Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (234 page)

Shaking off the memory, she headed quickly for the circular staircase at the far end of the room. She was wearing jeans and
rubber-soled sneakers, and a soundless rune was carved into her ankle; the silence was almost eerie as she bounded up the steps and onto the gallery. There were books up here too, but they were locked away behind glass cases. Some looked very old, their covers frayed, their bindings reduced to a few strings. Others were clearly books of dark or dangerous magic—
Unspeakable Cults
,
The Demon’s Pox
,
A Practical Guide to Raising the Dead.

Between the locked bookshelves were glass display cases. Each held something of rare and beautiful workmanship—a delicate glass flacon whose stopper was an enormous emerald; a crown with a diamond in the center that did not look as if it would fit any human head; a pendant in the shape of an angel whose wings were clockwork cogs and gears; and in the last case, just as Isabelle had promised, a pair of gleaming golden rings shaped like curling leaves, the faerie work as delicate as baby’s breath.

The case was locked, of course, but the Opening rune—Clary biting her lip as she drew it, careful not to make it too powerful lest the glass case burst apart and bring people running—unsnapped the lock. Carefully she eased the case open. It was only as she slid her stele back into her pocket that she hesitated.

Was this really her? Stealing from the Clave to pay the Queen of the Fair Folk, whose promises, as Jace had told her once, were like scorpions, with a barbed sting in the tail?

She shook her head as if to clear the doubts away—and froze. The door to the library was opening. She could hear the creak of wood, muffled voices, footsteps. Without another thought she dropped to the ground, flattening herself against the cold wooden floor of the gallery.

“You were right, Jace,” came a voice—coolly amused, and horribly familiar—from below. “The place is deserted.”

The ice that had been in Clary’s veins seemed to crystallize, freezing her in place. She could not move, could not breathe. She had not felt a shock this intense since she had seen her father run a sword through Jace’s chest. Very slowly she inched toward the edge of the gallery and looked down.

And bit down on her lip savagely to keep herself from screaming.

The sloping roof above rose to a point and was set with a glass skylight. Sunlight poured down through the skylight, lighting a portion of the floor like a spotlight on a stage. She could see that the chips of glass and marble and bits of semiprecious stone that were inlaid in the floor formed a design—the Angel Raziel, the cup and the sword. Standing directly on one of the Angel’s outspread wings was Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.

Sebastian.

So this was what her brother looked like.
Really
looked like, alive and moving and animated. A pale face, all angles and planes, tall and slim in black gear. His hair was silvery white, not dark as it had been when she had first seen him, dyed to match the color of the real Sebastian Verlac’s. His own pale color suited him better. His eyes were black and snapping with life and energy. The last time she’d seen him, floating in a glass coffin like Snow White, one of his hands had been a bandaged stump. Now that hand was whole again, with a silver bracelet glittering on the wrist, but nothing visible showed that it had ever been damaged—and more than damaged, had been
missing
.

And there beside him, golden hair shimmering in the pale sunlight, was Jace. Not Jace as she had imagined him so often over the past two weeks—beaten or bleeding or suffering or
starving, locked away in some dark cell, screaming in pain or calling out for her. This was Jace as she remembered him, when she let herself remember—flushed and healthy and vibrant and beautiful. His hands were careless in the pockets of his jeans, his Marks visible through his white T-shirt. Over it was thrown an unfamiliar tan suede jacket that brought out the gold undertones to his skin. He tipped his head back, as if enjoying the feeling of sun on his face. “I’m always right, Sebastian,” he said. “You ought to know that about me by now.”

Sebastian gave him a measured look, and then a smile. Clary stared. It had every appearance of being a real smile. But what did she know? Sebastian had smiled at her before, and that had turned out to be one big lie. “So where are the books on summoning? Is there any order to the chaos here?”

“Not really. It’s not alphabetized. It follows Hodge’s special system.”

“Isn’t he the one I killed? Inconvenient, that,” said Sebastian. “Perhaps I should take the upstairs level and you the downstairs.”

He moved toward the staircase that led up to the gallery. Clary’s heart began to pound with fear. She associated Sebastian with murder, blood, pain, and terror. She knew that Jace had fought him and won once but had nearly died in the process himself. In a hand-to-hand fight she would never beat her brother. Could she fling herself from the gallery railing to the floor without breaking a leg? And if she did, what would happen then? What would Jace do?

Sebastian had his foot on the lowest step when Jace called out to him, “Wait. They’re here. Filed under ‘Magic, Nonlethal.’”

“Nonlethal? Where’s the fun in that?” Sebastian purred, but he took his foot off the step and moved back toward Jace.
“This is quite a library,” he said, reading off titles as he passed them. “
The Care and Feeding of Your Pet Imp. Demons Revealed
.” He plucked that one off the shelf and let out a long, low chuckle.

“What is it?” Jace looked up, his mouth curving upward. Clary wanted to run downstairs and throw herself at him so badly that she bit down on her lip again. The pain was acid sharp.

“It’s pornography,” said Sebastian. “Look. Demons . . .
revealed
.”

Jace came up behind him, resting one hand on Sebastian’s arm for balance as he read over his shoulder. It was like watching Jace with Alec, someone he was so comfortable with, he could touch them without thinking about it—but horrible, backward, inside out. “Okay, how can you
tell
?”

Sebastian shut the book and hit Jace lightly on the shoulder with it. “Some things I know more about than you. Did you get the books?”

“I got them.” Jace scooped up a stack of heavy-looking tomes from a nearby table. “Do we have time to go by my room? If I could get some of my stuff . . .”

