Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (146 page)

“I—he surprised me,” Jace said a little reluctantly. “He must have had some kind of special training. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Yeah, well.” Simon touched his rib cage, wincing. “I think he kicked in a couple of my ribs. It’s okay,” he added at Clary’s worried look. “They’re healing. But Sebastian’s definitely strong. Really strong.” He looked at Jace. “How long do you think he was standing there in the shadows?”

Jace looked grim. He glanced among the trees in the direction Sebastian had gone. “Well, the Clave will catch him—and curse him, probably. I’d like to see them put the same curse on him they put on Hodge. That would be poetic justice.”

Simon turned aside and spat into the bushes. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his face twisted into a grimace. “His blood tastes foul—like poison.”

“I suppose we can add that to his list of charming qualities,” said Jace. “I wonder what else he was up to tonight.”

“We need to get back to the Hall.” The look on Alec’s face was strained, and Clary remembered that Sebastian had said something to him, something about the other Lightwoods. . . . “Can you walk, Clary?”

She drew away from Simon. “I can walk. What about Hodge? We can’t just leave him.”

“We have to,” said Alec. “There’ll be time to come back for him if we all survive the night.”

As they left the garden, Jace paused, drew off his jacket, and laid it over Hodge’s slack, upturned face. Clary wanted to go to Jace, put a hand on his shoulder even, but something in the way he held himself told her not to. Even Alec didn’t go near him or offer a healing rune, despite the fact that Jace was limping as he walked down the hill.

They moved together down the zigzag path, weapons drawn and at the ready, the sky lit red by the burning Gard behind them. But they saw no demons. The stillness and eerie light made Clary’s head throb; she felt as if she were in a dream. Exhaustion gripped her like a vise. Just putting one foot in front of the other was like lifting a block of cement and slamming it down, over and over. She could hear Jace and Alec talking up ahead on the path, their voices faintly blurred despite their proximity.

Alec was speaking softly, almost pleading: “Jace, the way you were talking up there, to Hodge. You can’t think like that. Being Valentine’s son, it doesn’t make you a monster. Whatever he did to you when you were a kid, whatever he taught you, you have to see it’s not your fault—”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Alec. Not now, not ever. Don’t ask me about it again.” Jace’s tone was savage, and Alec fell silent. Clary could almost feel his hurt. What a night, Clary thought. A night of so much pain for everyone.

She tried not to think of Hodge, of the pleading, pitiful look on his face before he’d died. She hadn’t liked Hodge, but he hadn’t deserved what Sebastian had done to him. No one did. She thought of Sebastian, of the way he’d moved, like sparks flying. She’d never seen anyone but Jace move like that. She wanted to puzzle it out—what had happened to Sebastian? How had a cousin of the Penhallows managed to go so wrong, and how had they never noticed? She’d thought he’d wanted to help her save her mother, but he’d only wanted to get the Book of the White for Valentine. Magnus had been wrong—it hadn’t been because of the Lightwoods that Valentine had found out about Ragnor Fell. It had been because
she’d told Sebastian. How could she have been so stupid?

Appalled, she barely noticed as the path turned into an avenue, leading them into the city. The streets were deserted, the houses dark, many of the witchlight streetlamps smashed, their glass scattered across the cobblestones. Voices were audible, echoing as if at a distance, and the gleam of torches was visible here and there among the shadows between buildings, but—

“It’s awfully quiet,” Alec said, looking around in surprise. “And—”

“It doesn’t stink like demons.” Jace frowned. “Strange. Come on. Let’s get to the Hall.”

Though Clary was half-braced for an attack, they didn’t see a single demon as they moved through the streets. Not a live one, at least—though as they passed a narrow alley, she saw a group of three or four Shadowhunters gathered in a circle around something that pulsed and twitched on the ground. They were taking turns stabbing it with long, sharpened poles. With a shudder she looked away.

The Hall of Accords was lit like a bonfire, witchlight pouring out of its doors and windows. They hurried up the stairs, Clary steadying herself when she stumbled. Her dizziness was getting worse. The world seemed to be swinging around her, as if she stood inside a great spinning globe. Above her the stars were white-painted streaks across the sky. “You should lie down,” Simon said, and then, when she said nothing, “Clary?”

