City of Glass

1 THE PORTAL

The cold snap of the previous week was over; the sun was shining brightly as Clary hurried across Luke’s dusty front yard, the hood of her jacket up to keep her hair from blowing across her face. The weather might have warmed up, but the wind off the East River could still be brutal. It carried with it a faint chemical smell, mixed with the Brooklyn smell of asphalt, gasoline, and burned sugar from the abandoned factory down the street.

Simon was waiting for her on the front porch, sprawled in a broken-springed armchair. He had his DS balanced on his blue-jeaned knees and was poking away at it industriously with the stylus. “Score,” he said as she came up the steps. “I’m kicking butt at Mario Kart.”

Clary pushed her hood back, shaking hair out of her eyes, and rummaged in her pocket for her keys. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all morning.”

Simon got to his feet, shoving the blinking rectangle into his messenger bag. “I was at Eric’s. Band practice.”

Clary stopped jiggling the key in the lock—it always stuck—long enough to frown at him. “Band practice? You mean you’re still—”

“In the band? Why wouldn’t I be?” He reached around her. “Here, let me do it.”

Clary stood still while Simon expertly twisted the key with just the right amount of pressure, making the stubborn old lock spring open. His hand brushed hers; his skin was cool, the temperature of the air outside. She shivered a little. They’d only called off their attempt at a romantic relationship last week, and she still felt confused whenever she saw him.

“Thanks.” She took the key back without looking at him.

It was hot in the living room. Clary hung her jacket up on the peg inside the front hall and headed to the spare bedroom, Simon trailing in her wake. She frowned. Her suitcase was open like a clamshell on the bed, her clothes and sketchbooks strewn everywhere.

“I thought you were just going to be in Idris a couple of days,” Simon said, taking in the mess with a look of faint dismay.

“I am, but I can’t figure out what to pack. I hardly own any dresses or skirts, but what if I can’t wear pants there?”

“Why wouldn’t you be able to wear pants there? It’s another country, not another century.”

“But the Shadowhunters are so old-fashioned, and Isabelle always wears dresses—” Clary broke off and sighed. “It’s nothing. I’m just projecting all my anxiety about my mom onto my wardrobe. Let’s talk about something else. How was practice? Still no band name?”

“It was fine.” Simon hopped onto the desk, legs dangling over the side. “We’re considering a new motto. Something ironic, like ‘We’ve seen a million faces and rocked about eighty percent of them.’”

“Have you told Eric and the rest of them that—”

“That I’m a vampire? No. It isn’t the sort of thing you just drop into casual conversation.”

“Maybe not, but they’re your friends. They should know. And besides, they’ll just think it makes you more of a rock god, like that vampire Lester.”

“Lestat,” Simon said. “That would be the vampire Lestat. And he’s fictional. Anyway, I don’t see you running to tell all your friends that you’re a Shadowhunter.”

“What friends? You’re my friend.” She threw herself down onto the bed and looked up at Simon. “And I told you, didn’t I?”

“Because you had no choice.” Simon put his head to the side, studying her; the bedside light reflected off his eyes, turning them silver. “I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Clary said, although her skin was prickling all over with a nervous anticipation that made it hard to concentrate. I’m going to Idris! her mind sang. I’ll see the Shadowhunter home country, the City of Glass. I’ll save my mother.

And I’ll be with Jace.

Simon’s eyes flashed as if he could hear her thoughts, but his voice was soft. “Tell me again—why do you have to go to Idris? Why can’t Madeleine and Luke take care of this without you?”

“My mom got the spell that put her in this state from a warlock—Ragnor Fell. Madeleine says we need to track him down if we want to know how to reverse the spell. But he doesn’t know Madeleine. He knew my mom, and Madeleine thinks he’ll trust me because I look so much like her. And Luke can’t come with me. He could come to Idris, but apparently he can’t get into Alicante without permission from the Clave, and they won’t give it. And don’t say anything about it to him, please—he’s really not happy about not going with me. If he hadn’t known Madeleine before, I don’t think he’d let me go at all.”

“But the Lightwoods will be there too. And Jace. They’ll be helping you. I mean, Jace did say he’d help you, didn’t he? He doesn’t mind you coming along?”

“Sure, he’ll help me,” Clary said. “And of course he doesn’t mind. He’s fine with it.”

But that, she knew, was a lie.

Clary had gone straight to the Insititute after she’d talked to Madeleine at the hospital. Jace had been the first one she’d told her mother’s secret to, before even Luke. And he’d stood there and stared at her, getting paler and paler as she spoke, as if she weren’t so much telling him how she could save her mother as draining the blood out of him with cruel slowness.

“You’re not going,” he said as soon as she’d finished. “If I have to tie you up and sit on you until this insane whim of yours passes, you are not going to Idris.”

Clary felt as if he’d slapped her. She had thought he’d be pleased. She’d run all the way from the hospital to the Institute to tell him, and here he was standing in the entryway glaring at her with a look of grim death. “But you’re going.”

“Yes, we’re going. We have to go. The Clave’s called every active Clave member who can be spared back to Idris for a massive Council meeting. They’re going to vote on what to do about Valentine, and since we’re the last people who’ve seen him—”

Clary brushed this aside. “So if you’re going, why can’t I go with you?”

The straightforwardness of the question seemed to make him even angrier. “Because it isn’t safe for you there.”

“Oh, and it’s so safe here? I’ve nearly been killed a dozen times in the past month, and every time it’s been right here in New York.”

“That’s because Valentine’s been concentrating on the two Mortal Instruments that were here.” Jace spoke through gritted teeth. “He’s going to shift his focus to Idris now, we all know it—”

“We’re hardly as certain of anything as all that,” said Maryse Lightwood. She had been standing in the shadow of the corridor doorway, unseen by either of them; she moved forward now, into the harsh entryway lights. They illuminated the lines of exhaustion that seemed to draw her face down. Her husband, Robert Lightwood, had been injured by demon poison during the battle last week and had needed constant nursing since; Clary could only imagine how tired she must be. “And the Clave wants to meet Clarissa. You know that, Jace.”

“The Clave can screw itself.”

“Jace,” Maryse said, sounding genuinely parental for a change. “Language.”

“The Clave wants a lot of things,” Jace amended. “It shouldn’t necessarily get them all.”

Maryse shot him a look, as if she knew exactly what he was talking about and didn’t appreciate it. “The Clave is often right, Jace. It’s not unreasonable for them to want to talk to Clary, after what she’s been through. What she could tell them—”

“I’ll tell them whatever they want to know,” Jace said.

Maryse sighed and turned her blue eyes on Clary. “So you want to go to Idris, I take it?”

“Just for a few days. I won’t be any trouble,” Clary said, gazing entreatingly past Jace’s white-hot glare at Maryse. “I swear.”

“The question isn’t whether you’ll be any trouble; the question is whether you’ll be willing to meet with the Clave while you’re there. They want to talk to you. If you say no, I doubt we can get the authorization to bring you with us.”

“No—,” Jace began.

“I’ll meet with the Clave,” Clary interrupted, though the thought sent a ripple of cold down her spine. The only emissary of the Clave she’d known so far was the Inquisitor, who hadn’t exactly been pleasant to be around.

Maryse rubbed at her temples with her fingertips. “Then it’s settled.” She didn’t sound settled, though; she sounded as tense and fragile as an overtightened violin string. “Jace, show Clary out and then come see me in the library. I need to talk to you.”

She disappeared back into the shadows without even a word of farewell. Clary stared after her, feeling as if she’d just been drenched with ice water. Alec and Isabelle seemed genuinely fond of their mother, and she was sure Maryse wasn’t a bad person, really, but she wasn’t exactly warm.

Jace’s mouth was a hard line. “Now look what you’ve done.”

“I need to go to Idris, even if you can’t understand why,” Clary said. “I need to do this for my mother.”

“Maryse trusts the Clave too much,” said Jace. “She has to believe they’re perfect, and I can’t tell her they aren’t, because—” He stopped abruptly.

“Because that’s something Valentine would say.”

She expected an explosion, but “No one is perfect” was all he said. He reached out and stabbed at the elevator button with his index finger. “Not even the Clave.”

Clary crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that really why you don’t want me to come? Because it isn’t safe?”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “What do you mean? Why else wouldn’t I want you to come?”

She swallowed. “Because—” Because you told me you don’t have feelings for me anymore, and you see, that’s very awkward, because I still have them for you. And I bet you know it.

“Because I don’t want my little sister following me everywhere?” There was a sharp note in his voice, half mockery, half something else.

The elevator arrived with a clatter. Pushing the gate aside, Clary stepped into it and turned to face Jace. “I’m not going because you’ll be there. I’m going because I want to help my mother. Our mother. I have to help her. Don’t you get it? If I don’t do this, she might never wake up. You could at least pretend you care a little bit.”

Jace put his hands on her shoulders, his fingertips brushing the bare skin at the edge of her collar, sending pointless, helpless shivers through her nerves. There were shadows below his eyes, Clary noticed without wanting to, and dark hollows under his cheekbones. The black sweater he was wearing only made his bruise-marked skin stand out more, and the dark lashes, too; he was a study in contrasts, something to be painted in shades of black, white, and gray, with splashes of gold here and there, like his eyes, for an accent color—

“Let me do it.” His voice was soft, urgent. “I can help her for you. Tell me where to go, who to ask. I’ll get what you need.”

“Madeleine told the warlock I’d be the one coming. He’ll be expecting Jocelyn’s daughter, not Jocelyn’s son.”

Jace’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “So tell her there was a change of plans. I’ll be going, not you. Not you.”

“Jace—”

“I’ll do whatever,” he said. “Whatever you want, if you promise to stay here.”

“I can’t.”

He let go of her, as if she’d pushed him away. “Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “she’s my mother, Jace.”

“And mine.” His voice was cold. “In fact, why didn’t Madeleine approach both of us about this? Why just you?”

“You know why.”

“Because,” he said, and this time he sounded even colder, “to her you’re Jocelyn’s daughter. But I’ll always be Valentine’s son.”

He slammed the gate shut between them. For a moment she stared at him through it—the mesh of the gate divided up his face into a series of diamond shapes, outlined in metal. A single golden eye stared at her through one diamond, furious anger flickering in its depths.

“Jace—,” she began.

But with a jerk and a clatter, the elevator was already moving, carrying her down into the dark silence of the cathedral.

“Earth to Clary.” Simon waved his hands at her. “You awake?”

“Yeah, sorry.” She sat up, shaking her head to clear it of cobwebs. That had been the last time she’d seen Jace. He hadn’t picked up the phone when she’d called him afterward, so she’d made all her plans to travel to Idris with the Lightwoods using Alec as reluctant and embarrassed point person. Poor Alec, stuck between Jace and his mother, always trying to do the right thing. “Did you say something?”

“Just that I think Luke is back,” Simon said, and jumped off the desk just as the bedroom door opened. “And he is.”

“Hey, Simon.” Luke sounded calm, maybe a little tired—he was wearing a battered denim jacket, a flannel shirt, and old cords tucked into boots that looked like they’d seen their best days ten years ago. His glasses were pushed up into his brown hair, which seemed flecked with more gray now than Clary remembered. There was a square package under his arm, tied with a length of green ribbon. He held it out to Clary. “I got you something for your trip.”

“You didn’t have to do that!” Clary protested. “You’ve done so much….” She thought of the clothes he’d bought her after everything she owned had been destroyed. He’d given her a new phone, new art supplies, without ever having to be asked. Almost everything she owned now was a gift from Luke. And you don’t even approve of the fact that I’m going. That last thought hung unspoken between them.

“I know. But I saw it, and I thought of you.” He handed over the box.

The object inside was swathed in layers of tissue paper. Clary tore through it, her hand seizing on something soft as kitten’s fur. She gave a little gasp. It was a bottle-green velvet coat, old-fashioned, with a gold silk lining, brass buttons, and a wide hood. She drew it onto her lap, smoothing her hands lovingly down the soft material. “It looks like something Isabelle would wear,” she exclaimed. “Like a Shadowhunter traveling cloak.”

“Exactly. Now you’ll be dressed more like one of them,” Luke said. “When you’re in Idris.”

She looked up at him. “Do you want me to look like one of them?”

“Clary, you are one of them.” His smile was tinged with sadness. “Besides, you know how they treat outsiders. Anything you can do to fit in…”

Simon made an odd noise, and Clary looked guiltily at him—she’d almost forgotten he was there. He was looking studiously at his watch. “I should go.”

“But you just got here!” Clary protested. “I thought we could hang out, watch a movie or something—”

“You need to pack.” Simon smiled, bright as sunshine after rain. She could almost believe there was nothing bothering him. “I’ll come by later to say good-bye before you go.”

“Oh, come on,” Clary protested. “Stay—”

“I can’t.” His tone was final. “I’m meeting Maia.”

“Oh. Great,” Clary said. Maia, she told herself, was nice. She was smart. She was pretty. She was also a werewolf. A werewolf with a crush on Simon. But maybe that was as it should be. Maybe his new friend should be a Downworlder. After all, he was a Downworlder himself now. Technically, he shouldn’t even be spending time with Shadowhunters like Clary. “I guess you’d better go, then.”

“I guess I’d better.” Simon’s dark eyes were unreadable. This was new—she’d always been able to read Simon before. She wondered if it was a side effect of the vampirism, or something else entirely. “Good-bye,” he said, and bent as if to kiss her on the cheek, sweeping her hair back with one of his hands. Then he paused and drew back, his expression uncertain. She frowned in surprise, but he was already gone, brushing past Luke in the doorway. She heard the front door bang in the distance.

“He’s acting so weird,” she exclaimed, hugging the velvet coat against herself for reassurance. “Do you think it’s the whole vampire thing?”

“Probably not.” Luke looked faintly amused. “Becoming a Downworlder doesn’t change the way you feel about things. Or people. Give him time. You did break up with him.”

“I did not. He broke up with me.”

“Because you weren’t in love with him. That’s an iffy proposition, and I think he’s handling it with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box.”

“No one has a boom box anymore. That was the eighties.” Clary scrambled off the bed, pulling the coat on. She buttoned it up to the neck, luxuriating in the soft feel of the velvet. “I just want Simon to go back to normal.” She glanced at herself in the mirror and was pleasantly surprised—the green made her red hair stand out and brightened the color of her eyes. She turned to Luke. “What do you think?”

He was leaning in the doorway with his hands in his pockets; a shadow passed over his face as he looked at her. “Your mother had a coat just like that when she was your age,” was all he said.

Clary clutched the cuffs of the coat, digging her fingers into the soft pile. The mention of her mother, mixed with the sadness in his expression, was making her want to cry. “We’re going to see her later today, right?” she asked. “I want to say good-bye before I go, and tell her—tell her what I’m doing. That she’s going to be okay.”

Luke nodded. “We’ll visit the hospital later today. And, Clary?”

“What?” She almost didn’t want to look at him, but to her relief, when she did, the sadness was gone from his eyes.

He smiled. “Normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Simon glanced down at the paper in his hand and then at the cathedral, his eyes slitted against the afternoon sun. The Institute rose up against the high blue sky, a slab of granite windowed with pointed arches and surrounded by a high stone wall. Gargoyle faces leered down from its cornices, as if daring him to approach the front door. It didn’t look anything like it had the first time he had ever seen it, disguised as a run-down ruin, but then glamours didn’t work on Downworlders.

You don’t belong here. The words were harsh, sharp as acid; Simon wasn’t sure if it was the gargoyle speaking or the voice in his own mind. This is a church, and you are damned.

“Shut up,” he muttered halfheartedly. “Besides, I don’t care about churches. I’m Jewish.”

There was a filigreed iron gate set into the stone wall. Simon put his hand to the latch, half-expecting his skin to sear with pain, but nothing happened. Apparently the gate itself wasn’t particularly holy. He pushed it open and was halfway up the cracked stonework path to the front door when he heard voices—several of them, and familiar—nearby.

Or maybe not that nearby. He had nearly forgotten how much his hearing, like his sight, had sharpened since he’d been Turned. It sounded as if the voices were just over his shoulder, but as he followed a narrow path around the side of the Institute, he saw that the people were standing quite a distance away, at the far end of the grounds. The grass grew wild here, half-covering the branching paths that led among what had probably once been neatly arranged rosebushes. There was even a stone bench, webbed with green weeds; this had been a real church once, before the Shadowhunters had taken it over.

He saw Magnus first, leaning against a mossy stone wall. It was hard to miss Magnus—he was wearing a splash-painted white T-shirt over rainbow leather trousers. He stood out like a hothouse orchid, surrounded by the black-clad Shadowhunters: Alec, looking pale and uncomfortable; Isabelle, her long black hair twisted into braids tied with silver ribbons, standing beside a little boy who had to be Max, the youngest. Nearby was their mother, looking like a taller, bonier version of her daughter, with the same long black hair. Beside her was a woman Simon didn’t know. At first Simon thought she was old, since her hair was nearly white, but then she turned to speak to Maryse and he saw that she probably wasn’t more than thirty-five or forty.

And then there was Jace, standing off at a little distance, as if he didn’t quite belong. He was all in Shadowhunter black like the others. When Simon wore all black, he looked like he was on his way to a funeral, but Jace just looked tough and dangerous. And blonder. Simon felt his shoulders tighten and wondered if anything—time, or forgetfulness—would ever dilute his resentment of Jace. He didn’t want to feel it, but there it was, a stone weighting down his unbeating heart.

Something seemed odd about the gathering—but then Jace turned toward him, as if sensing he was there, and Simon saw, even from this distance, the thin white scar on his throat, just above his collar. The resentment in his chest faded into something else. Jace dropped a small nod in his direction. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Maryse, in the sort of voice Simon would never have used with his own mother. He sounded like an adult talking to another adult.

Maryse indicated her permission with a distracted wave. “I don’t see why it’s taking so long,” she was saying to Magnus. “Is that normal?”

“What’s not normal is the discount I’m giving you.” Magnus tapped the heel of his boot against the wall. “Normally I charge twice this much.”

“It’s only a temporary Portal. It just has to get us to Idris. And then I expect you to close it back up again. That is our agreement.” She turned to the woman at her side. “And you’ll remain here to witness that he does it, Madeleine?”

Madeleine. So this was Jocelyn’s friend. There was no time to stare, though—Jace already had Simon by the arm and was dragging him around the side of the church, out of view of the others. It was even more weedy and overgrown back here, the path snaked with ropes of undergrowth. Jace pushed Simon behind a large oak tree and let go of him, darting his eyes around as if to make sure they hadn’t been followed. “It’s okay. We can talk here.”

It was quieter back here certainly, the rush of traffic from York Avenue muffled behind the bulk of the Institute. “You’re the one who asked me here,” Simon pointed out. “I got your message stuck to my window when I woke up this morning. Don’t you ever use the phone like normal people?”

“Not if I can avoid it, vampire,” said Jace. He was studying Simon thoughtfully, as if he were reading the pages of a book. Mingled in his expression were two conflicting emotions: a faint amazement and what looked to Simon like disappointment. “So it’s still true. You can walk in the sunlight. Even midday sun doesn’t burn you.”

“Yes,” Simon said. “But you knew that—you were there.” He didn’t have to elaborate on what “there” meant; he could see in the other boy’s face that he remembered the river, the back of the truck, the sun rising over the water, Clary crying out. He remembered it just as well as Simon did.

“I thought perhaps it might have worn off,” Jace said, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

“If I feel the urge to burst into flames, I’ll let you know.” Simon never had much patience with Jace. “Look, did you ask me to come all the way uptown just so you could stare at me like I was something in a petri dish? Next time I’ll send you a photo.”

“And I’ll frame it and put it on my nightstand,” said Jace, but he didn’t sound as if his heart were in the sarcasm. “Look, I asked you here for a reason. Much as I hate to admit it, vampire, we have something in common.”

“Totally awesome hair?” Simon suggested, but his heart wasn’t really in it either. Something about the look on Jace’s face was making him increasingly uneasy.

“Clary,” Jace said.

Simon was caught off guard. “Clary?”

“Clary,” Jace said again. “You know: short, redheaded, bad temper.”

“I don’t see how Clary is something we have in common,” Simon said, although he did. Nevertheless, this wasn’t a conversation he particularly wanted to have with Jace now, or, in fact, ever. Wasn’t there some sort of manly code that precluded discussions like this—discussions about feelings?

Apparently not. “We both care about her,” Jace stated, giving him a measured look. “She’s important to both of us. Right?”

“You’re asking me if I care about her?” “Caring” seemed like a pretty insufficient word for it. He wondered if Jace was making fun of him—which seemed unusually cruel, even for Jace. Had Jace brought him over here just to mock him because it hadn’t worked out romantically between Clary and himself? Though Simon still had hope, at least a little, that things might change, that Jace and Clary would start to feel about each other the way they were supposed to, the way siblings were meant to feel about each other—

He met Jace’s gaze and felt that little hope shrivel. The look on the other boy’s face wasn’t the look brothers got when they talked about their sisters. On the other hand, it was obvious Jace hadn’t brought him over here to mock him for his feelings; the misery Simon knew must be plainly written across his own features was mirrored in Jace’s eyes.

“Don’t think I like asking you these questions,” Jace snapped. “I need to know what you’d do for Clary. Would you lie for her?”

“Lie about what? What’s going on, anyway?” Simon realized what it was that had bothered him about the tableau of Shadowhunters in the garden. “Wait a second,” he said. “You’re leaving for Idris right now? Clary thinks you’re going tonight.”

“I know,” Jace said. “And I need you to tell the others that Clary sent you here to say she wasn’t coming. Tell them she doesn’t want to go to Idris anymore.” There was an edge to his voice—something Simon barely recognized, or perhaps it was simply so strange coming from Jace that he couldn’t process it. Jace was pleading with him. “They’ll believe you. They know how…how close you two are.”

Simon shook his head. “I can’t believe you. You act like you want me to do something for Clary, but actually you just want me to do something for you.” He started to turn away. “No deal.”

Jace caught his arm, spinning him back around. “This is for Clary. I’m trying to protect her. I thought you’d be at least a little interested in helping me do that.”

Simon looked pointedly at Jace’s hand where it clamped his upper arm. “How can I protect her if you don’t tell me what I’m protecting her from?”

Jace didn’t let go. “Can’t you just trust me that this is important?”

“You don’t understand how badly she wants to go to Idris,” Simon said. “If I’m going to keep that from happening, there had better be a damn good reason.”

Jace exhaled slowly, reluctantly—and let go his grip on Simon’s arm. “What Clary did on Valentine’s ship,” he said, his voice low. “With the rune on the wall—the Rune of Opening—well, you saw what happened.”

“She destroyed the ship,” said Simon. “Saved all our lives.”

“Keep your voice down.” Jace glanced around anxiously.

“You’re not saying no one else knows about that, are you?” Simon demanded in disbelief.

“I know. You know. Luke knows and Magnus knows. No one else.”

“What do they all think happened? The ship just opportunely came apart?”

“I told them Valentine’s Ritual of Conversion must have gone wrong.”

“You lied to the Clave?” Simon wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or dismayed.

“Yes, I lied to the Clave. Isabelle and Alec know Clary has some ability to create new runes, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep that from the Clave or the new Inquisitor. But if they knew she could do what she does—amplify ordinary runes so they have incredible destructive power—they’d want her as a fighter, a weapon. And she’s not equipped for that. She wasn’t brought up for it—” He broke off, as Simon shook his head. “What?”

“You’re Nephilim,” Simon said slowly. “Shouldn’t you want what’s best for the Clave? If that’s using Clary…”

“You want them to have her? To put her in the front lines, up against Valentine and whatever army he’s raising?”

“No,” said Simon. “I don’t want that. But I’m not one of you. I don’t have to ask myself who to put first, Clary or my family.”

Jace flushed a slow, dark red. “It’s not like that. If I thought it would help the Clave—but it won’t. She’ll just get hurt—”

“Even if you thought it would help the Clave,” Simon said, “you’d never let them have her.”

“What makes you say that, vampire?”

“Because no one can have her but you,” said Simon.

The color left Jace’s face. “So you won’t help me,” he said in disbelief. “You won’t help her?”

Simon hesitated—and before he could respond, a noise split the silence between them. A high, shrieking cry, terrible in its desperation, and worse for the abruptness with which it was cut off. Jace whirled around. “What was that?”

The single shriek was joined by other cries, and a harsh clanging that scraped Simon’s eardrums. “Something’s happened—the others—”

But Jace was already gone, running along the path, dodging the undergrowth. After a moment’s hesitation Simon followed. He had forgotten how fast he could run now—he was hard on Jace’s heels as they rounded the corner of the church and burst out into the garden.

Before them was chaos. A white mist blanketed the garden, and there was a heavy smell in the air—the sharp tang of ozone and something else under it, sweet and unpleasant. Figures darted back and forth—Simon could see them only in fragments, as they appeared and disappeared through gaps in the fog. He glimpsed Isabelle, her hair snapping around her in black ropes as she swung her whip. It made a deadly fork of golden lightning through the shadows. She was fending off the advance of something lumbering and huge—a demon, Simon thought—but it was full daylight; that was impossible. As he stumbled forward, he saw that the creature was humanoid in shape, but humped and twisted, somehow wrong. It carried a thick wooden plank in one hand and was swinging at Isabelle almost blindly.

Only a short distance away, through a gap in the stone wall, Simon could see the traffic on York Avenue rumbling placidly by. The sky beyond the Institute was clear.

“Forsaken,” Jace whispered. His face was blazing as he drew one of his seraph blades from his belt. “Dozens of them.” He pushed Simon to the side, almost roughly. “Stay here, do you understand? Stay here.”

Simon stood frozen for a moment as Jace plunged forward into the mist. The light of the blade in his hand lit the fog around him to silver; dark figures dashed back and forth inside it, and Simon felt as if he were gazing through a pane of frosted glass, desperately trying to make out what was happening on the other side. Isabelle had vanished; he saw Alec, his arm bleeding, as he sliced through the chest of a Forsaken warrior and watched it crumple to the ground. Another reared up behind him, but Jace was there, now with a blade in each hand; he leaped into the air and brought them up and then down with a vicious scissoring movement—and the Forsaken’s head tumbled free of its neck, black blood spurting. Simon’s stomach wrenched—the blood smelled bitter, poisonous.

He could hear the Shadowhunters calling to one another out of the mist, though the Forsaken were utterly silent. Suddenly the mist cleared, and Simon saw Magnus, standing wild-eyed by the wall of the Institute. His hands were raised, blue lightning sparking between them, and against the wall where he stood, a square black hole seemed to be opening in the stone. It wasn’t empty, or dark precisely, but shone like a mirror with whirling fire trapped within its glass. “The Portal!” he was shouting. “Go through the Portal!”

Several things happened at once. Maryse Lightwood appeared out of the mist, carrying the boy, Max, in her arms. She paused to call something over her shoulder and then plunged toward the Portal and through it, vanishing into the wall. Alec followed, dragging Isabelle after him, her blood-spattered whip trailing on the ground. As he pulled her toward the Portal, something surged up out of the mist behind them—a Forsaken warrior, swinging a double-bladed knife.

Simon unfroze. Darting forward, he called out Isabelle’s name—then stumbled and pitched forward, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him, if he’d had any breath. He scrambled into a sitting position, turning to see what he’d tripped over.

It was a body. The body of a woman, her throat slit, her eyes wide and blue in death. Blood stained her pale hair. Madeleine.

“Simon, move!” It was Jace, shouting; Simon looked and saw the other boy running toward him out of the fog, bloody seraph blades in his hands. Then he looked up. The Forsaken warrior he’d seen chasing Isabelle loomed over him, its scarred face twisted into a rictus grin. Simon twisted away as the double-bladed knife swung down toward him, but even with his improved reflexes, he wasn’t fast enough. A searing pain shot through him as everything went black.

2 THE DEMON TOWERS OF ALICANTE

There was no amount of magic, Clary thought as she and Luke circled the block for the third time, that could create new parking spaces on a New York City street. There was nowhere for the truck to pull in, and half the street was double-parked. Finally Luke pulled up at a hydrant and shifted the pickup into neutral with a sigh. “Go on,” he said. “Let them know you’re here. I’ll bring your suitcase.”

Clary nodded, but hesitated before reaching for the door handle. Her stomach was tight with anxiety, and she wished, not for the first time, that Luke were going with her. “I always thought that the first time I went overseas, I’d have a passport with me at least.”

Luke didn’t smile. “I know you’re nervous,” he said. “But it’ll be all right. The Lightwoods will take good care of you.”

I’ve only told you that a million times, Clary thought. She patted Luke’s shoulder lightly before jumping down from the truck. “See you in a few.”

She made her way down the cracked stone path, the sound of traffic fading as she neared the church doors. It took her several moments to peel the glamour off the Institute this time. It felt as if another layer of disguise had been added to the old cathedral, like a new coat of paint. Scraping it off with her mind felt hard, even painful. Finally it was gone and she could see the church as it was. The high wooden doors gleamed as if they’d just been polished.

There was a strange smell in the air, like ozone and burning. With a frown she put her hand to the knob. I am Clary Morgenstern, one of the Nephilim, and I ask entrance to the Institute—

The door swung open. Clary stepped inside. She looked around, blinking, trying to identify what it was that felt somehow different about the cathedral’s interior.

She realized it as the door swung shut behind her, trapping her in a blackness relieved only by the dim glow of the rose window far overhead. She had never been inside the entrance to the Institute when there had not been dozens of flames lit in the elaborate candelabras lining the aisle between the pews.

She took her witchlight stone out of her pocket and held it up. Light blazed from it, sending shining spokes of illumination flaring out between her fingers. It lit the dusty corners of the cathedral’s interior as she made her way to the elevator near the bare altar and jabbed impatiently at the call button.

Nothing happened. After half a minute she pressed the button again—and again. She laid her ear against the elevator door and listened. Not a sound. The Institute had gone dark and silent, like a mechanical doll whose clockwork heart had run down.

Her heart pounding now, Clary hurried back down the aisle and pushed the heavy doors open. She stood on the front steps of the church, glancing about frantically. The sky was darkening to cobalt overhead, and the air smelled even more strongly of burning. Had there been a fire? Had the Shadowhunters evacuated? But the place looked untouched….

“It wasn’t a fire.” The voice was soft, velvety and familiar. A tall figure materialized out of the shadows, hair sticking up in a corona of ungainly spikes. He wore a black silk suit over a shimmering emerald green shirt, and brightly jeweled rings on his narrow fingers. There were fancy boots involved as well, and a good deal of glitter.

“Magnus?” Clary whispered.

“I know what you were thinking,” Magnus said. “But there was no fire. That smell is hellmist—it’s a sort of enchanted demonic smoke. It mutes the effects of certain kinds of magic.”

“Demonic mist? Then there was—”

“An attack on the Institute. Yes. Earlier this afternoon. Forsaken—probably a few dozen of them.”

“Jace,” Clary whispered. “The Lightwoods—”

“The hellsmoke muted my ability to fight the Forsaken effectively. Theirs, too. I had to send them through the Portal into Idris.”

“But none of them were hurt?”

“Madeleine,” said Magnus. “Madeleine was killed. I’m sorry, Clary.”

Clary sank down onto the steps. She hadn’t known the older woman well, but Madeleine had been a tenuous connection to her mother—her real mother, the tough, fighting Shadowhunter that Clary had never known.

“Clary?” Luke was coming up the path through the gathering dark. He had Clary’s suitcase in one hand. “What’s going on?”

Clary sat hugging her knees while Magnus explained. Underneath her pain for Madeleine she was full of a guilty relief. Jace was all right. The Lightwoods were all right. She said it over and over to herself, silently. Jace was all right.

“The Forsaken,” Luke said. “They were all killed?”

“Not all of them.” Magnus shook his head. “After I sent the Lightwoods through the Portal, the Forsaken dispersed; they didn’t seem interested in me. By the time I shut the Portal, they were all gone.”

Clary raised her head. “The Portal’s closed? But—you can still send me to Idris, right?” she asked. “I mean, I can go through the Portal and join the Lightwoods there, can’t I?”

Luke and Magnus exchanged a look. Luke set the suitcase down by his feet.

“Magnus?” Clary’s voice rose, shrill in her own ears. “I have to go.”

“The Portal is closed, Clary—”

“Then open another one!”

“It’s not that easy,” the warlock said. “The Clave guards any magical entry into Alicante very carefully. Their capital is a holy place to them—it’s like their Vatican, their Forbidden City. No Downworlders can come there without permission, and no mundanes.”

“But I’m a Shadowhunter!”

“Only barely,” said Magnus. “Besides, the towers prevent direct Portaling to the city. To open a Portal that went through to Alicante, I’d have to have them standing by on the other side expecting you. If I tried to send you through on my own, it would be in direct contravention of the Law, and I’m not willing to risk that for you, biscuit, no matter how much I might like you personally.”

Clary looked from Magnus’s regretful face to Luke’s wary one. “But I need to get to Idris,” she said. “I need to help my mother. There must be some other way to get there, some way that doesn’t involve a Portal.”

“The nearest airport is a country over,” Luke said. “If we could get across the border—and that’s a big ‘if’—there would be a long and dangerous overland journey after that, through all sorts of Downworlder territory. It could take us days to get there.”

Clary’s eyes were burning. I will not cry, she told herself. I will not.

“Clary.” Luke’s voice was gentle. “We’ll get in touch with the Lightwoods. We’ll make sure they have all the information they need to get the antidote for Jocelyn. They can contact Fell—”

But Clary was on her feet, shaking her head. “It has to be me,” she said. “Madeleine said Fell wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

“Fell? Ragnor Fell?” Magnus echoed. “I can try to get a message to him. Let him know to expect Jace.”

Some of the worry cleared from Luke’s face. “Clary, do you hear that? With Magnus’s help—”

But Clary didn’t want to hear any more about Magnus’s help. She didn’t want to hear anything. She had thought she was going to save her mother, and now there was going to be nothing for her to do but sit by her mother’s bedside, hold her limp hand, and hope someone else, somewhere else, would be able to do what she couldn’t.

She scrambled down the steps, pushing past Luke when he tried to reach out for her. “I just need to be alone for a second.”

“Clary—” She heard Luke call out to her, but she pulled away from him, darting around the side of the cathedral. She found herself following the stone path where it forked, making her way toward the small garden on the Institute’s east side, toward the smell of char and ashes—and a thick, sharp smell under that. The smell of demonic magic. There was mist in the garden still, scattered bits of it like trails of cloud caught here and there on the edge of a rosebush or hiding under a stone. She could see where the earth had been churned up earlier by the fighting—and there was a dark red stain there, by one of the stone benches, that she didn’t want to look at long.

Clary turned her head away. And paused. There, against the wall of the cathedral, were the unmistakable marks of rune-magic, glowing a hot, fading blue against the gray stone. They formed a squarish outline, like the outline of light around a half-open door….

The Portal.

Something inside her seemed to twist. She remembered other symbols, shining dangerously against the smooth metal hull of a ship. She remembered the shudder the ship had given as it had wrenched itself apart, the black water of the East River pouring in. They’re just runes, she thought. Symbols. I can draw them. If my mother can trap the essence of the Mortal Cup inside a piece of paper, then I can make a Portal.

She found her feet carrying her to the cathedral wall, her hand reaching into her pocket for her stele. Willing her hand not to shake, she set the tip of the stele to the stone.

