Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (30 page)

Simon-the-rat crept forward slightly, his whiskers trembling. She could
see the shape of his small rounded ears, flat against his head, and the sharp point of
his nose. She fought down a feeling of revulsion—she’d never liked rats,
with their yellowy squared-off teeth all ready to bite. She wished he’d been
turned into a hamster.

“It’s me, Clary,” she said slowly. “Are you
okay?”

Jace and the others arrived behind her, Isabelle
looking more annoyed now than tearful. “Is he under there?” Jace asked
curiously.

Clary, still on her hands and knees, nodded. “Shh. You’ll
frighten him off.” She pushed her fingers gingerly under the edge of the bar, and
wiggled them. “Please come out, Simon. We’ll get Magnus to reverse the
spell. It’ll be okay.”

She heard a squeak, and the rat’s pink nose poked out from beneath
the bar. With an exclamation of relief, Clary seized the rat in her hands. “Simon!
You understood me!”

The rat, huddled in the hollow of her palms, squeaked glumly. Delighted,
she hugged him to her chest. “Oh, poor baby,” she crooned, almost as if he
really were a pet. “Poor Simon, it’ll be fine, I promise—”

“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him,” Jace said.
“That’s probably the closest he’s ever gotten to second
base.”

“Shut
up
!” Clary glared at Jace
furiously, but she did loosen her grip on the rat. His whiskers were trembling, whether
in anger or agitation or simple terror, she couldn’t tell. “Get
Magnus,” she said sharply. “We have to turn him back.”

“Let’s not be hasty.” Jace was actually grinning, the
bastard. He reached toward Simon as if he meant to pet him. “He’s cute like
that. Look at his little pink nose.”

Simon bared long yellow teeth at Jace and made a snapping motion. Jace
pulled his outstretched hand back. “Izzy, go fetch our magnificent
host.”

“Why me?” Isabelle looked petulant.

“Because it’s your fault the mundane’s a rat,
idiot,” he said, and Clary was struck by how rarely any of them, other than
Isabelle, ever said Simon’s actual name. “And we can’t leave him
here.”

“You’d be happy to leave him if it
weren’t for
her
,” Isabelle said, managing to
inject the single syllable word with enough venom to poison an elephant. She stalked
off, her skirt flouncing around her hips.

“I can’t believe she let you drink that blue drink,”
Clary said to rat-Simon. “Now you see what you get for being so
shallow.”

Simon squeaked irritably. Clary heard someone chuckle and glanced up to
see Magnus leaning over her. Isabelle stood behind him, her expression furious.
“Rattus norvegicus,”
said Magnus, peering at Simon.
“A common brown rat, nothing exotic.”

“I don’t care what kind of rat he is,” Clary said
crossly. “I want him turned back.”

Magnus scratched his head thoughtfully, shedding glitter. “No
point,” he said.

“That’s what I said.” Jace looked pleased.

“NO POINT?” Clary shouted, so loudly that Simon hid his head
under her thumb. “HOW CAN YOU SAY THERE’S NO POINT?”

“Because he’ll turn back on his own in a few hours,”
said Magnus. “The effect of the cocktails is temporary. No point working up a
transformation spell; it’ll just traumatize him. Too much magic is hard on
mundanes, their systems aren’t used to it.”

“I doubt his system is used to being a rat, either,” Clary
pointed out. “You’re a warlock, can’t you just reverse the
spell?”

Magnus considered. “No,” he said.

“You mean you won’t.”

“Not for free, darling, and you can’t afford me.”

“I can’t take a rat home on the subway either,” Clary
said
plaintively. “I’ll drop him, or one of the MTA
police will arrest me for transporting pests on the transit system.” Simon chirped
his annoyance. “Not that you’re a pest, of course.”

A girl who had been shouting by the door was now joined by six or seven
others. The sound of angry voices rose above the hum of the party and the strains of the
music. Magnus rolled his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, backing into the crowd,
which closed behind him instantly.

Isabelle, wobbling on her sandals, expelled a gusty sigh. “So much
for
his
help.”

