Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (29 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jace’s eyebrows went up. “Is that a copy of the Gray
Book?”

Magnus, feverishly flipping pages, said nothing.

“Hodge has one,” Alec observed.

“He showed it to me once.”

“It’s not gray,” Clary felt compelled to point out.
“It’s green.”

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

Alec looked impressed. “I didn’t know all that.”

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

“I do not—”

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

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

“Will it hurt?” Clary asked nervously.

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

“Imagine that,” said Magnus.

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

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

Clary looked down at her lap. “I still don’t remember anything
about the Mortal Cup.”

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

“Mortal Instruments?” Clary echoed, bewildered. “I
thought—”

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

“Nobody knows where the mirror is,” said Alec.
“Nobody’s known for ages.”

“It’s the Cup that concerns us,” said Jace.
“Valentine’s looking for it.”

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

“I thought you said you didn’t know who Valentine was?”
Clary pointed out.

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

“Is that what you think he’s after? Revenge?” said
Jace.

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

Alec looked harder at Magnus. “Were you at the Uprising?”

Magnus’s eyes locked with Alec’s. “I was. I killed a
number of your folk.”

“Circle members,” said Jace quickly. “Not
ours—”

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

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

Magnus spread his hands wide. “Are you?”

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

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

Alec sat up straighter. “But without the Cup, we
can’t—”

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

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

Magnus was looking at him with some amusement. “It’s happened
before.”

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

“I think so. I don’t feel any different . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

Jace, glancing around the room, laughed. “Where’s
Isabelle?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Not necessarily,” said Magnus. “Faeries aren’t
particular.”

Jace curled his lip scornfully in the warlock’s direction.
“You still here?”

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

“Where’s Simon?” Clary interrupted.

Isabelle wobbled. “He’s a rat,” she said darkly.

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

“No, Alec,” Isabelle said irritably.

“Not like that. He’s a
rat
.”

“She’s drunk,” said Jace, beginning to turn away in
disgust.

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

“A
rat
?” Clary
repeated incredulously. “You don’t mean . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If he hasn’t been stepped on,” Jace pointed out
unhelpfully.

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

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

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