She squeezed her eyelids shut and, against the darkness behind them, began to draw with her mind in curving lines of light. Lines that spoke to her of doorways, of being carried on whirling air, of travel and faraway places. The lines came together in a rune as graceful as a bird in flight. She didn’t know if it was a rune that had existed before or one she had invented, but it existed now as if it always had.

Portal.

She began to draw, the marks leaping out from the stele’s tip in charcoaled black lines. The stone sizzled, filling her nose with the acidic smell of burning. Hot blue light grew against her closed eyelids. She felt heat on her face, as if she stood in front of a fire. With a gasp she lowered her hand, opening her eyes.

The rune she had drawn was a dark flower blossoming on the stone wall. As she watched, the lines of it seemed to melt and change, flowing gently down, unfurling, reshaping themselves. Within moments the shape of the rune had changed. It was now the outline of a glowing doorway, several feet taller than Clary herself.

She couldn’t tear her eyes from the doorway. It shone with the same dark light as the Portal behind the curtain at Madame Dorothea’s. She reached out for it—

And recoiled. To use a Portal, she remembered with a sinking feeling, you had to imagine where you wanted to go, where you wanted the Portal to take you. But she had never been to Idris. It had been described to her, of course. A place of green valleys, of dark woods and bright water, of lakes and moun tains, and Alicante, the city of glass towers. She could imagine what it might look like, but imagination wasn’t enough, not with this magic. If only…

She took a sudden sharp breath. But she had seen Idris. She’d seen it in a dream, and she knew, without knowing how she knew, that it had been a true dream. After all, what had Jace said to her in the dream about Simon? That he couldn’t stay because “this place is for the living”? And not long after that, Simon had died….

She cast her memory back to the dream. She had been dancing in a ballroom in Alicante. The walls had been gold and white, with a clear, diamondlike roof overhead. There had been a fountain—a silver dish with a mermaid statue at the center—and lights strung in the trees outside the windows, and Clary had been wearing green velvet, just as she was now.

As if she were still in the dream, she reached for the Portal. A bright light spread under the touch of her fingers, a door opening onto a lighted place beyond. She found herself staring into a whirling golden maelstrom that slowly began to coalesce into discernible shapes—she thought she could see the outline of mountains, a piece of sky—

“Clary!” It was Luke, racing up the path, his face a mask of anger and dismay. Behind him strode Magnus, his cat eyes shining like metal in the hot Portal light that bathed the garden. “Clary, stop! The wards are dangerous! You’ll get yourself killed!”

But there was no stopping now. Beyond the Portal the golden light was growing. She thought of the gold walls of the Hall in her dream, the golden light refracting off the cut glass everywhere. Luke was wrong; he didn’t understand her gift, how it worked— what did wards matter when you could create your own reality just by drawing it? “I have to go,” she cried, moving forward, her fingertips outstretched. “Luke, I’m sorry—”

She stepped forward—and with a last, swift leap, he was at her side, catching at her wrist, just as the Portal seemed to explode all around them. Like a tornado snatching a tree up by the roots, the force yanked them both off their feet. Clary caught a last glimpse of the cars and buildings of Manhattan spinning away from her, vanishing as a whiplash-hard current of wind caught her, sending her hurtling, her wrist still in Luke’s iron grip, into a whirling golden chaos.

Simon awoke to the rhythmic slap of water. He sat up, sudden terror freezing his chest—the last time he’d woken up to the sound of waves, he’d been a prisoner on Valentine’s ship, and the soft liquid noise brought him back to that terrible time with an immediacy that was like a dash of ice water in the face.

But no—a quick look around told him that he was somewhere else entirely. For one thing, he was lying under soft blankets on a comfortable wooden bed in a small, clean room whose walls were painted a pale blue. Dark curtains were drawn over the window, but the faint light around their edges was enough for his vampire’s eyes to see clearly. There was a bright rug on the floor and a mirrored cupboard on one wall.

There was also an armchair pulled up to the side of the bed. Simon sat up, the blankets falling away, and realized two things: one, that he was still wearing the same jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d headed to the Institute to meet Jace; and two, that the person in the chair was dozing, her head propped on her hand, her long black hair spilling down like a fringed shawl.

“Isabelle?” Simon said.

Her head popped up like a startled jack-in-the-box’s, her eyes flying open. “Oooh! You’re awake!” She sat up straight, flicking her hair back. “Jace’ll be so relieved. We were almost totally sure you were going to die.”

“Die?” Simon echoed. He felt dizzy and a little sick. “From what?” He glanced around the room, blinking. “Am I in the Institute?” he asked, and realized the moment the words were out of his mouth that, of course, that was impossible. “I mean—where are we?”

An uneasy flicker passed across Isabelle’s face. “Well…you mean, you don’t remember what happened in the garden?” She tugged nervously at the crochet trim that bordered the chair’s upholstery. “The Forsaken attacked us. There were a lot of them, and the hellmist made it hard to fight them. Magnus opened up the Portal, and we were all running into it when I saw you coming toward us. You tripped over—over Madeleine. And there was a Forsaken just behind you; you must not have seen him, but Jace did. He tried to get to you, but it was too late. The Forsaken stuck his knife into you. You bled—a lot. And Jace killed the Forsaken and picked you up and dragged you through the Portal with him,” she finished, speaking so rapidly that her words blurred together and Simon had to strain to catch them. “And we were already on the other side, and let me tell you, everyone was pretty surprised when Jace came through with you bleeding all over him. The Consul wasn’t at all pleased.”

Simon’s mouth was dry. “The Forsaken stuck his knife into me?” It seemed impossible. But then, he had healed before, after Valentine had cut his throat. Still, he at least ought to remember. Shaking his head, he looked down at himself. “Where?”

“I’ll show you.” Much to his surprise, a moment later Isabelle was seated on the bed beside him, her cool hands on his midriff. She pushed his T-shirt up, baring a strip of pale stomach, bisected by a thin red line. It was barely a scar. “Here,” she said, her fingers gliding over it. “Is there any pain?”

“N-no.” The first time Simon had ever seen Isabelle, he’d found her so striking, so alight with life and vitality and energy, he’d thought he’d finally found a girl who burned bright enough to blot out the image of Clary that always seemed to be printed on the inside of his eyelids. It was right around the time she’d gotten him turned into a rat at Magnus Bane’s loft party that he’d realized maybe Isabelle burned a little too bright for an ordinary guy like him. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“But my eyes do,” said a coolly amused voice from the doorway. Jace. He had come in so quietly that even Simon hadn’t heard him; closing the door behind him, he grinned as Isabelle pulled Simon’s shirt down. “Molesting the vampire while he’s too weak to fight back, Iz?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure that violates at least one of the Accords.”

“I’m just showing him where he got stabbed,” Isabelle protested, but she scooted back to her chair with a certain amount of haste. “What’s going on downstairs?” she asked. “Is everyone still freaking out?”

The smile left Jace’s face. “Maryse has gone up to the Gard with Patrick,” he said. “The Clave’s in session and Malachi thought it would be better if she…explained…in person.”

Malachi. Patrick. Gard. The unfamiliar names whirled through Simon’s head. “Explained what?”

Isabelle and Jace exchanged a look. “Explained you,” Jace said finally. “Explained why we brought a vampire with us to Alicante, which is, by the way, expressly against the Law.”

“To Alicante? We’re in Alicante?” A wave of blank panic washed over Simon, quickly replaced by a pain that shot through his midsection. He doubled over, gasping.

“Simon!” Isabelle reached out her hand, alarm in her dark eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Go away, Isabelle.” Simon, his hands fisted against his stomach, looked up at Jace, pleading in his voice. “Make her go.”

Isabelle recoiled, a hurt look on her face. “Fine. I’ll go. You don’t have to tell me twice.” She flounced to her feet and out of the room, banging the door behind her.

Jace turned to Simon, his amber eyes expressionless. “What’s going on? I thought you were healing.”

Simon threw up a hand to ward the other boy off. A metallic taste burned in the back of his throat. “It’s not Isabelle,” he ground out. “I’m not hurt—I’m just…hungry.” He felt his cheeks burn. “I lost blood, so—I need to replace it.”

“Of course,” Jace said, in the tone of someone who’s just been enlightened by an interesting, if not particularly necessary, scientific fact. The faint concern left his expression, to be replaced by something that looked to Simon like amused contempt. It struck a chord of fury inside him, and if he hadn’t been so debilitated by pain, he would have flung himself off the bed and onto the other boy in a rage. As it was, all he could do was gasp, “Screw you, Wayland.”

“Wayland, is it?” The amused look didn’t leave Jace’s face, but his hands went to his throat and began to unzip his jacket.

“No!” Simon shrank back on the bed. “I don’t care how hungry I am. I’m not—drinking your blood—again.”

Jace’s mouth twisted. “Like I’d let you.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a glass flask. It was half-full of a thin red-brown liquid. “I thought you might need this,” he said. “I squeezed the juice out of a few pounds of raw meat in the kitchen. It was the best I could do.”

Simon took the flask from Jace with hands that were shaking so badly that the other boy had to unscrew the top for him. The liquid inside was foul—too thin and salty to be proper blood, and with that faint unpleasant taste that Simon knew meant the meat had been a few days old.

“Ugh,” he said, after a few swallows. “Dead blood.”

Jace’s eyebrows went up. “Isn’t all blood dead?”

“The longer the animal whose blood I’m drinking has been dead, the worse the blood tastes,” Simon explained. “Fresh is better.”

“But you’ve never drunk fresh blood. Have you?”

Simon raised his own eyebrows in response.

“Well, aside from mine, of course,” Jace said. “And I’m sure my blood is fan-tastic.”

Simon set the empty flask down on the arm of the chair by the bed. “There’s something very wrong with you,” he said. “Mentally, I mean.” His mouth still tasted of spoiled blood, but the pain was gone. He felt better, stronger, as if the blood were a medicine that worked instantly, a drug he had to have to live. He wondered if this was what it was like for heroin addicts. “So I’m in Idris.”

“Alicante, to be specific,” said Jace. “The capital city. The only city, really.” He went to the window and drew back the curtains. “The Penhallows didn’t really believe us,” he said. “That the sun wouldn’t bother you. They put these blackout curtains up. But you should look.”

Rising from the bed, Simon joined Jace at the window. And stared.

A few years ago his mother had taken him and his sister on a trip to Tuscany—a week of heavy, unfamiliar pasta dishes, unsalted bread, hardy brown countryside, and his mother speeding down narrow, twisting roads, barely avoiding crashing their Fiat into the beautiful old buildings they’d ostensibly come to see. He remembered stopping on a hillside just opposite a town called San Gimignano, a collection of rust-colored buildings dotted here and there with high towers whose tops soared upward as if reaching for the sky. If what he was looking at now reminded him of anything, it was that; but it was also so alien that it was genuinely unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

He was looking out of an upper window in what must have been a fairly tall house. If he glanced up, he could see stone eaves and sky beyond. Across the way was another house, not quite as tall as this one, and between them ran a narrow, dark canal, crossed here and there by bridges—the source of the water he’d heard before. The house seemed to be built partway up a hill—below it honey-colored stone houses, clustered along narrow streets, fell away to the edge of a green circle: woods, surrounded by hills that were very far away; from here they resembled long green and brown strips dotted with bursts of autumn colors. Behind the hills rose jagged mountains frosted with snow.

But none of that was what was strange; what was strange was that here and there in the city, placed seemingly at random, rose soaring towers crowned with spires of reflective whitish-silvery material. They seemed to pierce the sky like shining daggers, and Simon realized where he had seen that material before: in the hard, glasslike weapons the Shadowhunters carried, the ones they called seraph blades.

“Those are the demon towers,” Jace said, in response to Simon’s unasked question. “They control the wards that protect the city. Because of them, no demon can enter Alicante.”

The air that came in through the window was cold and clean, the sort of air you never breathed in New York City: It tasted of nothing, not dirt or smoke or metal or other people. Just air. Simon took a deep, unnecessary breath of it before he turned to look at Jace; some human habits died hard. “Tell me,” he said, “that bringing me here was an accident. Tell me this wasn’t somehow all part of you wanting to stop Clary from coming with you.”

Jace didn’t look at him, but his chest rose and fell once, quickly, in a sort of suppressed gasp. “That’s right,” he said. “I created a bunch of Forsaken warriors, had them attack the Institute and kill Madeleine and nearly kill the rest of us, just so that I could keep Clary at home. And lo and behold, my diabolical plan is working.”

“Well, it is working,” Simon said quietly. “Isn’t it?”

“Listen, vampire,” Jace said. “Keeping Clary from Idris was the plan. Bringing you here was not the plan. I brought you through the Portal because if I’d left you behind, bleeding and unconscious, the Forsaken would have killed you.”

“You could have stayed behind with me—”

“They would have killed us both. I couldn’t even tell how many of them there were, not with the hellmist. Even I can’t fight off a hundred Forsaken.”

“And yet,” Simon said, “I bet it pains you to admit that.”

“You’re an ass,” Jace said, without inflection, “even for a Downworlder. I saved your life and I broke the Law to do it. Not for the first time, I might add. You could show a little gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” Simon felt his fingers curl in against his palms. “If you hadn’t dragged me to the Institute, I wouldn’t be here. I never agreed to this.”

“You did,” said Jace, “when you said you’d do anything for Clary. This is anything.”

Before Simon could snap back an angry retort, there was a knock on the door. “Hello?” Isabelle called from the other side. “Simon, is your diva moment over? I need to talk to Jace.”

“Come in, Izzy.” Jace didn’t take his eyes off Simon; there was an electric anger in his gaze, and a sort of challenge that made Simon long to hit him with something heavy. Like a pickup truck.

Isabelle entered the room in a swirl of black hair and tiered silvery skirts. The ivory corset top she wore left her arms and shoulders, twined with inky runes, bare. Simon supposed it was a nice change of pace for her to be able to show her Marks off in a place where no one would think them out of the ordinary.

“Alec’s going up to the Gard,” Isabelle said without preamble. “He wants to talk to you about Simon before he leaves. Can you come downstairs?”

“Sure.” Jace headed for the door; halfway there, he realized Simon was following him and turned with a glower. “You stay here.”

“No,” Simon said. “If you’re going to be discussing me, I want to be there for it.”

For a moment it looked as if Jace’s icy calm were about to snap; he flushed and opened his mouth, his eyes flashing. Just as quickly, the anger vanished, tamped down by an obvious act of will. He gritted his teeth and smiled. “Fine,” he said. “Come on downstairs, vampire. You can meet the whole happy family.”

The first time Clary had gone through a Portal, there had been a sense of flying, of weightless tumbling. This time it was like being thrust into the heart of a tornado. Howling winds tore at her, ripped her hand from Luke’s and the scream from her mouth. She fell whirling through the heart of a black and gold maelstrom.

Something flat and hard and silvery like the surface of a mirror rose up in front of her. She plunged toward it, shrieking, throwing her hands up to cover her face. She struck the surface and broke through, into a world of brutal cold and gasping suffocation. She was sinking through a thick blue darkness, trying to breathe, but she couldn’t draw air into her lungs, only more of the freezing coldness—

Suddenly she was seized by the back of her coat and hauled upward. She kicked feebly but was too weak to break the hold on her. It drew her up, and the indigo darkness around her turned to pale blue and then to gold as she broke the surface of the water—it was water—and sucked in a gasp of air. Or tried to. Instead she choked and gagged, black spots dotting her vision. She was being dragged through the water, fast, weeds catching and tugging at her legs and arms—she twisted around in the grip that held her and caught a terrifying glimpse of something, not quite wolf and not quite human, ears as pointed as daggers and lips drawn back from sharp white teeth. She tried to scream, but only water came up.

A moment later she was out of the water and being flung onto damp hard-packed earth. There were hands on her shoulders, slamming her facedown against the ground. The hands struck her back, over and over, until her chest spasmed and she coughed up a bitter stream of water.

She was still choking when the hands rolled her onto her back. She was looking up at Luke, a black shadow against a high blue sky touched with white clouds. The gentleness she was used to seeing in his expression was gone; he was no longer wolflike, but he looked furious. He hauled her into a sitting position, shaking her hard, over and over, until she gasped and struck out at him weakly. “Luke! Stop it! You’re hurting me—”

His hands left her shoulders. He grabbed her chin in one hand instead, forcing her head up, his eyes searching her face. “The water,” he said. “Did you cough up all the water?”

“I think so,” she whispered. Her voice came faintly from her swollen throat.

“Where’s your stele?” he demanded, and when she hesitated, his voice sharpened. “Clary. Your stele. Find it.”

She pulled away from his grasp and rummaged in her wet pockets, her heart sinking as her fingers scrabbled against nothing but damp material. She turned a miserable face up to Luke. “I think I must have dropped it in the lake.” She sniffled. “My…my mother’s stele…”

“Jesus, Clary.” Luke stood up, clasping his hands distractedly behind his head. He was soaking wet too, water running off his jeans and heavy flannel coat in thick rivulets. The spectacles he usually wore halfway down his nose were gone. He looked down at her somberly. “You’re all right,” he said. It wasn’t really a question. “I mean, right now. You feel all right?”

She nodded. “Luke, what’s wrong? Why do we need my stele?”

Luke said nothing. He was looking around as if hoping to glean some assistance from their surroundings. Clary followed his gaze. They were on the wide dirt bank of a good-size lake. The water was pale blue, sparked here and there with reflected sunlight. She wondered if it was the source of the gold light she’d seen through the half-open Portal. There was nothing sinister about the lake now that she was next to it instead of in it. It was surrounded by green hills dotted with trees just beginning to turn russet and gold. Beyond the hills rose high mountains, their peaks capped in snow.

Clary shivered. “Luke, when we were in the water—did you go part wolf? I thought I saw—”

“My wolf self can swim better than my human self,” Luke said shortly. “And it’s stronger. I had to drag you through the water, and you weren’t offering much help.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. You weren’t—you weren’t supposed to come with me.”

“If I hadn’t, you’d be dead now,” he pointed out. “Magnus told you, Clary. You can’t use a Portal to get into the Glass City unless you have someone waiting for you on the other side.”

“He said it was against the Law. He didn’t say if I tried to get there I’d bounce off.”

“He told you there are wards up around the city that prevent Portaling into it. It’s not his fault you decided to play around with magic you just barely understand. Just because you have power doesn’t mean you know how to use it.” He scowled.

“I’m sorry,” Clary said in a small voice. “It’s just—where are we now?”

“Lake Lyn,” said Luke. “I think the Portal took us as close to the city as it could and then dumped us. We’re on the outskirts of Alicante.” He looked around, shaking his head half in amazement and half in weariness. “You did it, Clary. We’re in Idris.”

“Idris?” Clary said, and stood staring stupidly out across the lake. It twinkled back at her, blue and undisturbed. “But—you said we were on the outskirts of Alicante. I don’t see the city anywhere.”

“We’re miles away.” Luke pointed. “You see those hills in the distance? We have to cross over those; the city is on the other side. If we had a car, we could get there in an hour, but we’re going to have to walk, which will probably take all afternoon.” He squinted up at the sky. “We’d better get going.”

Clary looked down at herself in dismay. The prospect of a daylong hike in soaking-wet clothes did not appeal. “Isn’t there anything else…?”

“Anything else we can do?” Luke said, and there was a sudden sharp edge of anger to his voice. “Do you have any suggestions, Clary, since you’re the one who brought us here?” He pointed away from the lake. “That way lie mountains. Passable on foot only in high summer. We’d freeze to death on the peaks.” He turned, stabbed his finger in another direction. “That way lie miles of woods. They run all the way to the border. They’re uninhabited, at least by human beings. Past Alicante there’s farmland and country houses. Maybe we could get out of Idris, but we’d still have to pass through the city. A city, I may add, where Downworlders like myself are hardly welcome.”

Clary looked at him with her mouth open. “Luke, I didn’t know—”

“Of course you didn’t know. You don’t know anything about Idris. You don’t even care about Idris. You were just upset about being left behind, like a child, and you had a tantrum. And now we’re here. Lost and freezing and—” He broke off, his face tight. “Come on. Let’s start walking.”

Clary followed Luke along the edge of Lake Lyn in a miserable silence. As they walked, the sun dried her hair and skin, but the velvet coat held water like a sponge. It hung on her like a lead curtain as she tripped hastily over rocks and mud, trying to keep up with Luke’s long-legged stride. She made a few further attempts at conversation, but Luke remained stubbornly silent. She’d never done anything so bad before that an apology hadn’t softened Luke’s anger. This time, it seemed, was different.

The cliffs rose higher around the lake as they progressed, pocked with spots of darkness, like splashes of black paint. As Clary looked more closely, she realized they were caves in the rock. Some looked like they went very deep, twisting away into darkness. She imagined bats and creepy-crawling things hiding in the blackness, and shivered.

At last a narrow path cutting through the cliffs led them to a wide road lined with crushed stones. The lake curved away behind them, indigo in the late afternoon sunlight. The road cut through a flat grassy plain that rose to rolling hills in the distance. Clary’s heart sank; the city was nowhere in sight.

Luke was staring toward the hills with a look of intense dismay on his face. “We’re farther than I thought. It’s been such a long time….”

“Maybe if we found a bigger road,” Clary suggested, “we could hitchhike, or get a ride to the city, or—”

“Clary. There are no cars in Idris.” Seeing her shocked expression, Luke laughed without much amusement. “The wards foul up the machinery. Most technology doesn’t work here—mobile phones, computers, the like. Alicante itself is lit—and powered—mostly by witchlight.”

“Oh,” Clary said in a small voice. “Well—about how far from the city are we?”

“Far enough.” Without looking at her, Luke raked both his hands back through his short hair. “There’s something I’d better tell you.”

Clary tensed. All she’d wanted before was for Luke to talk to her; now she didn’t want it anymore. “It’s all right—”

“Did you notice,” Luke said, “that there weren’t any boats on Lake Lyn—no docks—nothing that might suggest the lake is used in any way by the people of Idris?”

“I just thought that was because it was so remote.”

“It’s not that remote. A few hours from Alicante on foot. The fact is, the lake—” Luke broke off and sighed. “Did you ever notice the pattern on the library floor at the Institute in New York?”

Clary blinked. “I did, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.”

“It was an angel rising out of a lake, holding a cup and a sword. It’s a repeating motif in Nephilim decorations. The legend is that the angel Raziel rose out of Lake Lyn when he first appeared to Jonathan Shadowhunter, the first of the Nephilim, and gave him the Mortal Instruments. Ever since then the lake has been—”

“Sacred?” Clary suggested.

“Cursed,” Luke said. “The water of the lake is in some way poisonous to Shadowhunters. It won’t hurt Downworlders—the Fair Folk call it the Mirror of Dreams, and they drink its water because they claim it gives them true visions. But for a Shadowhunter to drink the water is very dangerous. It causes hallucinations, fever—it can drive a person to madness.”

Clary felt cold all over. “That’s why you tried to make me spit the water out.”

Luke nodded. “And why I wanted you to find your stele. With a healing rune, we could stave off the water’s effects. Without it, we need to get you to Alicante as quickly as possible. There are medicines, herbs, that will help, and I know someone who will almost certainly have them.”

“The Lightwoods?”

“Not the Lightwoods.” Luke’s voice was firm. “Someone else. Someone I know.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. “Let’s just pray this person hasn’t moved away in the last fifteen years.”

“But I thought you said it was against the Law for Downworlders to come into Alicante without permission.”

His answering smile was a reminder of the Luke who had caught her when she’d fallen off the jungle gym as a child, the Luke who had always protected her. “Some Laws were meant to be broken.”

The Penhallows’ house reminded Simon of the Institute—it had that same sense of belonging somehow to another era. The halls and stairways were narrow, made of stone and dark wood, and the windows were tall and thin, giving out onto views of the city. There was a distinctly Asian feel to the decorations: a shoji screen stood on the first-floor landing, and there were lacquer-flowered tall Chinese vases on the windowsills. There were also a number of silkscreen prints on the walls, showing what must have been scenes from Shadowhunter mythology, but with an Eastern feel to them—warlords wielding glowing seraph blades were prominently featured, alongside colorful dragonlike creatures and slithering, pop-eyed demons.

“Mrs. Penhallow—Jia—used to run the Beijing Institute. She splits her time between here and the Forbidden City,” Isabelle said as Simon paused to examine a print. “And the Penhallows are an old family. Wealthy.”

“I can tell,” Simon muttered, looking up at the chandeliers, dripping cut-glass crystals like teardrops.

Jace, on the step behind them, grunted. “Move it along. We’re not taking a historical tour here.”

Simon weighed a rude retort and decided it wasn’t worth bothering. He took the rest of the stairs at a rapid pace; they opened out at the bottom into a large room. It was an odd mixture of the old and the new: A glass picture window looked out onto the canal, and there was music playing from a stereo that Simon couldn’t see. But there was no television, no stack of DVDs or CDs, the sort of detritus Simon associated with modern living rooms. Instead there were a number of overstuffed couches grouped around a large fireplace, in which flames were crackling.

Alec stood by the fireplace, in dark Shadowhunter gear, drawing on a pair of gloves. He looked up as Simon entered the room and scowled his habitual scowl, but said nothing.

Seated on the couches were two teenagers Simon had never seen before, a boy and a girl. The girl looked as if she were partly Asian, with delicate, almond-shaped eyes, glossy dark hair pulled back from her face, and a mischievous expression. Her delicate chin narrowed into a point like a cat’s. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was very striking.

The black-haired boy beside her was more than striking. He was probably Jace’s height, but seemed taller, even sitting down; he was slender and muscular, with a pale, elegant, restless face, all cheekbones and dark eyes. There was something strangely familiar about him, as if Simon had met him before.

The girl spoke first. “Is that the vampire?” She looked Simon up and down as if she were taking his measurements. “I’ve never really been this close to a vampire before—not one I wasn’t planning to kill, at least.” She cocked her head to the side. “He’s cute, for a Downworlder.”

“You’ll have to forgive her; she has the face of an angel and the manners of a Moloch demon,” said the boy with a smile, getting to his feet. He held his hand out to Simon. “I’m Sebastian. Sebastian Verlac. And this is my cousin, Aline Penhallow. Aline—”

“I don’t shake hands with Downworlders,” Aline said, shrinking back against the couch cushions. “They don’t have souls, you know. Vampires.”

Sebastian’s smile disappeared. “Aline—”

“It’s true. That’s why they can’t see themselves in mirrors, or go in the sun.”

Very deliberately, Simon stepped backward, into the patch of sunlight in front of the window. He felt the sun hot on his back, his hair. His shadow was cast, long and dark, across the floor, almost reaching Jace’s feet.

Aline took a sharp breath but said nothing. It was Sebastian who spoke, looking at Simon with curious black eyes. “So it’s true. The Lightwoods said, but I didn’t think—”

“That we were telling the truth?” Jace said, speaking for the first time since they’d come downstairs. “We wouldn’t lie about something like this. Simon’s…unique.”

“I kissed him once,” Isabelle said, to no one in particular.

Aline’s eyebrows shot up. “They really do let you do whatever you want in New York, don’t they?” she said, sounding half-horrified and half-envious. “The last time I saw you, Izzy, you wouldn’t even have considered—”

“The last time we all saw each other, Izzy was eight,” Alec said. “Things change. Now, Mom had to leave here in a hurry, so someone has to take her notes and records up to the Gard for her. I’m the only one who’s eighteen, so I’m the only one who can go while the Clave’s in session.”

“We know,” Isabelle said, flopping down onto a couch. “You’ve already told us that, like, five times.”

Alec, who was looking important, ignored this. “Jace, you brought the vampire here, so you’re in charge of him. Don’t let him go outside.”

The vampire, Simon thought. It wasn’t like Alec didn’t know his name. He’d saved Alec’s life once. Now he was “the vampire.” Even for Alec, who was prone to the occasional fit of inexplicable sullenness, this was obnoxious. Maybe it had something to do with being in Idris. Maybe Alec felt a greater need to assert his Shadowhunter-ness here.

“That’s what you brought me down here to tell me? Don’t let the vampire go outside? I wouldn’t have done that anyway.” Jace slid onto the couch beside Aline, who looked pleased. “You’d better hurry up to the Gard and back. God knows what depravity we might get up to here without your guidance.”

Alec gazed at Jace with calm superiority. “Try to hold it together. I’ll be back in half an hour.” He vanished through an archway that led to a long corridor; somewhere in the distance, a door clicked shut.

“You shouldn’t bait him,” Isabelle said, shooting Jace a severe look. “They did leave him in charge.”

Aline, Simon couldn’t help but notice, was sitting very close to Jace, their shoulders touching, even though there was plenty of room around them on the couch. “Did you ever think that in a past life Alec was an old woman with ninety cats who was always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn? Because I do,” he said, and Aline giggled. “Just because he’s the only one who can go to the Gard—”

“What’s the Gard?” Simon asked, tired of having no idea what anyone was talking about.

Jace looked at him. His expression was cool, unfriendly; his hand was atop Aline’s where it rested on her thigh. “Sit down,” he said, jerking his head toward an armchair. “Or did you plan to hover in the corner like a bat?”

Great. Bat jokes. Simon settled himself uncomfortably in the chair.

“The Gard is the official meeting place of the Clave,” Sebastian said, apparently taking pity on Simon. “It’s where the Law is made, and where the Consul and Inquisitor reside. Only adult Shadowhunters are allowed onto its grounds when the Clave is in session.”

“In session?” Simon asked, remembering what Jace had said earlier, upstairs. “You mean—not because of me?”

Sebastian laughed. “No. Because of Valentine and the Mortal Instruments. That’s why everyone’s here. To discuss what Valentine’s going to do next.”

Jace said nothing, but at the sound of Valentine’s name, his face tightened.

“Well, he’ll go after the Mirror,” Simon said. “The third of the Mortal Instruments, right? Is it here in Idris? Is that why everyone’s here?”

There was a short silence before Isabelle answered. “The thing about the Mirror is that no one knows where it is. In fact, no one knows what it is.”

“It’s a mirror,” Simon said. “You know—reflective, glass. I’m just assuming.”

“What Isabelle means,” said Sebastian kindly, “is that nobody knows anything about the Mirror. There are multiple mentions of it in Shadowhunter histories, but no specifics about where it is, what it looks like, or, most important, what it does.”

“We assume Valentine wants it,” said Isabelle, “but that doesn’t help much, since no one’s got a clue where it is. The Silent Brothers might have had an idea, but Valentine killed them all. There won’t be more for at least a little while.”

“All of them?” Simon demanded in surprise. “I thought he only killed the ones in New York.”

“The Bone City isn’t really in New York,” Isabelle said. “It’s like—remember the entrance to the Seelie Court, in Central Park? Just because the entrance was there doesn’t mean the Court itself is under the park. It’s the same with the Bone City. There are various entrances, but the City itself—” Isabelle broke off as Aline shushed her with a quick gesture. Simon looked from her face to Jace’s to Sebastian’s. They all had the same guarded expression, as if they’d just realized what they’d been doing: telling Nephilim secrets to a Downworlder. A vampire. Not the enemy, precisely, but certainly someone who couldn’t be trusted.

Aline was the first one to break the silence. Fixing her pretty, dark gaze on Simon, she said, “So—what’s it like, being a vampire?”

“Aline!” Isabelle looked appalled. “You can’t just go around asking people what it’s like to be a vampire.”

“I don’t see why,” Aline said. “He hasn’t been a vampire that long, has he? So he must remember what it was like being a person.” She turned back to Simon. “Does blood still taste like blood to you? Or does it taste like something else now, like orange juice or something? Because I would think the taste of blood would—”

“It tastes like chicken,” Simon said, just to shut her up.

“Really?” Aline looked astonished.

“He’s making fun of you, Aline,” said Sebastian, “as well he should. I apologize for my cousin again, Simon. Those of us who were brought up outside Idris tend to have a little more familiarity with Downworlders.”

“But weren’t you brought up in Idris?” Isabelle asked. “I thought your parents—”

“Isabelle,” Jace interrupted, but it was already too late; Sebastian’s expression darkened.

“My parents are dead,” he said. “A demon nest near Calais—it’s all right, it was a long time ago.” He waved away Isabelle’s protestation of sympathy. “My aunt—Aline’s father’s sister—brought me up at the Institute in Paris.”

“So you speak French?” Isabelle sighed. “I wish I spoke another language. But Hodge never thought we needed to learn anything but ancient Greek and Latin, and nobody speaks those.”

“I also speak Russian and Italian. And some Romanian,” Sebastian said with a modest smile. “I could teach you some phrases—”

“Romanian? That’s impressive,” said Jace. “Not many people speak it.”

“Do you?” Sebastian asked with interest.

“Not really,” Jace said with a smile so disarming Simon knew he was lying. “My Romanian is pretty much limited to useful phrases like, ‘Are these snakes poisonous?’ and ‘But you look much too young to be a police officer.’”

Sebastian didn’t smile. There was something about his expression, Simon thought. It was mild—everything about him was calm—but Simon had the sense that the mildness hid something beneath it that belied his outward tranquility. “I do like traveling,” he said, his eyes on Jace. “But it’s good to be back, isn’t it?”

Jace paused in the act of playing with Aline’s fingers. “What do you mean?”

“Just that there’s nowhere else quite like Idris, however much we Nephilim might make homes for ourselves elsewhere. Don’t you agree?”

“Why are you asking me?” Jace’s look was icy.

Sebastian shrugged. “Well, you lived here as a child, didn’t you? And it’s been years since you’ve been back. Or did I get that wrong?”

“You didn’t get it wrong,” Isabelle said impatiently. “Jace likes to pretend that everyone isn’t talking about him, even when he knows they are.”

“They certainly are.” Though Jace was glaring at him, Sebastian seemed unruffled. Simon felt a sort of half-reluctant liking for the dark-haired Shadowhunter boy. It was rare to find someone who didn’t react to Jace’s taunts. “These days in Idris it’s all anyone talks about. You, the Mortal Instruments, your father, your sister—”

“Clarissa was supposed to come with you, wasn’t she?” Aline said. “I was looking forward to meeting her. What happened?”

Though Jace’s expression didn’t change, he drew his hand back from Aline’s, curling it into a fist. “She didn’t want to leave New York. Her mother’s ill in the hospital.” He never says our mother, Simon thought. It’s always her mother.

“It’s weird,” Isabelle said. “I really thought she wanted to come.”

“She did,” said Simon. “In fact—”

Jace was on his feet, so fast that Simon didn’t even see him move. “Come to think of it, I have something I need to discuss with Simon. In private.” He jerked his head toward the double doors at the far end of the room, his eyes glittering a challenge. “Come on, vampire,” he said, in a tone that left Simon with the distinct feeling that a refusal would probably end in some kind of violence. “Let’s talk.”

3 AMATIS

By late afternoon Luke and Clary had left the lake far behind and were pacing over seemingly endless broad, flat swatches of high grass. Here and there a gentle rise reared up into a high hill topped with black rocks. Clary was exhausted from staggering up and down the hills, one after another, her boots slipping on the damp grass as if it were greased marble. By the time they left the fields behind for a narrow dirt road, her hands were bleeding and grass-stained.

