought to deal with you myself. I followed you to your silly musical show, and afterward, when I came up to you, I saw it. Your Mark. As one who knew Cain personally, I am intimately familiar with its shape.”

“Knew Cain personally?” Simon shook his head. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”

“Believe it or do not believe it,” she said. “It makes no difference to me. I am older than the dreams of your kind, little boy. I walked the paths of the Garden of Eden. I knew Adam before Eve did. I was his first wife, but I would not be obedient to him, so God cast me out and made for Adam a new wife, one fashioned of his own body that she might ever be subservient.” She smiled faintly. “I have many names. But you may call me Lilith, first of all demons.”

At that, Simon, who had not felt cold in months, finally shivered. He had heard the name Lilith before. He couldn’t remember where exactly, but he knew it was a name associated with darkness, with evil and terrible things.

“Your Mark presented me with a conundrum,” said Lilith. “I need you, you see, Daylighter. Your life force—your blood. But I could not force you or harm you.”

She said this as if needing his blood were the most natural thing in the world.

“You—drink blood?” Simon asked. He felt dazed, as if he were trapped in a strange dream. Surely this couldn’t really be happening.

She laughed. “Blood is not the food of demons, silly child. What I want from you is not for myself.” She held out a slender hand. “Come closer.”

Simon shook his head. “I’m not stepping inside that circle.”

She shrugged. “Very well, then. I intended only to give you a better view.” She moved her fingers slightly, almost negligently, the gesture of someone twitching a curtain aside. The black cloth covering the coffin-shaped object between them vanished.

Simon stared at what was revealed. He had not been wrong about the coffin shape. It was a big glass box, just long and wide enough for a person to lie down in. A glass coffin, he thought, like Snow White’s. But this was no fairy tale. Inside the coffin was a cloudy liquid, and floating in that liquid—naked from the waist up, his white-blond hair drifting around him like pale seaweed—was Sebastian.

There were no messages stuck to Jordan’s apartment door, nothing on or under the welcome mat, and nothing immediately obvious inside the apartment, either. While Alec stood guard downstairs and Maia and Jordan rummaged through Simon’s backpack in the living room, Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon’s bedroom, looked silently at the place he’d been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty—just four walls, naked of any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B.

She could hear the city—the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the quiet of Idris terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon’s small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone.

Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d ever seen his bedroom at home, which presumably was covered with band posters, sports trophies, boxes of those games he loved to play, musical instruments, books—all the flotsam and jetsam of a normal life. She’d never asked to come over, and he’d never suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his mother, of doing anything that might bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing to make. But now, looking at this empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of the city all around her, she felt a twinge of fear for Simon—mixed with an equal twinge of regret.

She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia’s voice. She didn’t sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to hate Jordan.

“Nothing,” she was saying. “Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on them.” Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon’s backpack. Jordan, on the other side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was doing—that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by every move you made. “I’ll check his wallet.”

Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned. “Weird that he left it. Can I see?” He reached across the counter.

Maia jerked back so fast she dropped the wallet, her hand flying out.

“I wasn’t . . .” Jordan drew his hand back slowly. “I’m sorry.”

Maia took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, “I talked to Simon. I know you never meant to Turn me. I know you didn’t know what was happening to you. I remember what that was like. I remember being terrified.”

Jordan put his hands down slowly, carefully, on the countertop. It was odd, Isabelle thought, watching someone so tall try to make himself look harmless and small. “I should have been there for you.”

“But the Praetor wouldn’t let you be,” Maia said. “And let’s face it, you didn’t know anything about being a werewolf; we would have been like two blindfolded people stumbling around in a circle. Maybe it’s better you weren’t there. It made me run away to where I could get help. From the Pack.”

“At first I hoped the Praetor Lupus would bring you in,” he whispered. “So I could see you again. Then I realized that was selfish and I should be wishing that I didn’t pass on the disease to you. I knew it was fifty-fifty. I thought you might be one of the lucky ones.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” she said, matter-of-factly. “And over the years I built you up in my head to be this sort of monster. I thought you knew what you were doing when you did this to me. I thought it was revenge on me for kissing that boy. So I hated you. And hating you made everything easier. Having someone to blame.”

“You should blame me,” he said. “It is my fault.”

She ran her finger along the countertop, avoiding his eyes. “I do blame you. But . . . not the way I did before.”

Jordan reached up and grabbed his own hair with his fists, tugging on it hard. “There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think about what I did to you. I bit you. I Turned you. I made you what you are. I raised my hand to you. I hurt you. The one person I loved more than anything else in the world.”

Maia’s eyes were shining with tears. “Don’t say that. That doesn’t help. You think that helps?”

Isabelle cleared her throat loudly, stepping into the living room. “So. Have you found anything?”

Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, “Not really. We were just about to go through his wallet.” He picked it up from where Maia had dropped it. “Here.” He tossed it to Isabelle.

She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state nondriver’s ID, a guitar pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye—a business card, shoved carelessly behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.

Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name.

Satrina Kendall. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind.

Isabelle held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each other. “What do you think of this?”

Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was scowling. “Have you found anything? I’ve been standing down there for thirty minutes, and nothing even remotely threatening has come by. Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps.”

“Here,” Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. “Look at this. Does anything strike you as odd?”

“You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis’s sucky band?” Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared between his eyes. “Satrina?”

“Does that name mean something to you?” Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady.

“Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why warlocks are called Lilith’s children,” said Alec. “Because she mothered demons, and they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks.”

“And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?” Jordan sounded dubious.

Alec gave him a cold look. “Who are you again?”

“Oh, shut up, Alec,” Isabelle said, in the tone she only ever took with her brother. “Look, not all of us have your memory for boring facts. I don’t suppose you recall the other names of Lilith?”

With a superior look Alec rattled them off, “Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto—”

“Talto!” Isabelle yelped. “That’s it. I knew I was remembering something. I knew there was a connection!” Quickly she told them about the Church of Talto, what Clary had found there, and how it connected to the dead half-demon baby at Beth Israel.

“I wish you’d told me about this before,” Alec said. “Yes, Talto is another name for Lilith. And Lilith has always been associated with babies. She was Adam’s first wife, but she fled from the Garden of Eden because she didn’t want to obey Adam or God. God cursed her for her disobedience, though—any child she bore would die. The legend says she tried over and over to have a child, but they were all born dead. Eventually she swore she would have vengeance against God by weakening and murdering infant humans. You might say she’s the demon goddess of dead children.”

“But you said she was the mother of demons,” said Maia.

“She was able to create demons by scattering drops of her blood on the earth in a place called Edom,” said Alec. “Because they were born out of her hatred for God and mankind, they became demons.” Aware that they were all staring at him, he shrugged. “It’s just a story.”

“All stories are true,” said Isabelle. This had been a tenet of her beliefs since she was a child. All Shadowhunters believed it. There was no one religion, no one truth—and no myth lacked meaning. “You know that, Alec.”

“I know something else, too,” Alec said, handing her back the card. “That telephone number and that address are crap. No way they’re real.”

“Maybe,” Isabelle said, tucking the card into her pocket. “But we don’t have anywhere else to start looking. So we’re going to start there.”

Simon could only stare. The body floating inside the coffin—Sebastian’s—didn’t appear to be alive; at least, he wasn’t breathing. But he clearly wasn’t exactly dead, either. It had been two months. If he were dead, Simon was fairly sure, he’d look like he was in a lot worse shape than he did. His body was very white, like marble; one hand was a bandaged stump, but he was otherwise unmarked. He appeared to be asleep, his eyes shut, his arms loose at his sides. Only the fact that his chest wasn’t rising or falling indicated that something was very wrong.

“But,” Simon said, knowing he sounded ridiculous, “he’s dead. Jace killed him.”

Lilith placed a pale hand on the glass surface of the coffin. “Jonathan,” she said, and Simon remembered that that was, in fact, his name. Her voice had an odd soft quality when she said it, as if she were crooning to a child. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

“Um,” said Simon, looking with loathing at the creature inside the coffin—the boy who had murdered nine-year-old Max Lightwood. The creature who had killed Hodge. Had tried to kill them all. “Not my type, really.”

“Jonathan is unique,” she said. “He is the only Shadowhunter I have ever known of who is part Greater Demon. This makes him very powerful.”

“He’s dead,” Simon said. He felt that, somehow, it was important to keep making this point, though Lilith didn’t seem to quite grasp it.

Lilith, gazing down at Sebastian, frowned. “It’s true. Jace Lightwood slipped up behind him and stabbed him in the back, through to the heart.”

“How do you—”

“I was in Idris,” said Lilith. “When Valentine opened the doorway to the demon worlds, I came through. Not to fight in his stupid battle. Out of curiosity more than anything else. That Valentine should have such hubris—” She broke off, shrugging. “Heaven smote him down for it, of course. I saw the sacrifice he made; I saw the Angel rise and turn on him. I saw what was brought back. I am the oldest of demons; I know the Old Laws. A life for a life. I raced to Jonathan. It was almost too late. That which was human about him died instantly—his heart had ceased to beat, his lungs to inflate. The Old Laws were not enough. I tried to bring him back then. He was too far gone. All I could do was this. Preserve him for this moment.”

Simon wondered briefly what would happen if he made a run for it—dashed past this insane demon and threw himself off the roof of the building. He couldn’t be harmed by another living creature; that was the result of the Mark, but he doubted its power extended to protecting him against the ground. Still, he was a vampire. If he fell forty stories and smashed every bone in his body, would he heal from that? He swallowed hard and found Lilith looking at him with amusement.

“Don’t you want to know,” she said in her cold, seductive voice, “what moment I mean?” Before he could answer, she leaned forward, her elbows on the coffin. “I suppose you know the story of the way the Nephilim came to be? How the Angel Raziel mixed his blood with the blood of men, and gave it to a man to drink, and that man became the first of the Nephilim?”

“I’ve heard it.”

“In effect the Angel created a new race of creature. And now, with Jonathan, a new race has been born again. As Jonathan Shadowhunter led the first Nephilim, so shall this Jonathan lead the new race that I intend to create.”

“The new race you intend—” Simon held up his hands. “You know what, you want to lead a new race starting off with one dead guy, you go right ahead. I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“He is dead now. He need not remain so.” Lilith’s voice was cool, unemotional. “There is, of course, one kind of Downworlder whose blood offers the possibility of, shall we say, resurrection.”

“Vampires,” said Simon. “You want me to turn Sebastian into a vampire?”

“His name is Jonathan.” Her tone was sharp. “And yes, in a sense. I want you to bite him, to drink his blood, and to give him your blood in exchange—”

“I won’t do it.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“A world without Sebastian”—Simon used the name deliberately—“in it is a better world than one with him in it. I won’t do it.” Anger was rising in Simon, a swift tide. “Anyway, I couldn’t if I wanted to. He’s dead. Vampires can’t bring back the dead. You ought to know that, if you know so much. Once the soul is gone from the body, nothing can bring someone back. Thankfully.”

Lilith bent her gaze on him. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said. “Clary never told you.”

Simon was getting fed up. “Never told me what?”

She chuckled. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. To prevent chaos there must be order. If a life is given to the Light, a life is owed to the Dark as well.”

“I have,” Simon said slowly and deliberately, “literally no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t care. You villains and your creepy eugenics programs are starting to bore me. So I’m going to leave now. You’re welcome to try to stop me by threatening or hurting me. I encourage you to go ahead and try.”

She looked at him and chuckled. “‘Cain rose up,’” she said. “You are a bit like him whose Mark you bear. He was stubborn, as you are. Foolhardy, too.”

“He went up against—” Simon choked on the word. God. “I’m just dealing with you.” He turned to leave.

“I would not turn your back on me, Daylighter,” said Lilith, and there was something in her voice that made him look back at her, where she leaned on Sebastian’s coffin. “You think you cannot be hurt,” she said with a sneer. “And indeed I cannot lift a hand against you. I am not a fool; I have seen the holy fire of the divine. I have no wish to see it turned against me. I am not Valentine, to bargain with what I cannot understand. I am a demon, but a very old one. I know humanity better than you might think. I understand the weaknesses of pride, of lust for power, of desire of the flesh, of greed and vanity and love.”

“Love isn’t a weakness.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” she said, and glanced past him, with a look as cold and pointed as an icicle.

He turned, not wanting to, knowing he must, and looked behind him.

There on the brick walkway was Jace. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt. Standing in front of him was Clary, still in the pretty gold-colored dress she had worn to the Ironworks party. Her long, wavy red hair had come out of its knot and hung down around her shoulders. She stood very still in the circle of Jace’s arms. It would almost have looked like a romantic picture if it were not for the fact that in one of his hands, Jace was holding a long and glittering bone-handled knife, and the edge of it was pressed against Clary’s throat.

Simon stared at Jace in total and absolute shock. There was no emotion on Jace’s face, no light in his eyes. He seemed utterly blank.

Very slightly he inclined his head.

“I brought her, Lady Lilith,” he said. “Just as you asked.”

17 AND CAIN ROSE UP

Clary had never been so cold.

Even when she had crawled out of Lake Lyn, coughing and sputtering its poisonous water onto the shore, she hadn’t been this cold. Even when she had thought Jace was dead, she hadn’t felt this terrible icy paralysis in her heart. Then she had burned with rage, rage against her father. Now she just felt ice, all the way down to her toes.

She had come back to consciousness in the marble lobby of a strange building, under the shadow of an unlit chandelier. Jace had been carrying her, one arm under her bent knees, the other supporting her head. Still dizzy and groggy, she’d buried her head against his neck for a moment, trying to remember where she was.

“What happened?” she had whispered.

They had reached the elevator. Jace pushed the button, and Clary heard the rattle that meant the machine was moving down toward them. But where were they?

“You were unconscious,” he said.

“But how—” She remembered then, and fell silent. His hands on her, the sting of her stele on her skin, the wave of darkness that had come over her. Something wrong with the rune he had drawn on her, the way it had looked and felt. She stayed motionless in his arms for a moment, and then said:

“Put me down.”

He set her down on her feet, and they looked at each other. Only a small space separated them. She could have reached out and touched him, but for the first time since she had met him, she didn’t want to. She had the terrible feeling that she was looking at a stranger. He looked like Jace, and sounded like Jace when he spoke, and had felt like Jace when she was holding him. But his eyes were strange and distant, as was the tiny smile playing about his mouth.

The elevator doors opened behind him. She remembered standing in the nave of the Institute, saying “I love you” to a closed elevator door. The gap yawned behind him now, as black as the mouth of a cave. She felt for the stele in her pocket; it was gone.

“You knocked me out,” she said. “With a rune. You brought me here. Why?”

His beautiful face was entirely, carefully blank. “I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice.”

She turned and ran then, going for the door, but he was faster than she was. He always had been. He swung in front of her, blocking her path, and held out his hands. “Clary, don’t run,” he said. “Please. For me.”

She looked at him incredulously. His voice was the same—he sounded just like Jace, but not like him—like a recording of him, she thought, all the tones and patterns of his voice there, but the life that animated it gone. How had she not realized it before? She had thought he sounded remote because of stress and pain, but no. It was that he was gone. Her stomach turned over, and she bolted for the door again, only to have him catch her around the waist and swing her back toward him. She pushed at him, her fingers locking into the fabric of his shirt, ripping it sideways.

She froze, staring. On the skin of his chest, just over his heart, was a rune.

It wasn’t one she had ever seen before. It wasn’t black, like Shadowhunter runes were, but dark red, the color of blood. And it lacked the delicate grace of the runes from the Gray Book. It was scrawling, ugly, its lines sharp and cruel rather than curving and generous.

Jace didn’t seem to see it. He stared down at himself as if wondering what she was gazing at, then looked at her, puzzled. “It’s all right. You didn’t hurt me.”

“That rune—,” she began, but cut herself off, hard. Maybe he didn’t know it was there. “Let me go, Jace,” she said instead, backing away from him. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he said, and reached for her again.

This time she didn’t fight. What would happen even if she escaped? She couldn’t just leave him here. Jace was still there, she thought, trapped somewhere behind those blank eyes, maybe screaming for her. She had to stay with him. Had to know what was happening. She let him pick her up and carry her into the elevator.

“The Silent Brothers will notice you left,” she said, as the buttons for floor after floor lit up while the elevator rose. “They’ll alert the Clave. They’ll come looking—”

“I need not fear the Brothers. I wasn’t a prisoner; they weren’t expecting me to want to leave. They won’t notice I’m gone until they wake up tomorrow morning.”

“What if they wake up earlier than that?”

“Oh,” he said, with a cold certainly, “they won’t. It’s much more likely the other partygoers at the Ironworks will notice you’re missing. But what can they do about it? They’ll have no idea where you went, and Tracking to this building is blocked.” He stroked her hair back from her face, and she went still. “You’re just going to have to trust me. No one’s coming for you.”

He didn’t bring the knife out until they left the elevator, and then he said, “I would never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” even as he flicked her hair back with the tip of the blade and pressed the edge to her throat. The icy air hit her bare shoulders and arms as soon as they were out on the roof. Jace’s hands were warm where he touched her, and she could feel the heat of him through her thin dress, but it didn’t warm her, not inside. Inside she was filled with jagged slivers of ice.