“What do you want?”

Jace shrugged. “Clothes mostly, some weapons.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Too dangerous. We need to get in and out fast. Only emergency items.”

“My favorite jacket is an emergency item,” Jace said. It was so much like hearing him talk to Alec, to any of his friends. “Much like myself, it is both snuggly
and
fashionable.”

“Look, we have all the money we could want,” said Sebastian. “
Buy
clothes. And you’ll be ruling this place in a few weeks. You can run your favorite jacket up the flagpole and fly it like a pennant.”

Jace laughed, that soft rich sound Clary loved. “I’m warning
you, that jacket is sexy. The Institute could go up in sexy, sexy flames.”

“Be good for the place. Too dismal right now.” Sebastian grabbed the back of Jace’s current jacket with a fist and pulled him sideways. “Now we’re going. Hold on to the books.” He glanced down at his right hand, where a slim silver ring glittered; with the hand that wasn’t holding on to Jace, he used his thumb to twist the ring.

“Hey,” Jace said. “Do you think—” He broke off, and for a moment Clary thought that it was because he had looked up and seen her—his face was tilted upward—but even as she sucked in her breath, they both vanished, fading like mirages against the air.

Slowly Clary lowered her head onto her arm. Her lip was bleeding where she had bitten it; she could taste the blood in her mouth. She knew she should get up, move, run away. She wasn’t supposed to be here. But the ice in her veins had grown so cold, she was terrified that if she moved, she would shatter.

Alec woke to Magnus’s shaking his shoulder. “Come on, sweet pea,” he said. “Time to rise and face the day.”

Alec unfolded himself groggily out of his nest of pillows and blankets and blinked at his boyfriend. Magnus, despite having gotten very little sleep, looked annoyingly chipper. His hair was wet, dripping onto the shoulders of his white shirt and making it transparent. He wore jeans with holes in them and fraying hems, which usually meant he was planning to spend the day without leaving his apartment.

“‘Sweet pea’?” Alec said.

“I was trying it out.”

Alec shook his head. “No.”

Magnus shrugged. “I’ll keep at it.” He held out a chipped blue mug of coffee fixed the way Alec liked it—black, with sugar. “Wake up.”

Alec sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and took the mug. The first bitter swallow sent a tingle of energy through his nerves. He remembered lying awake the night before and waiting for Magnus to come to bed, but eventually exhaustion had overtaken him and he had fallen asleep at around five a.m. “I’m skipping the Council meeting today.”

“I know, but you’re supposed to meet your sister and the others in the park by Turtle Pond. You told me to remind you.”

Alec swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What time is it?”

Magnus took the mug gently out of his hand before the coffee spilled and set it on the bedside table. “You’re fine. You’ve got an hour.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips against Alec’s; Alec remembered the first time they had ever kissed, here in this apartment, and he wanted to wrap his arms around his boyfriend and pull him close. But something held him back.

He stood up, disentangling himself, and went over to the bureau. He had a drawer where his clothes were. A place for his toothbrush in the bathroom. A key to the front door. A decent amount of real estate to take up in anyone’s life, and yet he couldn’t shake the cold fear in his stomach.

Magnus had rolled onto his back on the bed and was watching Alec, one arm crooked behind his head. “Wear that scarf,” he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. “It matches your eyes.”

Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate—for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. “Don’t tell me,”
he said. “The scarf’s a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something.”

Magnus sat up. “What’s gotten into you?”

Alec stared at him. “Am I the newest thing in this apartment?”

“I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He’s only two.”

“I said newest, not youngest,” Alec snapped. “Who’s
W.S.
? Is it Will?”

Magnus shook his head like there was water in his ears. “What the hell? You mean the snuffbox?
W.S.
is Woolsey Scott. He—”

“Founded the Praetor Lupus. I know.” Alec pulled on his jeans and zipped them up. “You mentioned him before, and besides, he’s a historical figure. And his snuffbox is in your junk drawer. What else is in there? Jonathan Shadowhunter’s toenail clippers?”

Magnus’s cat eyes were cold. “Where is all this coming from, Alexander? I don’t lie to you. If there’s anything about me you want to know, you can ask.”

“Bull,” Alec said bluntly, buttoning his shirt. “You’re kind and funny and all those great things, but what you’re not is forthcoming,
sweet pea
. You can talk all day about other people’s problems, but you won’t talk about yourself or your history, and when I do ask, you wriggle like a worm on a hook.”

“Maybe because you can’t ask me about my past without picking a fight about how I’m going to live forever and you’re not,” Magnus snapped. “Maybe because immortality is rapidly becoming the third person in our relationship, Alec.”

“Our relationship isn’t supposed to
have
a third person.”

“Exactly.”

Alec’s throat tightened. There were a thousand things he
wanted to say, but he had never been good with words like Jace and Magnus were. Instead he grabbed the blue scarf off its peg and wrapped it defiantly around his neck.

“Don’t wait up,” he said. “I might patrol tonight.”

As he slammed out of the apartment, he heard Magnus yell after him, “And that scarf, I’ll have you know, is from the
Gap
! I got it
last year
!”

Alec rolled his eyes and jogged down the stairs to the lobby. The single bulb that usually lit the place was out, and the space was so dim that for a moment he didn’t see the hooded figure slipping toward him from the shadows. When he did, he was so startled that he dropped his key chain with a rattling clang.

The figure glided toward him. He could tell nothing about it—not age or gender or even species. The voice that came from beneath the hood was crackling and low. “I have a message for you, Alec Lightwood,” it said. “From Camille Belcourt.”