Luke stalked ahead of her with determined strides. Occasionally he would point out items of interest in a somber voice, like the world’s most depressed tour guide. “We just crossed Brocelind Plain,” he said as they climbed a rise and saw a tangled expanse of dark trees stretching away toward the west, where the sun hung low in the sky. “This is the forest. The woods used to cover most of the lowland of the country. Much of it was cut down to make way for the city—and to clear out the wolf packs and vampire nests that tended to crop up there. Brocelind Forest has always been a hiding place for Downworlders.”

They trudged along in silence as the road curved alongside the forest for several miles before taking an abrupt turn. The trees seemed to lift away as a ridge rose above them, and Clary blinked when they turned the corner of a high hill—unless her eyes were deceiving her, there were houses down there. Small, white rows of houses, orderly as a Munchkin village. “We’re here!” she exclaimed, and darted forward, only stopping when she realized that Luke was no longer beside her.

She turned and saw him standing in the middle of the dusty road, shaking his head. “No,” he said, moving to catch up with her. “That’s not the city.”

“Then is it a town? You said there weren’t any towns near here—”

“It’s a graveyard. It’s Alicante’s City of Bones. Did you think the City of Bones was the only resting place we had?” He sounded sad. “This is the necropolis, the place we bury those who die in Idris. You’ll see. We have to walk through it to get to Alicante.”

Clary hadn’t been to a graveyard since the night Simon had died, and the memory gave her a bone-deep shiver as she passed along the narrow lanes that threaded among the mausoleums like white ribbon. Someone took care of this place: The marble gleamed as if freshly scrubbed, and the grass was evenly cut. There were bunches of white flowers laid here and there on the graves; she thought at first they were lilies, but they had a spicy, unfamiliar scent that made her wonder if they were native to Idris. Each tomb looked like a little house; some even had metal or wire gates, and the names of Shadowhunter families were carved over the doors. CARTWRIGHT. MERRYWEATHER. HIGHTOWER. BLACKWELL. MIDWINTER. She stopped at one: HERONDALE.

She turned to look at Luke. “That was the Inquisitor’s name.”

“This is her family tomb. Look.” He pointed. Beside the door were white letters cut into the gray marble. They were names. MARCUS HERONDALE. STEPHEN HERONDALE. They had both died in the same year. Much as Clary had hated the Inquisitor, she felt something twist inside her, a pity she couldn’t help. To lose your husband and your son, so close together…Three words in Latin ran under Stephen’s name: AVE ATQUE VALE.

“What does that mean?” she asked, turning to Luke.

“It means ‘Hail and farewell.’ It’s from a poem by Catullus. At some point it became what the Nephilim say during funerals, or when someone dies in battle. Now come on—it’s better not to dwell on this stuff, Clary.” Luke took her shoulder and moved her gently away from the tomb.

Maybe he was right, Clary thought. Maybe it was better not to think too much about death and dying right now. She kept her eyes averted as they made their way out of the necropolis. They were almost through the iron gates at the far end when she spotted a smaller mausoleum, growing like a white toadstool in the shadow of a leafy oak tree. The name above the door leaped out at her as if it had been written in lights.

FAIRCHILD.

“Clary—” Luke reached for her, but she was already gone. With a sigh he followed her into the tree’s shadow, where she stood transfixed, reading the names of the grandparents and great-grandparents she had never even known she had. ALOYSIUS FAIRCHILD. ADELE FAIRCHILD, B. NIGHTSHADE. GRANVILLE FAIRCHILD. And below all those names: JOCELYN MORGENSTERN, B. FAIRCHILD.

A wave of cold went over Clary. Seeing her mother’s name there was like revisiting the nightmares she had sometimes where she was at her mother’s funeral and no one would tell her what had happened or how her mother had died.

“But she’s not dead,” she said, looking up at Luke. “She’s not—”

“The Clave didn’t know that,” he told her gently.

Clary gasped. She could no longer hear Luke’s voice or see him standing in front of her. Before her rose a jagged hillside, gravestones protruding from the dirt like snapped-off bones. A black headstone loomed up in front of her, letters cut unevenly into its face: CLARISSA MORGENSTERN, B. 1991 D. 2007. Under the words was a crudely drawn child’s sketch of a skull with gaping eye sockets. Clary staggered backward with a scream.

Luke caught her by the shoulders. “Clary, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She pointed. “There—look—”

But it was gone. The grass stretched out ahead of her, green and even, the white mausoleums neat and plain in their orderly rows.

She twisted to look up at him. “I saw my own gravestone,” she said. “It said I was going to die—now—this year.” She shuddered.

Luke looked grim. “It’s the lake water,” he said. “You’re starting to hallucinate. Come on—we haven’t got much time left.”

Jace marched Simon upstairs and down a short hallway lined with doors; he paused only to straight-arm one of them open, a scowl on his face. “In here,” he said, half-shoving Simon through the doorway. Simon saw what looked like a library inside: rows of bookshelves, long couches, and armchairs. “We should have some privacy—”

He broke off as a figure rose nervously from one of the armchairs. It was a little boy with brown hair and glasses. He had a small, serious face, and there was a book clutched in one of his hands. Simon was familiar enough with Clary’s reading habits to recognize it as a manga volume even at a distance.

Jace frowned. “Sorry, Max. We need the room. Grown-up talk.”

“But Izzy and Alec already kicked me out of the living room so they could have grown-up talk,” Max complained. “Where am I supposed to go?”

Jace shrugged. “Your room?” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Time to do your duty for your country, kiddo. Scram.”

Looking aggrieved, Max stalked past them both, his book clutched to his chest. Simon felt a twinge of sympathy—it sucked to be old enough to want to know what was going on, but so young you were always dismissed. The boy shot him a look as he went past—a scared, suspicious glance. That’s the vampire, his eyes said.

“Come on.” Jace hustled Simon into the room, shutting and locking the door behind them. With the door closed the room was so dimly lit even Simon found it dark. It smelled like dust. Jace walked across the floor and threw open the curtains at the far end of the room, revealing a tall, single-paned picture window that gave out onto a view of the canal just outside. Water splashed against the side of the house just a few feet below them, under stone railings carved with a weather-beaten design of runes and stars.

Jace turned to Simon with a scowl. “What the hell is your problem, vampire?”

“My problem? You’re the one who practically dragged me out of there by my hair.”

“Because you were about to tell them that Clary never canceled her plans to come to Idris. You know what would happen then? They’d contact her and arrange for her to come. And I already told you why that can’t happen.”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t get you,” he said. “Sometimes you act like all you care about is Clary, and then you act like—”

Jace stared at him. The air was full of dancing dust motes; they made a shimmering curtain between the two boys. “Act like what?”

“You were flirting with Aline,” Simon said. “It didn’t seem like all you cared about was Clary then.”

“That is so not your business,” Jace said. “And besides, Clary is my sister. You do know that.”

“I was there in the faerie court too,” Simon replied. “I remember what the Seelie Queen said. The kiss the girl desires most will free her.”

“I bet you remember that. Burned into your brain, is it, vampire?”

Simon made a noise in the back of his throat that he hadn’t even realized he was capable of making. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not having this argument. I’m not fighting over Clary with you. It’s ridiculous.”

“Then why did you bring all this up?”

“Because,” Simon said. “If you want me to lie—not to Clary, but to all your Shadowhunter friends—if you want me to pretend that it was Clary’s own decision not to come here, and if you want me to pretend that I don’t know about her powers, or what she can really do, then you have to do something for me.”

“Fine,” Jace said. “What is it you want?”

Simon was silent for a moment, looking past Jace at the line of stone houses fronting the sparkling canal. Past their crenellated roofs he could see the gleaming tops of the demon towers. “I want you to do whatever you need to do to convince Clary that you don’t have feelings for her. And don’t—don’t tell me you’re her brother; I already know that. Stop stringing her along when you know that whatever you two have has no future. And I’m not saying this because I want her for myself. I’m saying it because I’m her friend and I don’t want her hurt.”

Jace looked down at his hands for a long moment without answering. They were thin hands, the fingers and knuckles scuffed with old calluses. The backs of them were laced with the thin white lines of old Marks. They were a soldier’s hands, not a teenage boy’s. “I’ve already done that,” he said. “I told her I was only interested in being her brother.”

“Oh.” Simon had expected Jace to fight him on this, to argue, not to just give up. A Jace who just gave up was new—and left Simon feeling almost ashamed for having asked. Clary never mentioned it to me, he wanted to say, but then why would she have? Come to think of it, she had seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn lately whenever Jace’s name had come up. “Well, that takes care of that, I guess. There’s one last thing.”

“Oh?” Jace spoke without much apparent interest. “And what’s that?”

“What was it Valentine said when Clary drew that rune on the ship? It sounded like a foreign language. Meme something—?”

“Mene mene tekel upharsin,” Jace said with a faint smile. “You don’t recognize it? It’s from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That’s your book, isn’t it?”

“Just because I’m Jewish doesn’t mean I’ve memorized the Old Testament.”

“It’s the Writing on the Wall. ‘God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ It’s a portent of doom—it means the end of an empire.”

“But what does that have to do with Valentine?”

“Not just Valentine,” said Jace. “All of us. The Clave and the Law—what Clary can do overturns everything they know to be true. No human being can create new runes, or draw the sort of runes Clary can. Only angels have that power. And since Clary can do that—well, it seems like a portent. Things are changing. The Laws are changing. The old ways may never be the right ways again. Just as the rebellion of the angels ended the world as it was—it split heaven in half and created hell—this could mean the end of the Nephilim as they currently exist. This is our war in heaven, vampire, and only one side can win it. And my father means it to be his.”

Though the air was still cold, Clary was boiling hot in her wet clothes. Sweat ran down her face in rivulets, dampening the collar of her coat as Luke, his hand on her arm, hurried her along the road under a rapidly darkening sky. They were within sight of Alicante now. The city was in a shallow valley, bisected by a silvery river that flowed into one end of the city, seemed to vanish, and flowed again out the other. A tumble of honey-colored buildings with red slate roofs and a tangle of steeply winding dark streets backed up against the side of a steep hill. On the crown of the hill rose a dark stone edifice, pillared and soaring, with a glittering tower at each cardinal direction point: four in all. Scattered among the other buildings were the same tall, thin, glasslike towers, each one shimmering like quartz. They were like glass needles piercing the sky. The fading sunlight struck dull rainbows from their surfaces like a match striking sparks. It was a beautiful sight, and very strange.

You have never seen a city till you have seen Alicante of the glass towers.

“What was that?” Luke said, overhearing. “What did you say?”

Clary hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. Embarrassed, she repeated her words, and Luke looked at her in surprise. “Where did you hear that?”

“Hodge,” Clary said. “It was something Hodge said to me.”

Luke peered at her more closely. “You’re flushed,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Clary’s neck was aching, her whole body on fire, her mouth dry. “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s just get there, okay?”

“Okay.” Luke pointed; at the edge of the city, where the buildings ended, Clary could see an archway, two sides curving to a pointed top. A Shadowhunter in black gear stood watch inside the shadow of the archway. “That’s the North Gate—it’s where Downworlders can legally enter the city, provided they’ve got the paperwork. Guards are posted there night and day. Now, if we were on official business, or had permission to be here, we’d go in through it.”

“But there aren’t any walls around the city,” Clary pointed out. “It doesn’t seem like much of a gate.”

“The wards are invisible, but they’re there. The demon towers control them. They have for a thousand years. You’ll feel it when you pass through them.” He glanced one more time at her flushed face, concern crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. They moved away from the gate, along the east side of the city, where buildings were more thickly clustered. With a gesture to be quiet, Luke drew her toward a narrow opening between two houses. Clary shut her eyes as they approached, almost as if she expected to be smacked in the face with an invisible wall as soon as they stepped onto the streets of Alicante. It wasn’t like that. She felt a sudden pressure, as if she were in an airplane that was dropping. Her ears popped—and then the feeling was gone, and she was standing in the alley between the buildings.

Just like an alley in New York—like every alley in the world, apparently—it smelled like cat pee.

Clary peered around the corner of one of the buildings. A larger street stretched away up the hill, lined with small shops and houses. “There’s no one around,” she observed, with some surprise.

In the fading light Luke looked gray. “There must be a meeting going on up at the Gard. It’s the only thing that could get everyone off the streets at once.”

“But isn’t that good? There’s no one around to see us.”

“It’s good and bad. The streets are mostly deserted, which is good. But anyone who does happen by will be much more likely to notice and remark on us.”

“I thought you said everyone was in the Gard.”

Luke smiled faintly. “Don’t be so literal, Clary. I meant most of the city. Children, teenagers, anyone exempted from the meeting, they won’t be there.”

Teenagers. Clary thought of Jace, and despite herself, her pulse leaped forward like a horse charging out of the starting gate at a race.

Luke frowned, almost as if he could read her thoughts. “As of now, I’m breaking the Law by being in Alicante without declaring myself to the Clave at the gate. If anyone recognizes me, we could be in real trouble.” He glanced up at the narrow strip of russet sky visible between the rooftops. “We have to get off the streets.”

“I thought we were going to your friend’s house.”

“We are. And she’s not a friend, precisely.”

“Then who—?”

“Just follow me.” Luke ducked into a passage between two houses, so narrow that Clary could reach out and touch the walls of both houses with her fingers as they made their way down it and onto a cobblestoned winding street lined with shops. The buildings themselves looked like a cross between a Gothic dreamscape and a children’s fairy tale. The stone facings were carved with all manner of creatures out of myth and legend—the heads of monsters were a prominent feature, interspersed with winged horses, something that looked like a house on chicken legs, mermaids, and, of course, angels. Gargoyles jutted from every corner, their snarling faces contorted. And everywhere there were runes: splashed across doors, hidden in the design of an abstract carving, dangling from thin metal chains like wind chimes that twisted in the breeze. Runes for protection, for good luck, even for good business; staring at them all, Clary began to feel a little dizzy.

They walked in silence, keeping to the shadows. The cobblestone street was deserted, shop doors shut and barred. Clary cast furtive glances into the windows as they passed. It was strange to see a display of expensive decorated chocolates in one window and in the next an equally lavish display of deadly-looking weapons—cutlasses, maces, nail-studded cudgels, and an array of seraph blades in different sizes. “No guns,” she said. Her own voice sounded very far away.

Luke blinked at her. “What?”

“Shadowhunters,” she said. “They never seem to use guns.”

“Runes keep gunpowder from igniting,” he said. “No one knows why. Still, Nephilim have been known to use the occasional rifle on lycanthropes. It doesn’t take a rune to kill us—just silver bullets.” His voice was grim. Suddently his head went up. In the dim light it was easy to imagine his ears pricking forward like a wolf’s. “Voices,” he said. “They must be finished at the Gard.”

He took her arm and pulled her sideways off the main street. They emerged into a small square with a well at its center. A masonry bridge arched over a narrow canal just ahead of them. In the fading light the water in the canal looked almost black. Clary could hear the voices herself now, coming from the streets nearby. They were raised, angry-sounding. Clary’s dizziness increased—she felt as if the ground were tilting under her, threatening to send her sprawling. She leaned back against the wall of the alley, gasping for air.

“Clary,” Luke said. “Clary, are you all right?”

His voice sounded thick, strange. She looked at him, and the breath died in her throat. His ears had grown long and pointed, his teeth razor-sharp, his eyes a fierce yellow—

“Luke,” she whispered. “What’s happening to you?”

“Clary.” He reached for her, his hands oddly elongated, the nails sharp and rust-colored. “Is something wrong?”

She screamed, twisting away from him. She wasn’t sure why she felt so terrified—she’d seen Luke Change before, and he’d never harmed her. But the terror was a live thing inside her, uncontrollable. Luke caught at her shoulders and she cringed away from him, away from his yellow, animal eyes, even as he hushed her, begging her to be quiet in his ordinary, human voice. “Clary, please—”

“Let me go! Let me go!”

But he didn’t. “It’s the water—you’re hallucinating—Clary, try to keep it together.” He drew her toward the bridge, half-dragging her. She could feel tears running down her face, cooling her burning cheeks. “It’s not real. Try to hold on, please,” he said, helping her onto the bridge. She could smell the water below it, green and stale. Things moved below the surface of it. As she watched, a black tentacle emerged from the water, its spongy tip lined with needle teeth. She cringed away from the water, unable to scream, a low moaning coming from her throat.

Luke caught her as her knees buckled, swinging her up into his arms. He hadn’t carried her since she was five or six years old. “Clary,” he said, but the rest of his words melded and blurred into a nonsensical roar as they stepped down off the bridge. They raced past a series of tall, thin houses that almost reminded Clary of Brooklyn row houses—or maybe she was just hallucinating her own neighborhood? The air around them seemed to warp as they went on, the lights of the houses blazing up around them like torches, the canal shimmering with an evil phosphorescent glow. Clary’s bones felt as if they were dissolving inside her body.

“Here.” Luke jerked to a halt in front of a tall canal house. He kicked hard at the door, shouting; it was painted a bright, almost garish, red, a single rune splashed across it in gold. The rune melted and ran as Clary stared at it, taking the shape of a hideous grinning skull. It’s not real, she told herself fiercely, stifling her scream with her fist, biting down until she tasted blood in her mouth.

The pain cleared her head momentarily. The door flew open, revealing a woman in a dark dress, her face creased with a mixture of anger and surprise. Her hair was long, a tangled gray-brown cloud escaping from two braids; her blue eyes were familiar. A witchlight rune-stone gleamed in her hand. “Who is it?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

“Amatis.” Luke moved into the pool of witchlight, Clary in his arms. “It’s me.”

The woman blanched and tottered, putting out a hand to brace herself against the doorway. “Lucian?” Luke tried to take a step forward, but the woman—Amatis—blocked his path. She was shaking her head so hard that her braids whipped back and forth. “How can you come here, Lucian? How dare you come here?”

“I had very little choice.” Luke tightened his hold on Clary. She bit back a cry. Her whole body felt as if it were on fire, every nerve ending burning with pain.

“You have to go, then,” Amatis said. “If you leave immediately—”

“I’m not here for me. I’m here for the girl. She’s dying.” As the woman stared at him, he said, “Amatis, please. She’s Jocelyn’s daughter.”

There was a long silence, during which Amatis stood like a statue, unmoving, in the doorway. She seemed frozen, whether from surprise or horror Clary couldn’t guess. Clary clenched her fist—her palm was sticky with blood where the nails dug in—but even the pain wasn’t helping now; the world was coming apart in soft colors, like a jigsaw puzzle drifting on the surface of water. She barely heard Amatis’s voice as the older woman stepped back from the doorway and said, “Very well, Lucian. You can bring her inside.”

By the time Simon and Jace came back into the living room, Aline had laid food out on the low table between the couches. There was bread and cheese, slices of cake, apples, and even a bottle of wine, which Max was not allowed to touch. He sat in the corner with a plate of cake, his book open on his lap. Simon sympathized with him. He felt just as alone in the laughing, chatting group as Max probably did.

He watched Aline touch Jace’s wrist with her fingers as she reached for a piece of apple, and felt himself tense. But this is what you want him to do, he told himself, and yet somehow he couldn’t get rid of the sense that Clary was being disregarded.

Jace met his eyes over Aline’s head and smiled. Somehow, even though he wasn’t a vampire, he was able to manage a smile that seemed to be all pointed teeth. Simon looked away, glancing around the room. He noticed that the music he’d heard earlier wasn’t coming from a stereo at all but from a complicated-looking mechanical contraption.

He thought about striking up a conversation with Isabelle, but she was chatting with Sebastian, whose elegant face was bent attentively down to hers. Jace had laughed at Simon’s crush on Isabelle once, but Sebastian could doubtless handle her. Shadowhunters were brought up to handle anything, weren’t they? Although the look on Jace’s face when he’d said that he planned to be only Clary’s brother made Simon wonder.

“We’re out of wine,” Isabelle declared, setting the bottle down on the table with a thump. “I’m going to get some more.” With a wink at Sebastian, she disappeared into the kitchen.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem a little quiet.” It was Sebastian, leaning over the back of Simon’s chair with a disarming smile. For someone with such dark hair, Simon thought, Sebastian’s skin was very fair, as if he didn’t go out in the sun much. “Everything all right?”

Simon shrugged. “There aren’t a lot of openings for me in the conversation. It seems to be either about Shadowhunter politics or people I’ve never heard of, or both.”

The smile disappeared. “We can be something of a closed circle, we Nephilim. It’s the way of those who are shut out from the rest of the world.”

“Don’t you think you shut yourselves out? You despise ordinary humans—”

“‘Despise’ is a little strong,” said Sebastian. “And do you really think the world of humans would want anything to do with us? All we are is a living reminder that whenever they comfort themselves that there are no real vampires, no real demons or monsters under the bed—they’re lying.” He turned his head to look at Jace, who, Simon realized, had been staring at them both in silence for several minutes. “Don’t you agree?”

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi c? v? ascultam conversatia?”

Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de când ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama dac? nu m? placi ori dac? eşti atât de b?nuitor cu toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to see what’s taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.” He disappeared through the doorway, leaving Jace staring after him with a puzzled expression.

“What’s wrong? Does he not speak Romanian after all?” Simon asked.

“No,” said Jace. A small frown line had appeared between his eyes. “No, he speaks it all right.”

Before Simon could ask him what he meant by that, Alec entered the room. He was frowning, just as he had been when he’d left. His gaze lingered momentarily on Simon, a look almost of confusion in his blue eyes.

Jace glanced up. “Back so soon?”

“Not for long.” Alec reached down to pluck an apple off the table with a gloved hand. “I just came back to get—him,” he said, gesturing toward Simon with the apple. “He’s wanted at the Gard.”

Aline looked surprised. “Really?” she said, but Jace was already rising from the couch, disentangling his hand from hers.

“Wanted for what?” he said, with a dangerous calm. “I hope you found that out before you promised to deliver him, at least.”

“Of course I asked,” Alec snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, come on,” said Isabelle. She had reappeared in the doorway with Sebastian, who was holding a bottle. “Sometimes you are a bit stupid, you know. Just a bit,” she repeated as Alec shot her a murderous glare.

“They’re sending Simon back to New York,” he said. “Through the Portal.”

“But he just got here!” Isabelle protested with a pout. “That’s no fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun, Izzy. Simon coming here was an accident, so the Clave thinks the best thing is for him to go home.”

“Great,” Simon said. “Maybe I’ll even make it back before my mother notices I’m gone. What’s the time difference between here and Manhattan?”

“You have a mother?” Aline looked amazed.

Simon chose to ignore this. “Seriously,” he said, as Alec and Jace exchanged glances. “It’s fine. All I want is to get out of this place.”

“You’ll go with him?” Jace said to Alec. “And make sure everything’s all right?”

They were looking at each other in a way that was familiar to Simon. It was the way he and Clary sometimes looked at each other, exchanging coded glances when they didn’t want their parents to know what they were planning.

“What?” he said, looking from one to the other. “What’s wrong?”

They broke their stare; Alec glanced away, and Jace turned a bland and smiling look on Simon. “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Congratulations, vampire—you get to go home.”

4 DAYLIGHTER

Night had fallen over Alicante when Simon and Alec left the Penhallows’ house and headed uphill toward the Gard. The streets of the city were narrow and twisting, wending upward like pale stone ribbons in the moonlight. The air was cold, though Simon felt it only distantly.

Alec walked along in silence, striding ahead of Simon as if pretending that he were alone. In his previous life Simon would have had to hurry, panting, to keep up; now he discovered he could pace Alec just by speeding up his stride. “Must suck,” Simon said finally, as Alec stared morosely ahead. “Getting stuck with escorting me, I mean.”

Alec shrugged. “I’m eighteen. I’m an adult, so I have to be the responsible one. I’m the only one who can go in and out of the Gard when the Clave’s in session, and besides, the Consul knows me.”

“What’s a Consul?”

“He’s like a very high officer of the Clave. He counts the votes of the Council, interprets the Law for the Clave, and advises them and the Inquisitor. If you head up an Institute and you run into a problem you don’t know how to deal with, you call the Consul.”

“He advises the Inquisitor? I thought—isn’t the Inquisitor dead?”

Alec snorted. “That’s like saying, ‘Isn’t the president dead?’ Yeah, the Inquisitor died; now there’s a new one. Inquisitor Aldertree.”

Simon glanced down the hill toward the dark water of the canals far below. They’d left the city behind them and were treading a narrow road between shadowy trees. “I’ll tell you, inquisitions haven’t worked out well for my people in the past.” Alec looked blank. “Never mind. Just a mundane history joke. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“You’re not a mundane,” Alec pointed out. “That’s why Aline and Sebastian were so excited to get a look at you. Not that you can tell with Sebastian; he always acts like he’s seen everything already.”

Simon spoke without thinking. “Are he and Isabelle…Is there something going on there?”

That startled a laugh out of Alec. “Isabelle and Sebastian? Hardly. Sebastian’s a nice guy—Isabelle only likes dating thoroughly inappropriate boys our parents will hate. Mundanes, Downworlders, petty crooks…”

“Thanks,” Simon said. “I’m glad to be classed with the criminal element.”

“I think she does it for attention,” Alec said. “She’s the only girl in the family too, so she has to keep proving how tough she is. Or at least, that’s what she thinks.”

“Or maybe she’s trying to take the attention off you,” Simon said, almost absently. “You know, since your parents don’t know you’re gay and all.”

Alec stopped in the middle of the road so suddenly that Simon almost crashed into him. “No,” he said, “but apparently everyone else does.”

“Except Jace,” Simon said. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

Alec took a deep breath. He was pale, Simon thought, or it could have just been the moonlight, washing the color out of everything. His eyes looked black in the darkness. “I really don’t see what business it is of yours. Unless you’re trying to threaten me.”

“Trying to threaten you?” Simon was taken aback. “I’m not—”

“Then why?” said Alec, and there was a sudden, sharp vulnerability in his voice that took Simon aback. “Why bring it up?”

“Because,” Simon said. “You seem to hate me most of the time. I don’t take it that personally, even if I did save your life. You seem to kind of hate the whole world. And besides, we have practically nothing in common. But I see you looking at Jace, and I see myself looking at Clary, and I figure—maybe we have that one thing in common. And maybe it might make you dislike me a little less.”

“So you’re not going to tell Jace?” Alec said. “I mean—you told Clary how you felt, and…”

“And it wasn’t the best idea,” said Simon. “Now I wonder all the time how you go back after something like that. Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me. Maybe if I found someone else…”

“Someone else,” Alec repeated. He had started walking again, very quickly, staring at the road ahead of him.

Simon hurried to keep up. “You know what I mean. For instance, I think Magnus Bane really likes you. And he’s pretty cool. He throws great parties, anyway. Even if I did get turned into a rat that time.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Alec’s voice was dry. “But I don’t think he likes me all that much. He barely spoke to me when he came to open the Portal at the Institute.”

“Maybe you should call him,” Simon suggested, trying not to think too hard about how weird it was to be giving a demon hunter advice about possibly dating a warlock.

“Can’t,” Alec said. “No phones in Idris. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” His tone was abrupt. “We’re here. This is the Gard.”

A high wall rose in front of them, set with a pair of enormous gates. The gates were carved with the swirling, angular patterns of runes, and though Simon couldn’t read them as Clary could, there was something dazzling in their complexity and the sense of power that emanated from them. The gates were guarded by stone angel statues on either side, their faces fierce and beautiful. Each held a carved sword in its hand, and a writhing creature—a mixture of rat, bat, and lizard, with nasty pointed teeth—lay dying at its feet. Simon stood looking at them for a long moment. Demons, he figured—but they could just as easily be vampires.

Alec pushed the gate open and gestured for Simon to pass through. Once inside, he blinked around in confusion. Since he’d become a vampire, his night vision had sharpened to a laserlike clarity, but the dozens of torches lining the path to the doors of the Gard were made of witchlight, and the harsh white glow seemed to bleach the detail out of everything. He was vaguely aware of Alec guiding him forward down a narrow stone pathway that shone with reflected illumination, and then there was someone standing on the path in front of him, blocking his way with an upraised arm.

“So this is the vampire?” The voice that spoke was deep enough to nearly be a growl. Simon looked up, the light stinging his eyes to burning—they would have teared up if he’d still been able to shed tears. Witchlight, he thought, angel light, burns me. I suppose it’s no surprise.

The man standing in front of them was very tall, with sallow skin stretched over prominent cheekbones. Under a close-cropped dome of black hair, his forehead was high, his nose beaked and Roman. His expression as he looked down at Simon was the look of a subway commuter watching a large rat run back and forth on the rails, half-hoping a train will come along and squish it.

“This is Simon,” said Alec, a little uncertainly. “Simon, this is Consul Malachi Dieudonné. Is the Portal ready, sir?”

“Yes,” Malachi said. His voice was harsh and carried a faint accent. “Everything is in readiness. Come, Downworlder.” He beckoned to Simon. “The sooner this is all over, the better.”

Simon moved to go to the chief officer, but Alec stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Just a moment,” he said, addressing the Consul. “He’ll be sent directly back to Manhattan? And there will be someone waiting there on the other side for him?”

“Indeed,” said Malachi. “The warlock Magnus Bane. Since he unwisely allowed the vampire into Idris in the first place, he’s taken responsibility for his return.”

“If Magnus hadn’t let Simon through the Portal, he would have died,” Alec said, a little sharply.

“Perhaps,” said Malachi. “That’s what your parents say, and the Clave has chosen to believe them. Against my advice, in fact. Still, one does not lightly bring Downworlders into the City of Glass.”

“There was nothing light about it.” Anger surged in Simon’s chest. “We were under attack—”

Malachi turned his gaze on Simon. “You will speak when you are spoken to, Downworlder, not before.”

Alec’s hand tightened on Simon’s arm. There was a look on his face—half hesitation, half suspicion, as if he were doubting his wisdom in bringing Simon here after all.

“Now, Consul, really!” The voice carrying through the courtyard was high, a little breathless, and Simon saw with some surprise that it belonged to a man—a small, round man hurrying along the path toward them. He was wearing a loose gray cloak over his Shadowhunter gear, and his bald head glistened in the witchlight. “There’s no need to alarm our guest.”

“Guest?” Malachi looked outraged.

The small man came to a halt before Alec and Simon and beamed at them both. “We’re so glad—pleased, really—that you decided to cooperate with our request that you return to New York. It does make everything so much easier.” He twinkled at Simon, who stared back at him in confusion. He didn’t think he’d ever met a Shadowhunter who seemed pleased to see him—not when he was a mundane, and definitely not now that he was a vampire. “Oh, I almost forgot!” The little man slapped himself on the forehead in remorse. “I should have introduced myself. I’m the Inquisitor—the new Inquisitor. Inquisitor Aldertree is my name.”

Aldertree held his hand out to Simon, and in a welter of confusion Simon took it. “And you. Your name is Simon?”

“Yes,” Simon said, drawing his hand back as soon as he could. Aldertree’s grip was unpleasantly moist and clammy. “There’s no need to thank me for cooperating. All I want is to go home.”

“I’m sure you do, I’m sure you do!” Though Aldertree’s tone was jovial, something flashed across his face as he spoke—an expression Simon couldn’t pin down. It was gone in a moment, as Aldertree smiled and gestured toward a narrow path that wound alongside the Gard. “This way, Simon, if you please.”

Simon moved forward, and Alec made as if to follow him. The Inquisitor held up a hand. “That’s all we’ll be needing from you, Alexander. Thank you for your help.”

“But Simon—,” Alec began.

“Will be just fine,” the Inquisitor assured him. “Malachi, please show Alexander out. And give him a witchlight rune-stone to get him back home if he hasn’t brought one. The path can be tricky at night.”

And with another beatific smile, he whisked Simon away, leaving Alec staring after them both.

The world flared up around Clary in an almost tangible blur as Luke carried her over the threshold of the house and down a long hallway, Amatis hurrying ahead of them with her witch- light. More than half-delirious, she stared as the corridor unfolded before her, growing longer and longer like a corridor in a nightmare.

The world turned on its side. Suddenly she was lying on a cold surface, and hands were smoothing a blanket over her. Blue eyes gazed down at her. “She seems so ill, Lucian,” Amatis said, in a voice that was warped and distorted like an old recording. “What happened to her?”

“She drank about half of Lake Lyn.” The sound of Luke’s voice faded, and for a moment Clary’s vision cleared: She was lying on the cold tiled floor of a kitchen, and somewhere above her head Luke was rummaging in a cabinet. The kitchen had peeling yellow walls and an old-fashioned black cast-iron stove against one wall; flames leaped behind the stove grating, making her eyes hurt. “Anise, belladonna, hellbore…” Luke turned away from the cabinet with an armful of glass canisters. “Can you boil these together, Amatis? I’m going to move her closer to the stove. She’s shivering.”

Clary tried to speak, to say that she didn’t need to be warmed, that she was burning up, but the sounds that came out of her mouth weren’t the ones she’d intended. She heard herself whimper as Luke lifted her, and then there was heat, thawing her left side—she hadn’t even realized she was cold. Her teeth clicked together hard, and she tasted blood in her mouth. The world began to tremble around her like water shaken in a glass.

“The Lake of Dreams?” Amatis’s voice was full of disbelief. Clary couldn’t see her clearly, but she seemed to be standing near the stove, a long-handled wooden spoon in her hand. “What were you doing there? Does Jocelyn know where—”

And the world was gone, or at least the real world, the kitchen with the yellow walls and the comforting fire behind the grate. Instead she saw the waters of Lake Lyn, with fire reflected in them as if in the surface of a piece of polished glass. Angels were walking on the glass—angels with white wings that hung bloodied and broken from their backs, and each of them had Jace’s face. And then there were other angels, with wings of black shadow, and they touched their hands to the fire and laughed….

“She keeps calling out for her brother.” Amatis’s voice sounded hollow, as if filtering down from impossibly high overhead. “He’s with the Lightwoods, isn’t he? They’re staying with the Penhallows on Princewater Street. I could—”

“No,” Luke said sharply. “No. It’s better Jace doesn’t know about this.”

Was I calling out for Jace? Why would I do that? Clary wondered, but the thought was short-lived; the darkness came back, and the hallucinations claimed her again. This time she dreamed of Alec and of Isabelle; both looked as if they’d been through a fierce battle, their faces streaked with grime and tears. Then they were gone, and she dreamed of a faceless man with black wings sprouting from his back like a bat’s. Blood ran from his mouth when he smiled. Praying that the visions would vanish, Clary squeezed her eyes shut….

It was a long time before she surfaced again to the sound of voices above her. “Drink this,” Luke said. “Clary, you have to drink this,” and then there were hands on her back and fluid was being dripped into her mouth from a soaked rag. It tasted bitter and awful and she choked and gagged on it, but the hands on her back were firm. She swallowed, past the pain in her swollen throat. “There,” said Luke. “There, that should be better.”

Clary opened her eyes slowly. Kneeling beside her were Luke and Amatis, their nearly identically blue eyes filled with matching concern. She glanced behind them and saw nothing—no angels or devils with bat wings, only yellow walls and a pale pink teakettle balanced precariously on a windowsill.

“Am I going to die?” she whispered.

Luke smiled haggardly. “No. It’ll be a little while before you’re back on form, but—you’ll survive.”

“Okay.” She was too exhausted to feel much of anything, even relief. It felt as if all her bones had been removed, leaving a limp suit of skin behind. Looking up drowsily through her eyelashes, she said, almost without thinking, “Your eyes are the same.”

Luke blinked. “The same as what?”