She grew colder still when she saw Simon, looking at her with his huge dark eyes. His face looked scrubbed blank with shock, like a white piece of paper. He was looking at her, and Jace behind her, as if he were seeing something fundamentally wrong, a person with their face turned inside-out, a map of the world with all the land gone and nothing left but ocean.

She barely looked at the woman beside him, with her dark hair and her thin, cruel face. Clary’s gaze had gone immediately to the transparent coffin on its pedestal of stone. It seemed to glow from within, as if lit by a milky inner light. The water that Jonathan was floating in was probably not water but some other, less natural liquid. Normal Clary, she thought dispassionately, would have screamed at the sight of her brother, floating still and dead-looking and totally unmoving in what looked like Snow White’s glass coffin. But frozen Clary just stared with a remote and distant shock.

Lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony. Well, some of that was true. When she had met Sebastian, his hair had been black, but it was white-silver now, floating around his head like albino seaweed. The same color as his father’s hair. Their father’s hair. His skin was so pale it looked as if it could be made up of luminous crystals. But his lips were colorless too, as were the lids of his eyes.

“Thank you, Jace,” the woman that Jace had called Lady Lilith said. “Nicely done, and very prompt. I thought I was going to have difficulties with you at first, but it appears I worried for nothing.”

Clary stared. Though the woman did not look familiar, her voice was familiar. She had heard that voice before. But where? She tried to pull away from Jace, but his grip on her only tightened. The edge of the knife kissed her throat. An accident, she told herself. Jace—even this Jace—would never hurt her.

“You,” she said to Lilith between her teeth. “What have you done to Jace?”

“Valentine’s daughter speaks.” The dark-haired woman smiled. “Simon? Would you like to explain?”

Simon looked like he was going to throw up. “I have no idea.” He sounded as if he were choking. “Believe me, you two were the last thing I expected to see.”

“The Silent Brothers said that a demon was responsible for what’s been happening with Jace,” Clary said, and saw Simon look more baffled than ever. The woman, though, just watched her with eyes like flat obsidian circles. “That demon was you, wasn’t it? But why Jace? What do you want from us?”

“‘Us’?” Lilith pealed with laughter. “As if you mattered in this, my girl. Why you? Because you are a means to an end. Because I needed both these boys, and both of them love you. Because Jace Herondale is the one person you trust more than anyone else in the world. And you are someone the Daylighter loves enough to give up his own life for. Perhaps you cannot be harmed,” she said, turning to Simon. “But she can be. Are you so stubborn that you will sit back and watch Jace cut her throat rather than give up your blood?”

Simon, looking like death itself, shook his head slowly, but before he could speak, Clary said, “Simon, no! Don’t do it, whatever it is. Jace wouldn’t hurt me.”

The woman’s fathomless eyes turned to Jace. She smiled. “Cut her,” she said. “Just a little.”

Clary felt Jace’s shoulders tense, the way they had in the park when he’d been showing her how to fight. She felt something at her throat, like a stinging kiss, cold and hot at once, and felt a warm trickle of liquid spill down onto her collarbone. Simon’s eyes widened.

He had cut her. He had actually done it. She thought of Jace crouched on the floor of the bedroom at the Institute, his pain clear in every line of his body. I dream that you come into my room. And then I hurt you. I cut you or strangle or stab you, and you die, looking up at me with those green eyes of yours while your life bleeds away between my hands.

She had not believed him. Not really. He was Jace. He would never hurt her. She looked down and saw the blood staining the neckline of her dress. It looked like red paint.

“You see now,” said the woman. “He does what I tell him. Don’t blame him for it. He is completely within my power. For weeks I have crept through his head, seeing his dreams, learning his fears and wants, his guilts and desires. In a dream he accepted my Mark, and that Mark has been burning through him ever since—through his skin, down into his soul. Now his soul is in my hands, to shape or direct as I see fit. He will do whatever I say.”

Clary remembered what the Silent Brothers had said. When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters. When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as an unlocked door—open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence.

I did this, Clary thought. I brought him back, and I wanted it kept secret. If we had only told someone what had happened, maybe the ritual could have been done in time to keep Lilith out of his head. She felt sick with self-loathing. Behind her Jace was silent, as still as a statue, his arms around her and the knife still at her throat. She could feel it against her skin when she took a breath to speak, keeping her voice even with an effort. “I understand that you control Jace,” she said. “I don’t understand why. Surely there are other, easier ways to threaten me.”

Lilith sighed as if the whole business had grown tedious. “I need you,” she said, with exaggerated patience, “to get Simon to do what I want, which is give me his blood. And I need Jace not just because I needed a way to get you here, but as a counterweight. All things in magic must balance, Clarissa.” She pointed at the rough black circle drawn on the tiles, and then at Jace. “He was the first. The first to be brought back, the first soul restored to this world in the name of Light. Therefore he must be present for me to successfully restore the second, in the name of the Dark. Do you understand now, silly girl? We are all needed here. Simon to die. Jace to live. Jonathan to return. And you, Valentine’s daughter, to be the catalyst for it all.”

The demon woman’s voice had dropped to a low chant. With a shock of surprise Clary realized that she now knew where she had heard it before. She saw her father, standing inside a pentagram, a black-haired woman with tentacles for eyes kneeling at his feet. The woman said, The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. But it will burn out his humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood.

“I know,” Clary said through stiff lips. “I know who you are. I saw you cut your wrist and drip blood into a cup for my father. The angel Ithuriel showed it to me in a vision.”

Simon’s eyes darted back and forth between Clary and the woman, whose dark eyes held a hint of surprise. Clary guessed she didn’t surprise easily. “I saw my father summon you. I know what he called you. My Lady of Edom. You’re a Greater Demon. You gave your blood to make my brother what he is. You turned him into a—a horrible thing. If it weren’t for you—”

“Yes. All that is true. I gave my blood to Valentine Morgenstern, and he put it in his baby boy, and this is the result.” The woman placed her hand gently, almost as a caress, against the glass surface of Sebastian’s coffin. There was the oddest smile on her face. “You might almost say that, in a way, I am Jonathan’s mother.”

“I told you that address didn’t mean anything,” Alec said.

Isabelle ignored him. The moment they had stepped through the doors of the building, the ruby pendant around her neck had pulsed, faintly, like the beat of a distant heart. That meant demonic presence. Under other circumstances she would have expected her brother to sense the weirdness of the place just like she did, but he was clearly too sunk in gloom about Magnus to concentrate.

“Get your witchlight,” she said to him. “I left mine at home.”

He shot her an irritated look. It was dark in the lobby, dark enough that a normal human wouldn’t have been able to see. Maia and Jordan both had the excellent night vision of werewolves. They were standing at opposite ends of the room, Jordan examining the big marble lobby desk, and Maia leaning against the far wall, apparently examining her rings. “You’re supposed to bring it with you everywhere,” Alec replied.

“Oh? Did you bring your Sensor?” she snapped. “I didn’t think so. At least I have this.” She tapped the pendant. “I can tell you that there’s something here. Something demonic.”

Jordan’s head snapped around. “There are demons here?”

“I don’t know—maybe only one. It pulsed and faded,” Isabelle admitted. “But it’s too big a coincidence for this just to have been the wrong address. We have to check it out.”

A dim light rose up all around her. She looked over and saw Alec holding up his witchlight, its blaze contained by his fingers. It threw strange shadows across his face, making him look older than he was, his eyes a darker blue. “So let’s get going,” he said. “We’ll take it one floor at a time.”

They moved toward the elevator, Alec first, then Isabelle, Jordan and Maia dropping into line behind them. Isabelle’s boots had Soundless runes carved into the soles, but Maia’s heels clicked on the marble floor as she walked. Frowning, she paused to discard them, and went barefoot the rest of the way. As Maia stepped into the elevator, Isabelle noticed that she wore a gold ring around her left big toe, set with a turquoise stone.

Jordan, glancing down at her feet, said in a surprised tone, “I remember that ring. I bought that for you at—”

“Shut up,” Maia said, hitting the door close button. The doors slid shut as Jordan lapsed into silence.

They paused at every floor. Most were still under construction—there were no lights, and wires hung down from the ceilings like vines. Windows had plywood nailed over them. Drop cloths blew in the faint wind like ghosts. Isabelle kept a firm hand on her pendant, but nothing happened until they reached the tenth floor. As the doors opened, she felt a flutter against the inside of her cupped palm, as if she had been holding a tiny bird there and it had beaten its wings.

She spoke in a whisper. “There’s something here.”

Alec just nodded; Jordan opened his mouth to say something, but Maia elbowed him, hard. Isabelle slipped past her brother, into the hall outside the elevators. The ruby was pulsing and vibrating against her hand now like a distressed insect.

Behind her, Alec whispered, “Sandalphon.” Light blazed up around Isabelle, illuminating the hall. Unlike some of the other floors they had seen, this one seemed at least partly finished. Bare granite walls rose around her, and the floor was smooth black tile. A corridor led in two directions. One ended in a heap of construction equipment and tangled wires. The other ended in an archway. Beyond the archway, black space beckoned.

Isabelle turned to look back at her companions. Alec had put away his witchlight stone and was holding a blazing seraph blade, lighting the interior of the elevator like a lantern. Jordan had produced a large, brutal-looking knife and was gripping it in his right hand. Maia seemed to be in the process of putting her hair up; when she lowered her hands, she was holding a long, razor-tipped pin. Her nails had grown, too, and her eyes held a feral, greenish gleam.

“Follow me,” Isabelle said. “Quietly.”

Tap, tap went the ruby against Isabelle’s throat as she went down the hall, like the prodding of an insistent finger. She didn’t hear the rest of them behind her, but she knew they were there from the long shadows cast against the dark granite walls. Her throat was tight, her nerves singing, the way they always did before she walked into battle. This was the part she liked least, the anticipation before the release of violence. During a fight nothing mattered but the fight itself; now she had to struggle to keep her mind on the task at hand.

The archway loomed above them. It was carved marble, oddly old-fashioned for such a modern building, its sides decorated with scrollwork. Isabelle glanced up briefly as she passed through, and almost started. The face of a grinning gargoyle was carved into the stone, leering down at her. She made a face at it and turned to look at the room she had entered.

It was vast, high-ceilinged, clearly meant to someday be a full loft apartment. The walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving out onto a view of the East River with Queens in the distance, the Coca-Cola sign flashing blood-red and navy blue down onto the black water. The lights of surrounding buildings hovered glittering in the night air like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The room itself was dark, and full of odd, humped shadows, spaced at regular intervals, low to the ground. Isabelle squinted, puzzled. They weren’t animate; they appeared to be chunks of square, blocky furniture, but what—?

“Alec,” she said softly. Her pendant was writhing as if alive, its ruby heart painfully hot against her skin.

In a moment her brother was beside her. He raised his blade, and the room was full of light. Isabelle’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Oh, by the Angel, no.”

“You’re not his mother.” Simon’s voice cracked as he said it; Lilith didn’t even turn to look at him. She still had her hands on the glass coffin. Sebastian floated inside it, silent and unaware. His feet were bare, Simon noticed. “He has a mother. Clary’s mother. Clary’s his sister. Sebastian—Jonathan—won’t be too pleased if you hurt her.”

Lilith looked up at that, and laughed. “A brave attempt, Daylighter,” she said. “But I know better. I saw my son grow up, you know. Often I visited him in the form of an owl. I saw how the woman who had given birth to him hated him. He has no love lost for her, nor should he, nor does he care for his sister. He is more like me than he is like Jocelyn Morgenstern.” Her dark eyes moved from Simon to Jace and Clary. They had not moved, not really. Clary still stood in the circle of Jace’s arms, with the knife near her throat. He held it easily, carelessly, as if he were barely paying attention. But Simon knew how quickly Jace’s seeming uninterest could explode into violent action.

“Jace,” said Lilith. “Step into the circle. Bring the girl with you.”

Obediently Jace moved forward, pushing Clary ahead of him. As they crossed the barrier of the black-painted line, the runes inside the line flashed a sudden, brilliant red—and something else lit as well. A rune on the left side of Jace’s chest, just above his heart, glowed suddenly, with such brightness that Simon closed his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, he could still see the rune, a vicious swirl of angry lines, printed against the inside of his eyelids.

“Open your eyes, Daylighter,” Lilith snapped. “The time has come. Will you give me your blood, or will you refuse? You know the price if you do.”

Simon looked down at Sebastian in his coffin—and did a double take. A rune that was the twin of the one that had just flashed on Jace’s chest was visible on his bare chest as well, just beginning to fade as Simon stared down at him. In a moment it was gone, and Sebastian was still and white again. Unmoving. Unbreathing.

Dead.

“I can’t bring him back for you,” Simon said. “He’s dead. I’d give you my blood, but he can’t swallow it.”

Her breath hissed through her teeth in exasperation, and for a moment her eyes glowed with a harsh acidic light. “First you must bite him,” she said. “You are a Daylighter. Angel blood runs through your body, through your blood and tears, through the fluid in your fangs. Your Daylighter blood will revive him enough that he can swallow and drink. Bite him and give him your blood, and bring him back to me.”

Simon stared at her wildly. “But what you’re saying—you’re saying I have the power to bring back the dead?”

“Since you’ve been a Daylighter you’ve had that power,” she said. “But not the right to use it.”

“The right?”

She smiled, tracing the tip of one long red-painted nail across the top of Sebastian’s coffin. “History is written by the winners, they say,” she said. “There might not be so much of a difference between the side of Light and the side of Dark as you suppose. After all, without the Dark, there is nothing for the Light to burn away.”

Simon looked at her blankly.

“Balance,” she clarified. “There are laws older than any you can imagine. And one of them is that you cannot bring back what is dead. When the soul has left the body, it belongs to death. And it cannot be taken back without a price to pay.”

“And you’re willing to pay it? For him?” Simon gestured toward Sebastian.

“He is the price.” She threw her head back and laughed. It sounded almost like human laughter. “If the Light brings back a soul, then the Dark has the right to bring one back as well. This is my right. Or perhaps you should ask your little friend Clary what I’m talking about.”

Simon looked at Clary. She looked as if she might pass out. “Raziel,” she said faintly. “When Jace died—”

“Jace died?” Simon’s voice went up an octave. Jace, despite being the subject under discussion, remained serene and expressionless, his knife hand steady.

“Valentine stabbed him,” Clary said in an almost-whisper. “And then the Angel killed Valentine, and he said I could have anything I wanted. And I said I wanted Jace back, I wanted him back, and he brought him back—for me.” Her eyes were huge in her small white face. “He was dead for only a few minutes . . . hardly any time at all . . .”

“It was enough,” breathed Lilith. “I was hovering near my son during his battle with Jace; I saw him fall and die. I followed Jace to the lake, I watched as Valentine slew him, and then as the Angel raised him again. I knew that was my chance. I raced back to the river and took my son’s body from it. . . . I kept it preserved for just this moment.” She looked fondly down at the coffin. “Everything in balance. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. Jace is the counterweight. If Jace lives, then so shall Jonathan.”

Simon couldn’t tear his eyes away from Clary. “What she’s saying—about the Angel—it’s true?” he said. “And you never told anyone?”

To his surprise it was Jace who answered. Brushing his cheek against Clary’s hair, he said, “It was our secret.”

Clary’s green eyes flashed, but she didn’t move.

“So you see, Daylighter,” said Lilith, “I am only taking what is mine by right. The Law says that the one who was first brought back must be here in the circle when the second is returned.” She indicated Jace with a contemptuous flick of her finger. “He is here. You are here. All is in readiness.”

“Then you don’t need Clary,” said Simon. “Leave her out of it. Let her go.”

“Of course I need her. I need her to motivate you. I cannot hurt you, Mark-bearer, or threaten you, or kill you. But I can cut out your heart when I cut out her life. And I will.”

She looked toward Clary, and Simon’s gaze followed hers.

Clary. She was so pale that she looked almost blue, though perhaps that was the cold. Her green eyes were vast in her pale face. A trickle of drying blood spilled from her collarbone to the neckline of her dress, now spotted with red. Her hands hung at her sides, loose, but they were shaking.

Simon saw her as she was, but also as she had been when she was seven years old, skinny arms and freckles and those blue plastic barrettes she’d worn in her hair until she was eleven. He thought of the first time he’d noticed she had a real girl’s shape under the baggy T-shirt and jeans she always wore, and how he hadn’t been sure if he should look or look away. He thought of her laugh and her quick pencil moving across a page, leaving intricately designed images behind: spired castles, running horses, brightly colored characters she’d made up in her head. You can walk to school by yourself, her mother had said, but only if Simon goes with you. He thought of her hand in his when they crossed the street, and his own sense of the awesome task that he had undertaken: the responsibility for her safety.

He had been in love with her once, and maybe some part of him always would be, because she had been his first. But that wasn’t what mattered now. She was Clary; she was part of him; she always had been and would be forever. As he stared at her, she shook her head, very slightly. He knew what she was saying. Don’t do it. Don’t give her what she wants. Let whatever happens to me happen.