With an enormous effort, she forced herself to smile at him. “I’m all right.”

Jace, standing at the entrance to the Hall, looked back at her
in silence. In the harsh glare of the witchlight, the blood on his face and his swollen eye looked ugly, streaked and black.

There was a dull roar inside the Hall, the low murmur of hundreds of voices. To Clary it sounded like the beating of an enormous heart. The lights of the bracketed torches, coupled with the glow of witchlights carried everywhere, seared her eyes and fragmented her vision; she could see only vague shapes now, vague shapes and colors. White, gold, and then the night sky above, fading from dark to paler blue. How late was it?

“I don’t see them.” Alec, casting anxiously around the room for his family, sounded as if he were a hundred miles off, or deep under water. “They should be here by now—”

His voice faded as Clary’s dizziness worsened. She put a hand against a nearby pillar to steady herself. A hand brushed across her back—Simon. He was saying something to Jace, sounding anxious. His voice faded into the pattern of dozens of others, rising and falling around her like waves breaking.

“Never seen anything like it. The demons just turned around and left, just vanished.”

“Sunrise, probably. They’re afraid of sunrise, and it’s not far off.”

“No, it was more than that.”

“You just don’t want to think they’ll be back the next night, or the next.”

“Don’t say that; there’s no reason to say that. They’ll get the wards back up.”

“And Valentine will just take them down again.”

“Maybe it’s no better than we deserve. Maybe Valentine was right—maybe allying ourselves with Downworlders means we’ve lost the Angel’s blessing.”

“Hush. Have some respect. They’re tallying the dead out in Angel Square.”

“There they are,” Alec said. “Over there, by the dais. It looks like . . .” His voice trailed off, and then he was gone, pushing his way through the crowd. Clary squinted, trying to sharpen her vision. All she could see were blurs—

She heard Jace catch his breath, and then, without another word, he was shoving through the crowd after Alec. Clary let go of the pillar, meaning to follow them, but stumbled. Simon caught her.

“You need to lie down, Clary,” he said.

“No,” she whispered. “I want to see what happened—”

She broke off. He was staring past her, after Jace, and he looked stricken. Bracing herself against the pillar, she raised herself up on her toes, struggling to see over the crowd—

There they were, the Lightwoods: Maryse with her arms around Isabelle, who was sobbing, and Robert Lightwood sitting on the ground and holding something—no,
someone
, and Clary thought of the first time she had seen Max, at the Institute, lying limp and asleep on a couch, his glasses knocked askew and his hand trailing along the floor.
He can sleep anywhere,
Jace had said, and he almost looked as if he were sleeping now, in his father’s lap, but Clary knew he wasn’t.

Alec was on his knees, holding one of Max’s hands, but Jace was just standing where he was, not moving, and more than anything else he looked lost, as if he had no idea where he was or what he was doing there. All Clary wanted was to run to him and put her arms around him, but the look on Simon’s face told her no, no, and so did her memory of the manor house and Jace’s arms around her there. She was the
last person on earth who could ever give him any comfort.

“Clary,” Simon said, but she was pulling away from him, despite her dizziness and the pain in her head. She ran for the door of the Hall and pushed it open, ran out onto the steps and stood there, gulping down breaths of cold air. In the distance the horizon was streaked with red fire, the stars fading, bleached out of the lightening sky. The night was over. Dawn had come.

Clary woke gasping out of a dream of bleeding angels, her
sheets twisted around her in a tight spiral. It was pitch-black and close in Amatis’s spare bedroom, like being locked in a coffin. She reached out and twitched the curtains open. Daylight poured in. She frowned and pulled them shut again.

Shadowhunters burned their dead, and ever since the demon attack, the sky to the west of the city had been stained with smoke. Looking at it out the window made Clary feel sick, so she kept the curtains closed. In the darkness of the room she closed her eyes, trying to remember her dream. There had been angels in it, and the image of the rune Ithuriel had showed her, flashing over and over against the inside of her eyelids like a blinking
WALK
sign. It was a simple rune, as simple as a tied
knot, but no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t read it, couldn’t figure out what it meant. All she knew was that it seemed somehow incomplete to her, as if whoever had created the pattern hadn’t quite finished it.