“As hers,” Clary said, moving her sleepy gaze to Amatis, who looked perplexed. “The same blue.”

The ghost of a smile passed over Luke’s face. “Well, it’s not that surprising, considering,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce you properly before. Clary, this is Amatis Herondale. My sister.”

The Inquisitor fell silent the moment Alec and the chief officer were out of earshot. Simon followed him up the narrow witch-lit path, trying not to squint into the light. He was aware of the Gard rising up around him like the side of a ship rising up out of the ocean; lights blazed from its windows, staining the sky with a silvery light. There were low windows too, set at ground level. Several were barred, and there was only darkness within.

At length they reached a wooden door set into an archway at the side of the building. Aldertree moved to free the lock, and Simon’s stomach tightened. People, he’d noticed since he’d become a vampire, had a scent around them that changed with their moods. The Inquisitor stank of something bitter and strong as coffee, but much more unpleasant. Simon felt the prickling pain in his jaw that meant that his fang teeth wanted to come out, and shrank back from the Inquisitor as he passed through the door.

The hallway beyond was long and white, almost tunnel-like, as if it had been carved out of white rock. The Inquisitor hurried along, his witchlight bouncing brightly off the walls. For such a short-legged man he moved remarkably fast, turning his head from side to side as he went, his nose wrinkling as if he were smelling the air. Simon had to hurry to keep pace as they passed a set of huge double doors, thrown wide open like wings. In the room beyond, Simon could see an amphitheater with row upon row of chairs in it, each one occupied by a black-clad Shadowhunter. Voices echoed off the walls, many raised in anger, and Simon caught snatches of the conversation as he passed, the words blurring as the speakers overlapped each other.

“But we have no proof of what Valentine wants. He has communicated his wishes to no one—”

“What does it matter what he wants? He’s a renegade and a liar; do you really think any attempt to appease him would benefit us in the end?”

“You know a patrol found the dead body of a werewolf child on the outskirts of Brocelind? Drained of blood. It looks like Valentine’s completed the Ritual here in Idris.”

“With two of the Mortal Instruments in his possession, he’s more powerful than any one Nephilim has a right to be. We may have no choice—”

“My cousin died on that ship in New York! There’s no way we’re letting Valentine get away with what he’s already done! There must be retribution!”

Simon hesitated, curious to hear more, but the Inquisitor was buzzing around him like a fat, irritable bee. “Come along, come along,” he said, swinging his witchlight in front of him. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste. I should get back to the meeting before it ends.”

Reluctantly, Simon allowed the Inquisitor to push him along the corridor, the word “retribution” still ringing in his ears. The reminder of that night on the ship was cold, unpleasant. When they reached a door carved with a single stark black rune, the Inquisitor produced a key and unlocked it, ushering Simon inside with a broad gesture of welcome.

The room beyond was bare, decorated with a single tapestry that showed an angel rising out of a lake, clutching a sword in one hand and a cup in the other. The fact that he’d seen both the Cup and the Sword before momentarily distracted Simon. It wasn’t until he heard the click of a lock sliding home that he realized the Inquisitor had bolted the door behind him, locking them both in.

Simon glanced around. There was no furniture in the room besides a bench with a low table beside it. A decorative silver bell rested on the table. “The Portal…It’s in here?” he asked uncertainly.

“Simon, Simon.” Aldertree rubbed his hands together as if anticipating a birthday party or some other delightful event. “Are you really in such a hurry to leave? There are a few questions I had so hoped to ask you first….”

“Okay.” Simon shrugged uncomfortably. “Ask me whatever you want, I guess.”

“How very cooperative of you! How delightful!” Aldertree beamed. “So, how long is it exactly that you’ve been a vampire?”

“About two weeks.”

“And how did it happen? Were you attacked on the street, or perhaps in your bed at night? Do you know who it was who Turned you?”

“Well—not exactly.”

“But, my boy!” Aldertree cried. “How could you not know something like that?” The look he bent on Simon was open and curious. He seemed so harmless, Simon thought. Like someone’s grandfather or funny old uncle. Simon must have imagined the bitter smell.

“It really wasn’t that simple,” said Simon, and went on to explain about his two trips to the Dumort, one as a rat and the second under a compulsion so strong it had felt like a giant set of pincers holding him in their grasp and marching him exactly where they wanted him to go. “And so you see,” he finished, “the moment I walked in the door of the hotel, I was attacked—I don’t know which of them it was who Turned me, or if it was all of them somehow.”

The Inquisitor clucked. “Oh dear, oh dear. That’s not good at all. That’s very upsetting.”

“I certainly thought so,” Simon agreed.

“The Clave won’t be pleased.”

“What?” Simon was baffled. “What does the Clave care how I became a vampire?”

“Well, it would be one thing if you were attacked,” Aldertree said apologetically. “But you just walked out there and, well, gave yourself up to the vampires, you see? It looks a bit as if you wanted to be one.”

“I didn’t want to be one! That’s not why I went to the hotel!”

“Of course, of course.” Aldertree’s voice was soothing. “Let’s move to another topic, shall we?” Without waiting for a response, he went on. “How is it that the vampires let you survive to rise again, young Simon? Considering that you trespassed on their territory, their normal procedure would have been to feed until you died, and then burn your body to prevent you from rising.”

Simon opened his mouth to reply, to tell the Inquisitor how Raphael had taken him to the Institute, and how Clary and Jace and Isabelle had brought him to the cemetery and watched over him as he’d dug his way out of his own grave. Then he hesitated. He had only the vaguest idea how the Law worked, but he doubted somehow that it was standard Shadowhunter procedure to watch over vampires as they rose, or to provide them with blood for their first feeding. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have no idea why they Turned me instead of killing me.”

“But one of them must have let you drink his blood, or you wouldn’t be…well, what you are today. Are you saying you don’t know who your vampire sire was?”

My vampire sire? Simon had never thought of it that way—he’d gotten Raphael’s blood in his mouth almost by accident. And it was hard to think of the vampire boy as a sire of any sort. Raphael looked younger than Simon did. “I’m afraid not.”

“Oh, dear.” The Inquisitor sighed. “Most unfortunate.”

“What’s unfortunate?”

“Well, that you’re lying to me, my boy.” Aldertree shook his head. “And I had so hoped you’d cooperate. This is terrible, just terrible. You wouldn’t consider telling me the truth? Just as a favor?”

“I am telling you the truth!”

The Inquisitor drooped like an unwatered flower. “Such a shame.” He sighed again. “Such a shame.” He crossed the room then and rapped sharply on the door, still shaking his head.

“What’s going on?” Alarm and confusion tinged Simon’s voice. “What about the Portal?”

“The Portal?” Aldertree giggled. “You didn’t really think I was just going to let you go, did you?”

Before Simon could say a word in reply, the door burst open and Shadowhunters in black gear poured into the room, seizing hold of him. He struggled as strong hands clamped themselves around each of his arms. A hood was tugged down over his head, blinding him. He kicked out at the darkness; his foot connected, and he heard someone swear.

He was jerked backward viciously; a hot voice snarled in his ear. “Do that again, vampire, and I’ll pour holy water down your throat and watch you die puking blood.”

“That’s enough!” The Inquisitor’s thin, worried voice rose like a balloon. “There will be no more threats! I’m just trying to teach our guest a lesson.” He must have moved forward, because Simon smelled the strange, bitter smell again, muffled through the hood. “Simon, Simon,” Aldertree said. “I did so enjoy meeting you. I hope a night in the cells of the Gard will have the desired effect and in the morning you’ll be a bit more cooperative. I do still see such a bright future for us, once we get over this little hiccup.” His hand came down on Simon’s shoulder. “Take him downstairs, Nephilim.”

Simon yelled aloud, but his cries were muffled by the hood. The Shadowhunters dragged him from the room and propelled him down what felt like an endless series of mazelike corridors, twisting and turning. Eventually they reached a set of stairs and he was shoved down it by main force, his feet slipping on the steps. He couldn’t tell anything about where they were—except that there was a close, dark smell around them, like wet stone, and that the air was growing wetter and colder as they descended.

At last they paused. There was a scraping sound, like iron dragging over stone, and Simon was thrown forward to land on his hands and knees on hard ground. There was a loud, metallic clang, as of a door being slammed shut, and the sound of retreating footsteps, the echo of boots on stone growing fainter as Simon staggered to his feet. He dragged the hood from his head and threw it to the ground. The close, hot, suffocating feeling around his face vanished, and he fought the urge to gasp for breath—breath he didn’t need. He knew it was just a reflex, but his chest ached as if he’d really been deprived of air.

He was in a square barren stone room, with just a single barred window set into the wall above the small, hard-looking bed. Through a low door Simon could see a tiny bathroom with a sink and toilet. The west wall of the room was also barred—thick, iron-looking bars running from floor to ceiling, sunk deeply into the floor. A hinged iron door, made of bars itself, was set into the wall; it was fitted with a brass knob, which was carved across its face with a dense black rune. In fact, all the bars were carved with runes; even the window bars were wrapped with spidery lines of them.

Though he knew the cell door must be locked, Simon couldn’t help himself; he strode across the floor and seized the knob. A searing pain shot through his hand. He yelled and jerked his arm back, staring. Thin wisps of smoke rose from his burned palm; an intricate design had been charred into the skin. It looked a little like a Star of David inside a circle, with delicate runes drawn in each of the hollow spaces between the lines.

The pain felt like white heat. Simon curled his hand in on itself as a gasp rose to his lips. “What is this?” he whispered, knowing no one could hear him.

“It’s the Seal of Solomon,” said a voice. “It contains, they claim, one of the True Names of God. It repels demons—and your kind as well, being an article of your faith.”

Simon jerked upright, half-forgetting the pain in his hand. “Who’s there? Who said that?”

There was a pause. Then, “I’m in the cell next to yours, Daylighter,” said the voice. It was male, adult, slightly hoarse. “The guards were here half the day talking about how to keep you penned in. So I wouldn’t bother trying to get it open. You’re better off saving your strength till you find out what the Clave wants from you.”

“They can’t hold me here,” Simon protested. “I don’t belong to this world. My family will notice I’m missing—my teachers—”

“They’ve taken care of that. There are simple enough spells—a beginning warlock could use them—that will supply your parents with the illusion that there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for your absence. A school trip. A visit to family. It can be done.” There was no threat in the voice, and no sorrow; it was matter-of-fact. “Do you really think they’ve never made a Downworlder disappear before?”

“Who are you?” Simon’s voice cracked. “Are you a Downworlder too? Is this where they keep us?”

This time there was no answer. Simon called out again, but his neighbor had evidently decided that he’d said all he wanted to say. Nothing answered Simon’s cries but silence.

The pain in his hand had faded. Looking down, Simon saw that the skin no longer looked burned, but the mark of the Seal was printed on his palm as if it had been drawn there in ink. He looked back at the cell bars. He realized now that not all the runes were runes at all: Carved between them were Stars of David and lines from the Torah in Hebrew. The carvings looked new.

The guards were here half the day talking about how to keep you penned in, the voice had said.

But it hadn’t just been because he was a vampire, laughably; it had partly been because he was Jewish. They had spent half the day carving the Seal of Solomon into that doorknob so it would burn him when he touched it. It had taken them this long to turn the articles of his faith against him.

For some reason the realization stripped away the last of Simon’s self-possession. He sank down onto the bed and put his head in his hands.

Princewater Street was dark when Alec returned from the Gard, the windows of the houses shuttered and shaded, only the occasional witchlight streetlamp casting a pool of white illumination onto the cobblestones. The Penhallows’ house was the brightest on the block—candles glowed in the windows, and the front door was slightly ajar, letting a slice of yellow light out to curve along the walkway.

Jace was sitting on the low stone wall that bordered the Penhallows’ front garden, his hair very bright under the light of the nearest streetlamp. He looked up as Alec approached, and shivered a little. He was wearing only a light jacket, Alec saw, and it had grown cold since the sun had gone down. The smell of late roses hung in the chilly air like thin perfume.

Alec sank down onto the wall beside Jace. “Have you been out here waiting for me all this time?”

“Who says I’m waiting for you?”

“It went fine, if that’s what you were worried about. I left Simon with the Inquisitor.”

“You left him? You didn’t stay to make sure everything went all right?”

“It was fine,” Alec repeated. “The Inquisitor said he’d take him inside personally and send him back to—”

“The Inquisitor said, the Inquisitor said,” Jace interrupted. “The last Inquisitor we met completely exceeded her command—if she hadn’t died, the Clave would have relieved her of her position, maybe even cursed her. What’s to say this Inquisitor isn’t a nut job too?”

“He seemed all right,” said Alec. “Nice, even. He was perfectly polite to Simon. Look, Jace—this is how the Clave works. We don’t get to control everything that happens. But you have to trust them, because otherwise everything turns into chaos.”

“But they’ve screwed up a lot recently—you have to admit that.”

“Maybe,” Alec said, “but if you start thinking you know better than the Clave and better than the Law, what makes you any better than the Inquisitor? Or Valentine?”

Jace flinched. He looked as if Alec had hit him, or worse.

Alec’s stomach dropped. “I’m sorry.” He reached out a hand. “I didn’t mean that—”

A beam of bright yellow light cut across the garden suddenly. Alec looked up to see Isabelle framed in the open front door, light pouring out around her. She was only a silhouette, but he could tell from the hands on her hips that she was annoyed. “What are you two doing out here?” she called. “Everyone’s wondering where you are.”

Alec turned back to his friend. “Jace—”

But Jace, getting to his feet, ignored Alec’s outstretched hand. “You’d better be right about the Clave,” was all he said.

Alec watched as Jace stalked back to the house. Unbidden, Simon’s voice came into his mind. Now I wonder all the time how you go back after something like that. Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me.

The front door shut, leaving Alec sitting in the half-lit garden, alone. He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of a face hovering behind his lids. Not Jace’s face, for a change. The eyes set in the face were green, slit-pupiled. Cat eyes.

Opening his eyes, he reached into his satchel and drew out a pen and a piece of paper, torn from the spiral-bound notebook he used as a journal. He wrote a few words on it and then, with his stele, traced the rune for fire at the bottom of the page. It went up faster than he’d thought it would; he let go of the paper as it burned, floating in midair like a firefly. Soon all that was left was a fine drift of ash, sifting like white powder across the rosebushes.

5 A PROBLEM OF MEMORY

Afternoon light woke Clary, a beam of pale brightness that laid itself directly over her face, lighting the insides of her eyelids to hot pink. She stirred restlessly and warily opened her eyes.

The fever was gone, and so was the sense that her bones were melting and breaking inside her. She sat up and glanced around with curious eyes. She was in what had to be Amatis’s spare room—it was small, white-painted, the bed covered with a brightly woven rag blanket. Lace curtains were drawn back over round windows, letting in circles of light. She sat up slowly, waiting for dizziness to wash over her. Nothing happened. She felt entirely healthy, even well rested. Getting out of bed, she looked down at herself. Someone had put her in a pair of starched white pajamas, though they were wrinkled now and too big for her; the sleeves hung down comically past her fingers.

She went to one of the circular windows and peered out. Stacked houses of old-gold stone rose up the side of a hill, and the roofs looked as if they had been shingled in bronze. This side of the house faced away from the canal, onto a narrow side garden turning brown and gold with autumn. A trellis crawled up the side of the house; a single last rose hung on it, drooping browning petals.

The doorknob rattled, and Clary climbed hastily back into bed just before Amatis entered, holding a tray in her hands. She raised her eyebrows when she saw Clary was awake, but said nothing.

“Where’s Luke?” Clary demanded, drawing the blanket close around herself for comfort.

Amatis set the tray down on the table beside the bed. There was a mug of something hot on it, and some slices of buttered bread. “You should eat something,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”

“I feel fine,” Clary said. “Where’s Luke?”

There was a high-backed chair beside the table; Amatis sat in it, folded her hands in her lap, and regarded Clary calmly. In the daylight Clary could see more clearly the lines in her face—she looked older than Clary’s mother by many years, though they couldn’t be that far apart in age. Her brown hair was stippled with gray, her eyes rimmed with dark pink, as if she had been crying. “He’s not here.”

“Not here like he just popped around the corner to the bodega for a six-pack of Diet Coke and a box of Krispy Kremes, or not here like…”

“He left this morning, around dawn, after sitting up with you all night. As to his destination, he wasn’t specific.” Amatis’s tone was dry, and if Clary hadn’t felt so wretched, she might have been amused to note that it made her sound much more like Luke. “When he lived here, before he left Idris, after he was…Changed…he led a wolf pack that made its home in Brocelind Forest. He said he was going back to them, but he wouldn’t say why or for how long—only that he’d be back in a few days.”

“He just…left me here? Am I supposed to sit around and wait for him?”

“Well, he couldn’t very well take you with him, could he?” Amatis asked. “And it won’t be easy for you to get home. You broke the Law in coming here like you did, and the Clave won’t overlook that, or be generous about letting you leave.”

“I don’t want to go home.” Clary tried to collect herself. “I came here to…to meet someone. I have something to do.”

“Luke told me,” said Amatis. “Let me give you a piece of advice—you’ll only find Ragnor Fell if he wants to be found.”

“But—”

“Clarissa.” Amatis looked at her speculatively. “We’re expecting an attack by Valentine at any moment. Almost every Shadowhunter in Idris is here in the city, inside the wards. Staying in Alicante is the safest thing for you.”

Clary sat frozen. Rationally, Amatis’s words made sense, but it didn’t do much to quiet the voice inside her screaming that she couldn’t wait. She had to find Ragnor Fell now; she had to save her mother now, she had to go now. She bit down on her panic and tried to speak casually. “Luke never told me he had a sister.”

“No,” Amatis said. “He wouldn’t have. We weren’t—close.”

“Luke said your last name was Herondale,” Clary said. “But that’s the Inquisitor’s last name. Isn’t it?”

“It was,” said Amatis, and her face tightened as if the words pained her. “She was my mother-in-law.”

What was it Luke had told Clary about the Inquisitor? That she’d had a son, who’d married a woman with “undesirable family connections.” “You were married to Stephen Herondale?”

Amatis looked surprised. “You know his name?”

“I do—Luke told me—but I thought his wife died. I thought that’s why the Inquisitor was so—” Horrible, she wanted to say, but it seemed cruel to say it. “Bitter,” she said at last.

Amatis reached for the mug she’d brought; her hand shook a little as she lifted it. “Yes, she did die. Killed herself. That was Céline—Stephen’s second wife. I was the first.”

“And you got divorced?”

“Something like that.” Amatis thrust the mug at Clary. “Look, drink this. You have to put something in your stomach.”

Distracted, Clary took the mug and swallowed a hot mouthful. The liquid inside was rich and salty—not tea, as she’d thought, but soup. “Okay,” she said. “So what happened?”

Amatis was gazing into the distance. “We were in the Circle, Stephen and I, along with everyone else. When Luke was—when what happened to Luke happened, Valentine needed a new lieutenant. He chose Stephen. And when he chose Stephen, he decided that perhaps it wouldn’t be fitting for the wife of his closest friend and adviser to be someone whose brother was…”

“A werewolf.”

“He used another word.” Amatis sounded bitter. “He convinced Stephen to annul our marriage and to find himself another wife, one that Valentine had picked for him. Céline was so young—so completely obedient.”

“That’s horrible.”

Amatis shook her head with a brittle laugh. “It was a long time ago. Stephen was kind, I suppose—he gave me this house and moved back into the Herondale manor with his parents and Céline. I never saw him again after that. I left the Circle, of course. They wouldn’t have wanted me anymore. The only one of them who still visited me was Jocelyn. She even told me when she went to see Luke….” She pushed her graying hair back behind her ears. “I heard what happened to Stephen in the Uprising once it was all over. And Céline—I’d hated her, but I felt sorry for her then. She cut her wrists, they say—blood everywhere—” She took a deep breath. “I saw Imogen later at Stephen’s funeral, when they put his body into the Herondale mausoleum. She didn’t even seem to recognize me. They made her the Inquisitor not long after that. The Clave felt there was no one else who would have hunted down the former members of the Circle more ruthlessly than she did—and they were right. If she could have washed away her memories of Stephen in their blood, she would have.”

Clary thought of the cold eyes of the Inquisitor, her narrow, hard stare, and tried to feel pity for her. “I think it made her crazy,” she said. “Really crazy. She was horrible to me—but mostly to Jace. It was like she wanted him dead.”

“That makes sense,” said Amatis. “You look like your mother, and your mother brought you up, but your brother—” She cocked her head to the side. “Does he look as much like Valentine as you look like Jocelyn?”

“No,” Clary said. “Jace just looks like himself.” A shiver went through her at the thought of Jace. “He’s here in Alicante,” she said, thinking out loud. “If I could see him—”

“No.” Amatis spoke with asperity. “You can’t leave the house. Not to see anyone. And definitely not to see your brother.”

“Not leave the house?” Clary was horrified. “You mean I’m stuck here? Like a prisoner?”

“It’s only for a day or two,” Amatis admonished her, “and besides, you’re not well. You need to recover. The lake water nearly killed you.”

“But Jace—”

“Is one of the Lightwoods. You can’t go over there. The moment they see you, they’ll tell the Clave you’re here. And then you won’t be the only one in trouble with the Law. Luke will be too.”

But the Lightwoods won’t betray me to the Clave. They wouldn’t do that—

The words died on her lips. There was no way she was going to be able to convince Amatis that the Lightwoods she’d known fifteen years ago no longer existed, that Robert and Maryse weren’t blindly loyal fanatics anymore. This woman might be Luke’s sister, but she was still a stranger to Clary. She was almost a stranger to Luke. He hadn’t seen her in sixteen years—had never even mentioned she existed. Clary leaned back against the pillows, feigning weariness. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t feel well. I think I’d better sleep.”

“Good idea.” Amatis leaned over and plucked the empty mug out of her hand. “If you want to take a shower, the bathroom’s across the hall. And there’s a trunk of my old clothes at the foot of the bed. You look like you’re about the size I was when I was your age, so they might fit you. Unlike those pajamas,” she added, and smiled, a weak smile that Clary didn’t return. She was too busy fighting the urge to pound her fists against the mattress in frustration.

The moment the door closed behind Amatis, Clary scrambled out of bed and headed for the bathroom, hoping that standing in hot water would help clear her head. To her relief, for all their old-fashionedness, the Shadowhunters seemed to believe in modern plumbing and hot and cold running water. There was even sharply scented citrus soap to rinse the lingering smell of Lake Lyn out of her hair. By the time she emerged, wrapped in two towels, she was feeling much better.

In the bedroom she rummaged through Amatis’s trunk. Her clothes were packed away neatly between layers of crisp paper. There were what looked like school clothes—merino wool sweaters with an insignia that looked like four Cs back to back sewed over the breast pocket, pleated skirts, and button-down shirts with narrow cuffs. There was a white dress swathed in layers of tissue paper—a wedding dress, Clary thought, and laid it aside carefully. Below it was another dress, this one made of silvery silk, with slender bejeweled straps holding up its gossamer weight. Clary couldn’t imagine Amatis in it, but—This is the sort of thing my mother might have worn when she went dancing with Valentine, she couldn’t help thinking, and let the dress slide back into the trunk, its texture soft and cool against her fingers.

And then there was the Shadowhunter gear, packed away at the very bottom.

Clary drew out those clothes and spread them curiously across her lap. The first time she had seen Jace and the Lightwoods, they had been wearing their fighting gear: closefitting tops and pants of tough, dark material. Up close she could see that the material was not stretchy but stiff, a thin leather pounded very flat until it became flexible. There was a jacket-type top that zipped up and pants that had complicated belt loops. Shadowhunter belts were big, sturdy things, meant for hanging weapons on.

She ought, of course, to put on one of the sweaters and maybe a skirt. That was what Amatis had probably meant her to do. But something about the fighting gear called to her; she had always been curious, always wondered what it would be like….

A few minutes later the towels were hanging over the bar at the foot of the bed and Clary was regarding herself in the mirror with surprise and not a little amusement. The gear fit—it was tight but not too tight, and hugged the curves of her legs and chest. In fact, it made her look as if she had curves, which was sort of novel. It couldn’t make her look formidable—she doubted anything could do that—but at least she looked taller, and her hair against the black material was extraordinarily bright. In fact—I look like my mother, Clary thought with a jolt.

And she did. Jocelyn had always had a steely core of toughness under her doll-like looks. Clary had often wondered what had happened in her mother’s past to make her the way she was—strong and unbending, stubborn and unafraid. Does your brother look as much like Valentine as you look like Jocelyn? Amatis had asked, and Clary had wanted to reply that she didn’t look at all like her mother, that her mother was beautiful and she wasn’t. But the Jocelyn that Amatis had known was the girl who’d plotted to bring down Valentine, who’d secretly forged an alliance of Nephilim and Downworlders that had broken the Circle and saved the Accords. That Jocelyn would never have agreed to stay quietly inside this house and wait while everything in her world fell apart.

Without pausing to think, Clary crossed the room and shot home the bolt on the door, locking it. Then she went to the window and pushed it open. The trellis was there, clinging to the side of the stone wall like—Like a ladder, Clary told herself. Just like a ladder—and ladders are perfectly safe.

Taking a deep breath, she crawled out onto the window ledge.

The guards came back for Simon the next morning, shaking him awake out of an already fitful sleep plagued with strange dreams. This time they didn’t blindfold him as they led him back upstairs, and he snuck a quick glance through the barred door of the cell next to his. If he’d hoped to get a look at the owner of the hoarse voice that had spoken to him the night before, he was disappointed. The only thing visible through the bars was what looked like a pile of discarded rags.

The guards hurried Simon along a series of gray corridors, quick to shake him if he looked too long in any direction. Finally they came to a halt in a richly wallpapered room. There were portraits on the walls of different men and women in Shadowhunter gear, the frames decorated with patterns of runes. Below one of the largest portraits was a red couch on which the Inquisitor was seated, holding what looked like a silver cup in his hand. He held it out to Simon. “Blood?” he inquired. “You must be hungry by now.”

He tipped the cup toward Simon, and the view of the red liquid inside it hit him just as the smell did. His veins strained toward the blood, like strings under the control of a master puppeteer. The feeling was unpleasant, almost painful. “Is it…human?”

Aldertree chuckled. “My boy! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s deer blood. Perfectly fresh.”

Simon said nothing. His lower lip stung where his fangs had slid from their sheaths, and he tasted his own blood in his mouth. It filled him with nausea.

Aldertree’s face screwed up like a dried plum. “Oh, dear.” He turned to the guards. “Leave us now, gentlemen,” he said, and they turned to go. Only the Consul paused at the door, glancing back at Simon with a look of unmistakable disgust.

“No, thank you,” Simon said through the thickness in his mouth. “I don’t want the blood.”

“Your fangs say otherwise, young Simon,” Aldertree replied genially. “Here. Take it.” He held out the cup, and the smell of blood seemed to waft through the room like the scent of roses through a garden.

Simon’s incisors stabbed downward, fully extended now, slicing into his lip. The pain was like a slap; he moved forward, almost without volition, and grabbed the cup out of the Inquisitor’s hand. He drained it in three swallows, then, realizing what he had done, set it down on the arm of the couch. His hand was shaking. Inquisitor one, he thought. Me zero.

“I trust your night in the cells wasn’t too unpleasant? They’re not meant to be torture chambers, my boy, more along the lines of a space for enforced reflection. I find reflection absolutely centers the mind, don’t you? Essential to clear thinking. I do hope you got some thinking in. You seem like a thoughtful young man.” The Inquisitor cocked his head to the side. “I brought that blanket down for you with my own hands, you know. I wouldn’t have wanted you to be cold.”

“I’m a vampire,” Simon said. “We don’t get cold.”

“Oh.” The Inquisitor looked disappointed.

“I appreciated the Stars of David and the Seal of Solomon,” Simon added dryly. “It’s always nice to see someone taking an interest in my religion.”

“Oh, yes, of course, of course!” Aldertree brightened. “Wonderful, aren’t they, the carvings? Absolutely charming, and of course foolproof. I’d imagine any attempt to touch the cell door would melt the skin right off your hand!” He chuckled, clearly amused by the thought. “In any case. Could you take a step backward for me, my man? Just as a favor, a pure favor, you understand.”

Simon took a step back.

Nothing happened, but the Inquisitor’s eyes widened, the puffy skin around them looking stretched and shiny. “I see,” he breathed.

“You see what?”

“Look where you are, young Simon. Look all about you.”

Simon glanced around—nothing had changed about the room, and it took a moment for him to realize what Aldertree meant. He was standing in a bright patch of sun that angled through a window high overhead.

Aldertree was almost squirming with excitement. “You’re standing in direct sunlight, and it’s having no effect on you at all. I almost wouldn’t have believed it—I mean, I was told, of course, but I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Simon said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say.

“The question for you, of course,” Aldertree went on, “is whether you know why you’re like this.”

“Maybe I’m just nicer than the other vampires.” Simon was immediately sorry he’d spoken. Aldertree’s eyes narrowed, and a vein bulged at his temple like a fat worm. Clearly, he didn’t like jokes unless he was the one making them.

“Very amusing, very amusing,” he said. “Let me ask you this: Have you been a Daylighter since the moment you rose from the grave?”

“No.” Simon spoke with care. “No. At first the sun burned me. Even just a patch of sunlight would scorch my skin.”

“Indeed.” Aldertree gave a vigorous nod, as if to say that that was the way things ought to be. “So when was it you first noticed that you could walk in the daylight without pain?”

“It was the morning after the big battle on Valentine’s ship—”

“During which Valentine captured you, is that correct? He had captured you and kept you prisoner on his ship, meaning to use your blood to complete the Ritual of Infernal Conversion.”

“I guess you know everything already,” Simon said. “You hardly need me.”

“Oh, no, not at all!” Aldertree cried, throwing up his hands. He had very small hands, Simon noticed, so small that they looked a little out of place at the ends of his plump arms. “You have so much to contribute, my dear boy! For instance, I can’t help wondering if there was something that happened on the ship, something that changed you. Is there anything you can think of?”

I drank Jace’s blood, Simon thought, half-inclined to repeat this to the Inquisitor just to be nasty—and then, with a jolt, realized, I drank Jace’s blood. Could that have been what changed him? Was it possible? And whether it was possible or not, could he tell the Inquisitor what Jace had done? Protecting Clary was one thing; protecting Jace was another. He didn’t owe Jace anything.

Except that wasn’t strictly true. Jace had offered him his blood to drink, had saved his life with it. Would another Shadowhunter have done that, for a vampire? And even if he’d only done it for Clary’s sake, did it matter? He thought of himself saying, I could have killed you. And Jace: I would have let you. There was no telling what kind of trouble Jace would get into if the Clave knew he had saved Simon’s life, and how.

“I don’t remember anything from the boat,” Simon said. “I think Valentine must have drugged me or something.”

Aldertree’s face fell. “That’s terrible news. Terrible. I’m so sorry to hear it.”

“I’m sorry too,” Simon said, although he wasn’t.

“So there isn’t a single thing you remember? Not one colorful detail?”

“I just remember passing out when Valentine attacked me, and then I woke up later on…on Luke’s truck, headed home. I don’t remember anything else.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.” Aldertree drew his cloak around him. “I see the Lightwoods seem to have become rather fond of you, but the other members of the Clave are not so…understanding. You were captured by Valentine, you emerged from this confrontation with a peculiar new power you hadn’t had before, and now you’ve found your way to the heart of Idris. You do see how it looks?”

If Simon’s heart had still been able to beat, it would have been racing. “You think I’m a spy for Valentine.”

Aldertree looked shocked. “My boy, my boy—I trust you, of course. I trust you implicitly! But the Clave, oh, the Clave, I’m afraid they can be very suspicious. We had so hoped you’d be able to help us. You see—and I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I feel I can confide in you, dear boy—the Clave is in dreadful trouble.”

“The Clave?” Simon felt dazed. “But what does that have to do with—”

“You see,” Aldertree went on, “the Clave is split down the middle—at war with itself, you might say, in a time of war. Mistakes were made, by the previous Inquisitor and others—perhaps it’s better not to dwell. But you see, the very authority of the Clave, of the Consul and the Inquisitor, is under question. Valentine always seems to be a step ahead of us, as if he knows our plans in advance. The Council will not listen to my advice or Malachi’s, not after what happened in New York.”

“I thought that was the Inquisitor—”

“And Malachi was the one who appointed her. Now, of course, he had no idea she would go as mad as she did—”

“But,” Simon said, a little sourly, “there is the question of how it looks.”

The vein bulged in Aldertree’s forehead again. “Clever,” he said. “And you’re correct. Appearances are significant, and never more than in politics. You can always sway the crowd, provided you have a good story.” He leaned forward, his eyes locked on Simon. “Now let me tell you a story. It goes like this. The Lightwoods were once in the Circle. At some point they recanted and were granted mercy on the grounds that they stayed out of Idris, went to New York, and ran the Institute there. Their blameless record began to win them back the trust of the Clave. But all along they knew Valentine was alive. All along they were his loyal servants. They took in his son—”

“But they didn’t know—”

“Be quiet,” the Inquisitor snarled, and Simon shut his mouth. “They helped him find the Mortal Instruments and assisted him with the Ritual of Infernal Conversion. When the Inquisitor discovered what they were secretly up to, they arranged to have her killed during the battle on the ship. And now they have come here, to the heart of the Clave, to spy on our plans and reveal them to Valentine as they are made, so that he can defeat us and ultimately bend all Nephilim to his will. And they have brought you with them—you, a vampire who can withstand sunlight—to distract us from their true plans: to return the Circle to its former glory and destroy the Law.” The Inquisitor leaned forward, his piggy eyes gleaming. “What do you think of that story, vampire?”

“I think it’s insane,” said Simon. “And it’s got more giant holes in it than Kent Avenue in Brooklyn—which, incidentally, hasn’t been resurfaced in years. I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish with this—”

“Hoping?” echoed Aldertree. “I don’t hope, Downworlder. I know in my heart. I know it is my sacred duty to save the Clave.”

“With a lie?” said Simon.

“With a story,” said Aldertree. “Great politicians weave tales to inspire their people.”

“There’s nothing inspirational about blaming the Lightwoods for everything—”

“Some must be sacrificed,” said Aldertree. His face shone with a sweaty light. “Once the Council has a common enemy, and a reason to trust the Clave again, they will come together. What is the cost of one family, weighed against all that? In fact, I doubt anything much will happen to the Lightwood children. They won’t be blamed. Well, perhaps the eldest boy. But the others—”

“You can’t do this,” Simon said. “Nobody will believe this story.”

“People believe what they want to believe,” Aldertree said, “and the Clave wants someone to blame. I can give them that. All I need is you.”

“Me? What does this have to do with me?”

“Confess.” The Inquisitor’s face was scarlet with excitement now. “Confess that you’re a servant of the Lightwoods, that you’re all in league with Valentine. Confess and I’ll show you leniency. I’ll send you back to your own people. I swear to it. But I need your confession to make the Clave believe.”

“You want me to confess to a lie,” Simon said. He knew he was just repeating what the Inquisitor had already said, but his mind was whirling; he couldn’t seem to catch hold of a single thought. The faces of the Lightwoods spun through his mind—Alec, catching his breath on the path up to the Gard; Isabelle’s dark eyes turned up to his; Max bent over a book.