He stepped into the circle; as his feet passed over the painted line, he felt a shiver, like an electric shock, go through him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

“No!” Clary cried, but Simon didn’t look at her. He was watching Lilith, who smiled a cool, gloating smile as she raised her left hand and passed it across the surface of the coffin.

The lid of it vanished, peeling back in a way that reminded Simon bizarrely of peeling back the lid of a tin of sardines. As the top layer of glass pulled away, it melted and ran, dripping down the sides of the granite pedestal, crystallizing into tiny shards of glass as the drops struck the ground.

The coffin was open now, like a fish tank; Sebastian’s body drifted inside, and Simon thought he could once again see the flash of the rune on his chest as Lilith reached into the tank. As Simon watched, she took Sebastian’s dangling arms and crossed them over his chest with an oddly tender gesture, tucking the bandaged one under the one that was whole. She brushed a lock of his wet hair away from his still, white forehead, and stepped back, shaking milky water from her hands.

“To your work, Daylighter,” she said.

Simon moved toward the coffin. Sebastian’s face was slack, his eyelids still. No pulse beat in his throat. Simon remembered how much he had wanted to drink Maureen’s blood. How he had craved the feeling of his teeth sinking into her skin and freeing the salty blood beneath. But this—this was feeding off a corpse. The very thought made his stomach turn.

Though he wasn’t looking at her, he was aware of Clary watching him. He could feel her breath as he bent over Sebastian. He could sense Jace, too, watching him out of blank eyes. Reaching into the coffin, he closed his hands around Sebastian’s cold, slippery shoulders. Biting back the urge to be sick, he bent and sank his teeth into Sebastian’s throat. Black demon blood poured into his mouth, as bitter as poison.

Isabelle moved silently among the stone pedestals. Alec was with her, Sandalphon in his hand, sending light winging through the room. Maia was in one corner of the room, bent over and retching, her hand braced against the wall; Jordan hovered over her, looking as if he wanted to reach out and stroke her back, but was afraid of being rebuffed.

Isabelle didn’t blame Maia for throwing up. If she hadn’t had years of training, she would have thrown up herself. She had never seen anything like what she was looking at now. There were dozens, maybe fifty, of the stone pedestals in the room. Atop each one was a low crib-like basket. Inside each basket was a baby. And every one of the babies was dead.

She had held out hope at first, as she walked up and down the rows, that she might find one alive. But these children had been dead for some time. Their skin was gray, their small faces bruised and discolored. They were wrapped in thin blankets, and though it was cold in the room, Isabelle didn’t think it was cold enough for them to have frozen to death. She wasn’t sure how they had died; she couldn’t bear to investigate too closely. This was clearly a matter for the Clave.

Alec, behind her, had tears running down his face; he was cursing under his breath by the time they reached the last of the pedestals. Maia had straightened up and was leaning against the window; Jordan had given her some kind of cloth, maybe a handkerchief, to hold to her face. The cold white lights of the city burned behind her, cutting through the dark glass like diamond drills.

“Iz,” Alec said. “Who could have done something like this? Why would someone—even a demon—”

He broke off. Isabelle knew what he was thinking about. Max, when he had been born. She had been seven, Alec nine. They had bent over their little brother in the cradle, amused and enchanted by this fascinating new creature. They’d played with his little fingers, laughed at the weird faces he made when they tickled him.

Her heart twisted. Max. As she had moved down the lines of little cribs, now turned into little coffins, a sense of overwhelming dread had begun to press down on her. She couldn’t ignore the fact that the pendant around her neck was glowing with a harsh, steady glow. The sort of glow she might have expected if she were facing down a Greater Demon.

She thought of what Clary had seen in the morgue in Beth Israel. He looked just like a normal baby. Except for his hands. They were twisted into claws. . . .

With great care she reached into one of the cribs. Careful not to touch the baby, she twitched aside the thin blanket that wrapped its body.

She felt the breath puff out of her in a gasp. Ordinary chubby baby arms, round baby wrists. The hands looked soft and new. But the fingers—the fingers were twisted into claws, as black as burned bone, tipped with sharp little talons. She took an involuntary step back.

“What?” Maia moved toward them. She still looked sickened, but her voice was steady. Jordan followed her, hands in his pockets. “What did you find?” she asked.

“By the Angel.” Alec, beside Isabelle, was looking down into the crib. “Is this—like the baby Clary was telling you about? The one at Beth Israel?”

Slowly Isabelle nodded. “I guess it wasn’t just the one baby,” she said. “Someone’s been trying to make a lot more of them. More . . . Sebastians.”

“Why would anyone want more of him?” Alec’s voice was full of naked hatred.

“He was fast and strong,” Isabelle said. It almost hurt physically to say anything complimentary about the boy who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. “I guess they’re trying to breed a race of super-warriors.”

“It didn’t work.” Maia’s eyes were dark with sadness.

A noise so soft it was almost inaudible teased at the edge of Isabelle’s hearing. Her head jerked up, her hand going to her belt, where her whip was coiled. Something in the thick shadows at the edge of the room, near the door, moved, just the faintest flicker, but Isabelle had already broken away from the others and was running for the door. She burst out into the hallway near the elevators. There was something there—a shadow that had broken free of the greater darkness and was moving, edging along the wall. Isabelle picked up speed and threw herself forward, knocking the shadow to the floor.

It wasn’t a ghost. As they went down together in a heap, Isabelle surprised a very human-sounding grunt of surprise out of the shadowy figure. They hit the ground together and rolled. The figure was definitely human—slight and shorter than Isabelle, wearing a gray warm-up suit and sneakers. Sharp elbows came up, jabbing into Isabelle’s collarbone. A knee dug into her solar plexus. She gasped and rolled aside, feeling for her whip. By the time she got it free, the figure was on its feet. Isabelle rolled onto her stomach, flicking the whip forward; the end of it coiled around the stranger’s ankle and pulled tight. Isabelle jerked the whip back, yanking the figure off its feet.

She scrambled to her feet, reaching with her free hand for her stele, which was tucked down the front of her dress. With a quick slash she finished the nyx Mark on her left arm. Her vision adjusted quickly, the whole room seeming to fill with light as the night vision rune took effect. She could see her attacker more clearly now—a thin figure in a gray warm-up suit and gray sneakers, scrambling backward until its back hit the wall. The hood of the suit had fallen back, exposing the face. The head was shaved cleanly bald, but the face was definitely female, with sharp cheekbones and big dark eyes.

“Stop it,” Isabelle said, and pulled hard on the whip. The woman cried out in pain. “Stop trying to crawl away.”

The woman bared her teeth. “Worm,” she said. “Unbeliever. I will tell you nothing.”

Isabelle jammed her stele back into her dress. “If I pull hard enough on this whip, it’ll cut through your leg.” She gave the whip another flick, tightening it, and moved forward, until she was standing in front of the woman, looking down at her. “Those babies,” she said. “What happened to them?”

The woman gave a bubbling laugh. “They were not strong enough. Weak stock, too weak.”

“Too weak for what?” When the woman didn’t answer, Isabelle snapped, “You can tell me or lose your leg. Your choice. Don’t think I won’t let you bleed to death here on the floor. Child-murderers don’t deserve mercy.”

The woman hissed, like a snake. “If you harm me, She will smite you down.”

“Who—” Isabelle broke off, remembering what Alec had said. Talto is another name for Lilith. You might say she’s the demon goddess of dead children. “Lilith,” she said. “You worship Lilith. You did all this . . . for her?”

“Isabelle.” It was Alec, carrying the light of Sandalphon before him. “What’s going on? Maia and Jordan are searching, looking for any more . . . children, but it looks like they were all in the big room. What’s going on here?”

“This . . . person,” Isabelle said with disgust, “is a cult member of the Church of Talto. Apparently they worship Lilith. And they’ve murdered all these babies for her.”

“Not murder!” The woman struggled upright. “Not murder. Sacrifice. They were tested and found weak. Not our fault.”

“Let me guess,” Isabelle said. “You tried injecting the pregnant women with demon blood. But demon blood is toxic stuff. The babies couldn’t survive. They were born deformed, and then they died.”

The woman whimpered. It was a very slight sound, but Isabelle saw Alec’s eyes narrow. He had always been the one of them that was best at reading people.

“One of those babies,” he said. “It was yours. How could you inject your own child with demon blood?”

The woman’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t. We were the ones who took the blood injections. The mothers. Made us stronger, faster. Our husbands, too. But we got sick. Sicker and sicker. Our hair fell out. Our nails . . .” She raised her hands, showing the blackened nails, the torn, bloody nail beds where some had fallen away. Her arms were dotted with blackish bruises. “We’re all dying,” she said. There was a faint sound of satisfaction in her voice. “We will be dead in days.”

“She made you take poison,” Alec said, “and yet you worship her?”

“You don’t understand.” The woman sounded hoarse, dreamy. “I had nothing before She found me. None of us did. I was on the streets. Sleeping on subway gratings so I wouldn’t freeze. Lilith gave me a place to live, a family to take care of me. Just to be in Her presence is to be safe. I never felt safe before.”

“You’ve seen Lilith,” Isabelle said, struggling to keep the disbelief from her voice. She was familiar with demon cults; she had done a report on them once, for Hodge. He had given her high marks on it. Most cults worshipped demons they had imagined or invented. Some managed to raise weak minor demons, who either killed them all when set free, or contented themselves with being served by the cult members, all their needs attended to, and little asked of them in return. She had never heard of a cult who worshipped a Greater Demon in which the members had ever actually seen that demon in the flesh. Much less a Greater Demon as powerful as Lilith, the mother of warlocks. “You’ve been in her presence?”

The woman’s eyes fluttered half-shut. “Yes. With Her blood in me I can feel when She is near. As She is now.”

Isabelle couldn’t help it; her free hand flew to her pendant. It had been pulsing on and off since they’d entered the building; she had assumed it was because of the demon blood in the dead children, but the presence nearby of a Greater Demon would make even more sense. “She’s here? Where is she?”

The woman seemed to be drifting off into sleep. “Upstairs,” she said vaguely. “With the vampire boy. The one who walks by day. She sent us to fetch him for Her, but he was protected. We could not lay hands on him. Those who went to find him died. Then, when Brother Adam returned and told us the boy was guarded by holy fire, Lady Lilith was angry. She slew him where he stood. He was lucky, to die by Her hand, so lucky.” Her breath rattled. “And She is clever, Lady Lilith. She found another way to bring the boy. . . .”

The whip dropped from Isabelle’s suddenly limp hand. “Simon? She brought Simon here? Why?”

“‘None that go unto Her,’” the woman breathed, “‘return again . . .’”

Isabelle dropped to her knees, seizing up the whip. “Stop it,” she said in a voice that shook. “Stop yammering and tell me where he is. Where did she take him? Where is Simon? Tell me, or I’ll—”

“Isabelle.” Alec spoke heavily. “Iz, there’s no point. She’s dead.”

Isabelle stared at the woman in disbelief. She had died, it seemed, between one breath and the next, her eyes wide open, her face set in slack lines. It was possible to see now that beneath the starvation and the baldness and the bruising, she had probably been quite young, not more than twenty. “God damn it.”

“I don’t get it,” Alec said. “What does a Greater Demon want with Simon? He’s a vampire. Granted, a powerful vampire, but—”

“The Mark of Cain,” Isabelle said distractedly. “This must have something to do with the Mark. It’s got to.” She moved toward the elevator and jabbed at the call button. “If Lilith was really Adam’s first wife, and Cain was Adam’s son, then the Mark of Cain is nearly as old as she is.”

“Where are you going?”

“She said they were upstairs,” Isabelle said. “I’m going to search every floor until I find him.”

“She can’t hurt him, Izzy,” said Alec in the reasonable voice Isabelle detested. “I know you’re worried, but he’s got the Mark of Cain; he’s untouchable. Even a Greater Demon can’t harm him. No one can.”

Isabelle scowled at her brother. “So what do you think she wants him for, then? So she’ll have someone to pick up her dry cleaning during the day? Really, Alec—”

There was a ping, and the arrow above the farthest elevator lit up. Isabelle started forward as the doors began to open. Light flooded out . . . and after the light, a wave of men and women—bald, emaciated, and dressed in gray tracksuits and sneakers—poured out. They were brandishing crude weapons culled from the debris of construction: jagged shards of glass, torn-off chunks of rebar, concrete blocks. None of them spoke. In a silence as total as it was eerie, they surged from the elevator as one, and advanced on Alec and Isabelle.

18 SCARS OF FIRE

Clouds had rolled in over the river, the way they sometimes did at night, bringing a thick mist with them. It didn’t hide what was happening on the roof, just laid a sort of dimming fog over everything else. The buildings rising all around them were murky pillars of light, and the moon glowed barely, a muffled lamp, through the low scudding clouds. The broken bits of the glass coffin, scattered across the tiled ground, shone like shards of ice, and Lilith, too, shone, pale under the moon, watching Simon as he bent over Sebastian’s still body, drinking his blood.

Clary could hardly bear to watch. She knew Simon hated what he was doing; she knew he was doing it for her. For her, and even, a little bit, for Jace. And she knew what the next step in the ritual would be. Simon would give up his blood, willingly, to Sebastian, and Simon would die. Vampires could die when their blood was drained. He would die, and she would lose him forever, and it would—all of it—be her own fault.

She could feel Jace behind her, his arms still tight around her, the soft, regular beat of his heart against her shoulder blades. She remembered the way he had held her on the steps of the Accords Hall in Idris. The sound of the wind in the leaves as he’d kissed her, his hands warm on either side of her face. The way she had felt his heart beating and thought that no one else’s heart beat like his, like every pulse of his blood matched her own.

He had to be in there somewhere. Like Sebastian inside his glass prison. There had to be some way to reach him.

Lilith was watching Simon as he bent over Sebastian, her dark eyes wide and fixed. Clary and Jace might as well not have been there at all.

“Jace,” Clary whispered. “Jace, I don’t want to watch this.”

She pressed back against him, as if she were trying to snuggle into his arms, then pretended a wince as the knife brushed the side of her throat.

“Please, Jace,” she whispered. “You don’t need the knife. You know I can’t hurt you.”

“But why—”

“I just want to look at you. I want to see your face.”

She felt his chest rise and fall once, fast. A shudder went through him, as if he were fighting something, pushing against it. Then he moved, the way only he could move, so swiftly it was like a flash of light. He kept his right arm tight around her; his left hand slid the knife into his belt.

Her heart leaped wildly. I could run, she thought, but he would only catch her, and it was only a moment. Seconds later both arms were around her again, his hands on her arms, turning her. She felt his fingers trail over her back, her bare, shivering arms, as he spun her to face him.

She was looking away from Simon now, away from the demon woman, though she could still feel their presence at her back, shivering up her spine. She looked up at Jace. His face was so familiar. The lines of it, the way his hair fell across his forehead, the faint scar over his cheekbone, another at his temple. His eyelashes a shade darker than his hair. His eyes were the color of pale yellow glass. That was where he was different, she thought. He still looked like Jace, but his eyes were clear and blank, as if she were looking through a window into an empty room.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

He stroked her shoulder, sending sparks winging through her nerves; with a feeling of sickness she realized her body still responded to his touch. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She stared at him. You really think that, don’t you? Somehow you can’t see the disconnect between your actions and your intentions. Somehow she’s taken that away from you.

“You won’t be able to stop her,” she said. “She’s going to kill me, Jace.”

He shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t do that.”

Clary wanted to scream, but she kept her voice deliberate, careful, calm. “I know you’re in there, Jace. The real you.” She pressed closer to him. The buckle on his belt dug into her waist. “You could fight her. . . .”

It had been the wrong thing to say. He tensed all over, and she saw a flash of anguish in his eyes, the look of an animal in a trap. In another instant it had turned to hardness. “I can’t.”

She shivered. The look on his face was awful, so awful. At her shudder his eyes softened. “Are you cold?” he said, and for a moment he sounded like Jace again, concerned about her well-being. It made her throat hurt.

She nodded, though physical cold was the furthest thing from her mind. “Can I put my hands inside your jacket?”

He nodded. His jacket was unbuttoned; she slid her arms inside, her hands touching his back lightly. Everything was eerily silent. The city seemed frozen inside an icy prism. Even the light radiating off the buildings around them was still and cold.

He breathed slowly, steadily. She could see the rune on his chest through the torn fabric of his shirt. It seemed to pulse when he breathed. It was sickening, she thought, attached to him like that, like a leech, sucking out what was good, what was Jace.

She remembered what Luke had said to her about destroying a rune. If you disfigure it enough, you can minimize or destroy its power. Sometimes in battle the enemy will try to burn or slice off a Shadowhunter’s skin, just to deprive them of the power of their runes.

She kept her eyes fixed on Jace’s face. Forget about what’s happening, she thought. Forget about Simon, about the knife at your throat. What you say now matters more than anything you’ve ever said before.

“Remember what you said to me in the park?” she whispered.

He looked down at her, startled. “What?”

“When I told you I didn’t speak Italian. I remember what you told me, what that quote meant. You said it meant love is the most powerful force on earth. More powerful than anything else.”

A tiny line appeared between his eyebrows. “I don’t . . .”