“You know,” Alec said, “you could always put the rat in
your backpack.”

Clary looked at him hard, but couldn’t find anything wrong with the
idea. It wasn’t as if she had a pocket she could have tucked him in.
Isabelle’s clothes didn’t allow for pockets; they were too tight. Clary was
amazed they allowed for Isabelle.

Shrugging off her pack, she found a hiding place for the small brown rat
that had once been Simon, nestled between her rolled-up sweater and her sketchpad. He
curled up atop her wallet, looking reproachful. “I’m sorry,” she said
miserably.

“Don’t bother,” Jace said. “Why mundanes always
insist on taking responsibility for things that aren’t their fault is a mystery to
me. You didn’t force that cocktail down his idiotic throat.”

“If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t have been here at
all,” Clary said in a small voice.

“Don’t flatter yourself. He came because of
Isabelle.”

Angrily Clary jerked the top of the bag closed and stood up.
“Let’s get out of here. I’m sick of this place.”

The tight knot of shouting people by the door turned out to be more
vampires, easily recognizable by the pallor of their
skin and the
dead blackness of their hair.
They must dye it,
Clary thought,
they couldn’t possibly all be naturally dark-haired, and besides, some of them had
blond eyebrows. They were loudly complaining about their vandalized motorbikes and the
fact that some of their friends were missing and unaccounted for. “They’re
probably drunk and passed out somewhere,” Magnus said, waving long white fingers
in a bored manner. “You know how you lot tend to turn into bats and piles of dust
when you’ve downed a few too many Bloody Marys.”

“They mix their vodka with real blood,” Jace said in
Clary’s ear.

The pressure of his breath made her shiver. “Yes, I got that,
thanks.”

“We can’t go around picking up every pile of dust in the place
just in case it turns out to be Gregor in the morning,” said a girl with a sulky
mouth and painted-on eyebrows.

“Gregor will be fine. I rarely sweep,” soothed Magnus.
“I’m happy to send any stragglers back to the hotel come tomorrow—in a
car with blacked-out windows, of course.”

“But what about our motorbikes?” said a thin boy whose blond
roots showed under his bad dye job. A gold earring in the shape of a stake hung from his
left earlobe. “It’ll take hours to fix them.”

“You’ve got until sunrise,” said Magnus, temper visibly
fraying. “I suggest you get started.” He raised his voice. “All right,
that’s IT! Party’s over! Everybody out!” He waved his arms, shedding
glitter.

With a single loud twang the band ceased playing. A drone of loud
complaint rose from the partygoers, but they moved
obediently
toward the doorway. None of them stopped to thank Magnus for the party.

“Come on.” Jace pushed Clary toward the exit. The crowd was
dense. She held her backpack in front of her, hands wrapped protectively around it.
Someone bumped her shoulder, hard, and she yelped and moved sideways, away from Jace. A
hand brushed her backpack. She looked up and saw the vampire with the stake earring
grinning at her. “Hey, pretty thing,” he said. “What’s in the
bag?”

“Holy water,” said Jace, reappearing beside her as if
he’d been conjured up like a genie. A sarcastic blond genie with a bad
attitude.

“Oooh, a
Shadowhunter
,” said the
vampire. “Scary.” With a wink he melted back into the crowd.

“Vampires are
such
prima donnas,”
Magnus sighed from the doorway. “Honestly, I don’t know why I have these
parties.”

“Because of your cat,” Clary reminded him.

Magnus perked up. “That’s true. Chairman Meow deserves my
every effort.” He glanced at her and the tight knot of Shadowhunters just behind
her. “You on your way out?”

Jace nodded. “Don’t want to overstay our welcome.”

“What welcome?” Magnus asked. “I’d say it was a
pleasure to meet you, but it wasn’t. Not that you aren’t all fairly
charming, and as for you—” He dropped a glittery wink at Alec, who looked
astounded. “Call me?”

Alec blushed and stuttered and probably would have stood there all night
if Jace hadn’t grasped his elbow and hauled him toward the door, Isabelle at their
heels. Clary was about to follow when she felt a light tap on her arm; it was Magnus.
“I have a message for you,” he said. “From your mother.”