And Jace. Jace was one of them as much as if he shared their Lightwood blood. The Inquisitor hadn’t said his name, but Simon knew Jace would pay along with the rest of them. And whatever he suffered, Clary would suffer. How had it happened, Simon thought, that he was bound to these people—to people who thought of him as nothing more than a Downworlder, half human at best?

He raised his eyes to the Inquisitor’s. Aldertree’s were an odd charcoal black; looking into them was like looking into darkness. “No,” Simon said. “No, I won’t do it.”

“That blood I gave you,” Aldertree said, “is all the blood you’ll see until you give me a different answer.” There was no kindness in his voice, not even false kindness. “You’d be surprised how thirsty you can get.”

Simon said nothing.

“Another night in the cells, then,” the Inquisitor said, rising to his feet and reaching for a bell to summon the guards. “It’s quite peaceful down there, isn’t it? I do find that a peaceful atmosphere can help with a little problem of memory—don’t you?”

Though Clary had told herself she remembered the way she’d come with Luke the night before, this turned out not to be entirely true. Heading toward the city center seemed like the best bet for getting directions, but once she found the stone courtyard with the disused well, she couldn’t remember whether to turn left or right from it. She turned left, which plunged her into a warren of twisting streets, each one much like the next and each turn getting her more hopelessly lost than before.

Finally she emerged into a wider street lined with shops. Pedestrians hurried by on either side, none of them giving her a second glance. A few of them were also dressed in fighting gear, although most weren’t: It was cool out, and long, old-fashioned coats were the order of the day. The wind was brisk, and with a pang Clary thought of her green velvet coat, hanging up in Amatis’s spare bedroom.

Luke hadn’t been lying when he’d said that Shadowhunters had come from all over the world for the summit. Clary passed an Indian woman in a gorgeous gold sari, a pair of curved blades hanging from a chain around her waist. A tall, dark-skinned man with an angular Aztec face was gazing into a shop window full of weaponry; bracelets made of the same hard, shining material as the demon towers laddered his wrists. Farther down the street a man in a white nomadic robe consulted what looked like a street map. The sight of him gave Clary the nerve to approach a passing woman in a heavy brocade coat and ask her the way to Princewater Street. If there was ever going to be a time when the city’s inhabitants wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious of someone who didn’t seem to know where they were going, this would be it.

Her instinct was right; without a trace of hesitation the woman gave her a hurried series of directions. “And then right at the end of Oldcastle Canal, and over the stone bridge, and that’s where you’ll find Princewater.” She gave Clary a smile. “Visiting anyone in particular?”

“The Penhallows.”

“Oh, that’s the blue house, gold trim, backs up onto the canal. It’s a big place—you can’t miss it.”

She was half-right. It was a big place, but Clary walked right by it before realizing her mistake and swerving back around to look at it again. It was really more indigo than blue, she thought, but then again not everyone noticed colors that way. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between lemon yellow and saffron. As if they were even close to each other! And the trim on the house wasn’t gold; it was bronze. A nice darkish bronze, as if the house had been there for many years, and it probably had. Everything in this place was so ancient—

Enough, Clary told herself. She always did this when she was nervous, let her mind wander off in all sorts of random directions. She rubbed her hands down the sides of her trousers; her palms were sweaty and damp. The material felt rough and dry against her skin, like snake scales.

She mounted the steps and took hold of the heavy door knocker. It was shaped like a pair of angel’s wings, and when she let it fall, she could hear the sound echoing like the tolling of a huge bell. A moment later the door was yanked open, and Isabelle Lightwood stood on the threshold, her eyes wide with shock.

“Clary?”

Clary smiled weakly. “Hi, Isabelle.”

Isabelle leaned against the doorjamb, her expression dismal. “Oh, crap.”

Back in the cell Simon collapsed on the bed, listening to the footsteps of the guards recede as they marched away from his door. Another night. Another night down here in prison, while the Inquisitor waited for him to “remember.” You do see how it looks. In all his worst fears, his worst nightmares, it had never occurred to Simon that anyone might think he was in league with Valentine. Valentine hated Downworlders, famously. Valentine had stabbed him and drained his blood and left him to die. Although, admittedly, the Inquisitor didn’t know that.

There was a rustle from the other side of the cell wall. “I have to admit, I wondered if you’d be coming back,” said the hoarse voice Simon remembered from the night before. “I take it you didn’t give the Inquisitor what he wants?”

“I don’t think so,” Simon said, approaching the wall. He ran his fingers over the stone as if looking for a crack in it, something he could see through, but there was nothing. “Who are you?”

“He’s a stubborn man, Aldertree,” said the voice, as if Simon hadn’t spoken. “He’ll keep trying.”

Simon leaned against the damp wall. “Then I guess I’ll be down here for a while.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what it is he wants from you?”

“Why do you want to know?”

The chuckle that answered Simon sounded like metal scraping against stone. “I’ve been in this cell longer than you have, Daylighter, and as you can see, there’s not a lot to keep the mind occupied. Any distraction helps.”

Simon laced his hands over his stomach. The deer blood had taken the edge off his hunger, but it hadn’t been quite enough. His body still ached with thirst. “You keep calling me that,” he said. “Daylighter.”

“I heard the guards talking about you. A vampire who can walk around in the sunlight. No one’s ever seen anything like it before.”

“And yet you have a word for it. Convenient.”

“It’s a Downworlder word, not a Clave one. They have legends about creatures like you. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“I haven’t exactly been a Downworlder for very long,” Simon said. “And you seem to know a lot about me.”

“The guards like to gossip,” said the voice. “And the Lightwoods appearing through the Portal with a bleeding, dying vampire—that’s a good piece of gossip. Though I have to say I wasn’t expecting you to show up here—not until they started fixing up the cell for you. I’m surprised the Lightwoods stood for it.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Simon said bitterly. “I’m nothing. I’m a Downworlder.”

“Maybe to the Consul,” said the voice. “But the Lightwoods—”

“What about them?”

There was a short pause. “Those Shadowhunters who live outside Idris—especially those who run Institutes—tend to be more tolerant. The local Clave, on the other hand, is a good deal more…hidebound.”

“And what about you?” Simon said. “Are you a Downworlder?”

“A Downworlder?” Simon couldn’t be sure, but there was an edge of anger in the stranger’s voice, as if he resented the question. “My name is Samuel. Samuel Blackburn. I am Nephilim. Years ago I was in the Circle, with Valentine. I slaughtered Downworlders at the Uprising. I am not one of them.”

“Oh.” Simon swallowed. His mouth tasted of salt. The members of Valentine’s Circle had been caught and punished by the Clave, he remembered—except for those like the Lightwoods, who’d managed to make deals or accept exile in exchange for forgiveness. “Have you been down here ever since?”

“No. After the Uprising, I slipped out of Idris before I could be caught. I stayed away for years—years—until like a fool, thinking I’d been forgotten, I came back. Of course they caught me the moment I returned. The Clave has its ways of tracking its enemies. They dragged me in front of the Inquisitor, and I was interrogated for days. When they were done, they tossed me in here.” Samuel sighed. “In French this sort of prison is called an oubliette. It means ‘a forgetting place.’ It’s where you toss the garbage you don’t want to remember, so it can rot away without bothering you with its stench.”

“Fine. I’m a Downworlder, so I’m garbage. But you’re not. You’re Nephilim.”

“I’m Nephilim who was in league with Valentine. That makes me no better than you. Worse, even. I’m a turncoat.”

“But there are plenty of other Shadowhunters who used to be Circle members—the Lightwoods and the Penhallows—”

“They all recanted. Turned their backs on Valentine. I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? But why not?”

“Because I’m more afraid of Valentine than I am of the Clave,” said Samuel, “and if you were sensible, Daylighter, you would be too.”

“But you’re supposed to be in New York!” Isabelle exclaimed. “Jace said you’d changed your mind about coming. He said you wanted to stay with your mother!”

“Jace lied,” Clary said flatly. “He didn’t want me here, so he lied to me about when you were leaving, and then lied to you about me changing my mind. Remember when you told me he never lies? That is so not true.”

“He normally never does,” said Isabelle, who had gone pale. “Look, did you come here—I mean, does this have something to do with Simon?”

“With Simon? No. Simon’s safe in New York, thank God. Although he’s going to be really pissed that he never got to say good-bye to me.” Isabelle’s blank expression was starting to annoy Clary. “Come on, Isabelle. Let me in. I need to see Jace.”

“So…you just came here on your own? Did you have permission from the Clave? Please tell me you had permission from the Clave.”

“Not as such—”

“You broke the Law?” Isabelle’s voice rose, and then dropped. She went on, almost in a whisper, “If Jace finds out, he’ll freak. Clary, you’ve got to go home.”

“No. I’m supposed to be here,” Clary said, not even sure herself quite where her stubbornness was coming from. “And I need to talk to Jace.”

“Now isn’t a good time.” Isabelle looked around anxiously, as if hoping there was someone she could appeal to for help in removing Clary from the premises. “Please, just go back to New York. Please?”

“I thought you liked me, Izzy.” Clary went for the guilt.

Isabelle bit her lip. She was wearing a white dress and had her hair pinned up and looked younger than she usually did. Behind her Clary could see a high-ceilinged entryway hung with antique-looking oil paintings. “I do like you. It’s just that Jace—oh my God, what are you wearing? Where did you get fighting gear?”

Clary looked down at herself. “It’s a long story.”

“You can’t come in here like that. If Jace sees you—”

“Oh, so what if he sees me. Isabelle, I came here because of my mother—for my mother. Jace may not want me here, but he can’t make me stay home. I’m supposed to be here. My mother expected me to do this for her. You’d do it for your mother, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would,” Isabelle said. “But, Clary, Jace has his reasons—”

“Then I’d love to hear what they are.” Clary ducked under Isabelle’s arm and into the entryway of the house.

“Clary!” Isabelle yelped, and darted after her, but Clary was already halfway down the hall. She saw, with the half of her mind that wasn’t concentrating on dodging Isabelle, that the house was built like Amatis’s, tall and thin, but considerably larger and more richly decorated. The hallway opened into a room with high windows that looked out over a wide canal. White boats plied the water, their sails drifting by like dandelion clocks tossed on the wind. A dark-haired boy sat on a couch by one of the windows, apparently reading a book.

“Sebastian!” Isabelle called. “Don’t let her go upstairs!”

The boy looked up, startled—and a moment later was in front of Clary, blocking her path to the stairs. Clary skidded to a halt—she’d never seen anyone move that fast before, except Jace. The boy wasn’t even out of breath; in fact, he was smiling at her.

“So this is the famous Clary.” His smile lit up his face, and Clary felt her breath catch. For years she’d drawn her own ongoing graphic story—the tale of a king’s son who was under a curse that meant that everyone he loved would die. She’d put everything she had into dreaming up her dark, romantic, shadowy prince, and here he was, standing in front of her—the same pale skin, the same tumbling hair, and eyes so dark, the pupils seemed to meld with the iris. The same high cheekbones and deep-set, shadowed eyes fringed with long lashes. She knew she’d never set eyes on this boy before, and yet…

The boy looked puzzled. “I don’t think—have we met before?”

Speechless, Clary shook her head.

“Sebastian!” Isabelle’s hair had come out of its pins and hung down over her shoulders, and she was glaring. “Don’t be nice to her. She’s not supposed to be here. Clary, go home.”

With an effort Clary wrenched her gaze away from Sebastian and shot a glare at Isabelle. “What, back to New York? And how am I supposed to get there?”

“How did you get here?” Sebastian inquired. “Sneaking into Alicante is quite an accomplishment.”

“I came through a Portal,” said Clary.

“A Portal?” Isabelle looked astonished. “But there isn’t a Portal left in New York. Valentine destroyed them both—”

“I don’t owe you any explanations,” Clary said. “Not until you give me some. For one thing, where’s Jace?”

“He’s not here,” Isabelle answered, at exactly the same time that Sebastian said, “He’s upstairs.”

Isabelle turned on him. “Sebastian! Shut up.”

Sebastian looked perplexed. “But she’s his sister. Wouldn’t he want to see her?”

Isabelle opened her mouth and then closed it again. Clary could see that Isabelle was weighing the advisability of explaining her complicated relationship with Jace to the completely oblivious Sebastian against the advisability of springing an unpleasant surprise on Jace. Finally she threw her hands up in a gesture of despair. “Fine, Clary,” she said, with an unusual—for Isabelle—amount of anger in her voice. “Go ahead and do whatever you want, regardless of who it hurts. You always do anyway, don’t you?”

Ouch. Clary shot Isabelle a reproachful look before turning back to Sebastian, who stepped silently out of her way. She darted past him and up the stairs, vaguely aware of voices below her as Isabelle shouted at the unfortunate Sebastian. But that was Isabelle—if there was a boy around and blame that needed to be pinned on someone, Isabelle would pin it on him.

The staircase widened into a landing with a bay-windowed alcove that looked out over the city. A boy was sitting in the alcove, reading. He looked up as Clary came up the stairs, and blinked in surprise. “I know you.”

“Hi, Max. It’s Clary—Jace’s sister. Remember?”

Max brightened. “You showed me how to read Naruto,” he said, holding out his book to her. “Look, I got another one. This one’s called—”

“Max, I can’t talk now. I promise I’ll look at your book later, but do you know where Jace is?”

Max’s face fell. “That room,” he said, and pointed to the last door down the hall. “I wanted to go in there with him, but he told me he had to do grown-up stuff. Everyone’s always telling me that.”

“I’m sorry,” Clary said, but her mind was no longer on the conversation. It was racing ahead—what would she say to Jace when she saw him, what would he say to her? Moving down the hall to the door, she thought, It would be better to be friendly, not angry; yelling at him will just make him defensive. He has to understand that I belong here, just like he does. I don’t need to be protected like a piece of delicate china. I’m strong too—

She threw the door open. The room seemed to be a sort of library, the walls lined with books. It was brightly lit, light streaming through a tall picture window. In the middle of the room stood Jace. He wasn’t alone, though—not by a long shot. There was a dark-haired girl with him, a girl Clary had never seen before, and the two of them were locked together in a passionate embrace.

6 BAD BLOOD

Dizziness washed over Clary, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. She tried to back away but stumbled and hit the door with her shoulder. It shut with a bang, and Jace and the girl broke apart.

Clary froze. They were both staring at her. She noticed that the girl had dark straight hair to her shoulders and was extremely pretty. The top buttons of her shirt were undone, showing a strip of lacy bra. Clary felt as if she were about to throw up.

The girl’s hands went to her blouse, quickly doing up the buttons. She didn’t look pleased. “Excuse me,” she said with a frown. “Who are you?”

Clary didn’t answer—she was looking at Jace, who was staring at her incredulously. His skin was drained of all color, showing the dark rings around his eyes. He looked at Clary as if he were staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Aline.” Jace’s voice was without warmth or color. “This is my sister, Clary.”

“Oh. Oh.” Aline’s face relaxed into a slightly embarrassed smile. “Sorry! What a way to meet you. Hi, I’m Aline.”

She advanced on Clary, still smiling, her hand out. I don’t think I can touch her, Clary thought with a sinking feeling of horror. She looked at Jace, who seemed to read the expression in her eyes; unsmiling, he took Aline by the shoulders and said something in her ear. She looked surprised, shrugged, and headed for the door without another word.

This left Clary alone with Jace. Alone with someone who was still looking at her as if she were his worst nightmare come to life.

“Jace,” she said, and took a step toward him.

He backed away from her as if she were coated in something poisonous. “What,” he said, “in the name of the Angel, Clary, are you doing here?”

Despite everything, the harshness of his tone hurt. “You could at least pretend you were glad to see me. Even a little bit.”

“I’m not glad to see you,” he said. Some of his color had come back, but the shadows under his eyes were still gray smudges against his skin. Clary waited for him to say something else, but he seemed content just to stare at her in undisguised horror. She noticed with a distracted clarity that he was wearing a black sweater that hung off his wrists as if he’d lost weight, and that the nails on his hands were bitten down to the quick. “Not even a little bit.”

“This isn’t you,” she said. “I hate it when you act like this—”

“Oh, you hate it, do you? Well, I’d better stop doing it, then, hadn’t I? I mean, you do everything I ask you to do.”

“You had no right to do what you did!” she snapped at him, suddenly furious. “Lying to me like that. You had no right—”

“I had every right!” he shouted. She didn’t think he’d ever shouted at her before. “I had every right, you stupid, stupid girl. I’m your brother and I—”

“And you what? You own me? You don’t own me, whether you’re my brother or not!”

The door behind Clary flew open. It was Alec, soberly dressed in a long, dark blue jacket, his black hair in disarray. He wore muddy boots and an incredulous expression on his usually calm face. “What in all possible dimensions is going on here?” he said, looking from Jace to Clary with amazement. “Are you two trying to kill each other?”

“Not at all,” said Jace. As if by magic, Clary saw, it had all been wiped away: his rage and his panic, and he was icy calm again. “Clary was just leaving.”

“Good,” Alec said, “because I need to talk to you, Jace.”

“Doesn’t anyone in this house ever say, ‘Hi, nice to see you’ anymore?” Clary demanded of no one in particular.

It was much easier to guilt Alec than Isabelle. “It is good to see you, Clary,” he said, “except of course for the fact that you’re really not supposed to be here. Isabelle told me you got here on your own somehow, and I’m impressed—”

“Could you not encourage her?” Jace inquired.

“But I really, really need to talk to Jace about something. Can you give us a few minutes?”

“I need to talk to him too,” she said. “About our mother—”

“I don’t feel like talking,” said Jace, “to either of you, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes, you do,” Alec said. “You really want to talk to me about this.”

“I doubt that,” Jace said. He had turned his gaze back to Clary. “You didn’t come here alone, did you?” he said slowly, as if realizing that the situation was even worse than he’d thought. “Who came with you?”

There seemed to be no point in lying about it. “Luke,” said Clary. “Luke came with me.”

Jace blanched. “But Luke is a Downworlder. Do you know what the Clave does to unregistered Downworlders who come into the Glass City—who cross the wards without permission? Coming to Idris is one thing, but entering Alicante? Without telling anyone?”

“No,” Clary said, in a half whisper, “but I know what you’re going to say—”

“That if you and Luke don’t go back to New York immediately, you’ll find out?”

For a moment Jace was silent, meeting her eyes with his own. The desperation in his expression shocked her. He was the one threatening her, after all, not the other way around.

“Jace,” Alec said into the silence, a tinge of panic creeping into his voice. “Haven’t you wondered where I’ve been all day?”

“That’s a new coat you’re wearing,” Jace said, without looking at his friend. “I figure you went shopping. Though why you’re so eager to bother me about it, I have no idea.”

“I didn’t go shopping,” Alec said furiously. “I went—”

The door opened again. In a flutter of white dress, Isabelle darted in, shutting the door behind her. She looked at Clary and shook her head. “I told you he’d freak out,” she said. “Didn’t I?”

“Ah, the ‘I told you so,’” Jace said. “Always a classy move.”

Clary looked at him with horror. “How can you joke?” she whispered. “You just threatened Luke. Luke, who likes you and trusts you. Because he’s a Downworlder. What’s wrong with you?”

Isabelle looked horrified. “Luke’s here? Oh, Clary—”

“He’s not here,” Clary said. “He left—this morning—and I don’t know where he went. But I can certainly see now why he had to go.” She could hardly bear to look at Jace. “Fine. You win. We should never have come. I should never have made that Portal—”

“Made a Portal?” Isabelle looked bewildered. “Clary, only a warlock can make a Portal. And there aren’t very many of them. The only Portal here in Idris is in the Gard.”

“Which is what I had to talk to you about,” Alec hissed at Jace—who looked, Clary saw with surprise, even worse than he had before; he looked as if he were about to pass out. “About the errand I went on last night—the thing I had to deliver to the Gard—”

“Alec, stop. Stop,” Jace said, and the harsh desperation in his voice cut the other boy off; Alec shut his mouth and stood staring at Jace, his lip caught between his teeth. But Jace didn’t seem to see him; he was looking at Clary, and his eyes were hard as glass. Finally he spoke. “You’re right,” he said in a choked voice, as if he had to force out the words. “You should never have come. I know I told you it’s because it isn’t safe for you here, but that wasn’t true. The truth is that I don’t want you here because you’re rash and thoughtless and you’ll mess everything up. It’s just how you are. You’re not careful, Clary.”

“Mess…everything…up?” Clary couldn’t get enough air into her lungs for anything but a whisper.

“Oh, Jace,” Isabelle said sadly, as if he were the one who was hurt. He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed on Clary.

“You always just race ahead without thinking,” he said. “You know that, Clary. We’d never have ended up in the Dumort if it wasn’t for you.”

“And Simon would be dead! Doesn’t that count for anything? Maybe it was rash, but—”

His voice rose. “Maybe?”

“But it’s not like every decision I’ve made was a bad one! You said, after what I did on the boat, you said I’d saved everyone’s life—”

All the remaining color in Jace’s face went. He said, with a sudden and astounding viciousness, “Shut up, Clary, SHUT UP—”

“On the boat?” Alec’s gaze danced between them, bewildered. “What about what happened on the boat? Jace—”

“I just told you that to keep you from whining!” Jace shouted, ignoring Alec, ignoring everything but Clary. She could feel the force of his sudden anger like a wave threatening to knock her off her feet. “You’re a disaster for us, Clary! You’re a mundane, you’ll always be one, you’ll never be a Shadowhunter. You don’t know how to think like we do, think about what’s best for everyone—all you ever think about is yourself! But there’s a war on now, or there will be, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to follow around after you, trying to make sure you don’t get one of us killed!”

She just stared at him. She couldn’t think of a thing to say; he’d never spoken to her like this. She’d never even imagined him speaking to her like this. However angry she’d managed to make him in the past, he’d never spoken to her as if he hated her before.

“Go home, Clary,” he said. He sounded very tired, as if the effort of telling her how he really felt had drained him. “Go home.”

All her plans evaporated—her half-formed hopes of rushing after Fell, saving her mother, even finding Luke—nothing mattered, no words came. She crossed to the door. Alec and Isabelle moved to let her pass. Neither of them would look at her; they looked away instead, their expressions shocked and embarrassed. Clary knew she probably ought to feel humiliated as well as angry, but she didn’t. She just felt dead inside.

She turned at the door and looked back. Jace was staring after her. The light that streamed through the window behind him left his face in shadow; all she could see was the bright bits of sunshine that dusted his fair hair, like shards of broken glass.

“When you told me the first time that Valentine was your father, I didn’t believe it,” she said. “Not just because I didn’t want it to be true, but because you weren’t anything like him. I’ve never thought you were anything like him. But you are. You are.”

She went out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

“They’re going to starve me,” Simon said.

He was lying on the floor of his cell, the stone cold under his back. From this angle, though, he could see the sky through the window. In the days after Simon had first become a vampire, when he had thought he would never see daylight again, he’d found himself thinking incessantly about the sun and the sky. About the ways the color of the sky changed during the day: about the pale sky of morning, the hot blue of midday, and the cobalt darkness of twilight. He’d lain awake in the darkness with a parade of blues marching through his brain. Now, flat on his back in the cell under the Gard, he wondered if he’d had daylight and all its blues restored to him just so that he could spend the short, unpleasant rest of his life in this tiny space with only a patch of sky visible through the single barred window in the wall.

“Did you hear what I said?” He raised his voice. “The Inquisitor’s going to starve me to death. No more blood.”

There was a rustling noise. An audible sigh. Then Samuel spoke. “I heard you. I just don’t know what you want me to do about it.” He paused. “I’m sorry for you, Daylighter, if that helps.”

“It doesn’t really,” Simon said. “The Inquisitor wants me to lie. Wants me to tell him that the Lightwoods are in league with Valentine. Then he’ll send me home.” He rolled over onto his stomach, the stones jabbing into his skin. “Never mind. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”

Samuel made a noise halfway between a chuckle and a cough. “Actually, I do. I knew the Lightwoods. We were in the Circle together. The Lightwoods, the Waylands, the Pangborns, the Herondales, the Penhallows. All the fine families of Alicante.”

“And Hodge Starkweather,” Simon said, thinking of the Lightwoods’ tutor. “He was too, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” said Samuel. “But his family was hardly a well- respected one. Hodge showed some promise once, but I fear he never lived up to it.” He paused. “Aldertree’s always hated the Lightwoods, of course, since we were children. He wasn’t rich or clever or attractive, and, well, they weren’t very kind to him. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over it.”

“Rich?” Simon said. “I thought all Shadowhunters got paid by the Clave. Like…I don’t know, communism or something.”

“In theory all Shadowhunters are fairly and equally paid,” said Samuel. “Some, like those with high positions in the Clave, or those with great responsibility—running an Institute, for example—receive a higher salary. Then there are those who live outside Idris and choose to make money in the mundane world; it’s not forbidden, as long as they tithe a part of it to the Clave. But”—Samuel hesitated—“you saw the Penhallows’ house, didn’t you? What did you think of it?”

Simon cast his mind back. “Very fancy.”

“It’s one of the finest houses in Alicante,” said Samuel. “And they have another house, a manor out in the country. Almost all the rich families do. You see, there’s another way for Nephilim to gain wealth. They call it ‘spoils.’ Anything owned by a demon or Downworlder who is killed by a Shadowhunter becomes that Shadowhunter’s property. So if a wealthy warlock breaks the Law, and is killed by a Nephilim…”

Simon shivered. “So killing Downworlders is a lucrative business?”

“It can be,” said Samuel bitterly, “if you’re not too choosy about who you kill. You can see why there’s so much opposition to the Accords. It cuts into people’s pocketbooks, having to be careful about murdering Downworlders. Perhaps that’s why I joined the Circle. My family was never a rich one, and to be looked down on for not accepting blood money—” He broke off.

“But the Circle murdered Downworlders too,” said Simon.

“Because they thought it was their sacred duty,” said Samuel. “Not out of greed. Though I can’t imagine now why I ever thought that mattered.” He sounded exhausted. “It was Valentine. He had a way about him. He could convince you of anything. I remember standing beside him with my hands covered in blood, looking down at the body of a dead woman, and thinking only that what I was doing had to be right, because Valentine said it was so.”

“A dead Downworlder?”

Samuel breathed raggedly on the other side of the wall. At last, he said, “You must understand, I would have done anything he asked. Any of us would have. The Lightwoods as well. The Inquisitor knows that, and that is what he is trying to exploit. But you should know—there’s the chance that if you give in to him and throw blame on the Lightwoods, he’ll kill you anyway to shut you up. It depends on whether the idea of being merciful makes him feel powerful at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Simon said. “I’m not going to do it. I won’t betray the Lightwoods.”

“Really?” Samuel sounded unconvinced. “Is there some reason why not? Do you care for the Lightwoods that much?”

“Anything I told him about them would be a lie.”

“But it might be the lie he wants to hear. You do want to go home, don’t you?”

Simon stared at the wall as if he could somehow see through it to the man on the other side. “Is that what you’d do? Lie to him?”

Samuel coughed—a wheezy sort of cough, as if he weren’t very healthy. Then again, it was damp and cold down here, which didn’t bother Simon, but would probably bother a normal human being very much. “I wouldn’t take moral advice from me,” he said. “But yes, I probably would. I’ve always put saving my own skin first.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Actually,” said Samuel, “it is. One thing you’ll learn as you get older, Simon, is that when people tell you something unpleasant about themselves, it’s usually true.”

But I’m not going to get older, Simon thought. Out loud he said, “That’s the first time you’ve called me Simon. Simon and not Daylighter.”

“I suppose it is.”

“And as for the Lightwoods,” Simon said, “it’s not that I like them that much. I mean, I like Isabelle, and I sort of like Alec and Jace, too. But there’s this girl. And Jace is her brother.”

When Samuel replied, he sounded, for the first time, genuinely amused. “Isn’t there always a girl.”

The moment the door shut behind Clary, Jace slumped back against the wall, as if his legs had been cut out from under him. He looked gray with a mixture of horror, shock, and what looked almost like…relief, as if a catastrophe had been narrowly avoided.

“Jace,” Alec said, taking a step toward his friend. “Do you really think—”

Jace spoke in a low voice, cutting Alec off. “Get out,” he said. “Just get out, both of you.”

“So you can do what?” Isabelle demanded. “Wreck your life some more? What the hell was that about?”

Jace shook his head. “I sent her home. It was the best thing for her.”

“You did a hell of a lot more than send her home. You destroyed her. Did you see her face?”

“It was worth it,” said Jace. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“For her, maybe,” Isabelle said. “I hope it winds up worth it for you.”

Jace turned his face away. “Just…leave me alone, Isabelle. Please.”

Isabelle cast a startled look toward her brother. Jace never said please. Alec put a hand on her shoulder. “Never mind, Jace,” he said, as kindly as he could. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

Jace raised his head and looked at Alec without actually looking at him—he seemed to be staring off at nothing. “No, she won’t,” he said. “But I knew that. Speaking of which, you might as well tell me what you came in here to tell me. You seemed to think it was pretty important at the time.”

Alec took his hand off Isabelle’s shoulder. “I didn’t want to tell you in front of Clary—”

Jace’s eyes finally focused on Alec. “Didn’t want to tell me what in front of Clary?”

Alec hesitated. He’d rarely seen Jace so upset, and he could only imagine what effect further unpleasant surprises might have on him. But there was no way to hide this. Jace had to know. “Yesterday,” he said, in a low voice, “when I brought Simon up to the Gard, Malachi told me Magnus Bane would be meeting Simon at the other end of the Portal, in New York. So I sent a fire-message to Magnus. I heard back from him this morning. He never met Simon in New York. In fact, he says there’s been no Portal activity in New York since Clary came through.”

“Maybe Malachi was wrong,” Isabelle suggested, after a quick look at Jace’s ashen face. “Maybe someone else met Simon on the other side. And Magnus could be wrong about the Portal activity—”

Alec shook his head. “I went up to the Gard this morning with Mom. I meant to ask Malachi about it myself, but when I saw him—I can’t say why—I ducked behind a corner. I couldn’t face him. Then I heard him talking to one of the guards. Telling them to go bring the vampire upstairs because the Inquisitor wanted to speak to him again.”

“Are you sure they meant Simon?” Isabelle asked, but there was no conviction in her voice. “Maybe…”

“They were talking about how stupid the Downworlder had been to believe that they’d just send him back to New York without questioning him. One of them said that he couldn’t believe anyone had had the gall to try to sneak him into Alicante to begin with. And Malachi said, ‘Well, what do you expect from Valentine’s son?’”

“Oh,” Isabelle whispered. “Oh my God.” She glanced across the room. “Jace…”

Jace’s hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes looked sunken, as if they were pushing back into his skull. In other circumstances Alec would have put a hand on his shoulder, but not now; something about Jace made him hold back. “If it hadn’t been me who brought him through,” Jace said in a low, measured voice, as if he were reciting something, “maybe they would have just let him go home. Maybe they would have believed—”

“No,” Alec said. “No, Jace, it’s not your fault. You saved his life.”

“Saved him so the Clave could torture him,” said Jace. “Some favor. When Clary finds out…” He shook his head blindly. “She’ll think I brought him here on purpose, gave him to the Clave knowing what they’d do.”

“She won’t think that. You’d have no reason to do a thing like that.”

“Perhaps,” Jace said, slowly, “but after how I just treated her…”

“No one could ever think you’d do that, Jace,” said Isabelle. “No one who knows you. No one—”

But Jace didn’t wait to find out what else no one would ever think. Instead he turned around and walked over to the picture window that looked over the canal. He stood there for a moment, the light coming through the window turning the edges of his hair to gold. Then he moved, so quickly Alec didn’t have to time to react. By the time he saw what was going to happen and darted forward to prevent it, it was already too late.

There was a crash—the sound of shattering—and a sudden spray of broken glass like a shower of jagged stars. Jace looked down at his left hand, the knuckles streaked with scarlet, with a clinical interest as fat red drops of blood collected and splattered down onto the floor at his feet.

Isabelle stared from Jace to the hole in the glass, lines radiating out from the empty center, a spiderweb of thin silver cracks. “Oh, Jace,” she said, her voice as soft as Alec had ever heard it. “How on earth are we going to explain this to the Penhallows?”

Somehow Clary made it out of the house. She wasn’t sure how—everything was a fast blur of stairs and hallways, and then she was running to the front door and out of it and somehow she was on the Penhallows’ front steps, trying to decide whether or not she was going to throw up in their rosebushes.

They were ideally placed for throwing up in, and her stomach was roiling painfully, but the fact that all she’d eaten was some soup was catching up with her. She didn’t think there was anything in her stomach to throw up. Instead she made her way down the steps and turned blindly out of the front gate—she couldn’t remember which direction she’d come from anymore, or how to get back to Amatis’s, but it didn’t seem to matter much. It wasn’t as if she were looking forward to getting back and explaining to Luke that they had to leave Alicante or Jace would turn them in to the Clave.

Maybe Jace was right. Maybe she was rash and thoughtless. Maybe she never thought about how what she did impacted the people she loved. Simon’s face flashed across her vision, sharp as a photograph, and then Luke’s—

She stopped and leaned against a lamppost. The square glass fixture looked like the sort of gas lamp that topped the vintage posts in front of the brownstones in Park Slope. Somehow it seemed reassuring.

“Clary!” It was a boy’s voice, anxious. Immediately Clary thought, Jace. She spun around.

It wasn’t Jace. Sebastian, the dark-haired boy from the Penhallows’ living room, stood in front of her, panting a little as if he’d chased her down the street at a run.

She felt a burst of the same feeling she’d had earlier, when she’d first seen him—recognition, mixed with something she couldn’t identify. It wasn’t like or dislike—it was a sort of pull, as if something drew her toward this boy she didn’t know. Maybe it was just the way he looked. He was beautiful, as beautiful as Jace, though where Jace was all gold, this boy was pallor and shadows. Although now, under the lamplight, she could see that his resemblance to her imaginary prince was not as exact as she’d thought. Even their coloring was different. It was just something in the shape of his face, the way he held himself, the dark secretiveness of his eyes…

“Are you okay?” he said. His voice was soft. “You ran out of the house like…” His voice trailed off as he looked at her. She was still gripping the lamppost as if she needed it to hold her up. “What happened?”

“I had a fight with Jace,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “You know how it is.”

“I don’t, actually.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t have any sisters or brothers.”

“Lucky,” she said, and was startled at the bitterness in her own voice.

“You don’t mean that.” He took a step closer to her, and as he did, the streetlamp flickered on, casting a pool of white witchlight over them both. Sebastian looked up at the light and smiled. “It’s a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign that you should let me walk you home.”

“But I have no idea where that is,” she said, realizing. “I snuck out of the house to come here. I don’t remember the way I came.”

“Well, who are you staying with?”

She hesitated before replying.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I swear on the Angel.”

She stared. That was quite an oath, for a Shadowhunter. “All right,” she said, before she could overthink her decision. “I’m staying with Amatis Herondale.”

“Great. I know exactly where she lives.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

She managed a smile. “You’re kind of pushy, you know.”

He shrugged. “I have a fetish for damsels in distress.”

“Don’t be sexist.”

“Not at all. My services are also available to gentlemen in distress. It’s an equal opportunity fetish,” he said, and, with a flourish, offered his arm again.

This time, she took it.