“Yes, you do.” Tread carefully, she told herself, but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t help the strain that surfaced in her voice. “You remember. The most powerful force there is, you said. Stronger than Heaven or Hell. It has to be more powerful than Lilith, too.”

Nothing. He stared at her as if he couldn’t hear her. It was like shouting down into a black, empty tunnel. Jace, Jace, Jace. I know you’re in there.

“There’s a way you could protect me and still do what she wants,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be the best thing?” She pressed her body closer against his, feeling her stomach twist. It was like holding Jace and not like it, all at the same time, joy and horror mixed together. And she could feel his body react to her, the drumbeat of his heart in her ears, her veins; he had not stopped wanting her, whatever layers of control Lilith exerted over his mind.

“I’ll whisper it to you,” she said, brushing her lips against his neck. She breathed in the scent of him, as familiar as the scent of her own skin. “Listen.”

She tilted her face up, and he leaned down to hear her—and her hand moved from his waist to clamp down on the hilt of the knife in his belt. She whipped it upward, just as he had shown her when they had trained, balancing its weight in her palm, and she slashed the blade across the left side of his chest in a wide, shallow arc. Jace cried out—more in surprise than pain, she guessed—and blood burst from the cut, spilling down his skin, obscuring the rune. He put his hand to his chest; when it came away red, he stared at her, his eyes wide, as if somehow he was genuinely hurt, genuinely unable to believe in her betrayal.

Clary spun away from him as Lilith cried out. Simon was no longer bending over Sebastian; he had straightened up and was staring down at Clary, the back of his hand jammed against his mouth. Black demon blood dripped from his chin onto his white shirt. His eyes were wide.

“Jace,” Lilith’s voice soared upward in astonishment. “Jace, get hold of her—I order it—”

Jace didn’t move. He was staring from Clary, to Lilith, at his bloody hand, and then back again. Simon had begun to back away from Lilith; suddenly he stopped with a jerk and bent double, falling to his knees. Lilith whirled away from Jace and advanced on Simon, her hard face contorted. “Get up!” she shrieked. “Get on your feet! You drank his blood. Now he needs yours!”

Simon struggled to a sitting position, then slid limply to the ground. He retched, coughing up black blood. Clary remembered him in Idris, saying that Sebastian’s blood was like poison. Lilith drew back her foot to kick him—then staggered back as if an invisible hand had pushed her, hard. Lilith screeched—not words, just a scream like the cry of an owl. It was a sound of unadulterated hatred and rage.

It was not a sound a human being could have made; it felt like jagged shards of glass being driven into Clary’s ears. She cried out, “Leave Simon alone! He’s sick. Can’t you see he’s sick?”

She was immediately sorry she’d spoken. Lilith turned slowly, her gaze sliding over Jace, cold and imperious. “I told you, Jace Herondale.” Her voice rang out. “Don’t let the girl leave the circle. Take her weapon.”

Clary had barely realized she was still holding the knife. She felt so cold she was nearly numb, but beneath that a wash of unbearable rage at Lilith—at everything—freed the movement of her arm. She flung the knife at the ground. It skidded across the tiles, fetching up at Jace’s feet. He stared down at it blindly, as if he’d never seen a weapon before.

Lilith’s mouth was a thin red slash. The whites of her eyes had vanished; they were all black. She did not look human. “Jace,” she hissed. “Jace Herondale, you heard me. And you will obey me.”

“Take it,” Clary said, looking at Jace. “Take it and kill either her or me. It’s your choice.”

Slowly Jace bent down and picked up the knife.

Alec had Sandalphon in one hand, a hachiwara—good for parrying multiple attackers—in the other. At least six cultists lay at his feet, dead or unconscious.

Alec had fought quite a few demons in his time, but there was something especially eerie about fighting the cultists of the Church of Talto. They moved all together, less like people than like an eerie dark tide—eerie because they were so silent and so bizarrely strong and fast. They also seemed totally unafraid of death. Though Alec and Isabelle shouted at them to keep back, they kept moving forward in a wordless, clustering horde, flinging themselves at the Shadowhunters with the self-destructive mindlessness of lemmings hurling themselves over a cliff. They had backed Alec and Isabelle down the hallway and into the big, open room full of stone pedestals, when the noise of the fight brought Jordan and Maia running: Jordan in wolf form, Maia still human, but with her claws fully out.

The cultists seemed barely to register their presence. They fought on, falling one after the other as Alec, Maia, and Jordan laid about themselves with knives, claws, and blades. Isabelle’s whip traced shimmering patterns in the air as it sliced through bodies, sending fine sprays of blood into the air. Maia especially was acquitting herself well. At least a dozen cultists lay crumpled around her, and she was laying into another one with a blazing fury, her clawed hands red to the wrists.

A cultist streaked across Alec’s path and lunged at him, hands outstretched. Its hood was up; he couldn’t see its face, or guess at sex or age. He sank the blade of Sandalphon into the left side of its chest. It screamed—a male scream, loud and hoarse. The man collapsed, clawing at his chest, where flames were licking at the edge of the torn hole in his jacket. Alec turned away, sickened. He hated watching what happened to humans when a seraph blade pierced their skin.

Suddenly he felt a searing burn across his back, and turned to see a second cultist wielding a jagged piece of rebar. This one was hoodless—a man, his face so thin that his cheekbones seemed to be digging through his skin. He hissed and lunged again at Alec, who leaped aside, the weapon whistling harmlessly past him. He spun and kicked it out of the cultist’s hand; it rattled to the floor, and the cultist backed up, nearly tripped over a body—and ran.

Alec hesitated for a moment. The cultist who had just attacked him had nearly made it to the door. Alec knew he ought to follow—for all he knew, the man might be running to warn someone or to get reinforcements—but he felt bone-weary, disgusted, and a little sick. These people might be possessed; they might barely be people anymore, but it still felt too much like killing human beings.

He wondered what Magnus would say, but to tell the truth, he already knew. Alec had fought creatures like this before, the cult servants of demons. Almost all that was human about them had been consumed by the demon for energy, leaving nothing but a murderous yearning to kill and a human body dying slowly in agony. They were beyond help: incurable, unfixable. He heard Magnus’s voice as if the warlock stood beside him. Killing them is the most merciful thing you can do.

Jamming the hachiwara back into his belt, Alec gave chase, pounding out the door and into the hall after the fleeing cultist. The hallway was empty, the farthest of the elevator doors jammed open, a weird high-pitched alarm noise sounding through the corridor. Several doorways branched off from the foyer. Shrugging inwardly, Alec picked one at random and dashed through it.

He found himself in a maze of small rooms that were barely finished—drywall had been hastily thrown up, and bouquets of multicolored wire sprouted from holes in the walls. The seraph blade threw a patchwork quilt of light across the walls as he moved cautiously through the rooms, his nerves prickling. At one point the light caught movement, and he jumped. Lowering the blade, he saw a pair of red eyes and a small gray body skittering into a hole in the wall. Alec’s mouth twitched. That was New York for you. Even in a building as new as this one, there were rats.

Eventually the rooms opened out into a larger space—not as large as the room with the pedestals, but more sizeable than the others. There was a wall of glass here, too, with cardboard taped across sections of it.

A dark shape was huddled in one corner of the room, near an exposed section of piping. Alec approached cautiously. Was it a trick of the light? No, the shape was recognizably human, a bent, huddled figure in dark clothes. Alec’s night vision rune twinged as he narrowed his eyes, moving forward. The shape resolved itself into a slim woman, barefoot, her hands chained in front of her to a length of pipe. She raised her head as Alec approached, and the dim light that poured through the windows illuminated her pale white-blond hair.

“Alexander?” she said, her voice rich with disbelief. “Alexander Lightwood?”

It was Camille.

“Jace.” Lilith’s voice came down like a whip across bare flesh; even Clary flinched at the sound of it. “I command you to—”

Jace’s arm drew back—Clary tensed, bracing herself—and he flung the knife at Lilith. It whipped through the air, end over end, and sank into her chest; she staggered back, caught off balance. Lilith’s heels skidded on the smooth stone; the demoness righted herself with a snarl, reaching down to pluck the knife from her ribs. Spitting something in a language Clary couldn’t understand, she let it drop. It fell hissing to the ground, its blade half-eaten away, as if by a powerful acid.

She whirled on Clary. “What did you do to him? What did you do?” Her eyes had been all black a moment ago. Now they seemed to bulge and protrude. Small black serpents slithered from her eye sockets; Clary cried out and stepped back, almost tripping over a low hedge. This was the Lilith she had seen in Ithuriel’s vision, with her slithering eyes and harsh, echoing voice. She advanced on Clary—

And suddenly Jace was between them, blocking Lilith’s path. Clary stared. He was himself again. He seemed to burn with a righteous fire, as Raziel had by Lake Lyn that horrible night. He had drawn a seraph blade from his belt; the white-silver of it reflected in his eyes; blood dripped from the rent in his shirt and slicked his bare skin. The way he looked at her, at Lilith—if angels could rise up out of Hell, Clary thought, they would look like that. “Michael,” he said, and Clary wasn’t sure whether it was the strength of the name, or the rage in his voice, but the blade he held blazed up brighter than any seraph blade she’d ever seen. She looked aside for a moment, blinded, and saw Simon lying in a crumpled dark heap beside Sebastian’s glass coffin.

Her heart twisted inside her chest. What if Sebastian’s demon blood had poisoned him? The Mark of Cain wouldn’t help him. It was something he had done willingly, to himself. For her. Simon.

“Ah, Michael.” Lilith’s voice was rich with laughter as she moved toward Jace. “The captain of the hosts of the Lord. I knew him.”

Jace raised the seraph blade; it blazed like a star, so bright that Clary wondered if all the city could see it, like a searchlight piercing the sky. “Don’t come any closer.”

Lilith, to Clary’s surprise, paused. “Michael slew the demon Sammael, whom I loved,” she said. “Why is it, little Shadowhunter, that your angels are so cold and without mercy? Why do they break that which will not obey them?”

“I had no idea you were such a proponent of free will,” said Jace, and the way he said it, his voice heavy with sarcasm, did more to reassure Clary that he was himself again than anything else would have. “How about letting us all walk off this roof now, then? Me, Simon, Clary? What do you say, demoness? It’s over. You don’t control me anymore. I won’t hurt Clary, and Simon won’t obey you. And that piece of filth you’re trying to resuscitate—I suggest you get rid of him before he starts to rot. Because he isn’t coming back, and he’s way past his sell-by date.”

Lilith’s face twisted. She spat at Jace, and her spit was a black flame that hit the ground and became a snake that wiggled toward him, its jaws agape. He smashed it with a booted foot and lunged for the demoness, blade outstretched; but Lilith was gone like a shadow when light shone on it, vanishing and reforming just behind him. As he spun, she reached out almost lazily and slammed her open palm against his chest.

Jace went flying, Michael knocked from his hand, skittering across the stone tiles. Jace sailed through the air and struck the low roof wall with such force that splintering lines appeared in the stone. He hit the ground hard, visibly stunned.

Gasping, Clary ran for the fallen seraph blade, but never reached it. Lilith caught Clary up in two thin, icy hands and threw her with incredible force. Clary hurtled into a low hedge, the branches slashing viciously at her skin, opening up long cuts. She struggled to free herself, her dress tangled in the foliage. She heard the silk rip as she tore free and turned to see Lilith drag Jace to his feet, her hand fastened in the bloody front of his shirt.

She grinned at him, and her teeth were black too, and gleamed like metal. “I am glad you’re on your feet, little Nephilim. I want to see your face when I kill you, not stab you in the back the way you did my son.”

Jace wiped his sleeve across his face; he was bleeding from a long cut along his cheek, and the fabric came away red. “He’s not your son. You donated some blood to him. That doesn’t make him yours. Mother of warlocks—” He turned his head and spat, blood. “You’re not anyone’s mother.”

Lilith’s snake eyes darted back and forth furiously. Clary, disentangling herself painfully from the hedge, saw that each of the snake heads had two eyes of its own, glittering and red. Clary’s stomach turned as the snakes moved, their gazes seeming to slither up and down Jace’s body. “Cutting my rune apart. How crude,” she spat.

“But effective,” said Jace.

“You cannot win against me, Jace Herondale,” she said. “You may be the greatest Shadowhunter this world has known, but I am more than a Greater Demon.”

“Then, fight me,” said Jace. “I’ll give you a weapon. I’ll have my seraph blade. Fight me one on one, and we’ll see who wins.”

Lilith looked at him, shaking her head slowly, her dark hair swirling around her like smoke. “I am the oldest of demons,” she said. “I am not a man. I have no male pride for you to trick me with, and I am not interested in single combat. That is entirely a weakness of your sex, not mine. I am a woman. I will use any weapon and all weapons to get what I want.” She let go of him them, with a half-contemptuous shove; Jace stumbled for a moment, righting himself quickly and reaching to the ground for the glittering blade of Michael.

He seized it just as Lilith laughed and raised her hands. Half-opaque shadows exploded from her open palms. Even Jace looked shocked as the shadows solidified into the forms of twin black shadowy demons with shimmering red eyes. They hit the ground, pawing and growling. They were dogs, Clary thought in amazement, two gaunt, vicious-looking black dogs that vaguely resembled Doberman pinschers.

“Hellhounds,” breathed Jace. “Clary—”

He broke off as one of the dogs sprang toward him, its mouth opened as wide as a shark’s, a loud, baying howl erupting from its throat. A moment later the second one leaped into the air, launching itself directly at Clary.

“Camille.” Alec’s head was spinning. “What are you doing here?”

He immediately realized that he sounded like an idiot. He fought down the urge to smack himself in the forehead. The last thing he wanted was to look like a fool in front of Magnus’s ex-girlfriend.

“It was Lilith,” said the vampire woman in a small, trembling voice. “She had her cult members break into the Sanctuary. It isn’t warded against humans, and they’re human—barely. They cut my chains and brought me here, to her.” She raised her hands; the chains binding her wrists to the pipe rattled. “They brutalized me.”

Alec crouched down, bringing his eyes on a level with Camille’s. Vampires didn’t bruise—they healed too quickly for that—but her hair was matted with blood on the left side, which made him think she was telling the truth. “Let’s say I believe you,” he said. “What did she want with you? Nothing in what I know about Lilith says she has a particular interest in vampires.”

“You know why the Clave was holding me,” she said. “You would have heard.”

“You killed three Shadowhunters. Magnus said you claimed you were doing it because someone had ordered you to—” He broke off. “Lilith?”

“If I tell you, will you help me?” Camille’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes were huge, green, pleading. She was very beautiful. Alec wondered if she had once looked at Magnus like this. It made him want to shake her.

“I might,” he said, astonished at the coldness in his own voice. “You don’t have a lot of bargaining power here. I could go off and leave you for Lilith to have, and it wouldn’t make much difference to me.”

“Yes, it would,” she said. Her voice was low. “Magnus loves you. He wouldn’t love you if you were the sort of person who could abandon someone helpless.”

“He loved you,” Alec said.

She gave a wistful smile. “He appears to have learned better since then.”

Alec rocked back on his heels slightly. “Look,” he said. “Tell me the truth. If you do, I’ll cut you free and bring you to the Clave. They’ll treat you better than Lilith would.”

She looked down at her wrists, chained to the pipe. “The Clave chained me,” she said. “Lilith chained me. I see little difference in my treatment between the two.”

“I guess it’s your choice, then. Trust me, or trust her,” Alec said. It was a gamble, he knew.

He waited for several tense moments before she said, “Very well. If Magnus trusts you, I will trust you.” She raised her head, doing her best to look dignified despite torn clothing and bloody hair. “Lilith came to me, not I to her. She had heard I was looking to recover my position as head of the Manhattan clan from Raphael Santiago. She said she would help me, if I would help her.”

“Help her by murdering Shadowhunters?”

“She wanted their blood,” said Camille. “It was for those babies. She was injecting Shadowhunter blood and demon blood into the mothers, trying to replicate what Valentine did to his son. It didn’t work, though. The babies became twisted things—and then they died.” Catching his revolted look, she said, “I didn’t know at first what she wanted the blood for. You may not think much of me, but I have no taste for murdering innocents.”

“You didn’t have to do it,” said Alec. “Just because she offered.”

Camille smiled tiredly. “When you are as old as I am,” she said, “it is because you have learned to play the game correctly—to make the right alliances at the right times. To ally yourself not just with the powerful, but with those who you believe will make you powerful. I knew that if I did not agree to assist Lilith, she would kill me. Demons are not by nature trusting, and she would think that I would go to the Clave with what I knew about her plans to kill Shadowhunters, even if I promised her I would stay silent. I took a chance that Lilith was a greater danger to me than your kind were.”

“And you didn’t mind killing Shadowhunters.”

“They were Circle members,” said Camille. “They had killed my kind. And yours.”

“And Simon Lewis? What was your interest in him?”

“Everyone wants the Daylighter on their side.” Camille shrugged. “And I knew he had the Mark of Cain. One of Raphael’s vampire underlings is still loyal to me. He passed on the information. Few other Downworlders know of it. It makes him an incalculably valuable ally.”

“Is that what Lilith wants with him?”