Clary was so surprised she nearly dropped the pack.
“From my mother? You mean, she asked you to tell me something?”

“Not exactly,” Magnus said. His feline eyes, slit by their
single vertical pupils like fissures in a green-gold wall, were serious for once.
“But I knew her in a way that you didn’t. She did what she did to keep you
out of a world that she hated. Her whole existence, the running, the hiding—the
lies, as you called them—were to keep you safe. Don’t waste her sacrifices
by risking your life. She wouldn’t want that.”

“She wouldn’t want me to save her?”

“Not if it meant putting yourself in danger.”

“But I’m the only person who cares what happens to
her—”

“No,” Magnus said. “You aren’t.”

Clary blinked. “I don’t understand. Is there—Magnus, if
you know something—”

He cut her off with brutal precision. “And one last thing.”
His eyes flicked toward the door, through which Jace, Alec, and Isabelle had
disappeared. “Keep in mind that when your mother fled from the Shadow World, it
wasn’t the monsters she was hiding from. Not the warlocks, the wolf-men, the Fair
Folk, not even the demons themselves. It was
them
. It was the
Shadowhunters.”

They were waiting for her outside the warehouse. Jace, hands in pockets,
was leaning against the stairway railing and watching as the vampires stalked around
their broken motorcycles, cursing and swearing. He had a faint smile on his face. Alec
and Isabelle stood a little way off. Isabelle was wiping at her eyes, and Clary felt a
wave of irrational anger—Isabelle barely knew Simon. This wasn’t
her
disaster. Clary was the one who had
the
right to be carrying on, not the Shadowhunter girl.

Jace unhitched himself from the railing as Clary emerged. He fell into
step beside her, not speaking. He seemed lost in thought. Isabelle and Alec, hurrying
ahead, sounded like they were arguing with each other. Clary stepped up her pace a
little, craning her neck to hear them better.

“It’s not your fault,” Alec was saying. He sounded
weary, as if he’d been through this sort of thing with his sister before. Clary
wondered how many boyfriends she’d turned into rats by accident. “But it
ought to teach you not to go to so many Downworld parties,” he added.
“They’re always more trouble than they’re worth.”

Isabelle sniffed loudly. “If anything had happened to him, I—I
don’t know what I would have done.”

“Probably whatever it is you did before,” said Alec in a bored
voice. “It’s not like you knew him all that well.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t—”

“What? Love him?” Alec scoffed, raising his voice. “You
need to
know
someone to love them.”

“But that’s not all it is.” Isabelle sounded almost sad.
“Didn’t you have any fun at the party, Alec?”

“No.”

“I thought you might like Magnus. He’s nice, isn’t
he?”

“Nice?” Alec looked at her as if she were insane.
“Kittens are nice. Warlocks are—” He hesitated. “Not,” he
finished, lamely.

“I thought you might hit it off.” Isabelle’s eye makeup
glittered as bright as tears as she glanced over at her brother. “Get to be
friends.”

“I have friends,” Alec said, and looked over his shoulder,
almost as if he couldn’t help it, at Jace.

But Jace, his golden head down, lost in thought,
didn’t notice.

On impulse Clary reached to open the pack and glance into it—and
frowned. The pack was open. She flashed back to the party—she’d lifted the
pack, pulled the zipper closed. She was sure of it. She yanked the bag open, her heart
pounding.

She remembered the time she’d had her wallet stolen on the subway.
She remembered opening her bag, not seeing it there, her mouth drying up in
surprise—
Did I drop it? Have I lost it?
And
realizing:
It’s gone
. This was like that, only a
thousand times worse. Mouth dry as bone, Clary pawed through the pack, shoving aside
clothes and sketchpad, her fingernails scraping the bottom. Nothing.

She’d stopped walking. Jace was hovering just ahead of her, looking
impatient, Alec and Isabelle already a block ahead. “What’s wrong?”
Jace asked, and she could tell he was about to add something sarcastic. He must have
seen the look on her face, though, because he didn’t. “Clary?”