Alec shut the door of the small attic room behind him and turned to face Jace. His eyes were normally the color of Lake Lyn, a pale, untroubled blue, but the color tended to change with his moods. At the moment they were the color of the East River during a thunderstorm. His expression was stormy as well. “Sit,” he said to Jace, pointing at a low chair near the gabled window. “I’ll get the bandages.”

Jace sat. The room he shared with Alec at the top of the Penhallows’ house was small, with two narrow beds in it, one against each wall. Their clothes hung from a row of pegs on the wall. There was a single window, letting in faint light—it was getting dark now, and the sky outside the glass was indigo blue. Jace watched as Alec knelt to grab the duffel bag from under his bed and yank it open. He rummaged noisily among the contents before getting to his feet with a box in his hands. Jace recognized it as the box of medical supplies they used sometimes when runes weren’t an option—antiseptic, bandages, scissors, and gauze.

“Aren’t you going to use a healing rune?” Jace asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

“No. You can just—” Alec broke off, flinging the box onto the bed with an inaudible curse. He went to the small sink against the wall and washed his hands with such force that water splashed upward in a fine spray. Jace watched him with a distant curiosity. His hand had begun to burn with a dull and fiery ache.

Alec retrieved the box, pulled a chair up opposite Jace’s, and flung himself down onto it. “Give me your hand.”

Jace held his hand out. He had to admit it looked pretty bad. All four knuckles were split open like red starbursts. Dried blood clung to his fingers, a flaking red-brown glove.

Alec made a face. “You’re an idiot.”

“Thanks,” Jace said. He watched patiently as Alec bent over his hand with a pair of tweezers and gently nudged at a bit of glass embedded in his skin. “So, why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not use a healing rune? This isn’t a demon injury.”

“Because.” Alec retrieved the blue bottle of antiseptic. “I think it would do you good to feel the pain. You can heal like a mundane. Slow and ugly. Maybe you’ll learn something.” He splashed the stinging liquid over Jace’s cuts. “Although I doubt it.”

“I can always do my own healing rune, you know.”

Alec began wrapping a strip of bandages around Jace’s hand. “Only if you want me to tell the Penhallows what really happened to their window, instead of letting them think it was an accident.” He jerked a knot in the bandages tight, making Jace wince. “You know, if I’d thought you were going to do this to yourself, I would never have told you anything.”

“Yes, you would have.” Jace cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t realize my attack on the picture window would upset you quite so much.”

“It’s just—” Done with the bandaging, Alec looked down at Jace’s hand, the hand he was still holding between his. It was a white club of bandages, spotted with blood where Alec’s fingers had touched it. “Why do you do these things to yourself? Not just what you did to the window, but the way you talked to Clary. What are you punishing yourself for? You can’t help how you feel.”

Jace’s voice was even. “How do I feel?”

“I see how you look at her.” Alec’s eyes were remote, seeing something just past Jace, something that wasn’t there. “And you can’t have her. Maybe you just never knew what it was like to want something you couldn’t have before.”

Jace looked at him steadily. “What’s between you and Magnus Bane?”

Alec’s head jerked back. “I don’t—there’s nothing—”

“I’m not stupid. You went right to Magnus after you talked to Malachi, before you talked to me or Isabelle or anyone—”

“Because he was the only one who could answer my question, that’s why. There isn’t anything between us,” Alec said—and then, catching the look on Jace’s face, added with great reluctance, “anymore. There’s nothing between us anymore. Okay?”

“I hope that’s not because of me,” said Jace.

Alec went white and drew back, as if he were preparing to ward off a blow. “What do you mean?”

“I know how you think you feel about me,” Jace said. “You don’t, though. You just like me because I’m safe. There’s no risk. And then you never have to try to have a real relationship, because you can use me as an excuse.” Jace knew he was being cruel, and he barely cared. Hurting people he loved was almost as good as hurting himself when he was in this kind of mood.

“I get it,” Alec said tightly. “First Clary, then your hand, now me. To hell with you, Jace.”

“You don’t believe me?” Jace asked. “Fine. Go ahead. Kiss me right now.”

Alec stared at him in horror.

“Exactly. Despite my staggering good looks, you actually don’t like me that way. And if you’re blowing off Magnus, it’s not because of me. It’s because you’re too scared to tell anyone who you really love. Love makes us liars,” said Jace. “The Seelie Queen told me that. So don’t judge me for lying about how I feel. You do it too.” He stood up. “And now I want you to do it again.”

Alec’s face was stiff with hurt. “What do you mean?”

“Lie for me,” Jace said, taking his jacket down from the wall peg and shrugging it on. “It’s sunset. They’ll start coming back from the Gard about now. I want you to tell everyone I’m not feeling well and that’s why I’m not coming downstairs. Tell them I felt faint and tripped, and that’s how the window got broken.”

Alec tipped his head back and looked up at Jace squarely. “Fine,” he said. “If you tell me where you’re really going.”

“Up to the Gard,” said Jace. “I’m going to break Simon out of jail.”

Clary’s mother had always called the time of day between twilight and nightfall “the blue hour.” She said the light was strongest and most unusual then, and that it was the best time to paint. Clary had never really understood what she meant, but now, making her way through Alicante at twilight, she did.

The blue hour in New York wasn’t really blue; it was too washed out by streetlights and neon signs. Jocelyn must have been thinking of Idris. Here the light fell in swatches of pure violet across the golden stonework of the city, and the witchlight lamps cast circular pools of white light so bright Clary expected to feel heat when she walked through them. She wished her mother were with her. Jocelyn could have pointed out the parts of Alicante that were familiar to her, that had a place in her memories.

But she’d never tell you any of those things. She kept them secret from you on purpose. And now you may never know them. A sharp pain—half anger and half regret—caught at Clary’s heart.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Sebastian said. They were passing over a canal bridge, its stonework sides carved with runes.

“Just wondering how much trouble I’ll be in when I get back. I had to climb out a window to leave, but Amatis has probably noticed I’m gone by now.”

Sebastian frowned. “Why sneak out? Wouldn’t you be allowed to go see your brother?”

“I’m not supposed to be in Alicante at all,” Clary said. “I’m supposed to be home, watching safely from the sidelines.”

“Ah. That explains a lot.”

“Does it?” She cast a curious sideways glance at him. Blue shadows were caught in his dark hair.

“Everyone seemed to blanch when your name came up earlier. I gathered there was some bad blood between your brother and you.”

“Bad blood? Well, that’s one way to put it.”

“You don’t like him much?”

“Like Jace?” She’d given so much thought these past weeks as to whether she loved Jace Wayland and how, that she’d never much paused to consider whether she liked him.

“Sorry. He’s family—it’s not really about whether you like him or not.”

“I do like him,” she said, surprising herself. “I do, it’s just—he makes me furious. He tells me what I can and can’t do—”

“Doesn’t seem to work very well,” Sebastian observed.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to do what you want anyway.”

“I suppose.” The observation startled her, coming from a near stranger. “But it seems to have made him a lot angrier than I thought it had.”

“He’ll get over it.” Sebastian’s tone was dismissive.

Clary looked at him curiously. “Do you like him?”

“I like him. But I don’t think he likes me much.” Sebastian sounded rueful. “Everything I say seems to piss him off.”

They turned off the street into a wide cobble-paved square ringed with tall, narrow buildings. At the center was the bronze statue of an angel—the Angel, the one who’d given his blood to make the race of Shadowhunters. At the northern end of the square was a massive structure of white stone. A waterfall of wide marble steps led up to a pillared arcade, behind which was a pair of huge double doors. The overall effect in the evening light was stunning—and weirdly familiar. Clary wondered if she’d seen a picture of this place before. Maybe her mother had painted one?

“This is Angel Square,” Sebastian said, “and that was the Great Hall of the Angel. The Accords were first signed there, since Downworlders aren’t allowed into the Gard—now it’s called the Accords Hall. It’s a central meeting place—celebrations take place there, marriages, dances, that sort of thing. It’s the center of the city. They say all roads lead to the Hall.”

“It looks a bit like a church—but you don’t have churches here, do you?”

“No need,” said Sebastian. “The demon towers keep us safe. We need nothing else. That’s why I like coming here. It feels…peaceful.”

Clary looked at him in surprise. “So you don’t live here?”

“No. I live in Paris. I’m just visiting Aline—she’s my cousin. My mother and her father, my uncle Patrick, were brother and sister. Aline’s parents ran the Institute in Beijing for years. They moved back to Alicante about a decade ago.”

“Were they—the Penhallows weren’t in the Circle, were they?”

A startled look flashed across Sebastian’s face. He was silent as they turned and left the square behind them, making their way into a warren of dark streets. “Why would you ask that?” he said finally.

“Well—because the Lightwoods were.”

They passed under a streetlight. Clary glanced sideways at Sebastian. In his long dark coat and white shirt, under the pool of white light, he looked like a black-and-white illustration of a gentleman from a Victorian scrapbook. His dark hair curled close against his temples in a way that made her itch to draw him in pen and ink. “You have to understand,” he said. “A good half of the young Shadowhunters in Idris were part of the Circle, and plenty of those who weren’t in Idris too. Uncle Patrick was in the early days, but he got out of the Circle once he started to realize how serious Valentine was. Neither of Aline’s parents was part of the Uprising—my uncle went to Beijing to get away from Valentine and met Aline’s mother at the Institute there. When the Lightwoods and the other Circle members were tried for treason against the Clave, the Penhallows voted for leniency. Got them sent away to New York instead of cursed. So the Lightwoods have always been grateful.”

“What about your parents?” Clary said. “Were they in it?”

“Not really. My mother was younger than Patrick—he sent her to Paris when he went to Beijing. She met my father there.”

“Your mother was younger than Patrick?”

“She’s dead,” said Sebastian. “My father, too. My aunt Élodie brought me up.”

“Oh,” Clary said, feeling stupid. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remember them,” Sebastian said. “Not really. When I was younger, I wished I had an older sister or a brother, someone who could tell me what it was like having them as parents.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Can I ask you something, Clary? Why did you come to Idris at all when you knew how badly your brother would take it?”

Before she could answer him, they emerged from the narrow alley they’d been following into a familiar unlit courtyard, the disused well at its center gleaming in the moonlight. “Cistern Square,” Sebastian said, an unmistakable note of disappointment in his voice. “We got here faster than I thought we would.”

Clary glanced over the masonry bridge that spanned the nearby canal. She could see Amatis’s house in the distance. All the windows were lit. She sighed. “I can get back myself from here, thanks.”

“You don’t want me to walk you to the—”

“No. Not unless you want to get in trouble too.”

“You think I’d get in trouble? For being gentlemanly enough to walk you home?”

“No one’s supposed to know I’m in Alicante,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a secret. And no offense, but you’re a stranger.”

“I’d like to not be,” he said. “I’d like to get to know you better.” He was looking at her with a mixture of amusement and a certain shyness, as if he weren’t sure how what he’d just said would be received.

“Sebastian,” she said, with a sudden feeling of overwhelming tiredness. “I’m glad you want to get to know me. But I just don’t have the energy to get to know you. Sorry.”

“I didn’t mean—”

But she was already walking away from him, toward the bridge. Halfway there she turned around and glanced back at Sebastian. He was looking oddly forlorn in a patch of moonlight, his dark hair falling over his face.

“Ragnor Fell,” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“You asked me why I came here even though I wasn’t supposed to,” Clary said. “My mother is sick. Really sick. Maybe dying. The only thing that can help her, the only person who can help her, is a warlock named Ragnor Fell. Only I have no idea where to find him.”

“Clary—”

She turned back toward the house. “Good night, Sebastian.”

It was harder climbing up the trellis than it had been climbing down. Clary’s boots slipped a number of times on the damp stone wall, and she was relieved when she finally hauled herself up over the sill of the window and half-jumped, half-fell into the bedroom.

Her euphoria was short-lived. No sooner had her boots hit the floor than a bright light flared up, a soft explosion that lit the room to a daylight brightness.

Amatis was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back very straight, a witchlight stone in her hand. It burned with a harsh light that did nothing to soften the hard planes of her face or the lines at the corners of her mouth. She stared at Clary in silence for several long moments. Finally she said, “In those clothes, you look just like Jocelyn.”

Clary scrambled to her feet. “I—I’m sorry,” she said. “About going out like that—”

Amatis closed her hand around the witchlight, snuffing its glow. Clary blinked in the sudden dimness. “Change out of that gear,” Amatis said, “and meet me downstairs in the kitchen. And don’t even think about sneaking back out through the window,” she added, “or the next time you return to this house, you’ll find it sealed against you.”

Swallowing hard, Clary nodded.

Amatis rose to her feet and left without another word. Quickly Clary shucked off her gear and dressed in her own clothes, which hung over the bedpost, now dry—her jeans were a little stiff, but it was nice to pull on her familiar T-shirt. Shaking her tangled hair back, she headed downstairs.

The last time she’d seen the lower floor of Amatis’s house, she’d been delirious and hallucinating. She remembered long corridors stretching out to infinity and a huge grandfather clock whose ticks had sounded like the beats of a dying heart. Now she found herself in a small, homely living room, with plain wooden furniture and a rag rug on the floor. The small size and bright colors reminded her a little of her own living room at home in Brooklyn. She crossed through in silence and entered the kitchen, where a fire burned in the grate and the room was full of warm yellow light. Amatis was sitting at the table. She had a blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders; it made her hair seem more gray.

“Hi.” Clary hovered in the doorway. She couldn’t tell if Amatis was angry or not.

“I suppose I hardly need to ask where you went,” Amatis said, without looking up from the table. “You went to see Jonathan, didn’t you? I suppose it was only to be expected. Perhaps if I’d ever had children of my own, I’d know when a child was lying to me. But I had so hoped that, this time at least, I wouldn’t completely disappoint my brother.”

“Disappoint Luke?”

“You know what happened when he was bitten?” Amatis stared straight in front of her. “When my brother was bitten by a werewolf—and of course he was, Valentine was always taking stupid risks with himself and his followers, it was just a matter of time—he came and told me what had happened and how scared he was that he might have contracted the lycanthropic disease. And I said…I said…”

“Amatis, you don’t have to tell me this—”

“I told him to get out of my house and not to come back until he was sure he didn’t have it. I cringed away from him—I couldn’t help it.” Her voice shook. “He could see how disgusted I was, it was all over my face. He said he was afraid that if he did have it, if he’d become a were-creature, that Valentine would ask him to kill himself, and I said…I said that maybe that would be the best thing.”

Clary gave a little gasp; she couldn’t help it.

Amatis looked up quickly. Self-loathing was written all over her face. “Luke was always so basically good, whatever Valentine tried to get him to do—sometimes I thought he and Jocelyn were the only really good people I knew—and I couldn’t stand the idea of him being turned into some monster….”

“But he’s not like that. He’s not a monster.”

“I didn’t know. After he did Change, after he fled from here, Jocelyn worked and worked to convince me that he was still the same person inside, still my brother. If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have agreed to see him again. I let him stay here when he came before the Uprising—let him hide in the cellar—but I could tell he didn’t really trust me, not after I’d turned my back on him. I think he still doesn’t.”

“He trusted you enough to come to you when I was sick,” Clary said. “He trusted you enough to leave me here with you—”

“He had nowhere else to go,” said Amatis. “And look how well I’ve fared with you. I couldn’t even keep you in the house for a single day.”

Clary flinched. This was worse than being yelled at. “It’s not your fault. I lied to you and sneaked out. There wasn’t anything you could have done about it.”

“Oh, Clary,” Amatis said. “Don’t you see? There’s always something you can do. It’s just people like me who always tell themselves otherwise. I told myself there was nothing I could do about Luke. I told myself there was nothing I could do about Stephen leaving me. And I refuse even to attend the Clave’s meetings because I tell myself there’s nothing I can do to influence their decisions, even when I hate what they do. But then when I do choose to do something—well, I can’t even do that one thing right.” Her eyes shone, hard and bright in the firelight. “Go to bed, Clary,” she finished. “And from now on, you can come and go as you please. I won’t do anything to stop you. After all, like you said, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Amatis—”

“Don’t.” Amatis shook her head. “Just go to bed. Please.” Her voice held a note of finality; she turned away, as if Clary were already gone, and stared at the wall, unblinking.

Clary spun on her heel and ran up the stairs. In the spare room she kicked the door shut behind her and flung herself down onto the bed. She’d thought she wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Jace hates me, she thought. Amatis hates me. I never got to say good-bye to Simon. My mother’s dying. And Luke has abandoned me. I’m alone. I’ve never been so alone, and it’s all my own fault. Maybe that was why she couldn’t cry, she realized, staring dry-eyed at the ceiling. Because what was the point in crying when there was no one there to comfort you? And what was worse, when you couldn’t even comfort yourself?

7 WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

Out of a dream of blood and sunlight, Simon woke suddenly to the sound of a voice calling his name.

“Simon.” The voice was a hissing whisper. “Simon, get up.”

Simon was on his feet—sometimes how fast he could move now surprised even him—and spinning around in the darkness of the cell. “Samuel?” he whispered, staring into the shadows. “Samuel, was that you?”

“Turn around, Simon.” Now the voice, faintly familiar, held a note of irritability. “And come to the window.” Simon knew immediately who it was and looked through the barred window to see Jace kneeling on the grass outside, a witchlight stone in his hand. He was looking at Simon with a strained scowl. “What, did you think you were having a nightmare?”

“Maybe I still am.” There was a buzzing in Simon’s ears—if he’d had a heartbeat, he would have thought it was the blood rushing through his veins, but it was something else, something less corporeal but more proximate than blood.

The witchlight threw a crazy-quilt pattern of light and shadow across Jace’s pale face. “So here’s where they put you. I didn’t think they even used these cells anymore.” He glanced sideways. “I got the wrong window at first. Gave your friend in the next cell something of a shock. Attractive fellow, what with the beard and the rags. Kind of reminds me of the street folk back home.”

And Simon realized what the buzzing sound in his ears was. Rage. In some distant corner of his mind he was aware that his lips were drawn back, the tips of his fangs grazing his lower lip. “I’m glad you think all this is funny.”

“You’re not happy to see me, then?” Jace said. “I have to say, I’m surprised. I’ve always been told my presence brightened up any room. One might think that went doubly for dank underground cells.”

“You knew what would happen, didn’t you? ‘They’ll send you right back to New York,’ you said. No problem. But they never had any intention of doing that.”

“I didn’t know.” Jace met his eyes through the bars, and his gaze was clear and steady. “I know you won’t believe me, but I thought I was telling you the truth.”

“You’re either lying or stupid—”

“Then I’m stupid.”

“—or both,” Simon finished. “I’m inclined to think both.”

“I don’t have a reason to lie to you. Not now.” Jace’s gaze remained steady. “And quit baring your fangs at me. It’s making me nervous.”

“Good,” Simon said. “If you want to know why, it’s because you smell like blood.”

“It’s my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury.” Jace raised his left hand. It was a glove of white bandages, stained across the knuckles where blood had seeped through.

Simon frowned. “I thought your kind didn’t get injuries. Not ones that lasted.”

“I put it through a window,” Jace said, “and Alec’s making me heal like a mundane to teach me a lesson. There, I told you the truth. Impressed?”

“No,” Simon said. “I have bigger problems than you. The Inquisitor keeps asking me questions I can’t answer. He keeps accusing me of getting my Daylighter powers from Valentine. Of being a spy for him.”

Alarm flickered in Jace’s eyes. “Aldertree said that?”

“Aldertree implied the whole Clave thought so.”

“That’s bad. If they decide you’re a spy, then the Accords don’t apply. Not if they can convince themselves you’ve broken the Law.” Jace glanced around quickly before returning his gaze to Simon. “We’d better get you out of here.”

“And then what?” Simon almost couldn’t believe what he was saying. He wanted to get out of this place so badly he could taste it, yet he couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Where do you plan on hiding me?”

“There’s a Portal here in the Gard. If we can find it, I can send you back through—”

“And everyone will know you helped me. Jace, it’s not just me the Clave is after. In fact, I doubt they care about one Downworlder at all one way or the other. They’re trying to prove something about your family—about the Lightwoods. They’re trying to prove that they’re connected with Valentine somehow. That they never really left the Circle.”

Even in the darkness, it was possible to see the color rush into Jace’s cheeks. “But that’s ridiculous. They fought Valentine—on the ship—Robert nearly died—”

“The Inquisitor wants to believe that they sacrificed the other Nephilim who fought on the boat to preserve the illusion that they were against Valentine. But they still lost the Mortal Sword, and that’s what he cares about. Look, you tried to warn the Clave, and they didn’t care. Now the Inquisitor is looking for someone to blame everything on. If he can brand your family as traitors, then no one will blame the Clave for what happened, and he’ll be able to make whatever policies he wants to without opposition.”

Jace put his face in his hands, his long fingers tugging distractedly at his hair. “But I can’t just leave you here. If Clary finds out—”

“I should have known that’s what you were worried about.” Simon laughed harshly. “So don’t tell her. She’s in New York, anyway, thank—” He broke off, unable to say the word. “You were right,” he said instead. “I’m glad she’s not here.”

Jace lifted his head out of his hands. “What?”

“The Clave is insane. Who knows what they’d do to her if they knew what she could do. You were right,” Simon repeated, and when Jace said nothing in reply, added, “And you might as well enjoy that I just said that to you. I probably won’t ever say it again.”

Jace stared at him, his face blank, and Simon was reminded with an unpleasant jolt of the way Jace had looked on the ship, bloody and dying on the metal floor. Finally, Jace spoke. “So you’re telling me you plan to stay here? In prison? Until when?”

“Until we think of a better idea,” said Simon. “But there is one thing.”

Jace raised his eyebrows. “What’s that?”

“Blood,” said Simon. “The Inquisitor’s trying to starve me into talking. I already feel pretty weak. By tomorrow I’ll be—well, I don’t know how I’ll be. But I don’t want to give in to him. And I won’t drink your blood again, or anyone else’s,” he added quickly, before Jace could offer. “Animal blood will do.”

“Blood I can get you,” Jace said. He hesitated. “Did you…tell the Inquisitor that I let you drink my blood? That I saved you?”

Simon shook his head.

Jace’s eyes shone with reflected light. “Why not?”

“I suppose I didn’t want to get you into more trouble.”

“Look, vampire,” Jace said. “Protect the Lightwoods if you can. But don’t protect me.”

Simon raised his head. “Why not?”

“I suppose,” said Jace—and for a moment, as he looked down through the bars, Simon could almost imagine that he was outside, and Jace was the one inside the cell—“because I don’t deserve it.”

Clary woke to a sound like hailstones on a metal roof. She sat up in bed, staring around groggily. The sound came again, a sharp rattle-thump emanating from the window. Peeling her blanket back reluctantly, she went to investigate.

Throwing the window open let in a blast of cold air that cut through her pajamas like a knife. She shivered and leaned out over the sill.

Someone was standing in the garden below, and for a moment, with a leap of her heart, all she saw was that the figure was slender and tall, with boyish, rumpled hair. Then he raised his face and she saw that the hair was dark, not fair, and she realized that for the second time, she’d hoped for Jace and gotten Sebastian instead.

He was holding a handful of pebbles in one hand. He smiled when he saw her poke her head out, and gestured at himself and then at the rose trellis. Climb downstairs.

She shook her head and pointed toward the front of the house. Meet me at the front door. Shutting the window, she hurried downstairs. It was late morning—the light pouring in through the windows was srong and golden, but the lights were all off and the house was quiet. Amatis must still be asleep, she thought.

Clary went to the front door, unbolted it, and threw it open. Sebastian was there, standing on the front step, and once again she had that feeling, that strange burst of recognition, though it was fainter this time. She smiled weakly at him. “You threw stones at my window,” she said. “I thought people only did that in movies.”

He grinned. “Nice pajamas. Did I wake you up?”

“Maybe.”

“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t seem sorry. “But this couldn’t wait. You might want to run upstairs and get dressed, by the way. We’ll be spending the day together.”

“Wow. Confident, aren’t you?” she said, but then boys who looked like Sebastian probably had no reason to be anything but confident. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t leave the house. Not today.”

A faint line of concern appeared between his eyes. “You left the house yesterday.”

“I know, but that was before—” Before Amatis made me feel about two inches tall. “I just can’t. And please don’t try to argue me out of it, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t argue. But at least let me tell you what I came here to tell you. Then, I promise, if you still want me to go, I’ll go.”

“What is it?”

He raised his face, and she wondered how it was possible that dark eyes could glow just like golden ones. “I know where you can find Ragnor Fell.”

It took Clary less than ten minutes to run upstairs, throw on her clothes, scribble a hasty note to Amatis, and rejoin Sebastian, who was waiting for her at the edge of the canal. He grinned as she ran to meet him, breathless, her green coat flung over one arm. “I’m here,” she said, skidding to a stop. “Can we go now?”

Sebastian insisted on helping her on with the coat. “I don’t think anyone’s ever helped me with my coat before,” Clary observed, freeing the hair that had gotten trapped under her collar. “Well, maybe waiters. Were you ever a waiter?”

“No, but I was brought up by a Frenchwoman,” Sebastian reminded her. “It involves an even more rigorous course of training.”

Clary smiled, despite her nervousness. Sebastian was good at making her smile, she realized with a faint sense of surprise. Almost too good at it. “Where are we going?” she asked abruptly. “Is Fell’s house near here?”

“He lives outside the city, actually,” said Sebastian, starting toward the bridge. Clary fell into step beside him.

“Is it a long walk?”

“Too long to walk. We’re going to get a ride.”

“A ride? From who?” She came to a dead stop. “Sebastian, we have to be careful. We can’t trust just anyone with the information about what we’re doing—what I’m doing. It’s a secret.”

Sebastian regarded her with thoughtful dark eyes. “I swear on the Angel that the friend we’ll be getting a ride from won’t breathe a word to anyone about what we’re doing.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m very sure.”

Ragnor Fell, Clary thought as they wove through the crowded streets. I’m going to see Ragnor Fell. Wild excitement clashed with trepidation—Madeleine had made him sound formidable. What if he had no patience with her, no time? What if she couldn’t make him believe she was who she said she was? What if he didn’t even remember her mother?

It didn’t help her nerves that every time she passed a blond man or a girl with long dark hair her insides tensed up as she thought she recognized Jace or Isabelle. But Isabelle would probably just ignore her, she thought glumly, and Jace was doubtless back at the Penhallows’, necking with his new girlfriend.

“You worried about being followed?” Sebastian asked as they turned down a side street that led away from the city center, noticing the way she kept glancing around her.

“I keep thinking I see people I know,” she admitted. “Jace, or the Lightwoods.”

“I don’t think Jace has left the Penhallows’ since they got here. He mostly seems to be skulking in his room. He hurt his hand pretty badly yesterday too—”

“Hurt his hand? How?” Clary, forgetting to look where she was going, stumbled over a rock. The road they’d been walking on had somehow turned from cobblestones to gravel without her noticing. “Ouch.”

“We’re here,” Sebastian announced, stopping in front of a high wood-and-wire fence. There were no houses around—they had rather abruptly left the residential district behind, and there was only this fence on one side and a gravelly slope leading away toward the forest on the other.

There was a door in the fence, but it was padlocked. From his pocket Sebastian produced a heavy steel key and opened the gate. “I’ll be right back with our ride.” He swung the gate shut behind him. Clary put her eye to the slats. Through the gaps she could glimpse what looked like a low-slung red clapboard house. Though it didn’t appear to really have a door—or proper windows—

The gate opened, and Sebastian reappeared, grinning from ear to ear. He held a lead in one hand: Pacing docilely behind him was a huge gray and white horse with a blaze like a star on its forehead.

“A horse? You have a horse?” Clary stared in amazement. “Who has a horse?”

Sebastian stroked the horse fondly on the shoulder. “A lot of Shadowhunter families keep a horse in the stables here in Alicante. If you’ve noticed, there are no cars in Idris. They don’t work well with all these wards around.” He patted the pale leather of the horse’s saddle, emblazoned with a crest of arms that depicted a water serpent rising out of a lake in a series of coils. The name Verlac was written beneath in delicate script. “Come on up.”

Clary backed up. “I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

“I’ll be riding Wayfarer,” Sebastian reassured her. “You’ll just be sitting in front of me.”

The horse grunted softly. He had huge teeth, Clary noticed uneasily; each one the size of a Pez dispenser. She imagined those teeth sinking into her leg and thought of all the girls she’d known in middle school who’d wanted ponies of their own. She wondered if they were insane.

Be brave, she told herself. It’s what your mother would do.

She took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go.”

Clary’s resolution to be brave lasted as long as it took for Sebastian—after helping her into the saddle—to swing himself up onto the horse behind her and dig in his heels. Wayfarer took off like a shot, pounding over the graveled road with a force that sent jolting shocks up her spine. She clutched at the bit of the saddle that stuck up in front of her, her nails digging into it hard enough to leave marks in the leather.

The road they were on narrowed as they headed out of town, and now there were banks of thick trees on either side of them, walls of green that blocked any wider view. Sebastian drew back on the reins, and the horse ceased its frantic galloping, Clary’s heartbeat slowing along with its pace. As her panic receded, she became slowly conscious of Sebastian behind her—he was holding the reins on either side of her, his arms making a sort of cage around her that kept her from feeling like she was about to slide off the horse. She was suddenly very aware of him, not just the hard strength in the arms that held her, but that she was leaning back against his chest and that he smelled of, for some reason, black pepper. Not in a bad way—it was spicy and pleasant, very different from Jace’s smell of soap and sunlight. Not that sunlight had a smell, really, but if it did—

She gritted her teeth. She was here with Sebastian, on her way to see a powerful warlock, and mentally she was maundering on about the way Jace smelled. She forced herself to look around. The green banks of trees were thinning out and now she could see a sweep of marbled countryside to either side. It was beautiful in a stark sort of way: a carpet of green broken up here and there by a scar of gray stone road or a crag of black rock rising up out of the grass. Clusters of delicate white flowers, the same ones she’d seen in the necropolis with Luke, starred the hills like occasional snowfall.

“How did you find out where Ragnor Fell is?” she asked as Sebastian skillfully guided the horse around a rut in the road.

“My aunt Élodie. She’s got quite a network of informants. She knows everything that’s going on in Idris, even though she never comes here herself. She hates to leave the Institute.”

“What about you? Do you come to Idris much?”

“Not really. The last time I was here I was about five years old. I haven’t seen my aunt and uncle since then either, so I’m glad to be here now. It gives me a chance to catch up. Besides, I miss Idris when I’m not here. There’s nowhere else like it. It’s in the earth of the place. You’ll start to feel it, and then you’ll miss it when you’re not here.”

“I know Jace missed it,” she said. “But I thought that was because he lived here for years. He was brought up here.”

“In the Wayland manor,” Sebastian said. “Not that far from where we’re going, in fact.”

“You do seem to know everything.”

“Not everything,” Sebastian said with a laugh that Clary felt through her back. “Yeah, Idris works its magic on everyone—even those like Jace who have reason to hate the place.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, he was brought up by Valentine, wasn’t he? And that must have been pretty awful.”

“I don’t know.” Clary hesitated. “The truth is, he has mixed feelings about it. I think Valentine was a horrible father in a way, but in another way the little bits of kindness and love he did show were all the kindness and love Jace ever knew.” She felt a wave of sadness as she spoke. “I think he remembered Valentine with a lot of affection, for a long time.”

“I can’t believe Valentine ever showed Jace kindness or love. Valentine’s a monster.”

“Well, yes, but Jace is his son. And he was just a little boy. I think Valentine did love him, in his way—”

“No.” Sebastian’s voice was sharp. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

Clary blinked and almost turned around to see his face, but then thought better of it. All Shadowhunters were sort of crazy on the topic of Valentine—she thought of the Inquisitor and shuddered inwardly—and she could hardly blame them. “You’re probably right.”

“We’re here,” Sebastian said abruptly—so abruptly that Clary wondered if she really had offended him somehow—and slid down from the horse’s back. But when he looked up at her, he was smiling. “We made good time,” he said, tying the reins to the lower branch of a nearby tree. “Better than I thought we would.”

He indicated with a gesture that she should dismount, and after a moment’s hesitation Clary slid off the horse and into his arms. She clutched him as he caught her, her legs unsteady after the long ride. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to grab you.”

“I wouldn’t apologize for that.” His breath was warm against her neck, and she shivered. His hands lingered just a moment longer on her back before he reluctantly let her go.

All this wasn’t helping Clary’s legs feel any steadier. “Thanks,” she said, knowing full well she was blushing, and wishing heartily that her fair skin didn’t show color so readily. “So—this is it?” She looked around. They were standing in a small valley between low hills. There were a number of gnarled-looking trees ranged around a clearing. Their twisted branches had a sculptural beauty against the steel blue sky. But otherwise…“There’s nothing here,” she said with a frown.

“Clary. Concentrate.”

“You mean—a glamour? But I don’t usually have to—”

“Glamours in Idris are often stronger than they are elsewhere. You may have to try harder than you usually do.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently. “Look at the clearing.”

Clary silently performed the mental trick that allowed her to peel glamour from the thing it disguised. She imagined herself rubbing turpentine on a canvas, peeling away layers of paint to reveal the true image underneath—and there it was, a small stone house with a sharply gabled roof, smoke twisting from the chimney in an elegant curlicue. A winding path lined with stones led up to the front door. As she looked, the smoke puffing from the chimney stopped curling upward and began to take on the shape of a wavering black question mark.

Sebastian laughed. “I think that means, Who’s there?”

Clary pulled her coat closer around her. The wind blowing across the level grass wasn’t that brisk, but there was ice in her bones nevertheless. “It looks like something out of a fairy tale.”

“Are you cold?” Sebastian put an arm around her. Immediately the smoke curling from the chimney stopped forming itself into question marks and began puffing out in the shape of lopsided hearts. Clary ducked away from him, feeling both embarrassed and somehow guilty, as if she’d done something wrong. She hurried toward the front walk of the house, Sebastian just behind her. They were halfway up the front path when the door flew open.

Despite having been obsessed with finding Ragnor Fell ever since Madeleine had told her his name, Clary had never stopped to picture what he might look like. A large, bearded man, she would have thought, if she’d thought about it at all. Someone who looked like a Viking, with big broad shoulders.

But the person who stepped out of the front door was tall and thin, with short, spiky dark hair. He was wearing a gold mesh vest and a pair of silk pajama pants. He regarded Clary with mild interest, puffing gently on a fantastically large pipe as he did so. Though he looked nothing at all like a Viking, he was instantly and totally familiar.

Magnus Bane.

“But…” Clary looked wildly over at Sebastian, who seemed as astonished as she was. He was staring at Magnus with his mouth slightly open, a blank look on his face. Finally he stammered, “Are you—Ragnor Fell? The warlock?”

Magnus took the pipe out of his mouth. “Well, I’m certainly not Ragnor Fell the exotic dancer.”

“I…” Sebastian seemed at a loss for words. Clary wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but Magnus was a lot to take in. “We were hoping you could help us. I’m Sebastian Verlac, and this is Clarissa Morgenstern—her mother is Jocelyn Fairchild—”

“I don’t care who her mother is,” Magnus said. “You can’t see me without an appointment. Come back later. Next March would be good.”

“March?” Sebastian looked horrified.

“You’re right,” Magnus said. “Too rainy. How about June?”

Sebastian drew himself upright. “I don’t think you understand how important this is—”

“Sebastian, don’t bother,” Clary said in disgust. “He’s just messing with your head. He can’t help us, anyway.”