Camille’s eyes widened. Her skin was very pale, and beneath it Alec could see that her veins had darkened, the pattern of them beginning to spread across the whiteness of her face like widening cracks in china. Eventually, starving vampires became savage, then lost consciousness, once they had been without blood for too long. The older they were, the longer they could stave it off, but Alec couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since she had fed. “What do you mean?”

“Apparently she’s summoned Simon to meet with her,” said Alec. “They’re somewhere in the building.”

Camille stared a moment longer, then laughed. “A true irony,” she said. “She never mentioned him to me, and I never mentioned him to her, and yet both of us were pursuing him for our own ends. If she wants him, it’s for his blood,” she added. “The ritual she’s performing is most assuredly one of blood magic. His blood—mixed Downworlder and Shadowhunter blood—would be of great use to her.”

Alec felt a flicker of unease. “But she can’t hurt him. The Mark of Cain—”

“She’ll find a way around that,” said Camille. “She is Lilith, mother of warlocks. She’s been alive a long time, Alexander.”

Alec got to his feet. “Then I’d better find out what she’s doing.”

Camille’s chains rattled as she tried to rise to her knees. “Wait—but you said you would free me.”

Alec turned and looked down at her. “I didn’t. I said I would let the Clave have you.”

“But if you leave me here, nothing prevents Lilith from finding me first.” She tossed her matted hair back; lines of strain showed in her face. “Alexander, please. I beg you—”

“Who’s Will?” Alec said. The words came out abruptly, unexpectedly, and much to his horror.

“Will?” For a moment her face was blank; then it creased into a look of realization, and near amusement. “You heard my conversation with Magnus.”

“Some of it.” Alec exhaled carefully. “Will is dead, isn’t he? I mean, Magnus said it was a long time ago that he knew him. . . .”

“I know what’s bothering you, little Shadowhunter.” Camille’s voice had gone musical and soft. Behind her, through the windows, Alec could see the distant flickering lights of a plane as it flew over the city. “At first you were happy. You thought of the moment, not of the future. Now you have realized. You will grow old, and will someday die. And Magnus will not. He will continue. You will not grow old together. You will grow apart instead.”

Alec thought of the people on the airplane, high up in the cold and icy air, looking down on the city like a field of glittering diamonds, far below. Of course, he had never been in an airplane himself. He was only guessing at how it would feel: lonely, distant, disconnected from the world. “You can’t know that,” he said. “That we’ll grow apart.”

She smiled pityingly. “You’re beautiful now,” she said. “But will you be in twenty years? In forty? Fifty? Will he love your blue eyes when they fade, your soft skin when age cuts deep furrows in it? Your hands when they wrinkle and grow weak, your hair when it grows white—”

“Shut up.” Alec heard the crack in his own voice, and was ashamed. “Just shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Camille leaned toward him, her green eyes luminous. “What if I told you that you didn’t have to grow old? Didn’t have to die?”

Alec felt a wave of rage. “I’m not interested in becoming a vampire. Don’t even bother making the offer. Not if the only other alternative was death.”

For the briefest of moments her face twisted. It was gone in a flash as her control reasserted itself; she smiled a thin smile and said, “That wasn’t my suggestion. What if I told you there was another way? Another way for the two of you to be together forever?”

Alec swallowed. His mouth was as dry as paper. “Tell me,” he said.

Camille raised her hands. Her chains rattled. “Cut these free.”

“No. Tell me first.”

She shook her head. “I won’t do that.” Her expression was as hard as marble, as was her voice. “You said I had nothing to bargain with. But I do. And I will not give it away.”

Alec hesitated. In his head he heard Magnus’s soft voice. She is a master of implication and manipulation. She always has been.

But Magnus, he thought. You never told me. Never warned me it would be like this, that I would wake up one day and realize that I was going somewhere you couldn’t follow. That we are essentially not the same. There’s no “till death do us part” for those who never die.

He took a step toward Camille, and then another. Raising his right arm, he brought the seraph blade down, as hard as he could. It sheared through the metal of her chains; her wrists sprang apart, still in their manacles but free. She brought her hands up, her expression gloating, triumphant.

“Alec.” Isabelle spoke from the doorway; Alec turned and saw her standing there, her whip at her side. It was stained with blood, as were her hands and her silk dress. “What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing. I—” Alec felt a wave of shame and horror; almost without thinking, he moved to step in front of Camille, as if he could obscure her from his sister’s view.

“They’re all dead.” Isabelle sounded grim. “The cultists. We killed every one of them. Now come on. We have to start looking for Simon.” She squinted at Alec. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”

“I cut her free,” Alec blurted. “I shouldn’t have. It’s just—”

“Cut who free?” Isabelle took a step into the room. The ambient city light sparked off her dress, making her shine like a ghost. “Alec, what are you blathering about?”

Her expression was blank, confused. Alec turned, following her gaze, and saw—nothing. The pipe was still there, a length of chain lying beside it, the dust on the floor only very slightly disturbed. But Camille was gone.

Clary barely had time to put her arms up before the hellhound collided with her, a cannonball of muscle and bone and hot, stinking breath. Her feet went out from under her; she remembered Jace telling her the best way to fall, how to protect yourself, but the advice flew from her mind and she hit the ground with her elbows, agony shooting through her as the skin tore. A moment later the hound was on top of her, its paws crushing her chest, its gnarled tail swishing from side to side in a grotesque imitation of a wag. The tip of its tail was spiked with nail-like protrusions like a medieval mace, and a thick growl came from its barrel-chested body, so loud and strong that she could feel her bones vibrate.

“Hold her there! Tear her throat out if she tries to get away!” Lilith snapped instructions as the second hellhound sprang at Jace; he was struggling with it, rolling over and over, a whirlwind of teeth and arms and legs and the vicious whipping tail. Painfully Clary turned her head to the other side, and saw Lilith striding toward the glass coffin and Simon, still lying in a heap beside it. Inside the coffin Sebastian floated, as motionless as a drowned body; the milky color of the water had turned dark, probably with his blood.

The hound pinning her to the ground snarled close to her ear. The sound sent a jolt of fear through her—and along with the fear, anger. Anger at Lilith, and at herself. She was a Shadowhunter. It was one thing to be taken down by a Ravener demon when she’d never heard of the Nephilim. She had some training now. She ought to be able to do better.

Anything can be a weapon. Jace had said that to her in the park. The weight of the hellhound was crushing; she made a gagging noise and reached for her throat, as if fighting for air. It barked and snarled, baring its teeth; her fingers closed on the chain holding the Morgenstern ring around her neck. She yanked it, hard, and the chain snapped; she whipped it toward the dog’s face, slashing the hound brutally across the eyes. The hound reared back, howling in pain, and Clary rolled to the side, scrambling to her knees. Bloody-eyed, the dog crouched, ready to spring. The necklace had fallen out of Clary’s hand, the ring rolling away; she scrabbled for the chain as the dog leaped—

A shining blade split the night, slashing down inches from Clary’s face, severing the dog’s head from its body. It gave a single howl and vanished, leaving behind a scorched black mark on the stone, and the stench of demon in the air.

Hands came down, lifted Clary gently to her feet. It was Jace. He had shoved the burning seraph blade through his belt, and he held her by both hands, gazing at her with a peculiar look. She couldn’t have described it, or even drawn it—hope, shock, love, yearning, and anger all mixed together in his expression. His shirt was torn in several places, soaked with blood; his jacket was gone, his fair hair matted with sweat and blood. For a moment they simply stared at each other, his grip on her hands painfully tight. Then they both spoke at once:

“Are you—,” she began.

“Clary.” Still gripping her hands, he pushed her away from him, away from the circle, toward the walkway that led to the elevators. “Go,” he said raggedly. “Get out of here, Clary.”

“Jace—”

He took a shaking breath. “Please,” he said, and then he let her go, drawing the seraph blade from his belt as he turned back toward the circle.

“Get up,” Lilith growled. “Get up.”

A hand shook Simon’s shoulder, sending a wave of agony through his head. He had been floating in darkness; he opened his eyes now and saw night sky, stars, and Lilith’s white face looming over him. Her eyes were gone, replaced by slithering black snakes. The shock of the sight was enough to propel Simon to his feet.

The moment he was upright, he retched and nearly fell to his knees again. Shutting his eyes against the nausea, he heard Lilith snarl his name, and then her hand was on his arm, guiding him forward. He let her do it. His mouth was full of the nauseating, bitter taste of Sebastian’s blood; it was spreading through his veins, too, making him sick, weak, and shivery down to his bones. His head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and dizziness was advancing and receding in waves.

Abruptly Lilith’s cold grip on his arm was gone. Simon opened his eyes and found that he was standing over the glass coffin, just as he had been before. Sebastian floated in the dark, milky liquid, his face smooth, no pulse in his neck. Two dark holes were visible at the side of his throat where Simon had bitten him.

Give him your blood. Lilith’s voice echoed, not aloud but inside his head. Do it now.

Simon looked up dizzily. His vision was fogging. He strained to see Clary and Jace through the encroaching darkness.

Use your fangs, said Lilith. Tear your wrist open. Give Jonathan your blood. Heal him.

Simon raised his wrist to his mouth. Heal him. Raising someone from the dead was a lot more than healing them, he thought. Maybe Sebastian’s hand would grow back. Maybe that’s what she meant. He waited for his fangs to come, but they didn’t. He was too sick to be hungry, he thought, and fought back the insane urge to laugh.

“I can’t,” he said, half-gasping. “I can’t—”

“Lilith!” Jace’s voice cut through the night; Lilith turned with an incredulous hiss. Simon lowered his wrist slowly, struggling to focus his eyes. He focused on the brightness in front of him, and it became the leaping flame of a seraph blade, held in Jace’s left hand. Simon could see him clearly now, a distinct image painted onto the darkness. His jacket was gone, he was filthy, his shirt torn and black with blood, but his eyes were clear and steady and focused. He no longer looked like a zombie or someone caught sleepwalking in a terrible dream.

“Where is she?” Lilith said, her snake eyes slithering forward on their stalks. “Where is the girl?”

Clary. Simon’s fogged gaze scanned the darkness around Jace, but she was nowhere to be seen. His vision was beginning to clear. He could see blood smearing the tiled ground, and bits of shredded, torn satin caught on the sharp branches of a hedge. What looked like paw prints smeared the blood. Simon felt his chest tighten. He looked quickly back at Jace. Jace looked angry—very angry indeed—but not shattered the way Simon would have expected him to look if something had happened to Clary. So where was she?

“She has nothing to do with this,” Jace said. “You say I can’t kill you, demoness. I say I can. Let’s see which of us is right.”

Lilith moved so fast, she was a blur. One moment she was beside Simon, the next she was on the step above Jace. She slashed out at him with her hand; he ducked, spinning behind her, whipping the seraph blade across her shoulder. She screamed, whirling on him, blood arcing from her wound. It was a shimmering black color, like onyx. She brought her hands together as if she meant to smash the blade between them. They struck each other with a sound like a thunderclap, but Jace was already gone, several feet away, the light of the seraph blade dancing in the air before him like the wink of a mocking eye.

If it had been any other Shadowhunter but Jace, Simon thought, he would have been dead already. He thought of Camille saying, Man cannot contend with the divine. Shadowhunters were human, despite their angel blood, and Lilith was more than a demon.

Pain shot through Simon. With surprise he realized his fangs had, finally, come out, and were cutting into his lower lip. The pain and the taste of blood roused him further. He began to rise to his feet, slowly, his eyes on Lilith. She certainly didn’t appear to notice him, or what he was doing. Her eyes were fixed on Jace. With another sudden snarl she leaped for him. It was like watching moths flashing to and fro, watching the two of them as they battled back and forth across the rooftop. Even Simon’s vampire vision had trouble keeping up as they moved, leaping over hedges, darting among the walkways. Lilith backed Jace up against the low wall that surrounded a sundial, the numbers on its face picked out in shining gold. Jace was moving so fast he was nearly a blur, the light of Michael whipping around Lilith as if she were being wrapped in a net of shining filaments. Anyone else would have been cut to ribbons in seconds. But Lilith moved like dark water, like smoke. She seemed to vanish and reappear at will, and though Jace was clearly not tiring, Simon could sense his frustration.

Finally it happened. Jace swung the seraph blade violently toward Lilith—and she caught it out of the air, her hand wrapping around the blade. Her hand was dripping black blood as she yanked the blade toward her. The drops, as they struck the ground, became tiny obsidian snakes that wiggled away into the underbrush.

Taking the blade in both hands, she raised it. Blood was running down her pale wrists and forearms like streaks of tar. With a snarling grin she snapped the blade in half; one half crumbled to a shining powder in her hands, while the other—the hilt and a jagged shard of blade—sputtered darkly, a flame half-smothered by ash.

Lilith smiled. “Poor little Michael,” she said. “He always was weak.”

Jace was panting, his hands clenched at his sides, his hair pasted to his forehead with sweat. “You and your name-dropping,” he said. “‘I knew Michael.’ ‘I knew Sammael.’ ‘The angel Gabriel did my hair.’ It’s like I’m with the Band with biblical figures.”

This was Jace being brave, Simon thought, brave and snarky because he thought Lilith was going to kill him, and that was the way he wanted to go, unafraid and on his feet. Like a warrior. The way Shadowhunters did. His death song would always be this—jokes and snideness and pretend arrogance, and that look in his eyes that said, I’m better than you. Simon just hadn’t realized it before.

“Lilith,” Jace went on, managing to make the word sound like a curse. “I studied you. In school. Heaven cursed you with barrenness. A thousand babies, and they all died. Isn’t that the case?”

Lilith held her darkly glowing blade, her face impassive. “Be careful, little Shadowhunter.”

“Or what? Or you’ll kill me?” Blood was dripping down Jace’s face from the cut on his cheek; he made no move to wipe it away. “Go ahead.”

No. Simon tried to take a step; his knees buckled, and he fell, slamming his hands into the ground. He took a deep breath. He didn’t need the oxygen, but it helped somehow, steadying him. He reached up and grabbed the edge of the stone pedestal, using it to pull himself upright. The back of his head was pounding. There was no way there would be enough time. All Lilith had to do was drive forward the jagged blade she held—

But she didn’t. Looking at Jace, she didn’t move, and suddenly his eyes flashed, his mouth relaxing. “You can’t kill me,” he said, his voice rising. “What you said before—I’m the counterweight. I’m the only thing tethering him”—he thrust out an arm, indicating Sebastian’s glass coffin—“to this world. If I die, he dies. Isn’t that true?” He took a step back. “I could jump off this roof right now,” he said. “Kill myself. End this.”

For the first time Lilith appeared truly agitated. Her head whipped from side to side, her serpent eyes quivering, as if they were searching the wind. “Where is she? Where’s the girl?”

Jace wiped blood and sweat from his face and grinned at her; his lip was already split, and blood ran down his chin. “Forget it. I sent her back downstairs while you weren’t paying attention. She’s gone—safe from you.”

Lilith snarled. “You lie.”

Jace took another step back. A few more steps would bring him to the low wall, the edge of the building. Jace could survive a lot, Simon knew, but a fall from a forty-story building might be too much even for him.

“You forget,” said Lilith. “I was there, Shadowhunter. I watched you fall and die. I watched Valentine weep over your body. And then I watched as the Angel asked Clarissa what she desired of him, what she wanted in the world more than she wanted anything else, and she said you. Thinking you could be the only people in the world who could have their dead loved one back, and that there would be no consequences. That is what you thought, isn’t it, both of you? Fools.” Lilith spat. “You love each other—anyone can see that, looking at you—that kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory. No, she would never leave your side. Not while she thought you were in danger.” Her head jerked back, her hand shooting out, fingers curved into claws. “There.”

There was a scream, and one of the hedges seemed to tear apart, revealing Clary, who had been crouched, hiding, in the middle of it. Kicking and clawing, she was dragged forward, her fingernails scraping the ground, seizing in vain for a purchase on something that she could grip. Her hands left bloody trails on the tiles.

“No!” Jace started forward, then froze as Clary was whipped up into the air, where she hovered, dangling in front of Lilith. She was barefoot, her satin dress—now so torn and filthy it looked red and black rather than gold—swirling around her, one of her shoulder straps torn and dangling. Her hair had come completely out of its sparkling combs and spilled down over her shoulders. Her green eyes fixed on Lilith with hatred.

“You bitch,” she said.

Jace’s face was a mask of horror. He really had believed it when he’d said Clary was gone, Simon realized. He’d thought she was safe. But Lilith had been right. And she was gloating now, her snake’s eyes dancing as she moved her hands like a puppeteer, and Clary spun and gasped in the air. Lilith flicked her fingers, and what looked like the lash of a silver whip came down across Clary’s body, slicing her dress open, and the skin under it. She screamed and clutched at the wound, and her blood pattered down on the tiles like scarlet rain.

“Clary.” Jace whirled on Lilith. “All right,” he said. He was pale now, his bravado gone; his hands, clenched into fists, were white at the knuckles. “All right. Let her go, and I’ll do what you want—so will Simon. We’ll let you—”

“Let me?” Somehow the features of Lilith’s face had rearranged themselves. Snakes wriggled in the sockets of her eyes, her white skin was too stretched and shining, her mouth too wide. Her nose had nearly vanished. “You have no choice. And more to the point, you have annoyed me. All of you. Perhaps if you had simply done as I’d ordered, I would have let you go. You will never know now, will you?”