These are not the first dreams I have ever showed you,
Ithuriel had said. She thought of her other dreams: of Simon with crosses burned into his hands, Jace with wings, lakes of cracking ice that shone like mirror glass. Had the angel sent her those, too?

With a sigh she sat up. The dreams might be bad, but the waking images that marched across her brain weren’t much better. Isabelle, weeping on the floor of the Hall of Accords, tugging with such force on the black hair threaded through her fingers that Clary worried she would rip it out. Maryse shrieking at Jia Penhallow that the boy they’d brought into their house had done this, their nephew, and if he was so closely allied with Valentine, what did that say about them? Alec trying to calm his mother down, asking Jace to help him, but Jace just standing there as the sun rose over Alicante and blazed down through the ceiling of the Hall. “It’s dawn,” Luke had said, looking more tired than Clary had ever seen him. “Time to bring the bodies inside.” And he’d sent out patrols to gather up the dead Shadowhunters and lycanthropes lying in the streets and bring them to the plaza outside the Hall, the plaza Clary had crossed with Sebastian when she’d commented that the Hall looked like a church. It had seemed like a pretty place to her then, lined with flower boxes and brightly painted shops. And now it was full of corpses.

Including Max. Thinking of the little boy who’d so gravely talked about manga with her made her stomach knot. She’d
promised once that she’d take him to Forbidden Planet, but that would never happen now.
I would have bought him books,
she thought.
Whatever books he wanted.
Not that it mattered.

Don’t think about it.
Clary kicked her sheets back and got up. After a quick shower she changed into the jeans and sweater she’d worn the day she’d come from New York. She pressed her face to the material before she put the sweater on, hoping to catch a whiff of Brooklyn, or the smell of laundry detergent—something to remind her of home—but it had been washed and smelled like lemon soap. With another sigh she headed downstairs.

The house was empty except for Simon, sitting on the couch in the living room. The open windows behind him streamed daylight. He’d become like a cat, Clary thought, always seeking out available patches of sunlight to curl up in. No matter how much sun he got, though, his skin stayed the same ivory white.

She picked an apple out of the bowl on the table and sank down next to him, curling her legs up under her. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.” He looked at her. “I ought to ask you that. You’re the one with the shadows under your eyes. More nightmares?”

She shrugged. “Same stuff. Death, destruction, bad angels.”

“So a lot like real life, then.”

“Yeah, but at least when I wake up, it’s over.” She took a bite out of her apple. “Let me guess. Luke and Amatis are at the Accords Hall, having another meeting.”

“Yeah. I think they’re having the meeting where they get together and decide what other meetings they need to have.” Simon picked idly at the fringe edging a throw pillow. “Have you heard anything from Magnus?”

“No.” Clary was trying not to think about the fact that it had been three days since she’d seen Magnus, and he’d sent no word at all. Or the fact that there was really nothing stopping him from taking the Book of the White and disappearing into the ether, never to be heard from again. She wondered why she’d ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea.

She touched Simon’s wrist lightly. “And you? What about you? You’re still okay here?” She’d wanted Simon to go home the moment the battle was over—home, where it was safe. But he’d been strangely resistant. For whatever reason, he seemed to want to stay. She hoped it wasn’t because he thought he had to take care of her—she’d nearly come out and told him she didn’t need his protection—but she hadn’t, because part of her couldn’t bear to see him go. So he stayed, and Clary was secretly, guiltily glad. “You’re getting—you know—what you need?”

“You mean blood? Yeah, Maia’s still bringing me bottles every day. Don’t ask me where she gets it, though.” The first morning Simon had been at Amatis’s house, a grinning lycan-thrope had showed up on the doorstep with a live cat for him. “Blood,” he’d said, in a heavily accented voice. “For you. Fresh!” Simon had thanked the werewolf, waited for him to leave, and let the cat go, his expression faintly green.