Sebastian only looked more confused. “But I don’t see why he can’t—”

“All right, that’s enough,” Magnus said, and snapped his fingers once.

Sebastian froze in place, his mouth still open, his hand partially outstretched.

“Sebastian!” Clary reached out to touch him, but he was as rigid as a statue. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest showed that he was even still alive. “Sebastian?” she said again, but it was hopeless: She knew somehow that he couldn’t see or hear her. She turned on Magnus. “I can’t believe you just did that. What on earth is wrong with you? Has whatever’s in that pipe melted your brain? Sebastian’s on our side.”

“I don’t have a side, Clary darling,” Magnus said with a wave of his pipe. “And really, it’s your own fault I had to freeze him for a short while. You were awfully close to telling him I’m not Ragnor Fell.”

“That’s because you’re not Ragnor Fell.”

Magnus blew a stream of smoke out of his mouth and regarded her thoughtfully through the haze. “Come on,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

He held the door of the small house open, gesturing her inside. With a last, disbelieving glance at Sebastian, Clary followed him.

The interior of the cottage was unlit. The faint daylight streaming in through the windows was enough to show Clary that they stood inside a large room crowded with dark shadows. There was an odd smell in the air, as of burning garbage. She made a faint choking noise as Magnus raised his hand and snapped his fingers once again. A bright blue light bloomed from his fingertips.

Clary gasped. The room was a shambles—furniture smashed into splinters, drawers opened and their contents scattered. Pages ripped from books drifted in the air like ash. Even the window glass was shattered.

“I got a message from Fell last night,” said Magnus, “asking me to meet him here. I turned up here—and found it like this. Everything destroyed, and the stench of demons all around.”

“Demons? But demons can’t come into Idris—”

“I didn’t say they have. I’m just telling you what happened.” Magnus spoke without inflection. “The place stank of something demonic in origin. Ragnor’s body was on the floor. He hadn’t been dead when they left him, but he was dead when I arrived.” He turned to her. “Who knew you were looking for him?”

“Madeleine,” Clary whispered. “But she’s dead. Sebastian, Jace, and Simon. The Lightwoods—”

“Ah,” said Magnus. “If the Lightwoods know, the Clave may well know by now, and Valentine has spies in the Clave.”

“I should have kept it a secret instead of asking everyone about him,” Clary said in horror. “This is my fault. I should have warned Fell—”

“Might I point out,” said Magnus, “that you couldn’t find Fell, which is in fact why you were asking people about him. Look, Madeleine—and you—just thought of Fell as someone who could help your mother. Not someone Valentine might be interested in beyond that. But there’s more to it. Valentine might not have known how to wake up your mother, but he seems to have known that what she did to put herself in that state had a connection to something he wanted very much. A particular spell book.”

“How do you know all this?” Clary asked.

“Because Ragnor told me.”

“But—”

Magnus cut her off with a gesture. “Warlocks have ways of communicating with each other. They have their own languages.” He raised the hand that held the blue flame. “Logos.”

Letters of fire, each at least six inches tall, appeared on the walls as if etched into the stone with liquid gold. The letters raced around the walls, spelling out words Clary couldn’t read. She turned to Magnus. “What does it say?”

“Ragnor did this when he knew he was dying. It tells whatever warlock comes after him what happened.” As Magnus turned, the glow of the burning letters lit his cat eyes to gold. “He was attacked here by servants of Valentine. They demanded the Book of the White. Aside from the Gray Book, it’s among the most famous volumes of supernatural work ever written. Both the recipe for the potion Jocelyn took and the recipe for the antidote to it are contained in that book.”

Clary’s mouth dropped open. “So was it here?”

“No. It belonged to your mother. All Ragnor did was advise her where to hide it from Valentine.”

“So it’s—”

“It’s at the Wayland family manor. The Waylands had their home very close to where Jocelyn and Valentine lived; they were their nearest neighbors. Ragnor suggested that your mother hide the book in their home, where Valentine would never look for it. In the library, as a matter of fact.”

“But Valentine lived in the Wayland manor for years after that,” Clary protested. “Wouldn’t he have found it?”

“It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open.” Magnus smiled crookedly. “Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn’t have a sense of humor.”

“So have you gone to the Wayland manor? Have you looked for the book?”

Magnus shook his head. “Clary, there are misdirection wards on the manor. They don’t just keep out the Clave; they keep out everyone. Especially Downworlders. Maybe if I had time to work on them, I could crack them, but—”

“Then no one can get into the manor?” Despair clawed at her chest. “It’s impossible?”

“I didn’t say no one,” Magnus said. “I can think of at least one person who could almost certainly get into the manor.”

“You mean Valentine?”

“I mean,” said Magnus, “Valentine’s son.”

Clary shook her head. “Jace won’t help me, Magnus. He doesn’t want me here. In fact, I doubt he’s speaking to me at all.”

Magnus looked at her meditatively. “I think,” he said, “there isn’t much that Jace wouldn’t do for you, if you asked him.”

Clary opened her mouth and then shut it again. She thought of the way Magnus had always seemed to know how Alec felt about Jace, how Simon felt about her. Her feelings for Jace must be written on her face even now, and Magnus was an expert reader. She glanced away. “Say I can convince Jace to come to the manor with me and get the book,” she said. “Then what? I don’t know how to cast a spell, or make an antidote—”

Magnus snorted. “Did you think I was giving you all this advice for free? Once you get hold of the Book of the White, I want you to bring it straight to me.”

“The book? You want it?”

“It’s one of the most powerful spell books in the world. Of course I want it. Besides, it belongs, by right, to Lilith’s children, not Raziel’s. It’s a warlock book and should be in warlock hands.”

“But I need it—to cure my mother—”

“You need one page out of it, which you can keep. The rest is mine. And in return, when you bring me the book, I’ll make up the antidote for you and administer it to Jocelyn. You can’t say it’s not a fair deal.” He held out a hand. “Shake on it?”

After a moment’s hesitation Clary shook. “I’d better not regret this.”

“I certainly hope not,” Magnus said, turning cheerfully back toward the front door. On the walls the fire-letters were already fading. “Regret is such a pointless emotion, don’t you agree?”

The sun outside seemed especially bright after the darkness of the cottage. Clary stood blinking as the view swam into focus: the mountains in the distance, Wayfarer contentedly munching grass, and Sebastian immobile as a lawn statue, one hand still outstretched. She turned to Magnus. “Could you unfreeze him now, please?”

Magnus looked amused. “I was surprised when I got Sebastian’s message this morning,” he said. “Saying he was doing a favor for you, no less. How did you wind up meeting him?”

“He’s a cousin of some friends of the Lightwoods or something. He’s nice, I promise.”

“Nice, bah. He’s gorgeous.” Magnus gazed dreamily in his direction. “You should leave him here. I could hang hats on him and things.”

“No. You can’t have him.”

“Why not? Do you like him?” Magnus’s eyes gleamed. “He seems to like you. I saw him going for your hand out there like a squirrel diving for a peanut.”

“Why don’t we talk about your love life?” Clary countered. “What about you and Alec?”

“Alec refuses to acknowledge that we have a relationship, and so I refuse to acknowledge him. He sent me a fire message asking for a favor the other day. It was addressed to ‘Warlock Bane,’ as if I were a perfect stranger. He’s still hung up on Jace, I think, though that relationship will never go anywhere. A problem I imagine you know nothing about…”

“Oh, shut up.” Clary eyed Magnus with distaste. “Look, if you don’t unfreeze Sebastian, then I can never leave here, and you’ll never get the Book of the White.”

“Oh, all right, all right. But if I might make a request? Don’t tell him any of what I just told you, friend of the Lightwoods or not.” Magnus snapped his fingers petulantly.

Sebastian’s face came alive, like a video flashing back to action after it had been paused. “—help us,” he said. “This isn’t just some minor problem. This is life and death.”

“You Nephilim think all your problems are life and death,” said Magnus. “Now go away. You’ve begun to bore me.”

“But—”

“Go,” Magnus said, a dangerous tone to his voice. Blue sparks glittered at the tips of his long fingers, and there was suddenly a sharp smell in the air, like burning. Magnus’s cat eyes glowed. Even though she knew it was an act, Clary couldn’t help but back away.

“I think we should go, Sebastian,” she said.

Sebastian’s eyes were narrow. “But, Clary—”

“We’re going,” she insisted, and, grabbing him by the arm, half-dragged him toward Wayfarer. Reluctantly, he followed her, muttering under his breath. With a sigh of relief, Clary glanced back over her shoulder. Magnus was standing at the door to the cottage, his arms folded across his chest. Catching her eye, he grinned and dropped one eyelid in a single, glittering wink.

“I’m sorry, Clary.” Sebastian had a hand on Clary’s shoulder and another on her waist as he helped her up onto Wayfarer’s broad back. She fought down the little voice inside her head that warned her not to get back onto the horse—or any horse—and let him hoist her up. She swung a leg over and settled herself in the saddle, telling herself she was balancing on a large, moving sofa and not on a living creature that might turn around and bite her at any moment.

“Sorry about what?” she asked as he swung up behind her. It was almost annoying how easily he did it—as if he were dancing—but comforting to watch. He clearly knew what he was doing, she thought as he reached around her to take the reins. She supposed it was good that one of them did.

“About Ragnor Fell. I wasn’t expecting him to be that unwilling to help. Although, warlocks are capricious. You’ve met one before, haven’t you?”

“I met Magnus Bane.” She twisted around momentarily to look past Sebastian at the cottage receding into the distance behind them. The smoke was puffing out of the chimney in the shape of little dancing figures. Dancing Magnuses? She couldn’t tell from here. “He’s the High Warlock of Brooklyn.”

“Is he much like Fell?”

“Shockingly similar. It’s all right about Fell. I knew there was a chance he’d refuse to help us.”

“But I promised you help.” Sebastian sounded genuinely upset. “Well, at least there’s something else I can show you, so the day won’t have been a complete waste of time.”

“What is it?” She twisted around again to look up at him. The sun was high in the sky behind him, firing the strands of his dark hair with an outline of gold.

Sebastian grinned. “You’ll see.”

As they rode farther away from Alicante, walls of green foliage whipped by on either side, giving way every so often to improbably beautiful vistas: frost blue lakes, green valleys, gray mountains, silver slivers of river and creek flanked by banks of flowers. Clary wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this. She couldn’t help but feel nervous, almost exposed, without the comfort of tall buildings closing her in.

Not that there were no buildings at all. Every once in a while the roof of a large stone building would rise into view above the trees. These were manor houses, Sebastian explained (by shouting in her ear): the country houses of wealthy Shadowhunter families. They reminded Clary of the big old mansions along the Hudson River, north of Manhattan, where rich New Yorkers had spent their summers hundreds of years ago.

The road beneath them had turned from gravel to dirt. Clary was jerked out of her reverie as they crested a hill and Sebastian pulled Wayfarer up short. “This is it,” he said.

Clary stared. “It” was a tumbled mass of charred, blackened stone, recognizable only by outline as something that had once been a house: There was a hollow chimney, still pointing toward the sky, and a chunk of wall with a glassless window gaping in its center. Weeds grew up through the foundations, green among the black. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are we here?”

“You don’t know?” Sebastian asked. “This was where your mother and father lived. Where your brother was born. This was Fairchild manor.”

Not for the first time, Clary heard Hodge’s voice in her head. Valentine set a great fire and burned himself to death along with his family, his wife, and his child. Scorched the land black. No one will build there still. They say the place is cursed.

Without another word she slid from the horse’s back. She heard Sebastian call out to her, but she was already half-running, half-sliding down the low hill. The ground evened out where the house had once stood; the blackened stones of what had once been a walkway lay dry and cracked at her feet. In among the weeds she could see a set of stairs that ended abruptly a few feet from the ground.

“Clary—” Sebastian followed her through the weeds, but she was barely aware of his presence. Turning in a slow circle, she took it all in. Burned, half-dead trees. What had probably once been a shady lawn, stretching away down a sloping hill. She could see the roof of what was probably another nearby manor house in the distance, just above the tree line. The sun sparked off broken bits of window glass in the one full wall that was still standing. She stepped into the ruins over a shelf of blackened stones. She could see the outline of rooms, of doorways—even a scorched cabinet, almost intact, flung on its side with smashed bits of china spilling out, mixing with the black earth.

Once this had been a real house, inhabited by living, breathing people. Her mother had lived here, gotten married here, had a baby here. And then Valentine had come and turned it all to dust and ash, leaving Jocelyn thinking her son was dead, leading her to hide the truth about the world from her daughter…. A sense of piercing sadness invaded Clary. More than one life had been wrecked in this place. She put her hand to her face and was almost surprised to find it damp: She had been crying without knowing it.

“Clary, I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to see this.” It was Sebastian, crunching toward her across the rubble, his boots kicking up puffs of ash. He looked worried.

She turned to him. “Oh, I do. I did. Thank you.”

The wind had picked up. It blew strands of his dark hair across his face. He gave a rueful smile. “It must be hard to think about everything that happened in this place, about Valentine, about your mother—she had incredible courage.”

“I know,” Clary said. “She did. She does.”

He touched her face lightly. “So do you.”

“Sebastian, you don’t know anything about me.”

“That’s not true.” His other hand came up, and now he was cupping her face. His touch was gentle, almost tentative. “I’ve heard all about you, Clary. About the way you fought your father for the Mortal Cup, the way you went into that vampire-infested hotel after your friend. Isabelle’s told me stories, and I’ve heard rumors, too. And ever since the first one—the first time I heard your name—I’ve wanted to meet you. I knew you’d be extraordinary.”

She laughed shakily. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“No,” he breathed, sliding his fingertips under her chin. “Not at all.” He lifted her face to his. She was too surprised to move, even when he leaned toward her and she realized, belatedly, what he was doing: Reflexively she shut her eyes as his lips brushed gently over hers, sending shivers through her. A sudden fierce longing to be held and kissed in a way that would make her forget everything else surged through her. She put her arms up, twining them around his neck, partly to steady herself and partly to draw him closer.

His hair tickled her fingertips, not silky like Jace’s but fine and soft, and she shouldn’t be thinking about Jace. She pushed back thoughts of him as Sebastian’s fingers traced her cheeks and the line of her jaw. His touch was gentle, despite the calluses on his fingertips. Of course, Jace had the same calluses from fighting; probably all Shadowhunters had them—

She clamped down on the thought of Jace, or tried to, but it was no good. She could see him even with her eyes closed—see the sharp angles and planes of a face she could never properly draw, no matter how much the image of it had burned itself into her mind; see the delicate bones of his hands, the scarred skin of his shoulders—

The fierce longing that had surged up in her so swiftly receded with a sharp recoil that was like an elastic band springing back. She went numb, even as Sebastian’s lips pressed down on hers and his hands moved to cup the back of her neck—she went numb with an icy shock of wrongness. Something was terribly wrong, something even more than her hopeless longing for someone she could never have. This was something else: a sudden jolt of horror, as if she’d been taking a confident step forward and suddenly plunged into a black void.

She gasped and jerked away from Sebastian with such force that she almost stumbled. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have fallen.

“Clary.” His eyes were unfocused, his cheeks flushed with a high bright color. “Clary, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. “Nothing—it’s just, I shouldn’t have—I’m not really ready—”

“Did we go too fast? We can take it slower—” He reached for her, and before she could stop herself, she flinched away. He looked stricken. “I’m not going to hurt you, Clary.”

“I know.”

“Did something happen?” His hand came up, stroked her hair back; she bit back the urge to jerk away. “Did Jace—”

“Jace?” Did he know she’d been thinking about Jace, had he been able to tell? And at the same time…“Jace is my brother. Why would you bring him up like that? What do you mean?”

“I just thought—” He shook his head, pain and confusion chasing each other across his features. “That maybe someone else had hurt you.”

His hand was still on her cheek; she reached up and gently but firmly detached it, returning it to his side. “No. Nothing like that. I just—” She hesitated. “It felt wrong.”

“Wrong?” The hurt on his face vanished, replaced by disbelief. “Clary, we have a connection. You know we do. Since the first second I saw you—”

“Sebastian, don’t—”

“I felt like you were someone I’d always been waiting for. I saw you feel it too. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

But that hadn’t been what she’d felt. She’d felt as if she’d walked around a corner in a strange city and suddenly seen her own brownstone looming up in front of her. A surprising and not entirely pleasant recognition, almost: How can this be here?

“I didn’t,” she said.

The anger that rose in his eyes—sudden, dark, uncontrolled—took her by surprise. He caught her wrists in a painful grasp. “That’s not true.”

She tried to pull away. “Sebastian—”

“It’s not true.” The blackness of his eyes seemed to have swallowed up the pupils. His face was like a white mask, stiff and rigid.

“Sebastian,” she said as calmly as she could. “You’re hurting me.”

He let go of her. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

Well, you thought wrong, Clary wanted to say, but she bit the words back. She didn’t want to see that look on his face again. “We should go back,” she said instead. “It’ll be dark soon.”

He nodded numbly, seeming as shocked by his outburst as she was. He turned and headed back toward Wayfarer, who was cropping grass in the long shadow of a tree. Clary hesitated a moment, then followed him—there didn’t seem to be anything else she could do. She glanced down surreptitiously at her wrists as she fell into step behind him—they were ringed with red where his fingers had gripped her, and more strangely, her fingertips were smudged black, as if she had somehow stained them with ink.

Sebastian was silent as he helped her up onto Wayfarer’s back. “I’m sorry if I implied anything about Jace,” he said finally as she settled herself in the saddle. “He would never do anything to hurt you. I know it’s for your sake that he’s been visiting that vampire prisoner in the Gard—”

It was as if everything in the world ground to a sudden halt. Clary could hear her own breath whistling in and out of her ears, saw her hands, frozen like the hands of a statue, lying still against the saddle pommel. “Vampire prisoner?” she whispered.

Sebastian turned a surprised face up to hers. “Yes,” he said, “Simon, that vampire they brought over with them from New York. I thought—I mean, I was sure you knew all about it. Didn’t Jace tell you?”

8 ONE OF THE LIVING

Simon woke to sunlight glinting brightly off an object that had been shoved through the bars of his window. He got to his feet, his body aching with hunger, and saw that it was a metal flask, about the size of a lunchbox thermos. A rolled-up bit of notepaper had been tied around the neck. Plucking it down, Simon unrolled the paper and read:

Simon: This is cow blood, fresh from the butcher’s. Hope it’s all right. Jace told me what you said, and I want you to know I think it’s really brave. Just hang in there and we’ll figure out a way to get you out.

XOXOXOXOXOXOX Isabelle

Simon smiled at the scribbled Xs and Os that ran along the bottom of the page. Good to know Isabelle’s flamboyant affection hadn’t suffered under the current circumstances. He unscrewed the flask’s top and had swallowed several mouthfuls before a sharp prickling sensation between his shoulder blades made him turn around.

Raphael stood calmly in the center of the room. He had his hands clasped behind his back, his slight shoulders set. He was wearing a sharply pressed white shirt and a dark jacket. A gold chain glittered at his throat.

Simon almost gagged on the blood he was drinking. He swallowed hard, still staring. “You—you can’t be here.”

Raphael’s smile somehow managed to give the impression that his fangs were showing, even though they weren’t. “Don’t panic, Daylighter.”

“I’m not panicking.” This wasn’t strictly true. Simon felt as if he’d swallowed something sharp. He hadn’t seen Raphael since the night he’d clawed himself, bloody and bruised, out of a hastily dug grave in Queens. He still remembered Raphael throwing packets of animal blood at him, and the way he’d torn into them with his teeth as if he were an animal himself. It wasn’t something he liked to remember. He would have been happy never to see the vampire boy again. “The sun’s still up. How are you here?”

“I’m not.” Raphael’s voice was smooth as butter. “I am a Projection. Look.” He swung his hand, passing it through the stone wall beside him. “I am like smoke. I cannot hurt you. Of course, neither can you hurt me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Simon set the flask down on the cot. “I do want to know what you’re doing here.”

“You left New York very suddenly, Daylighter. You do realize that you’re supposed to inform the head vampire of your local area when you’re leaving the city, don’t you?”

“Head vampire? You mean you? I thought the head vampire was someone else—”

“Camille has not yet returned to us,” Raphael said, without any apparent emotion. “I lead in her stead. You’d know all this if you’d bothered to get acquainted with the laws of your kind.”

“My leaving New York wasn’t exactly planned in advance. And no offense, but I don’t really think of you as my kind.”

“Dios.” Raphael lowered his eyes, as if hiding amusement. “You are stubborn.”

“How can you say that?”

“It seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“I mean—” Simon’s throat closed up. “That word. You can say it, and I can’t say—” God.

Raphael’s eyes flashed upward; he did look amused. “Age,” he said. “And practice. And faith, or its loss—they are in some ways the same thing. You will learn, over time, little fledgling.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“But it is what you are. You’re a Child of the Night. Isn’t that why Valentine captured you and took your blood? Because of what you are?”

“You seem pretty well-informed,” Simon said. “Maybe you should tell me.”

Raphael’s eyes narrowed. “I have also heard a rumor that you drank the blood of a Shadowhunter and that is what gave you your gift, your ability to walk in sunlight. Is it true?”

Simon’s hair prickled. “That’s ridiculous. If Shadowhunter blood could give vampires the ability to walk in daylight, everyone would know it by now. Nephilim blood would be at a premium. And there would never be peace between vampires and Shadowhunters after that. So it’s a good thing it isn’t true.”

A faint smile turned up the edges of Raphael’s mouth. “True enough. Speaking of premiums, you do realize, don’t you, Daylighter, that you are a valuable commodity now? There isn’t a Downworlder on this earth who doesn’t want to get their hands on you.”

“Does that include you?”

“Of course it does.”

“And what would you do if you did get your hands on me?”

Raphael shrugged his slight shoulders. “Perhaps I am alone in thinking that the ability to walk in the daylight might not be such a gift as other vampires believe. We are the Children of the Night for a reason. It is possible that I consider you as much of an abomination as humanity considers me.”

“Do you?”

“It’s possible.” Raphael’s expression was neutral. “I think you’re a danger to us all. A danger to vampirekind, if you will. And you can’t stay in this cell forever, Daylighter. Eventually you’ll have to leave and face the world again. Face me again. But I can tell you one thing. I will swear to do you no harm, and not try to find you, if you in turn swear to hide yourself away once Aldertree releases you. If you swear to go so far away that no one will ever find you, and to never again contact anyone you knew in your mortal life. I can’t be more fair than that.”

But Simon was already shaking his head. “I can’t leave my family. Or Clary.”

Raphael made an irritable noise. “They are no longer part of who you are. You’re a vampire now.”

“But I don’t want to be,” said Simon.

“Look at you, complaining,” said Raphael. “You will never get sick, never die, and be strong and young forever. You will never age. What have you got to complain about?”

Young forever, Simon thought. It sounded good, but did anyone really want to be sixteen forever? It would have been one thing to be frozen forever at twenty-five, but sixteen? To always be this gangly, to never really grow into himself, his face or his body? Not to mention that, looking like this, he’d never be able to go into a bar and order a drink. Ever. For eternity.

“And,” Raphael added, “you do not even have to give up the sun.”

Simon had no desire to go down that road again. “I heard the others talking about you in the Dumort,” he said. “I know you put on a cross every Sunday and go to see your family. I bet they don’t even know you’re a vampire. So don’t tell me to leave everyone in my life behind. I won’t do it, and I won’t lie and say I will.”

Raphael’s eyes glittered. “What my family believes doesn’t matter. It’s what I believe. What I know. A true vampire knows he is dead. He accepts his death. But you, you think you are still one of the living. It is that which makes you so dangerous. You cannot acknowledge that you are no longer alive.”

It was twilight when Clary shut the door of Amatis’s house behind her and threw the bolts home. She leaned against the door for a long moment in the shadowy entryway, her eyes half-shut. Exhaustion weighed down every one of her limbs, and her legs ached painfully.

“Clary?” Amatis’s insistent voice cut through the silence. “Is that you?”

Clary stayed where she was, adrift in the calming darkness behind her closed eyes. She wanted so badly to be home, she could almost taste the metallic air of the Brooklyn streets. She could see her mother sitting in her chair by the window, dusty, pale yellow light streaming in through the open apartment windows, illuminating her canvas as she painted. Homesickness twisted in her gut like pain.

“Clary.” The voice came from much closer this time. Clary’s eyes snapped open. Amatis was standing in front of her, her gray hair pulled severely back, her hands on her hips. “Your brother’s here to see you. He’s waiting in the kitchen.”

“Jace is here?” Clary fought to keep her rage and astonishment off her face. There was no point showing how angry she was in front of Luke’s sister.

Amatis was looking at her curiously. “Should I not have let him in? I thought you’d want to see him.”

“No, it’s fine,” Clary said, maintaining her even tone with some difficulty. “I’m just tired.”

“Huh.” Amatis looked as if she didn’t believe it. “Well, I’ll be upstairs if you want me. I need a nap.”

Clary couldn’t imagine what she’d want Amatis for, but she nodded and limped down the corridor into the kitchen, which was awash with bright light. There was a bowl of fruit on the table—oranges, apples, and pears—and a loaf of thick bread along with butter and cheese, and a plate beside it of what looked like…cookies? Had Amatis actually made cookies?

At the table sat Jace. He was leaning forward on his elbows, his golden hair tousled, his shirt slightly open at the neck. She could see the thick banding of black Marks tracing his collarbone. He held a cookie in his bandaged hand. So Sebastian was right; he had hurt himself. Not that she cared. “Good,” he said, “you’re back. I was beginning to think you’d fallen into a canal.”

Clary just stared at him, wordless. She wondered if he could read the anger in her eyes. He leaned back in the chair, throwing one arm casually over the back of it. If it hadn’t been for the rapid pulse at the base of his throat, she might almost have believed his air of unconcern.

“You look exhausted,” he added. “Where have you been all day?”

“I was out with Sebastian.”

“Sebastian?” His look of utter astonishment was momentarily gratifying.

“He walked me home last night,” Clary said, and in her mind the words I’ll just be your brother from now on, just your brother beat like the rhythm of a damaged heart. “And so far, he’s the only person in this city who’s been remotely nice to me. So yes, I was out with Sebastian.”

“I see.” Jace set his cookie back down on the plate, his face blank. “Clary, I came here to apologize. I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did.”

“No,” Clary said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I also came to ask you if you’d reconsider going back to New York.”

“God,” Clary said. “This again—”

“It’s not safe for you here.”

“What are you worried about?” she asked tonelessly. “That they’ll throw me in prison like they did with Simon?”

Jace’s expression didn’t change, but he rocked back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the floor, almost as if she had shoved him. “Simon—?”

“Sebastian told me what happened to him,” she went on in the same flat voice. “What you did. How you brought him here and then let him just get thrown in jail. Are you trying to get me to hate you?”

“And you trust Sebastian?” Jace asked. “You barely know him, Clary.”

She stared at him. “Is it not true?”

He met her gaze, but his face had gone still, like Sebastian’s face when she’d pushed him away. “It’s true.”

She seized a plate off the table and flung it at him. He ducked, sending the chair spinning, and the plate hit the wall above the sink and shattered in a starburst of broken porcelain. He leaped out of the chair as she picked up another plate and threw it, her aim going wild: This one bounced off the refrigerator and hit the floor at Jace’s feet where it cracked into two even pieces. “How could you? Simon trusted you. Where is he now? What are they going to do to him?”

“Nothing,” Jace said. “He’s all right. I saw him last night—”

“Before or after I saw you? Before or after you pretended everything was all right and you were just fine?”

“You came away from that thinking I was just fine?” Jace choked on something almost like a laugh. “I must be a better actor than I thought.” There was a twisted smile on his face. It was a match to the tinder of Clary’s rage: How dare he laugh at her now? She scrabbled for the fruit bowl, but it suddenly didn’t seem like enough. She kicked the chair out of the way and flung herself at him, knowing it would be the last thing he’d expect her to do.

The force of her sudden assault caught him off guard. She slammed into him and he staggered backward, fetching up hard against the edge of the counter. She half-fell against him, heard him gasp, and drew back her arm blindly, not even knowing what she intended to do—

She had forgotten how fast he was. Her fist slammed not into his face, but into his upraised hand; he wrapped his fingers around hers, forcing her arm back down to her side. She was suddenly aware of how close they were standing; she was leaning against him, pressing him back against the counter with the slight weight of her body. “Let go of my hand.”

“Are you really going to hit me if I do?” His voice was rough and soft, his eyes blazing.

“Don’t you think you deserve it?”

She felt the rise and fall of his chest against her as he laughed without amusement. “Do you think I planned all this? Do you really think I’d do that?”

“Well, you don’t like Simon, do you? Maybe you never have.”

Jace made a harsh, incredulous sound and let go of her hand. When Clary stepped back, he held out his right arm, palm up. It took her a moment to realize what he was showing her: the ragged scar along his wrist. “This,” he said, his voice as taut as a wire, “is where I cut my wrist to let your vampire friend drink my blood. It nearly killed me. And now you think, what, that I just abandoned him without a thought?”

She stared at the scar on Jace’s wrist—one of so many all over his body, scars of all shapes and sizes. “Sebastian told me that you brought Simon here, and then Alec marched him up to the Gard. Let the Clave have him. You must have known—”

“I brought him here by accident. I asked him to come to the Institute so I could talk to him. About you, actually. I thought maybe he could convince you to drop the idea of coming to Idris. If it’s any consolation, he wouldn’t even consider it. While he was there, we were attacked by Forsaken. I had to drag him through the Portal with me. It was that or leave him there to die.”

“But why bring him to the Clave? You must have known—”

“The reason we sent him there was because the only Portal in Idris is in the Gard. They told us they were sending him back to New York.”

“And you believed them? After what happened with the Inquisitor?”

“Clary, the Inquisitor was an anomaly. That might have been your first experience with the Clave, but it wasn’t mine—the Clave is us. The Nephilim. They abide by the Law.”

“Except they didn’t.”

“No,” Jace said. “They didn’t.” He sounded very tired. “And the worst part about all this,” he added, “is remembering Valentine ranting about the Clave, how it’s corrupt, how it needs to be cleansed. And by the Angel if I don’t agree with him.”

Clary was silent, first because she could think of nothing to say, and then in startlement as Jace reached out—almost as if he weren’t thinking about what he was doing—and drew her toward him. To her surprise, she let him. Through the white material of his shirt she could see the outlines of his Marks, black and curling, stroking across his skin like licks of flame. She wanted to lean her head against him, wanted to feel his arms around her the way she’d wanted air when she was drowning in Lake Lyn.

“He might be right that things need fixing,” she said finally. “But he’s not right about the way they should be fixed. You can see that, can’t you?”

He half-closed his eyes. There were crescents of gray shadow under them, she saw, the remnants of sleepless nights. “I’m not sure I can see anything. You’re right to be angry, Clary. I shouldn’t have trusted the Clave. I wanted so badly to think that the Inquisitor was an abnormality, that she was acting without their authority, that there was still some part of being a Shadowhunter I could trust.”

“Jace,” she whispered.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. She and Jace were standing close enough, she realized, that they were touching all up and down their bodies; even their knees were touching, and she could feel his heartbeat. Move away from him, she told herself, but her legs wouldn’t obey.

“What is it?” he said, his voice very soft.

“I want to see Simon,” she said. “Can you take me to see him?”

As abruptly as he had caught hold of her, he let her go. “No. You’re not even supposed to be in Idris. You can’t go waltzing into the Gard.”

“But he’ll think everyone’s abandoned him. He’ll think—”

“I went to see him,” Jace said. “I was going to let him out. I was going to tear the bars out of the window with my hands.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “But he wouldn’t let me.”

“He wouldn’t let you? He wanted to stay in jail?”

“He said the Inquisitor was sniffing around after my family, after me. Aldertree wants to blame what happened in New York on us. He can’t grab one of us and torture it out of us—the Clave would frown on that—but he’s trying to get Simon to tell him some story where we’re all in cahoots with Valentine. Simon said if I break him out, then the Inquisitor will know I did it, and it’ll be even worse for the Lightwoods.”

“That’s very noble of him and all, but what’s his long-range plan? To stay in jail forever?”

Jace shrugged. “We hadn’t exactly worked that out.”

Clary blew out an exasperated breath. “Boys,” she said. “All right, look. What you need is an alibi. We’ll make sure you’re somewhere everyone can see you, and the Lightwoods are too, and then we’ll get Magnus to break Simon out of prison and get him back to New York.”

“I hate to tell you this, Clary, but there’s no way Magnus would do that. I don’t care how cute he thinks Alec is, he’s not going to go directly against the Clave as a favor to us.”

“He might,” Clary said, “for the Book of the White.”

Jace blinked. “The what?”

Quickly Clary told him about Ragnor Fell’s death, about Magnus showing up in Fell’s place, and about the spell book. Jace listened with stunned attentiveness until she finished.

“Demons?” he said. “Magnus said Fell was killed by demons?”

Clary cast her mind back. “No—he said the place stank of something demonic in origin. And that Fell was killed by ‘Valentine’s servants.’ That’s all he said.”

“Some dark magic leaves an aura that reeks like demons,” Jace said. “If Magnus wasn’t specific, it’s probably because he’s none too pleased that there’s a warlock out there practicing dark magic, breaking the Law. But it’s hardly the first time Valentine’s gotten one of Lilith’s children to do his nasty bidding. Remember the warlock kid he killed in New York?”

“Valentine used his blood for the Ritual. I remember.” Clary shuddered. “Jace, does Valentine want the Book for the same reason I do? To wake my mother up?”

“He might. Or if it’s what Magnus says it is, Valentine might just want it for the power he could gain from it. Either way, we’d better get it before he does.”

“Do you think there’s any chance it’s in the Wayland manor?”

“I know it’s there,” he said, to her surprise. “That cookbook? Recipes for Housewives or whatever? I’ve seen it before. In the manor’s library. It was the only cookbook in there.”

Clary felt dizzy. She almost hadn’t let herself believe it could be true. “Jace—if you take me to the manor, and we get the book, I’ll go home with Simon. Do this for me and I’ll go to New York, and I won’t come back, I swear.”

“Magnus was right—there are misdirection wards on the manor,” he said slowly. “I’ll take you there, but it’s not close. Walking, it might take us five hours.”

Clary reached out and drew his stele out of its loop on his belt. She held it up between them, where it glowed with a faint white light not unlike the light of the glass towers. “Who said anything about walking?”

“You get some strange visitors, Daylighter,” Samuel said. “First Jonathan Morgenstern, and now the head vampire of New York City. I’m impressed.”

Jonathan Morgenstern? It took Simon a moment to realize that this was, of course, Jace. He was sitting on the floor in the center of the room, turning the empty flask in his hands over and over idly. “I guess I’m more important than I realized.”

“And Isabelle Lightwood bringing you blood,” Samuel said. “That’s quite a delivery service.”

Simon’s head went up. “How do you know Isabelle brought it? I didn’t say anything—”

“I saw her through the window. She looks just like her mother,” said Samuel, “at least, the way her mother did years ago.” There was an awkward pause. “You know the blood is only a stopgap,” he added. “Pretty soon the Inquisitor will start wondering if you’ve starved to death yet. If he finds you perfectly healthy, he’ll figure out something’s up and kill you anyway.”