Simon let go of the stone pedestal, swayed, and steadied himself. Then he began to walk. Putting his feet down, one after the other, felt like heaving enormous bags of packed wet sand down the side of a cliff. Each time his foot hit the ground, it sent a stab of pain through his body. He concentrated on moving forward, one step at a time.

“Maybe I can’t kill you,” Lilith said to Jace. “But I can torture her past the point of her endurance—torture her to madness—and make you watch. There are worse things than death, Shadowhunter.”

She flicked her fingers again, and the silver whip came down, slashing across Clary’s shoulder this time, opening up a wide gash. Clary buckled but didn’t scream, jamming her hands into her mouth, curling in on herself as if she could protect herself from Lilith.

Jace started forward to throw himself at Lilith—and saw Simon. Their gazes met. For a moment the world seemed to hang in suspension, all of it, not just Clary. Simon saw Lilith, all her attention focused on Clary, her hand drawn back, ready to deliver an even more vicious blow. Jace’s face was white with anguish, his eyes darkening as they met Simon’s—and he realized—and understood.

Jace stepped back.

The world blurred around Simon. As he leaped forward, he realized two things. One, that it was impossible, he would never reach Lilith in time; her hand was already whipping forward, the air in front of her alive with whirling silver. And two, that he had never understood before quite how fast a vampire could move. He felt the muscles in his legs, his back, tear, the bones in his feet and ankles crack—

And he was there, sliding between Lilith and Clary as the demoness’s hand came down. The long, razored silver wire struck him across the face and chest—there was a moment of shocking pain—and then the air seemed to burst apart around him like glittering confetti, and Simon heard Clary scream, a clear sound of shock and amazement that cut through the darkness. “Simon!”

Lilith froze. She stared from Simon, to Clary, still hanging in the air, and then down at her own hand, now empty. She drew in a long, ragged breath.

“Sevenfold,” she whispered—and was abruptly cut off as a blinding incandescence lit up the night. Dazed, all Simon could think of was ants burning under the concentrated beam from a magnifying glass as a great ray of fire plunged down from the sky, spearing through Lilith. For a long moment she burned white against the darkness, trapped within the blinding flame, her mouth open like a tunnel in a silent scream. Her hair lifted, a mass of burning filaments against the darkness—and then she was white gold, beaten thin against the air—and then she was salt, a thousand crystalline granules of salt that rained down at Simon’s feet with a dreadful sort of beauty.

And then she was gone.

19 HELL IS SATISFIED

The unimaginable brilliance printed on the back of Clary’s eyelids faded into darkness. A surprisingly long darkness that gave way slowly to an intermittent grayish light, blotched with shadows. There was something hard and cold pressing into her back, and her whole body hurt. She heard murmured voices above her, which sent a stab of pain through her head. Someone touched her gently on the throat, and the hand was withdrawn. She took a deep breath.

Her whole body was throbbing. She opened her eyes to slits, and looked around her, trying not to move very much. She was lying on the hard tiles of the rooftop garden, one of the paving stones digging into her back. She had fallen to the ground when Lilith vanished, and was covered in cuts and bruises, her shoes were gone, her knees were bleeding, and her dress was slashed where Lilith had cut her with the magical whip, blood welling through the rents in her silk dress.

Simon was kneeling over her, his face anxious. The Mark of Cain still gleamed whitely on his forehead. “Her pulse is steady,” he was saying, “but come on. You’re supposed to have all those healing runes. There must be something you can do for her—”

“Not without a stele. Lilith made me throw Clary’s away so she couldn’t grab it from me when she woke up.” The voice was Jace’s, low and tense with suppressed anguish. He knelt across from Simon, on her other side, his face in shadow. “Can you carry her downstairs? If we can get her to the Institute—”

“You want me to carry her?” Simon sounded surprised; Clary didn’t blame him.

“I doubt she’d want me touching her.” Jace stood up, as if he couldn’t bear to remain in one place. “If you could—”

His voice cracked, and he turned away, staring at the place where Lilith had stood until a moment ago, a bare patch of stone now silvered with scattered molecules of salt. Clary heard Simon sigh—a deliberate sound—and he bent over her, his hands on her arms.

She opened her eyes the rest of the way, and their gazes met. Though she knew he realized she was conscious, neither of them said anything. It was hard for her to look at him, at that familiar face with the mark she had given him blazing like a white star above his eyes.

She had known, giving him the Mark of Cain, that she was doing something enormous, something terrifying and colossal whose outcome was almost totally unpredictable. She would have done it again, to save his life. But still, while he’d been standing there, the Mark burning like white lightning as Lilith—a Greater Demon as old as mankind itself—charred away to salt, she had thought, What have I done?

“I’m all right,” she said. She lifted herself up onto her elbows; they hurt horribly. At some point she’d landed on them and scraped off all the skin. “I can walk just fine.”

At the sound of her voice, Jace turned. The sight of him tore at her. He was shockingly bruised and bloody, a long scratch running the length of his cheek, his lower lip swollen, and a dozen bleeding rents in his clothes. She wasn’t used to seeing him so damaged—but of course, if he didn’t have a stele to heal her, he didn’t have one to heal himself, either.

His expression was absolutely blank. Even Clary, used to reading his face as if she were reading the pages of a book, could read nothing in it. His gaze dropped to her throat, where she could still feel the stinging pain, the blood crusting there where his knife had cut her. The nothingness of his expression cracked, and he looked away before she could see his face change.

Waving away Simon’s offer of a helping hand, she tried to rise to her feet. A searing pain shot through her ankle, and she cried out, then bit her lip. Shadowhunters didn’t scream in pain. They bore it stoically, she reminded herself. No whimpering.

“It’s my ankle,” she said. “I think it might be sprained, or broken.”

Jace looked at Simon. “Carry her,” he said. “Like I told you.”

This time Simon didn’t wait for Clary’s response; he slid one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders and lifted her; she looped her arms around his neck and held on tight. Jace headed toward the cupola and the doors that led inside. Simon followed, carrying Clary as carefully as if she were breakable porcelain. Clary had almost forgotten how strong he was, now that he was a vampire. He no longer smelled like himself, she thought, a little wistfully—that Simon-smell of soap and cheap aftershave (that he really didn’t need) and his favorite cinnamon gum. His hair still smelled like his shampoo, but otherwise he seemed to have no smell at all, and his skin where she touched it was cold. She tightened her arms around his neck, wishing he had some body heat. The tips of her fingers looked bluish, and her body felt numb.

Jace, ahead of them, shouldered the glass double doors open. Then they were inside, where it was mercifully slightly warmer. It was strange, Clary thought, being held by someone whose chest didn’t rise and fall as they breathed. A strange electricity still seemed to cling to Simon, a remnant of the brutally shining light that had enveloped the roof when Lilith was destroyed. She wanted to ask him how he was feeling, but Jace’s silence was so devastatingly total that she felt afraid to break it.

He reached for the elevator call button, but before his finger touched it, the doors slid open of their own accord, and Isabelle seemed to almost explode through them, her silvery-gold whip trailing behind her like the tail of a comet. Alec followed, hard on her heels; seeing Jace, Clary, and Simon there, Isabelle skidded to a stop, Alec nearly crashing into her from behind. Under other circumstances it would almost have been funny.

“But—,” Isabelle gasped. She was cut and bloodied, her beautiful red dress torn raggedly around the knees, her black hair having come down out of its updo, strands of it matted with blood. Alec looked as if he had fared only a little better; one sleeve of his jacket was sliced open down the side, though it didn’t look as if the skin beneath had been injured. “What are you doing here?”

Jace, Clary, and Simon all stared at her blankly, too shell-shocked to respond. Finally Jace said dryly, “We could ask you the same question.”

“I didn’t—We thought you and Clary were at the party,” Isabelle said. Clary had rarely seen Isabelle so not self-possessed. “We were looking for Simon.”

Clary felt Simon’s chest lift, a sort of reflexive human gasp of surprise. “You were?”

Isabelle flushed. “I . . .”

“Jace?” It was Alec, his tone commanding. He had given Clary and Simon an astonished look, but then his attention went, as it always did, to Jace. He might not be in love with Jace anymore, if he ever really had been, but they were still parabatai, and Jace was always first on his mind in any battle. “What are you doing here? And for the Angel’s sake, what happened to you?”

Jace stared at Alec, almost as if he didn’t know him. He looked like someone in a nightmare, examining a new landscape not because it was surprising or dramatic but to prepare himself for whatever horrors it might reveal. “Stele,” he said finally, in a cracking voice. “Do you have your stele?”

Alec reached for his belt, looking baffled. “Of course.” He held the stele out to Jace. “If you need an iratze—”

“Not for me,” Jace said, still in the same odd, cracked voice. “Her.” He pointed at Clary. “She needs it more than I do.” His eyes met Alec’s, gold and blue. “Please, Alec,” he said, the harshness gone from his voice as suddenly as it had come. “Help her for me.”

He turned and walked away, toward the far side of the room, where the glass doors were. He stood, staring through them—at the garden outside or his own reflection, Clary couldn’t tell.

Alec looked after Jace for a moment, then came toward Clary and Simon, stele in hand. He indicated that Simon should lower Clary to the floor, which he did gently, letting her brace her back against the wall. He stepped back as Alec knelt down over her. She could see the confusion in Alec’s face, and his look of surprise as he saw how bad the cuts across her arm and abdomen were. “Who did this to you?”

“I—” Clary looked helplessly toward Jace, who still had his back to them. She could see his reflection in the glass doors, his face a white smudge, darkened here and there with bruises. The front of his shirt was dark with blood. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Why didn’t you summon us?” Isabelle demanded, her voice thin with betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming here? Why didn’t you send a fire-message, or anything? You know we would have come if you needed us.”

“There wasn’t time,” Simon said. “And I didn’t know Clary and Jace were going to be here. I thought I was the only one. It didn’t seem right to drag you into my problems.”

“D-drag me into your problems?” Isabelle sputtered. “You—,” she began—and then to everyone’s surprise, clearly including her own, she flung herself at Simon, wrapping her arms around his neck. He staggered backward, unprepared for the assault, but he recovered quickly enough. His arms went around her, nearly snagging on the dangling whip, and he held her tightly, her dark head just under his chin. Clary couldn’t quite tell—Isabelle was speaking too softly—but it sounded like she was swearing at Simon under her breath.

Alec’s eyebrows went up, but he made no comment as he bent over Clary, blocking her view of Isabelle and Simon. He touched the stele to her skin, and she jumped at the stinging pain. “I know it hurts,” he said in a low voice. “I think you hit your head. Magnus ought to look at you. What about Jace? How badly is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.” Clary shook her head. “He won’t let me near him.”

Alec put his hand under her chin, turning her face from side to side, and sketched a second light iratze on the side of her throat, just under her jawline. “What did he do that he thinks was so terrible?”

She flicked her eyes up toward him. “What makes you think he did anything?”

Alec let go of her chin. “Because I know him. And the way he punishes himself. Not letting you near him is punishing himself, not punishing you.”

“He doesn’t want me near him,” Clary said, hearing the rebelliousness in her own voice and hating herself for being petty.

“You’re all he ever wants,” said Alec in a surprisingly gentle tone, and he sat back on his heels, pushing his long dark hair out of his eyes. There was something different about him these days, Clary thought, a surety about himself he hadn’t had when she had first met him, something that allowed him to be generous with others as he had never been generous with himself before. “How did you two wind up here, anyway? We didn’t even notice you leave the party with Simon—”

“They didn’t,” said Simon. He and Isabelle had detached themselves, but still stood close to each other, side by side. “I came here alone. Well, not exactly alone. I was—summoned.”

Clary nodded. “It’s true. We didn’t leave the party with him. When Jace brought me here, I had no idea Simon was going to be here too.”

“Jace brought you here?” Isabelle said, amazed. “Jace, if you knew about Lilith and the Church of Talto, you should have said something.”

Jace was still staring through the doors. “I guess it slipped my mind,” he said tonelessly.

Clary shook her head as Alec and Isabelle looked from their adoptive brother to her, as if for an explanation of his behavior. “It wasn’t really Jace,” she said finally. “He was . . . being controlled. By Lilith.”

“Possession?” Isabelle’s eyes rounded into surprised Os. Her hand tightened on her whip handle reflexively.

Jace turned away from the doors. Slowly he reached up and drew open his mangled shirt so that they could see the ugly possession rune, and the bloody slash that ran through it. “That,” he said, still in the same toneless voice, “is Lilith’s mark. It’s how she controlled me.”

Alec shook his head; he looked deeply disturbed. “Jace, usually the only way to sever a demonic connection like that is to kill the demon who’s doing the controlling. Lilith is one of the most powerful demons who ever—”

“She’s dead,” said Clary abruptly. “Simon killed her. Or I guess you could say the Mark of Cain killed her.”

They all stared at Simon. “And what about you two? How did you end up here?” he asked, his tone defensive.

“Looking for you,” Isabelle said. “We found that card Lilith must have given you. In your apartment. Jordan let us in. He’s with Maia, downstairs.” She shuddered. “The things Lilith’s been doing—you wouldn’t believe—so horrible—”

Alec held his hands up. “Slow down, everyone. We’ll explain what happened with us, and then Simon, Clary, you explain what happened on your end.”

The explanation took less time than Clary thought it would, with Isabelle doing much of the talking with wide, sweeping hand gestures that threatened, on occasion, to sever one of her friends’ unprotected limbs with her whip. Alec took the opportunity to go out onto the roof deck to send a fire-message to the Clave telling them where they were and asking for backup. Jace stepped aside wordlessly to let him by as he left, and again when he came back in. He didn’t speak during Simon and Clary’s explanation of what had happened on the rooftop either, even when they got to the part about Raziel having raised Jace from the dead back in Idris. It was Izzy who finally interrupted, when Clary began to explain about Lilith being Sebastian’s “mother” and keeping his body encased in glass.

“Sebastian?” Isabelle slammed her whip against the ground with enough force to open up a crack in the marble. “Sebastian is out there? And he’s not dead?” She turned to look at Jace, who was leaning against the glass doors, arms crossed, expressionless. “I saw him die. I saw Jace cut his spine in half, and I saw him fall into the river. And now you’re telling me he’s alive out there?”

“No,” Simon hastened to reassure her. “His body’s there, but he’s not alive. Lilith didn’t get to complete the ceremony.” Simon put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. She had gone a deadly white color.

“‘Not really alive’ isn’t dead enough for me,” she said. “I’m going out there and I’m going to cut him into a thousand pieces.” She turned toward the doors.

“Iz!” Simon put his hand on her shoulder. “Izzy. No.”

“No?” She looked at him incredulously. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t chop him into worthless-bastard-themed confetti.”

Simon’s eyes darted around the room, resting for a moment on Jace, as if he expected him to chime in or add a comment. He didn’t; he didn’t even move. Finally Simon said, “Look, you understand about the ritual, right? Because Jace was brought back from the dead, that gave Lilith the power to raise Sebastian. And to do that, she needed Jace there and alive, as—what did she call it—”

“A counterweight,” put in Clary.

“That mark that Jace has on his chest. Lilith’s mark.” In a seemingly unconscious gesture, Simon touched his own chest, just over the heart. “Sebastian has it too. I saw them both flash at the same time when Jace stepped into the circle.”

Isabelle, her whip twitching at her side, her teeth biting into her red bottom lip, said impatiently, “And?”

“I think she was making a tie between them,” said Simon. “If Jace died, Sebastian couldn’t live. So if you cut Sebastian into pieces—”

“It could hurt Jace,” Clary said, the words spilling out of her as she realized. “Oh, my God. Oh, Izzy, you can’t.”

“So we’re just going to let him live?” Isabelle sounded incredulous.

“Cut him to pieces if you like,” Jace said. “You have my permission.”

“Shut up,” said Alec. “Stop acting like your life doesn’t matter. Iz, weren’t you listening? Sebastian’s not alive.”

“He’s not dead, either. Not dead enough.”

“We need the Clave,” said Alec. “We need to give him over to the Silent Brothers. They can sever his connection to Jace, and then you’ll get all the blood you want, Iz. He’s Valentine’s son. And he’s a murderer. Everyone lost someone in the battle in Alicante, or knows someone who did. You think they’ll be kind to him? They’ll take him apart slowly while he’s still living.”

Isabelle stared up at her brother. Very slowly tears welled in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks, streaking the dirt and blood on her skin. “I hate it,” she said. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Alec pulled his sister closer and kissed the top of her head. “I know you do.”

She squeezed her brother’s hand briefly, then drew back. “Fine,” she said. “I won’t touch Sebastian. But I can’t stand to be this close to him.” She glanced toward the glass doors, where Jace still stood. “Let’s go downstairs. We can wait for the Clave in the lobby. And we need to get Maia and Jordan; they’re probably wondering where we went.”

Simon cleared his throat. “Someone should stay up here just to keep an eye on—on things. I’ll do it.”

“No.” It was Jace. “You go downstairs. I’ll stay. All of this is my fault. I should have made sure Sebastian was dead when I had the chance. And as for the rest of it . . .”

His voice trailed off. But Clary remembered him touching her face in a dark hallway in the Institute, remembered him whispering, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

My fault, my fault, my own most grievous fault.

She turned to look at the others; Isabelle had pushed the call button, which was lit. Clary could hear the distant hum of the rising elevator. Isabelle’s brow creased. “Alec, maybe you should stay up here with Jace.”

“I don’t need help,” Jace said. “There’s nothing to handle. I’ll be fine.”

Isabelle threw her hands up as the elevator arrived with a ping. “Fine. You win. Sulk up here alone if you want.” She stalked into the elevator, Simon and Alec crowding in after her. Clary was the last to follow, turning back to look at Jace as she went. He had gone back to staring at the doors, but she could see his reflection in them. His mouth was compressed into a bloodless line, his eyes dark.

Jace, she thought as the elevator doors began to close. She willed him to turn, to look at her. He didn’t, but she felt strong hands suddenly on her shoulders, shoving her forward. She heard Isabelle say, “Alec, what on earth are you—” as she stumbled through the elevator doors and righted herself, turning to stare. The doors were closing behind her, but through them she could see Alec. He gave her a rueful little half smile and a shrug, as if to say, What else was I supposed to do? Clary stepped forward, but it was too late; the elevator doors had clanged shut.

She was alone in the room with Jace.

The room was littered with dead bodies—crumpled figures all in gray hooded tracksuits, flung or crumpled or slumped against the wall. Maia stood by the window, breathing hard, looking out across the scene in front of her with disbelief. She had taken part in the battle at Brocelind in Idris, and had thought that was the worst thing she would ever see. But somehow this was worse. The blood that ran from dead cult members wasn’t demon ichor; it was human blood. And the babies—silent and dead in their cribs, their small taloned hands folded one over the other, like dolls . . .

She looked down at her own hands. Her claws were still out, stained with blood from tip to root; she retracted them, and the blood ran down her palms, staining her wrists. Her feet were bare and bloodstained, and there was a long scratch along one bare shoulder still oozing red, though it had already begun to heal. Despite the swift healing lycanthropy provided, she knew she’d wake up tomorrow covered in bruises. When you were a werewolf, bruises rarely lasted more than a day. She remembered when she had been human, and her brother, Daniel, had made himself an expert in pinching her hard in places where the bruises wouldn’t show.

“Maia.” Jordan came in through one of the unfinished doors, ducking a bundle of dangling wires. He straightened up and moved toward her, picking his way among the bodies. “Are you all right?”

The look of concern on his face knotted her stomach.

“Where are Isabelle and Alec?”

He shook his head. He had sustained much less visible damage than she had. His thick leather jacket had protected him, as had his jeans and boots. There was a long scrape along his cheek, dried blood in his light brown hair and staining the blade of the knife he held. “I’ve searched the whole floor. Haven’t seen them. Couple more bodies in the other rooms. They might have—”

The night lit up like a seraph blade. The windows went white, and bright light seared through the room. For a moment Maia thought the world had caught on fire, and Jordan, moving toward her through the light, seemed almost to disappear, white on white, into a shimmering field of silver. She heard herself scream, and she moved blindly backward, banging her head on the plate glass window. She put her hands up to cover her eyes—

And the light was gone. Maia lowered her hands, the world swinging around her. She reached out blindly, and Jordan was there. She put her arms around him—threw them around him, the way she used to when he came to pick her up from her house, and he would swing her into his arms, winding the curls of her hair through his fingers.

He had been slighter then, narrow-shouldered. Now muscle corded his bones, and holding him was like holding on to something absolutely solid, a pillar of granite in the midst of a blowing desert sandstorm. She clung on to him, and heard the beat of his heart under her ear as his hands smoothed her hair, one rough, soothing stroke at a time, comforting and . . . familiar. “Maia . . . it’s all right . . .”

She raised her head and pressed her mouth to his. He had changed in so many ways, but the feel of kissing him was the same, his mouth as soft as ever. He went rigid for a second with surprise, and then gathered her up against him, his hands stroking slow circles on her bare back. She remembered the first time they had ever kissed. She had handed him her earrings to put in the glove compartment of his car, and his hand had shaken so badly he’d dropped them and then apologized and apologized until she kissed him to shut him up. She’d thought he was the sweetest boy she’d ever known.

And then he was bitten, and everything changed.

She drew away, dizzy and breathing hard. He let her go instantly; he was staring at her, his mouth open, his eyes dazed. Behind him, through the window, she could see the city—she had half expected it to be flattened, a blasted white desert outside the window—but everything was exactly the same. Nothing had changed. Lights blinked on and off in the buildings across the street; she could hear the faint rush of traffic below. “We should go,” she said. “We should look for the others.”

“Maia,” he said. “Why did you just kiss me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think we should try the elevators?”

“Maia—”

“I don’t know, Jordan,” she said. “I don’t know why I kissed you, and I don’t know if I’m going to do it again, but I do know I’m freaked out and worried about my friends and I want to get out of here. Okay?”

He nodded. He looked like there were a million things he wanted to say but had determined not to say them, for which she was grateful. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, rimed white with plaster dust, and nodded. “Okay.”

Silence. Jace was still leaning against the door, only now he had his forehead pressed against it, his eyes closed. Clary wondered if he even knew she was in the room with him. She took a step forward, but before she could say anything, he pushed the doors open and walked back out into the garden.

She stood still for a moment, staring after him. She could call for the elevator, of course, ride it down, wait for the Clave in the lobby with everyone else. If Jace didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to talk. She couldn’t force him to. If Alec was right, and he was punishing himself, she’d just have to wait until he got over it.

She turned toward the elevator—and stopped. A little flame of anger licked its way through her, making her eyes burn. No, she thought. She didn’t have to let him behave like this. Maybe he could be this way to everyone else, but not to her. He owed her better than that. They owed each other better than that.

She whirled and made her way to the doors. Her ankle still ached, but the iratzes Alec had put on her were working. Most of the pain in her body had subsided to a dull, throbbing ache. She reached the doors and pushed them open, stepping onto the roof terrace with a wince as her bare feet came into contact with the freezing tiles.

She saw Jace immediately; he was kneeling near the steps, on tiles stained with blood and ichor and glittering with salt. He rose as she approached, and he turned, something shiny dangling from his hand.

The Morgenstern ring, on its chain.

The wind had come up; it blew his dark gold hair across his face. He pushed it away impatiently and said, “I just remembered that we left this here.”

His voice sounded surprisingly normal.

“Is that why you wanted to stay up here?” said Clary. “To get it back?”

He turned his hand, so the chain swung upward, his fingers closing over the ring. “I’m attached to it. It’s stupid, I know.”

“You could have said, or Alec could have stayed—”

“I don’t belong with the rest of you,” he said abruptly. “After what I did, I don’t deserve iratzes and healing and hugs and being consoled and whatever else it is my friends are going to think I need. I’d rather stay up here with him.” He jerked his chin toward the place where Sebastian’s motionless body lay in the open coffin, on its stone pedestal. “And I sure as hell don’t deserve you.”

Clary crossed her arms over her chest. “Have you ever thought about what I deserve? That maybe I deserve to get a chance to talk to you about what happened?”

He stared at her. They were only a few feet apart, but it felt as if an inexpressible gulf lay between them. “I don’t know why you would even want to look at me, much less talk to me.”

“Jace,” she said. “Those things you did—that wasn’t you.”

He hesitated. The sky was so black, the lit windows of the nearby skyscrapers so bright, it was as if they stood in the center of a net of shining jewels. “If it wasn’t me,” he said, “then why can I remember everything I did? When people are possessed, and they come back from it, they don’t remember what they did when the demon inhabited them. But I remember everything.” He turned abruptly and walked away, toward the roof garden wall. She followed him, glad for the distance it put between them and Sebastian’s body, now hidden from view by a row of hedges.

“Jace!” she called out, and he turned, his back to the wall, slumping against it. Behind him a city’s worth of electricity lit up the night like the demon towers of Alicante. “You remember because she wanted you to remember,” Clary said, catching up with him, a little breathless. “She did this to torture you as much as she did it to get Simon to do what she wanted. She wanted you to have to watch yourself hurt the people you love.”

“I was watching,” he said in a low voice. “It was as if some part of me was off at a distance, watching and screaming at myself to stop. But the rest of me felt completely peaceful and like what I was doing was right. Like it was the only thing I could do. I wonder if that’s how Valentine felt about everything he did. Like it was so easy to be right.” He looked away from her. “I can’t stand it,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here with me. You should just go.”

Instead of leaving, Clary moved to stand beside him against the wall. Her arms were already wrapped around herself; she was shivering. Finally, reluctantly, he turned his head to look at her again. “Clary . . .”

“You don’t get to decide,” she said, “where I go, or when.”

“I know.” His voice was ragged. “I’ve always known that about you. I don’t know why I had to fall in love with someone who’s more stubborn than I am.”

Clary was silent a moment. Her heart had contracted at those two words—“in love.” “All those things you said to me,” she said in a half whisper, “on the terrace at the Ironworks—did you mean them?”

His golden eyes dulled. “Which things?”

That you loved me, she almost said, but thinking back—he hadn’t said that, had he? Not the words themselves. The implication had been there. And the truth of the fact, that they loved each other, was something she knew as clearly as she knew her own name.

“You kept asking me if I would love you if you were like Sebastian, like Valentine.”

“And you said then I wouldn’t be me. Look how wrong that turned out to be,” he said, bitterness coloring his voice. “What I did tonight—”

Clary moved toward him; he tensed, but didn’t move away. She took hold of the front of his shirt, leaned in closely, and said, enunciating each word clearly, “That wasn’t you.”

“Tell that to your mother,” he said. “Tell it to Luke, when they ask where this came from.” He touched her collarbone gently; the wound was healed now, but her skin, and the fabric of her dress, were still stained darkly with blood.

“I’ll tell them,” she said. “I’ll tell them it was my fault.”

He looked at her, gold eyes incredulous. “You can’t lie to them.”

“I’m not. I brought you back,” she said. “You were dead, and I brought you back. I upset the balance, not you. I opened the door for Lilith and her stupid ritual. I could have asked for anything, and I asked for you.” She tightened her grip on his shirt, her fingers white with cold and pressure. “And I would do it again. I love you, Jace Wayland—Herondale—Lightwood—whatever you want to call yourself. I don’t care. I love you and I will always love you, and pretending it could be any other way is just a waste of time.”

A look of such pain crossed his face that Clary felt her heart tighten. Then he reached out and took her face between his hands. His palms were warm against her cheeks.

“Remember when I told you,” he said, his voice as soft as she had ever heard it, “that I didn’t know if there was a God or not, but either way, we were completely on our own? I still don’t know the answer; I only knew that there was such a thing as faith, and that I didn’t deserve to have it. And then there was you. You changed everything I believed in. You know that line from Dante that I quoted to you in the park? ‘L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle’?”

Her lips curled a little at the sides as she looked up at him. “I still don’t speak Italian.”

“It’s a bit of the very last verse from Paradiso—Dante’s Paradise. ‘My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ Dante was trying to explain faith, I think, as an overpowering love, and maybe it’s blasphemous, but that’s how I think of the way that I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to—that I loved you, and you loved me.”

Though he seemed to be looking at her, his gaze was distant, as if fixed on something far away.

“Then I started to have the dreams,” he went on. “And I thought maybe I’d been wrong. That I didn’t deserve you. That I didn’t deserve to be perfectly happy—I mean, God, who deserves that? And after tonight—”

“Stop.” She had been clutching his shirt; she loosened her grip now, flattening her hands against his chest. His heart was racing under her fingertips; his cheeks flushed, and not just from the cold. “Jace. Through everything that happened tonight, I knew one thing. That it wasn’t you hurting me. It wasn’t you doing these things. I have an absolute incontrovertible belief that you are good. And that will never change.”

Jace took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t even know how to try to deserve that.”

“You don’t have to. I have enough faith in you,” she said, “for both of us.”

His hands slid into her hair. The mist of their exhaled breath rose between them, a white cloud. “I missed you so much,” he said, and kissed her, his mouth gentle on hers, not desperate and hungry the way it had been the last few times he had kissed her, but familiar and tender and soft.

She closed her eyes as the world seemed to spin around her like a pinwheel. Sliding her hands up his chest, she stretched upward as far as she could, wrapping her arms around his neck, rising up on her toes to meet his mouth with hers. His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn’t matter; the world, the city, and all its lights and life seemed to have narrowed down to this, just her and Jace, the burning heart of a frozen world.

He drew away first, reluctantly. She realized why a moment later. The sound of honking cars and screeching tires from the street below was audible, even up here. “The Clave,” he said resignedly—though he had to clear his throat to get the words out, Clary was pleased to hear. His face was flushed, as she imagined hers was. “They’re here.”

With her hand in his Clary looked over the edge of the roof wall and saw that a number of long black cars had drawn up in front of the scaffolding. People were piling out. It was hard to recognize them from this height, but Clary thought she saw Maryse, and several other people dressed in gear. A moment later Luke’s truck roared up to the curb and Jocelyn leaped out. Clary would have known it was her, just from the way she moved, at a greater distance than this one.

Clary turned to Jace. “My mom,” she said. “I’d better get downstairs. I don’t want her coming up here and seeing—and seeing him.” She jerked her chin toward Sebastian’s coffin.

He stroked her hair back from her face. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

“Then, come with me.”

“No. Someone should stay up here.” He took her hand, turned it over, and dropped the Morgenstern ring into it, the chain pooling like liquid metal. The clasp had bent when she’d torn it off, but he’d managed to push it back into shape. “Please take it.”

Her eyes flicked down, and then, uncertainly, back up to his face. “I wish I understood what it meant to you.”

He shrugged slightly. “I wore it for a decade,” he said. “Some part of me is in it. It means I trust you with my past and all the secrets that past carries. And besides”—lightly he touched one of the stars engraved around the rim—“‘the love that moves the sun and all the other stars.’ Pretend that that’s what the stars stand for, not Morgenstern.”

In answer she dropped the chain back over her head, feeling the ring settle in its accustomed place, below her collarbone. It felt like a puzzle piece clicking back into place. For a moment their eyes locked in wordless communication, more intense in some ways than their physical contact had been; she held the image of him in her mind in that moment as if she were memorizing it—the tangled golden hair, the shadows cast by his lashes, the rings of darker gold inside the light amber of his eyes. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She squeezed his hand. “Five minutes.”

“Go on,” he said roughly, releasing her hand, and she turned and went back down the path. The moment she stepped away from him, she was cold again, and by the time she reached the doors to the building, she was freezing. She paused as she opened the door, and looked back at him, but he was only a shadow, backlit by the glow of the New York skyline. The love that moves the sun and all the other stars, she thought, and then, as if in answering echo, she heard Lilith’s words. The kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory. A shiver ran through her, and not just from the cold. She looked for Jace, but he had vanished into the shadows; she turned and headed back inside, the door sliding shut behind her.

Alec had gone upstairs to look for Jordan and Maia, and Simon and Isabelle were alone together, sitting side by side on the green chaise longue in the lobby. Isabelle held Alec’s witchlight in her hand, illuminating the room with a nearly spectral glow, sparking dancing motes of fire from the pendant chandelier.

She had said very little since her brother had left them together. Her head was bent, her dark hair falling forward, her gaze on her hands. They were delicate hands, long-fingered, but calloused as her brothers’ were. Simon had never noticed before, but she wore a silver ring on her right hand, with a pattern of flames around the band of it, and a carved L in the center. It reminded him of the ring Clary wore around her neck, with its design of stars.

“It’s the Lightwood family ring,” she said, noticing where his gaze was fixed. “Every family has an emblem. Ours is fire.”

It suits you, he thought. Izzy was like fire, in her flaming scarlet dress, with her moods as changeable as sparks. On the roof he’d half-thought she’d strangle him, her arms around his neck as she called him every name under the sun while clutching him like she’d never let him go. Now she was staring off into the distance, as untouchable as a star. It was all very disconcerting.

You love them so, Camille had said, your Shadowhunter friends. As the falcon loves the master who binds and blinds it.

“What you told us,” he said, a little halting, watching Isabelle wind a strand of her hair around her forefinger, “up there on the roof—that you hadn’t known that Clary and Jace were missing, that you’d come here for me—was that true?”

Isabelle looked up, tucking the strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course it’s true,” she said indignantly. “When we saw you were gone from the party—and you’ve been in danger for days, Simon, and what with Camille escaping—” She caught herself up short. “And Jordan’s responsible for you. He was freaking out.”

“So it was his idea to come looking for me?”

Isabelle turned to look at him for a long moment. Her eyes were fathomless and dark. “I was the one who noticed you were gone,” she said. “I was the one who wanted to find you.”

Simon cleared his throat. He felt oddly light-headed. “But why? I thought you hated me now.”

It had been the wrong thing to say. Isabelle shook her head, her dark hair flying, and moved a little away from him on the settee. “Oh, Simon. Don’t be dense.”