Simon looked up at the ceiling. The runes carved into the stone overlapped one another like shingled sand on a beach. “I guess I’ll just have to believe Jace when he says they’ll find a way to get me out,” he said. When Samuel said nothing in return, he added, “I’ll ask him to get you out too, I promise. I won’t leave you down here.”

Samuel made a choked noise, like a laugh that couldn’t quite make it out of his throat. “Oh, I don’t think Jace Morgenstern is going to want to rescue me,” he said. “Besides, starving down here is the least of your problems, Daylighter. Soon enough Valentine will attack the city, and then we’ll likely all be killed.”

Simon blinked. “How can you be so sure?”

“I was close to him at one point. I knew his plans. His goals. He intends to destroy Alicante’s wards and strike at the Clave from the heart of their power.”

“But I thought no demons could get past the wards. I thought they were impenetrable.”

“So it’s said. It requires demon blood to take the wards down, you see, and it can only be done from inside Alicante. But because no demon can get through the wards—well, it’s a perfect paradox, or should be. But Valentine claimed he’d found a way to get around that, a way to break through. And I believe him. He will find a way to take the wards down, and he will come into the city with his demon army, and he will kill us all.”

The flat certainty in Samuel’s voice sent a chill up Simon’s spine. “You sound awfully resigned. Shouldn’t you do something? Warn the Clave?”

“I did warn them. When they interrogated me. I told them over and over again that Valentine meant to destroy the wards, but they dismissed me. The Clave thinks the wards will stand forever because they’ve stood for a thousand years. But so did Rome, till the barbarians came. Everything falls someday.” He chuckled: a bitter, angry sound. “Consider it a race to see who kills you first, Daylighter—Valentine, the other Downworlders, or the Clave.”

Somewhere between here and there Clary’s hand was torn out of Jace’s. When the hurricane spit her out and she hit the floor, she hit it alone, hard, and rolled gasping to a stop.

She sat up slowly and looked around. She was lying in the center of a Persian rug thrown over the floor of a large stonewalled room. There were items of furniture here and there; the white sheets thrown over them turned them into humped, unwieldy ghosts. Velvet curtains sagged across huge glass windows; the velvet was gray-white with dust, and motes of dust danced in the moonlight.

“Clary?” Jace emerged from behind a massive white-sheeted shape; it might have been a grand piano. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She stood up, wincing a little. Her elbow ached. “Aside from the fact that Amatis will probably kill me when we get back. Considering that I smashed all her plates and opened up a Portal in her kitchen.”

He reached his hand down to her. “For whatever it’s worth,” he said, helping her to her feet, “I was very impressed.”

“Thanks.” Clary glanced around. “So this is where you grew up? It’s like something out of a fairy tale.”

“I was thinking a horror movie,” Jace said. “God, it’s been years since I’ve seen this place. It didn’t used to be so—”

“So cold?” Clary shivered a little. She buttoned her coat, but the cold in the manor was more than physical cold: The place felt cold, as if there had never been warmth or light or laughter inside it.

“No,” said Jace. “It was always cold. I was going to say dusty.” He took a witchlight stone out of his pocket, and it flared to life between his fingers. Its white glow lit his face from beneath, picking out the shadows under his cheekbones, the hollows at his temples. “This is the study, and we need the library. Come on.”

He led her from the room and down a long corridor lined with dozens of mirrors that gave back their own reflections. Clary hadn’t realized quite how disheveled she looked: her coat streaked with dust, her hair snarled from the wind. She tried to smooth it down discreetly and caught Jace’s grin in the next mirror. For some reason, due doubtless to a mysterious Shadowhunter magic she didn’t have a hope of understanding, his hair looked perfect.

The corridor was lined with doors, some open; through them Clary could glimpse other rooms, as dusty and unused-looking as the study had been. Michael Wayland had had no relatives, Valentine had said, so she supposed no one had inherited this place after his “death”—she had assumed Valentine had carried on living here, but that seemed clearly not to be the case. Everything breathed sorrow and disuse. At Renwick’s, Valentine had called this place “home,” had showed it to Jace in the Portal mirror, a gilt-edged memory of green fields and mellow stone, but that, Clary thought, had been a lie too. It was clear Valentine hadn’t really lived here in years—perhaps he had just left it here to rot, or he had come here only occasionally, to walk the dim corridors like a ghost.

They reached a door at the end of the hallway and Jace shouldered it open, standing back to let Clary pass into the room before him. She had been picturing the library at the Institute, and this room was not entirely unlike it: the same walls filled with row upon row of books, the same ladders on rolling casters so the high shelves could be reached. The ceiling was flat and beamed, though, not conical, and there was no desk. Green velvet curtains, their folds iced with white dust, hung over windows that alternated panes of green and blue glass. In the moonlight they sparkled like colored frost. Beyond the glass, all was black.

“This is the library?” she said to Jace in a whisper, though she wasn’t sure why she was whispering. There was something so profoundly still about the big, empty house.

He was looking past her, his eyes dark with memory. “I used to sit in that window seat and read whatever my father had assigned me that day. Different languages on different days—French on Saturday, English on Sunday—but I can’t remember now what day Latin was, if it was Monday or Tuesday….”

Clary had a sudden flashing image of Jace as a little boy, book balanced on his knees as he sat in the window embrasure, looking out over—over what? Were there gardens? A view? A high wall of thorns like the wall around Sleeping Beauty’s castle? She saw him as he read, the light that came in through the window casting squares of blue and green over his fair hair and the small face more serious than any ten-year-old’s should be.

“I can’t remember,” he said again, staring into the dark.

She touched his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, Jace.”

“I suppose not.” He shook himself, as if waking out of a dream, and moved across the room, the witchlight lighting his way. He knelt down to inspect a row of books and straightened up with one of them in his hand. “Simple Recipes for Housewives,” he said. “Here it is.”

She hurried across the room and took it from him. It was a plain-looking book with a blue binding, and dusty, like everything in the house. When she opened it, dust swarmed up from its pages like a gathering of moths.

A large, square hole had been cut out of the center of the book. Fitted into the hole like a jewel in a bezel was a smaller volume, about the size of a small chapbook, bound in white leather with the title printed in gilded Latin letters. Clary recognized the words for “white” and “book,” but when she lifted it out and opened it, to her surprise the pages were covered with thin, spidery handwriting in a language she couldn’t understand.

“Greek,” Jace said, looking over her shoulder. “Of the ancient variety.”

“Can you read it?”

“Not easily,” he admitted. “It’s been years. But Magnus will be able to, I imagine.” He closed the book and slipped it into the pocket of her green coat before turning back to the bookshelves, skimming his fingers along the rows of books, his fingertips tracing their spines.

“Are there any of these you want to take with you?” she asked gently. “If you’d like—”

Jace laughed and dropped his hand. “I was only allowed to read what I was assigned,” he said. “Some of the shelves had books on them I wasn’t even allowed to touch.” He indicated a row of books, higher up, bound in matching brown leather. “I read one of them once, when I was about six, just to see what the fuss was about. It turned out to be a journal my father was keeping. About me. Notes about ‘my son, Jonathan Christopher.’ He whipped me with a belt when he found out I’d read it. Actually, it was the first time I even knew I had a middle name.”

A sudden ache of hatred for her father went through Clary. “Well, Valentine’s not here now.”

“Clary…,” Jace began, a warning note in his voice, but she’d already reached up and yanked one of the books out from the forbidden shelf, knocking it to the ground. It made a satisfying thump. “Clary!”

“Oh, come on.” She did it again, knocking another book down, and then another. Dust puffed up from their pages as they hit the floor. “You try.”

Jace looked at her for a moment, and then a half smile teased the corner of his mouth. Reaching up, he swept his arm along the shelf, knocking the rest of the books to the ground with a loud crash. He laughed—and then broke off, lifting his head, like a cat pricking up its ears at a distant sound. “Do you hear that?”

Hear what? Clary was about to ask, and stopped herself. There was a sound, getting louder now—a high-pitched whirring and grinding, like the sound of machinery coming to life. The sound seemed to be coming from inside the wall. She took an involuntary step back just as the stones in front of them slid back with a groaning, rusty scream. An opening gaped behind the stones—a sort of doorway, roughly hacked out of the wall.

Beyond the doorway was a set of stairs, leading down into darkness.

9 THIS GUILTY BLOOD

“I didn’t remember there even being a cellar here,” Jace said, staring past Clary at the gaping hole in the wall. He raised the witchlight, and its glow bounced off the downward-leading tunnel. The walls were black and slick, made of a smooth dark stone Clary didn’t recognize. The steps gleamed as if they were damp. A strange smell drifted up through the opening: dank, musty, with a weird metallic tinge that set her nerves on edge.

“What do you think could be down there?”

“I don’t know.” Jace moved toward the stairs; he put a foot on the top step, testing it, and then shrugged as if he’d made up his mind. He began to make his way down the steps, moving carefully. Partway down he turned and looked up at Clary. “Are you coming? You can wait up here for me if you want to.”

She glanced around the empty library, then shivered and hurried after him.

The stairs spiraled down in tighter and tighter circles, as if they were making their way through the inside of a huge conch shell. The smell grew stronger as they reached the bottom, and the steps widened out into a large square room whose stone walls were streaked with the marks of damp—and other, darker stains. The floor was scrawled with markings: a jumble of pentagrams and runes, with white stones scattered here and there.

Jace took a step forward and something crunched under his feet. He and Clary looked down at the same time. “Bones,” Clary whispered. Not white stones after all, but bones of all shapes and sizes, scattered across the floor. “What was he doing down here?”

The witchlight burned in Jace’s hand, casting its eerie glow over the room. “Experiments,” Jace said in a dry, tense tone. “The Seelie Queen said—”

“What kind of bones are these?” Clary’s voice rose. “Are they animal bones?”

“No.” Jace kicked a pile of bones with his feet, scattering them. “Not all of them.”

Clary’s chest felt tight. “I think we should go back.”

Instead Jace raised the witchlight in his hand. It blazed out, brightly and then more brightly, lighting the air with a harsh white brilliance. The far corners of the room sprang into focus. Three of them were empty. The fourth was blocked with a hanging cloth. There was something behind the cloth, a humped shape—

“Jace,” Clary whispered. “What is that?”

He didn’t reply. There was a seraph blade in his free hand, suddenly; Clary didn’t know when he’d drawn it, but it shone in the witchlight like a blade of ice.

“Jace, don’t,” said Clary, but it was too late—he strode forward and twitched the cloth aside with the tip of the blade, then seized it and jerked it down. It fell in a blossoming cloud of dust.

Jace staggered back, the witchlight falling from his grasp. As the blazing light fell, Clary caught a single glimpse of his face: It was a white mask of horror. Clary snatched the witchlight up before it could go dark and raised it high, desperate to see what could have shocked Jace—unshockable Jace—so badly.

At first all she saw was the shape of a man—a man wrapped in a dirty white rag, crouched on the floor. Manacles circled his wrists and ankles, attached to thick metal staples driven into the stone floor. How can he be alive? Clary thought in horror, and bile rose up in her throat. The rune-stone shook in her hand, and light danced in patches over the prisoner: She saw emaciated arms and legs, scarred all over with the marks of countless tortures. The skull of a face turned toward her, black empty sockets where the eyes should have been—and then there was a dry rustle, and she saw that what she had thought was a white rag were wings, white wings rising up behind his back in two pure white crescents, the only pure things in this filthy room.

She gave a dry gasp. “Jace. Do you see—”

“I see.” Jace, standing beside her, spoke in a voice that cracked like broken glass.

“You said there weren’t any angels—that no one had ever seen one—”

Jace was whispering something under his breath, a string of what sounded like panicked curses. He stumbled forward, toward the huddled creature on the floor—and recoiled, as if he had bounced off an invisible wall. Looking down, Clary saw that the angel crouched inside a pentagram made of connected runes graven deeply into the floor; they glowed with a faint phosphorescent light. “The runes,” she whispered. “We can’t get past—”

“But there must be something—,” Jace said, his voice nearly breaking, “something we can do.”

The angel raised its head. Clary saw with a distracted, terrible pity that it had curling golden hair like Jace’s that shone dully in the light. Tendrils clung close to the hollows of its skull. Its eyes were pits, its face slashed with scars, like a beautiful painting destroyed by vandals. As she stared, its mouth opened and a sound poured from its throat—not words but a piercing golden music, a single singing note, held and held and held so high and sweet that the sound was like pain—

A flood of images rose up before Clary’s eyes. She was still clutching the rune-stone, but its light was gone; she was gone, no longer there but somewhere else, where the pictures of the past flowed before her in a waking dream—fragments, colors, sounds.

She was in a wine cellar, bare and clean, a single huge rune scrawled on the stone floor. A man stood beside it; he held an open book in one hand and a blazing white torch in the other. When he raised his head, Clary saw that it was Valentine: much younger, his face unlined and handsome, his dark eyes clear and bright. As he chanted, the rune blazed up into fire, and when the flames receded, a crumpled figure lay among the ashes: an angel, wings spread and bloody, like a bird shot out of the sky….

The scene changed. Valentine stood by a window, at his side a young woman with shining red hair. A familiar silver ring gleamed on his hand as he reached to put his arms around her. With a jolt of pain Clary recognized her mother—but she was young, her features soft and vulnerable. She was wearing a white nightgown and was obviously pregnant.

“The Accords,” Valentine was saying angrily, “were not just the worst idea the Clave has ever had, but the worst thing that could happen to Nephilim. That we should be bound to Downworlders, tied to those creatures—”

“Valentine,” Jocelyn said with a smile, “enough about politics, please.” She reached up and twined her arms around Valentine’s neck, her expression full of love—and his was as well, but there was something else in it, something that sent a shiver down Clary’s spine….

Valentine knelt in the center of a circle of trees. There was a bright moon overhead, illuminating the black pentagram that had been scrawled into the scraped earth of the clearing. The branches of trees made a thick net overhead; where they extended above the edge of the pentagram, their leaves curled and turned black. In the center of the five-pointed star sat a woman with long, shining hair; her shape was slim and lovely, her face hidden in shadow, her arms bare and white. Her left hand was extended in front of her, and as she opened her fingers, Clary could see that there was a long slash across her palm, dripping a slow stream of blood into a silver cup that rested on the pentagram’s edge. The blood looked black in the moonlight, or perhaps it was black.

“The child born with this blood in him,” she said, and her voice was soft and lovely, “will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. He will be more mighty than the Asmodei, stronger than the shedim of the storms. If he is properly trained, there is nothing he will not be able to do. Though I warn you,” she added, “it will burn out his humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood.”

“My thanks to you, Lady of Edom,” said Valentine, and as he reached to take the cup of blood, the woman lifted her face, and Clary saw that though she was otherwise beautiful, her eyes were hollow black holes from which curled waving black tentacles, like feelers probing the air. Clary stifled a scream—

The night, the forest, vanished. Jocelyn stood facing someone Clary couldn’t see. She was no longer pregnant, and her bright hair straggled around her stricken, despairing face. “I can’t stay with him, Ragnor,” she said. “Not for another day. I read his book. Do you know what he did to Jonathan? I didn’t think even Valentine could do that.” Her shoulders shook. “He used demon blood—Jonathan’s not a baby anymore. He isn’t even human; he’s a monster—”

She vanished. Valentine was pacing restlessly around the circle of runes, a seraph blade shining in his hand. “Why won’t you speak?” he muttered. “Why won’t you give me what I want?” He drove down with the knife, and the angel writhed as golden liquid poured from its wound like spilled sunlight. “If you won’t give me answers,” Valentine hissed, “you can give me your blood. It will do me and mine more good than it will you.”

Now they were in the Wayland library. Sunlight shone through the diamond-paned windows, flooding the room with blue and green. Voices came from another room: the sounds of laughter and chatting, a party going on. Jocelyn knelt by the bookshelf, glancing from side to side. She drew a thick book from her pocket and slipped it onto the shelf….

And she was gone. The scene showed a cellar, the same cellar that Clary knew she was standing in right now. The same scrawled pentagram scarred the floor, and within the center of the star lay the angel. Valentine stood by, once again with a burning seraph blade in his hand. He looked years older now, no longer a young man. “Ithuriel,” he said. “We are old friends now, aren’t we? I could have left you buried alive under those ruins, but no, I brought you here with me. All these years I’ve kept you close, hoping one day you would tell me what I wanted—needed—to know.” He came closer, holding the blade out, its blaze lighting the runic barrier to a shimmer. “When I summoned you, I dreamed that you would tell me why. Why Raziel created us, his race of Shadowhunters, yet did not give us the powers Downworlders have—the speed of the wolves, the immortality of the Fair Folk, the magic of warlocks, even the endurance of vampires. He left us naked before the hosts of hell but for these painted lines on our skin. Why should their powers be greater than ours? Why can’t we share in what they have? How is that just?”

Within its imprisoning star the angel sat silent as a marble statue, unmoving, its wings folded. Its eyes expressed nothing beyond a terrible silent sorrow. Valentine’s mouth twisted.

“Very well. Keep your silence. I will have my chance.” Valentine lifted the blade. “I have the Mortal Cup, Ithuriel, and soon I shall have the Sword—but without the Mirror I cannot begin the summoning. The Mirror is all I need. Tell me where it is. Tell me where it is, Ithuriel, and I will let you die.”

The scene broke apart in fragments, and as her vision faded, Clary caught glimpses of images now familiar to her from her own nightmares—angels with wings both white and black, sheets of mirrored water, gold and blood—and Jace, turning away from her, always turning away. Clary reached out for him, and for the first time the angel’s voice spoke in her head in words that she could understand.

These are not the first dreams I have ever showed you.

The image of a rune burst behind her eyes, like fireworks—not a rune she had ever seen before; it was as strong, simple, and straightforward as a tied knot. It was gone in a breath as well, and as it vanished, the angel’s singing ceased. Clary was back in her own body, reeling on her feet in the filthy and reeking room. The angel was silent, frozen, wings folded, a grieving effigy.

Clary let out her breath in a sob. “Ithuriel.” She reached her hands out to the angel, knowing she couldn’t pass the runes, her heart aching. For years the angel had been down here, sitting silent and alone in the blackness, chained and starving but unable to die….

Jace was beside her. She could see from his stricken face that he’d seen everything she had. He looked down at the seraph blade in his hand and then back at the angel. Its blind face was turned toward them in silent supplication.

Jace took a step forward, and then another. His eyes were fixed on the angel, and it was as if, Clary thought, there were some silent communication passing between them, some speech she couldn’t hear. Jace’s eyes were bright as gold disks, full of reflected light.

“Ithuriel,” he whispered.

The blade in his hand blazed up like a torch. Its glow was blinding. The angel raised its face, as if the light were visible to its blind eyes. It reached out its hands, the chains that bound its wrists rattling like harsh music.

Jace turned to her. “Clary,” he said. “The runes.”

The runes. For a moment she stared at him, puzzled, but his eyes urged her onward. She handed Jace the witchlight, took his stele from her pocket, and knelt down by the scrawled runes. They looked as if they’d been gouged into the stone with something sharp.

She glanced up at Jace. His expression startled her, the blaze in his eyes—they were full of faith in her, of confidence in her abilities. With the tip of the stele she traced several lines into the floor, changing the runes of binding to runes of release, imprisonment to openness. They flared up as she traced them, as if she were dragging a match tip across sulphur.

Done, she rose to her feet. The runes shimmered before her. Abruptly Jace moved to stand beside her. The witchlight stone was gone, the only illumination coming from the seraph blade that he’d named for the angel, blazing in his hand. He stretched it out, and this time his hand passed through the barrier of the runes as if there were nothing there.

The angel reached its hands up and took the blade from him. It shut its blind eyes, and Clary thought for a moment that it smiled. It turned the blade in its grasp until the sharp tip rested just blow its breastbone. Clary gave a little gasp and moved forward, but Jace grabbed her arm, his grip like iron, and yanked her backward—just as the angel drove the blade home.

The angel’s head fell back, its hands dropping from the hilt, which protruded from just where its heart would be—if angels had hearts; Clary didn’t know. Flames burst from the wound, spreading outward from the blade. The angel’s body shimmered into white flame, the chains on its wrist burning scarlet, like iron left too long in a fire. Clary thought of medieval paintings of saints consumed in the blaze of holy ecstasy—and the angel’s wings flew wide and white before they, too, caught and blazed up, a lattice of shimmering fire.

Clary could no longer watch. She turned and buried her face in Jace’s shoulder. His arm came around her, his grip tight and hard. “It’s all right,” he said into her hair, “it’s all right,” but the air was full of smoke and the ground felt like it was rocking under her feet. It was only when Jace stumbled that she realized it wasn’t shock: The ground was moving. She let go of Jace and staggered; the stones underfoot were grinding together, and a thin rain of dirt was sifting down from the ceiling. The angel was a pillar of smoke; the runes around it glowed painfully bright. Clary stared at them, decoding their meaning, and then looked wildly at Jace: “The manor—it was tied to Ithuriel. If the angel dies, the manor—”

She didn’t finish her sentence. He had already seized her hand and was running for the stairs, pulling her along after him. The stairs themselves were surging and buckling; Clary fell, banging her knee painfully on a step, but Jace’s grip on her arm didn’t loosen. She raced on, ignoring the pain in her leg, her lungs full of choking dust.

They reached the top of the steps and exploded out into the library. Behind them Clary could hear the soft roar as the rest of the stairs collapsed. It wasn’t much better here; the room was shuddering, books tumbling from their shelves. A statue lay where it had tipped over, in a pile of jagged shards. Jace let go of Clary’s hand, seized up a chair, and, before she could ask him what he meant to do, threw it at the stained-glass window.

It sailed through in a waterfall of broken glass. Jace turned and held his hand out to her. Behind him, through the jagged frame that remained, she could see a moonlight-saturated stretch of grass and a line of treetops in the distance. They seemed a long way down. I can’t jump that far, she thought, and was about to shake her head at Jace when she saw his eyes widen, his mouth shaping a warning. One of the heavy marble busts that lined the higher shelves had slid free and was falling toward her; she ducked out of its way, and it hit the floor inches from where she’d been standing, leaving a sizable dent in the floor.

A second later Jace’s arms were around her and he was lifting her off her feet. She was too surprised to struggle as he carried her over to the broken window and dumped her unceremoniously out of it.

She hit a grassy rise just below the window and tumbled down its steep incline, gaining speed until she fetched up against a hillock with enough force to knock the breath out of her. She sat up, shaking grass out of her hair. A second later Jace came to a stop next to her; unlike her, he rolled immediately into a crouch, staring up the hill at the manor house.

Clary turned to look where he was looking, but he’d already grabbed her, shoving her down into the depression between the two hills. Later she’d find dark bruises on her upper arms where he’d held her; now she just gasped in surprise as he knocked her down and rolled on top of her, shielding her with his body as a huge roar went up. It sounded like the earth shattering apart, like a volcano erupting. A blast of white dust shot into the sky. Clary heard a sharp pattering noise all around her. For a bewildered moment she thought it had started to rain—then she realized it was rubble and dirt and broken glass: the detritus of the shattered manor being flung down around them like deadly hail.

Jace pressed her harder into the ground, his body flat against hers, his heartbeat nearly as loud in her ears as the sound of the manor’s subsiding ruins.

The roar of the collapse faded slowly, like smoke dissipating into the air. It was replaced by the loud chirruping of startled birds; Clary could see them over Jace’s shoulder, circling curiously against the dark sky.

“Jace,” she said softly. “I think I dropped your stele somewhere.”

He drew back slightly, propping himself on his elbows, and looked down at her. Even in the darkness she could see herself reflected in his eyes; his face was streaked with soot and dirt, the collar of his shirt torn. “That’s all right. As long as you’re not hurt.”

“I’m fine.” Without thinking, she reached up, her fingers brushing lightly through his hair. She felt him tense, his eyes darkening.

“There was grass in your hair,” she said. Her mouth was dry; adrenaline sang through her veins. Everything that had just happened—the angel, the shattering manor—seemed less real than what she saw in Jace’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t touch me,” he said.

Her hand froze where it was, her palm against his cheek. “Why not?”

“You know why,” he said, and shifted away from her, rolling onto his back. “You saw what I saw, didn’t you? The past, the angel. Our parents.”

It was the first time, she thought, that he’d called them that. Our parents. She turned onto her side, wanting to reach out to him but not sure if she should. He was staring blindly up at the sky. “I saw.”

“You know what I am.” The words breathed out in an anguished whisper. “I’m part demon, Clary. Part demon. You understood that much, didn’t you?” His eyes bored into her like drills. “You saw what Valentine was trying to do. He used demon blood—used it on me before I was even born. I’m part monster. Part everything I’ve tried so hard to burn out, to destroy.”

Clary pushed away the memory of Valentine’s voice saying, She left me because I turned her first child into a monster. “But warlocks are part demon. Like Magnus. It doesn’t make them evil—”

“Not part Greater Demon. You heard what the demon woman said.”

It will burn out his humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood. Clary’s voice trembled. “It’s not true. It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense—”

“But it does.” There was a furious desperation in Jace’s expression. She could see the gleam of the silver chain around his bare throat, lit to a white flare by the starlight. “It explains everything.”

“You mean it explains why you’re such an amazing Shadowhunter? Why you’re loyal and fearless and honest and everything demons aren’t?”

“It explains,” he said, evenly, “why I feel the way I do about you.”

“What do you mean?”

He was silent for a long moment, staring at her across the tiny space that separated them. She could feel him, even though he wasn’t touching her, as if he still lay with his body against hers. “You’re my sister,” he said finally. “My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you”—he laughed soundlessly and without any humor—“to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”

Clary’s breath caught. “You said you just wanted to be my brother from now on.”

“I lied,” he said. “Demons lie, Clary. You know, there are some kinds of wounds you can get when you’re a Shadowhunter—internal injuries from demon poison. You don’t even know what’s wrong with you, but you’re bleeding to death slowly inside. That’s what it’s like, just being your brother.”

“But Aline—”

“I had to try. And I did.” His voice was lifeless. “But God knows, I don’t want anyone but you. I don’t even want to want anyone but you.” He reached out, trailed his fingers lightly through her hair, fingertips brushing her cheek. “Now at least I know why.”

Clary’s voice had sunk to a whisper. “I don’t want anyone but you, either.”

She was rewarded by the catch in his breathing. Slowly he drew himself up onto his elbows. Now he was looking down at her, and his expression had changed—there was a look on his face she’d never seen before, a sleepy, almost deadly light in his eyes. He let his fingers trail down her cheek to her lips, outlining the shape of her mouth with the tip of a finger. “You should probably,” he said, “tell me not to do this.”

She said nothing. She didn’t want to tell him to stop. She was tired of saying no to Jace—of never letting herself feel what her whole heart wanted her to feel. Whatever the cost.

He bent down, his lips against her cheek, brushing it lightly—and still that light touch sent shivers through her nerves, shivers that made her whole body tremble. “If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he whispered. When she still said nothing, he brushed his mouth against the hollow of her temple. “Or now.” He traced the line of her cheekbone. “Or now.” His lips were against hers. “Or—”

But she had reached up and pulled him down to her, and the rest of his words were lost against her mouth. He kissed her gently, carefully, but it wasn’t gentleness she wanted, not now, not after all this time, and she knotted her fists in his shirt, pulling him harder against her. He groaned softly, low in his throat, and then his arms circled her, gathering her against him, and they rolled over on the grass, tangled together, still kissing. There were rocks digging into Clary’s back, and her shoulder ached where she’d fallen from the window, but she didn’t care. All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered.

Despite her coat, she could feel the heat of him burning through his clothes and hers. She tugged his jacket off, and then somehow his shirt was off too. Her fingers explored his body as his mouth explored hers: soft skin over lean muscle, scars like thin wires. She touched the star-shaped scar on his shoulder—it was smooth and flat, as if it were a part of his skin, not raised like his other scars. She supposed they were imperfections, these marks, but they didn’t feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war.

He fumbled with the buttons of her coat, his hands shaking. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jace’s hands unsteady before. “I’ll do it,” she said, and reached for the last button herself; as she raised herself up, something cold and metallic struck her collarbone, and she gasped in surprise.

“What is it?” Jace froze. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. It was this.” She touched the silver chain around his neck. On its end hung a small silver circle of metal. It had bumped against her when she’d leaned forward. She stared at it now.

That ring—the weather-beaten metal with its pattern of stars—she knew that ring.

The Morgenstern ring. It was the same ring that had gleamed on Valentine’s hand in the dream the angel had showed them. It had been his, and he had given it to Jace, as it had always been passed along, father to son.

“I’m sorry,” Jace said. He traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip, a dreamlike intensity in his gaze. “I forgot I was wearing the damn thing.”

Sudden cold flooded Clary’s veins. “Jace,” she said, in a low voice. “Jace, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t wear the ring?”

“No, don’t—don’t touch me. Stop for a second.”

His face went still. Questions had chased away the dreamlike confusion in his eyes, but he said nothing, just withdrew his hand.

“Jace,” she said again. “Why? Why now?”

His lips parted in surprise. She could see a dark line where he had bitten his bottom lip, or maybe she had bitten it. “Why what now?”

“You said there was nothing between us. That if we—if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel, we’d be hurting everyone we care about.”

“I told you. I was lying.” His eyes softened. “You think I don’t want to—?”

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not stupid, I know that you do. But when you said that now you finally understand why you feel this way about me, what did you mean?”

Not that she didn’t know, she thought, but she had to ask, had to hear him say it.

Jace caught her wrists and drew her hands up to his face, lacing his fingers through hers. “You remember what I said to you at the Penhallows’ house?” he asked. “That you never think about what you do before you do it, and that’s why you wreck everything you touch?”

“No, I’d forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.”

He barely seemed to notice the sarcasm in her voice. “I wasn’t talking about you, Clary. I was talking about me. That’s what I’m like.” He turned his face slightly and her fingers slid along his cheek. “At least now I know why. I know what’s wrong with me. And maybe—maybe that’s why I need you so much. Because if Valentine made me a monster, then I suppose he made you a sort of angel. And Lucifer loved God, didn’t he? So says Milton, anyway.”

Clary sucked in her breath. “I am not an angel. And you don’t even know that that’s what Valentine used Ithuriel’s blood for—maybe Valentine just wanted it for himself—”

“He said the blood was for ‘me and mine,’” Jace said quietly. “It explains why you can do what you can do, Clary. The Seelie Queen said we were both experiments. Not just me.”

“I’m not an angel, Jace,” she repeated. “I don’t return library books. I steal illegal music off the Internet. I lie to my mom. I am completely ordinary.”

“Not to me.” He looked down at her. His face hovered against a background of stars. There was nothing of his usual arrogance in his expression—she had never seen him look so unguarded, but even that unguardedness was mixed with a self-hatred that ran as deep as a wound. “Clary, I—”

“Get off me,” Clary said.

“What?” The desire in his eyes cracked into a thousand pieces like the shards of the Portal mirror at Renwick’s, and for a moment his expression was blankly astonished. She could hardly bear to look at him and still say no. Looking at him now—even if she hadn’t been in love with him, that part of her that was her mother’s daughter, that loved every beautiful thing for its beauty alone, would still have wanted him.

But, then, it was precisely because she was her mother’s daughter that it was impossible.

“You heard me,” she said. “And leave my hands alone.” She snatched them back, knotting them into tight fists to stop their shaking.

He didn’t move. His lip curled back, and for a moment she saw that predatory light in his eyes again, but now it was mixed with anger. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me why?”

“You think you only want me because you’re evil, not human. You just want something else you can hate yourself for. I won’t let you use me to prove to yourself how worthless you are.”

“I never said that. I never said I was using you.”

“Fine,” she said. “Tell me now that you’re not a monster. Tell me there’s nothing wrong with you. And tell me you would want me even if you didn’t have demon blood.” Because I don’t have demon blood. And I still want you.

Their gazes locked, his blindly furious; for a moment neither breathed, and then he flung himself off her, swearing, and rolled to his feet. Snatching his shirt up from the grass, he drew it over his head, still glaring. He yanked the shirt down over his jeans and turned away to look for his jacket.

Clary stood up, staggering a little. The stinging wind raised goose bumps on her arms. Her legs felt like they were made of half-melted wax. She did up the buttons on her coat with numb fingers, fighting the urge to burst into tears. Crying wouldn’t help anything now.

The air was still full of dancing dust and ash, the grass all around scattered with debris: shattered bits of furniture; the pages of books blowing mournfully in the wind; splinters of gilded wood; a chunk of almost half a staircase, mysteriously unharmed. Clary turned to look at Jace; he was kicking bits of debris with a savage satisfaction. “Well,” he said, “we’re screwed.”

It wasn’t what she’d expected. She blinked. “What?”

“Remember? You lost my stele. There’s no chance of you drawing a Portal now.” He spoke the words with a bitter pleasure, as if the situation satisfied him in some obscure way. “We’ve got no other way of getting back. We’re going to have to walk.”

It wouldn’t have been a pleasant walk under normal circumstances. Accustomed to city lights, Clary couldn’t believe how dark it was in Idris at night. The thick black shadows that lined the road on either side seemed to be crawling with barely visible things, and even with Jace’s witchlight she could see only a few feet ahead of them. She missed streetlights, the ambient glow of headlights, the sounds of the city. All she could hear now was the steady crunch of their boots on gravel and, every once in a while, her own breath puffing out in surprise as she tripped over a stray rock.

After a few hours her feet began to ache and her mouth was dry as parchment. The air had grown very cold, and she hunched along shivering, her hands thrust deep into her pockets. But even all that would have been bearable if only Jace had been talking to her. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the manor except to snap out directions, telling her which way to turn at a fork in the road, or ordering her to skirt a pothole. Even then she doubted if he would have minded much if she’d fallen into the pothole, except that it would have slowed them down.

Eventually the sky in the east began to lighten. Clary, stumbling along half-asleep, raised her head in surprise. “It’s early for dawn.”

Jace looked at her with bland contempt. “That’s Alicante. The sun doesn’t come up for another three hours at least. Those are the city lights.”

Too relieved that they were nearly home to mind his attitude, Clary picked up her pace. They rounded a corner and found themselves walking along a wide dirt path cut into a hillside. It snaked along the curve of the slope, disappearing around a bend in the distance. Though the city was not yet visible, the air had grown brighter, the sky shot through with a peculiar reddish glow.

“We must be nearly there,” Clary said. “Is there a shortcut down the hill?”

Jace was frowning. “Something’s wrong,” he said abruptly. He took off, half-running down the road, his boots sending up puffs of dust that gleamed ochre in the strange light. Clary ran to keep pace, ignoring the protests of her blistered feet. They rounded the next curve and Jace skidded to a sudden halt, sending Clary crashing into him. In another circumstance it might have been comic. It wasn’t now.

The reddish light was stronger now, throwing a scarlet glow up into the night sky, lighting the hill they stood on as if it were daylight. Plumes of smoke curled up from the valley below like the unfurling feathers of a black peacock. Rising from the black vapor were the demon towers of Alicante, their crystalline shells like arrows of fire piercing the smoky air. Through the thick smoke, Clary could glimpse the leaping scarlet of flames, scattered across the city like a handful of glittering jewels across a dark cloth.

It seemed incredible, but there it was: They were standing on a hillside high over Alicante, and below them the city was burning.