“Iz.” He reached out and touched her wrist, hesitantly. She didn’t move away, just watched him. “Camille said something to me in the Sanctuary. She said that Shadowhunters didn’t care about Downworlders, just used them. She said the Nephilim would never do for me what I did for them. But you did. You came for me. You came for me.”

“Of course I did,” she said, in a muffled little voice. “When I thought something had happened to you—”

He leaned toward her. Their faces were inches from each other. He could see the reflected sparks of the chandelier in her black eyes. Her lips were parted, and Simon could feel the warmth of her breath. For the first time since he had become a vampire, he could feel heat, like an electrical charge passing between them. “Isabelle,” he said. Not Iz, not Izzy. Isabelle. “Can I—”

The elevator pinged; the doors opened, and Alec, Maia, and Jordan spilled out. Alec looked suspiciously at Simon and Isabelle as they sprang apart, but before he could say anything, the double doors of the lobby flew wide, and Shadowhunters poured into the room. Simon recognized Kadir and Maryse, who immediately flew across the room to Isabelle and caught her by the shoulders, demanding to know what had happened.

Simon got to his feet and edged away, feeling uncomfortable—and was nearly knocked down by Magnus, racing across the room to get to Alec. He didn’t seem to see Simon at all. After all, in a hundred, two hundred, years, it’ll be just you and me. We’ll be all that’s left, Magnus had said to him in the Sanctuary. Feeling unutterably lonely among the milling crowd of Shadowhunters, Simon pressed himself back against the wall in the vain hope that he wouldn’t be noticed.

Alec looked up just as Magnus reached him, caught him, and pulled him close. His fingers traced over Alec’s face as if checking for bruises or damage; under his breath, he was muttering, “How could you—go off like this and not even tell me—I could have helped you—”

“Stop it.” Alec pulled away, feeling mutinous.

Magnus checked himself, his voice sobering. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left the party. I should have stayed with you. Camille’s gone anyway. No one’s got the slightest idea where she went, and since you can’t track vampires . . .” He shrugged.

Alec pushed away the image of Camille in his mind, chained to the pipe, looking at him with those fierce green eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “She doesn’t matter. I know you were just trying to help. I’m not angry with you for leaving the party, anyway.”

“But you were angry,” said Magnus. “I knew you were. That’s why I was so worried. Running off and putting yourself in danger just because you’re angry with me—”

“I’m a Shadowhunter,” Alec said. “Magnus, this is what I do. It’s not about you. Next time fall in love with an insurance adjuster or—”

“Alexander,” said Magnus. “There isn’t going to be a next time.” He leaned his forehead against Alec’s, gold-green eyes staring into blue.

Alec’s heartbeat sped up. “Why not?” he said. “You live forever. Not everyone does.”

“I know I said that,” said Magnus. “But, Alexander—”

“Stop calling me that,” said Alec. “Alexander is what my parents call me. And I suppose it’s very advanced of you to have accepted my mortality so fatalistically—everything dies, blah, blah—but how do you think that makes me feel? Ordinary couples can hope—hope to grow old together, hope to live long lives and die at the same time, but we can’t hope for that. I don’t even know what it is you want.”

Alec wasn’t sure what he’d expected in response—anger or defensiveness or even humor—but Magnus’s voice only dropped, cracking slightly when he said, “Alex—Alec. If I gave you the impression I had accepted the idea of your death I can only apologize. I tried to, I thought I had—and yet still I pictured having you for fifty, sixty more years. I thought I might be ready then to let you go. But it’s you, and I realize now that I won’t be any more ready to lose you then than I am right now.” He put his hands gently to either side of Alec’s face. “Which is not at all.”

“So what do we do?” Alec whispered.

Magnus shrugged, and smiled suddenly; with his messy black hair and the gleam in his gold-green eyes, he looked like a mischievous teenager. “What everyone does,” he replied. “Like you said. Hope.”

Alec and Magnus had begun kissing in the corner of the room, and Simon wasn’t quite sure where to look. He didn’t want them to think he was staring at them during what was clearly a private moment, but wherever else he looked, he met the glaring eyes of Shadowhunters. Despite the fact that he’d fought with them in the bank against Camille, none of them looked at him with particular friendliness. It was one thing for Isabelle to accept him and to care about him, but Shadowhunters en masse were another thing entirely. He could tell what they were thinking. “Vampire, Downworlder, enemy” was written all over their faces. It came as a relief when the doors burst open again and Jocelyn came flying in, still wearing her blue dress from the party. Luke was only a few steps behind her.

“Simon!” she cried as soon as she caught sight of him. She ran over to him, and to his surprise she hugged him fiercely before letting him go. “Simon, where’s Clary? Is she—”

Simon opened his mouth, but no sound came out. How could he explain to Jocelyn, of all people, what had happened that night? Jocelyn, who would be horrified to know that so much of Lilith’s evil, the children she had murdered, the blood she had spilled, had all been in the service of making more creatures like Jocelyn’s own dead son, whose body even now lay entombed on the rooftop where Clary was with Jace?

I can’t tell her any of this, he thought. I can’t. He looked past her at Luke, whose blue eyes rested on him expectantly. Behind Clary’s family he could see the Shadowhunters crowding around Isabelle as she presumably recounted the events of the evening.

“I—,” he began helplessly, and then the elevator doors opened again, and Clary stepped out. Her shoes were gone, her lovely satin dress in bloody rags, bruises already fading on her bare arms and legs. But she was smiling—radiant even, happier than Simon had seen her look in weeks.

“Mom!” she exclaimed, and then Jocelyn had flown at her and was hugging her. Clary smiled at Simon over her mother’s shoulder. Simon glanced around the room. Alec and Magnus were still wrapped up in each other, and Maia and Jordan had vanished. Isabelle was still surrounded by Shadowhunters, and Simon could hear gasps of horror and amazement rise from the group surrounding her as she recounted her story. He suspected some part of her was enjoying it. Isabelle did love being the center of attention, no matter what the cause.

He felt a hand come down on his shoulder. It was Luke. “Are you all right, Simon?”

Simon looked up at him. Luke looked as he always did: solid, professorial, utterly reliable. Not even the least bit put out that his engagement party had been disrupted by a sudden dramatic emergency.

Simon’s father had died so long ago that he barely remembered him. Rebecca recalled bits about him—that he had a beard, and would help her build elaborate towers out of blocks—but Simon didn’t. It was one of the things he’d thought he always had in common with Clary, that had bonded them: both with dead fathers, both brought up by strong single women.

Well, at least one of those things had turned out to be true, Simon thought. Though his mother had dated, he’d never had a consistent fatherly presence in his life, other than Luke. He supposed that in a way, he and Clary had shared Luke. And the wolf pack looked up to Luke for guidance, as well. For a bachelor who’d never had children, Simon thought, Luke had an awful lot of kids to look after.

“I don’t know,” Simon said, giving Luke the honest answer he’d like to think he’d have given his own father. “I don’t think so.”

Luke turned Simon to face him. “You’re covered in blood,” he said. “And I’m guessing it’s not yours, because . . .” He gestured toward the Mark on Simon’s forehead. “But hey.” His voice was gentle. “Even covered in blood and with the Mark of Cain on you, you’re still Simon. Can you tell me what happened?”

“It’s not my blood, you’re right,” Simon said hoarsely. “But it’s also kind of a long story.” He tilted his head back to look up at Luke; he’d always wondered if maybe he’d have another growth spurt some day, grow a few more inches than the five-ten he was now, be able to look Luke—not to mention Jace—straight in the eye. But that would never happen now. “Luke,” he said. “Do you think it’s possible to do something so bad, even if you didn’t mean to do it, that you can never come back from it? That no one can forgive you?”

Luke looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he said, “Think of someone you love, Simon. Really love. Is there anything they could ever do that would mean you would stop loving them?”

Images flashed through Simon’s mind, like the pages of a flip-book: Clary, turning to smile at him over her shoulder; his sister, tickling him when he was just a little kid; his mother, asleep on the sofa with the coverlet pulled up to her shoulders; Izzy—

He shut the thoughts off hastily. Clary hadn’t done anything so terrible that he needed to dredge up forgiveness for her; none of the people he was picturing had. He thought of Clary, forgiving her mother for having stolen her memories. He thought of Jace, what he had done on the roof, how he had looked afterward. He had done what he had done without volition of his own, but Simon doubted Jace would be able to forgive himself, regardless. And then he thought of Jordan—not forgiving himself for what he had done to Maia, but forging ahead anyway, joining the Praetor Lupus, making a life out of helping others.

“I bit someone,” he said. The words came out of his mouth, and he wished he could swallow them back. He braced himself for Luke’s look of horror, but it didn’t come.

“Did they live?” Luke said. “This person that you bit. Did they survive?”

“I—” How to explain about Maureen? Lilith had ordered her away, but Simon was sure they hadn’t seen the last of her. “I didn’t kill her.”

Luke nodded once. “You know how werewolves become pack leaders,” he said. “They have to kill the old pack leader. I’ve done that twice. I have the scars to prove it.” He drew the collar of his shirt aside slightly, and Simon saw the edge of a thick white scar that looked ragged, as if his chest had been clawed. “The second time it was a calculated move. Cold-blooded killing. I wanted to become the leader, and that was how I did it.” He shrugged. “You’re a vampire. It’s in your nature to want to drink blood. You’ve held out a long time without doing it. I know you can walk in the sun, Simon, and so you pride yourself on being a normal human boy, but you’re still what you are. Just like I am. The more you try to crush your true nature, the more it will control you. Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.”

Simon said hoarsely, “My mom—”

“Clary told me what happened with your mother, and that you’ve been crashing with Jordan Kyle,” said Luke. “Look, your mother will come around, Simon. Like Amatis did, with me. You’re still her son. I’ll talk to her, if you want me to.”

Simon shook his head silently. His mother had always liked Luke. Dealing with the fact that Luke was a werewolf would probably make things worse, not better.

Luke nodded as if he understood. “If you don’t want to go back to Jordan’s, you’re more than welcome to stay on my sofa tonight. I’m sure Clary would be glad to have you around, and we can talk about what to do about your mother tomorrow.”

Simon squared his shoulders. He looked at Isabelle across the room, the gleam of her whip, the shine of the pendant at her throat, the flutter of her hands as she talked. Isabelle, who wasn’t afraid of anything. He thought of his mother, the way she had backed away from him, the fear in her eyes. He’d been hiding from the memory, running from it, ever since. But it was time to stop running. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but I think I don’t need a place to crash tonight. I think . . . that I’m going to go home.”

Jace stood alone on the roof, looking out over the city, the East River a silvery-black snake twining between Brooklyn and Manhattan. His hands, his lips, still felt warm from Clary’s touch, but the wind off the river was icy, and the warmth was fading fast. Without a jacket the air cut through the thin material of his shirt like the blade of a knife.

He took a deep breath, sucking the cold air into his lungs, and let it out slowly. His whole body felt tense. He was waiting for the sound of the elevator, the doors opening, the Shadowhunters flooding out into the garden. They would be sympathetic at first, he thought, worried about him. Then, as they understood what had happened—then would come the shrinking away, the meaningful looks exchanged when they thought he wasn’t watching. He had been possessed—not just by a demon, but by a Greater Demon—had acted against the Clave, had threatened and hurt another Shadowhunter.

He thought about how Jocelyn would look at him when she heard what he’d done to Clary. Luke might understand, forgive. But Jocelyn. He had never been able to bring himself to speak to her honestly, to say the words he thought might reassure her. I love your daughter, more than I ever thought it was possible to love anything. I would never hurt her.

She would just look at him, he thought, with those green eyes that were so like Clary’s. She would want more than that. She would want to hear him say what he wasn’t sure was true.

I am nothing like Valentine.

Aren’t you? The words seemed carried on the cold air, a whisper meant only for his ears. You never knew your mother. You never knew your father. You gave your heart to Valentine when you were a child, as children do, and made yourself a part of him. You cannot cut that away from yourself now with one clean slice of a blade.

His left hand was cold. He looked down and saw, to his shock, that somehow he had picked up the dagger—his real father’s etched silver dagger—and was holding it in his hand. The blade, though eaten away by Lilith’s blood, was whole again, and shining like a promise. A cold that had nothing to do with the weather began to spread through his chest. How many times had he woken up like this, gasping and sweating, the dagger in his hand? And Clary, always Clary, dead at his feet.

But Lilith was dead. It was over. He tried to slide the dagger into his belt, but his hand didn’t seem to want to obey the command his mind was giving it. He felt a sense of stinging heat across his chest, a searing pain. Looking down, he saw that the bloody line that had split Lilith’s mark in half, where Clary had slashed him with the dagger, had healed. The mark gleamed redly against his chest.

Jace stopped trying to shove the dagger into his belt. His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the hilt, his wrist twisting, desperately trying to turn the blade on himself. His heart was pounding. He had accepted no iratzes. How had the mark healed so fast? If he could gash it again, disfigure it, even temporarily—

But his hand wouldn’t obey him. His arm stayed stiffly at his side as his body turned, against his own will, toward the pedestal where Sebastian’s body lay.

The coffin had begun to glow, with a cloudy greenish light—almost a witchlight glow, but there was something painful about this light, something that seemed to pierce the eye. Jace tried to take a step back, but his legs wouldn’t move. Icy sweat trickled down his back. A voice whispered at the back of his mind.

Come here.

It was Sebastian’s voice.

Did you think you were free because Lilith is gone? The vampire’s bite woke me; now her blood in my veins compels you.

Come here.

Jace tried to dig in his heels, but his body betrayed him, carrying him forward, though his conscious mind strained against it. Even as he tried to hang back, his feet moved him down the path, toward the coffin. The painted circle flashed green as he moved across it, and the coffin seemed to answer with a second flash of emerald light. And then he was standing over it, looking down.

Jace bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain might shock him out of the dream state he was in. It didn’t work. He tasted his own blood as he stared down at Sebastian, who floated like a drowned corpse in the water. Those are pearls that were his eyes. His hair was colorless seaweed, his closed eyelids blue. His mouth had the cold, hard set of his father’s mouth. It was like looking at a young Valentine.

Without his volition, absolutely against his will, Jace’s hands began to rise. His left hand laid the edge of the dagger against the inside of his right palm, where life and love lines crisscrossed each other.

Words spilled from his own lips. He heard them as if from an immense distance. They were in no language he knew or understood, but he knew what they were—ritual chanting. His mind was screaming at his body to stop, but it appeared to make no difference. He left hand came down, the knife clenched in it. The blade sliced a clean, sure, shallow cut across his right palm. Almost instantly it began to bleed. He tried to draw back, tried to pull his arm away, but it was as if he were encased in cement. As he watched in horror, the first blood drops splashed onto Sebastian’s face.

Sebastian’s eyes flew open. They were black, blacker than Valentine’s, as black as the demon’s who had called herself his mother. They fixed on Jace, like great dark mirrors, giving him back his own face, twisted and unrecognizable, his mouth shaping the words of the ritual, spilling forth in a meaningless babble like a river of black water.

The blood was flowing more freely now, turning the cloudy liquid inside the coffin a darker red. Sebastian moved. The bloody water shifted and spilled as he sat up, his black eyes fixed on Jace.

The second part of the ritual. His voice spoke inside Jace’s head. It is almost complete.

Water ran off him like tears. His pale hair, pasted to his forehead, seemed to have no color at all. He raised one hand and held it out, and Jace, against the cry inside his own mind, held out the dagger, blade forward. Sebastian slid his hand along the length of the cold, sharp blade. Blood sprang up in a line across his palm. He knocked the dagger aside and took Jace’s hand, gripping it with his own.

It was the last thing Jace had expected. He couldn’t move to pull away. He felt each of Sebastian’s cold fingers as they wrapped his hand, pressing their bleeding cuts together. It was like being gripped by cold metal. Ice began to spread up his veins from his hand. A shudder passed over him, and then another, powerful physical tremors so painful it felt as if his body were being turned inside out. He tried to scream—

And the cry died in his throat. He looked down at his and Sebastian’s hands, clenched together. Blood ran through their fingers and down their wrists, as elegant as red lacework. It glittered in the cold electric light of the city. It moved not like liquid, but like moving red wires. It wrapped their hands together in a scarlet binding.

A peculiar sense of peace stole over Jace. The world seemed to fall away, and he was standing on the peak of a mountain, the world spread out before him, everything in it his for the taking. The lights of the city around him were no longer electric, but were the light of a thousand diamond-like stars. They seemed to shine down on him with a benevolent glow that said, This is good. This is right. This is what your father would have wanted.

He saw Clary in his mind’s eye, her pale face, the fall of her red hair, her mouth as it moved, shaping the words I’ll be right back. Five minutes.

And then her voice faded as another spoke over it, drowning it out. The image of her in his mind receded, vanishing imploringly into the darkness, as Eurydice had vanished when Orpheus had turned to look at her one last time. Her saw her, her white arms held out to him, and then the shadows closed over her and she was gone.

A new voice spoke in Jace’s head now, a familiar voice, once hated, now oddly welcome. Sebastian’s voice. It seemed to run through his blood, through the blood that passed through Sebastian’s hand into his, like a fiery chain.

We are one now, little brother, you and I, Sebastian said.

We are one.