Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (9 page)

BOOK: Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series
2.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Clary gingerly took a sip. It was delicious, rich and satisfying with a buttery aftertaste. “What is this?”

Isabelle shrugged. “One of Hodge’s tisanes. They always work.” She slid off the bed, landing on the floor with a catlike arch of her back. “I’m Isabelle Lightwood, by the way. I live here.”

“I know your name. I’m Clary. Clary Fray. Did Jace bring me here?”

Isabelle nodded. “Hodge was furious. You got ichor and blood all over the carpet in the entryway. If he’d done it while my parents were here, he’d have gotten grounded for sure.” She looked at Clary more narrowly. “Jace said you killed that Ravener demon all by yourself.”

A quick image of the scorpion thing with its crabbed, evil face flashed through Clary’s mind; she shuddered and clutched the cup more tightly. “I guess I did.”

“But you’re a mundie.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Clary said, savoring the look of thinly disguised amazement on Isabelle’s face. “Where is Jace? Is he around?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Somewhere,” she said. “I should go tell everyone you’re up. Hodge’ll want to talk to you.”

“Hodge is Jace’s tutor, right?”

“Hodge tutors us all.” She pointed. “The bathroom’s through there, and I hung some of my old clothes on the towel rack in case you want to change.”

Clary went to take another sip from the cup and found that it was empty. She no longer felt hungry or light-headed either, which was a relief. She set the cup down and hugged the sheet around herself. “What happened to
my
clothes?”

“They were covered in blood and poison. Jace burned them.”

“Did he?” asked Clary. “Tell me, is he always really rude, or does he save that for mundanes?”

“Oh, he’s rude to everyone,” said Isabelle airily. “It’s what makes him so damn sexy. That, and he’s killed more demons than anyone else his age.”

Clary looked at her, perplexed. “Isn’t he your brother?”

That got Isabelle’s attention. She laughed out loud. “Jace? My brother? No. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, he lives here with you,” Clary pointed out. “Doesn’t he?”

Isabelle nodded. “Well, yes, but . . .”

“Why doesn’t he live with his own parents?”

For a fleeting moment Isabelle looked uncomfortable. “Because they’re dead.”

Clary’s mouth opened in surprise. “Did they die in an accident?”

“No.” Isabelle fidgeted, pushing a dark lock of hair behind her left ear. “His mother died when he was born. His father was
murdered when he was ten. Jace saw the whole thing.”

“Oh,” Clary said, her voice small. “Was it . . . demons?”

Isabelle got to her feet. “Look, I’d better let everyone know you’ve woken up. They’ve been waiting for you to open your eyes for three days. Oh, and there’s soap in the bathroom,” she added. “You might want to clean up a little. You smell.”

Clary glared at her. “Thanks a lot.”

“Any time.”

Isabelle’s clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a “rack.”

She cleaned up in the small bathroom, using a bar of hard lavender soap. Drying herself with a white hand towel left damp hair straggling around her face in fragrant tangles. She squinted at her reflection in the mirror. There was a purpling bruise high up on her left cheek, and her lips were dry and swollen.

I have to call Luke,
she thought. Surely there was a phone around here somewhere. Maybe they’d let her use it after she talked to Hodge.

She found her Skechers placed neatly at the foot of her infirmary bed, her keys tied into the laces. Sliding her feet into them, she took a deep breath and left to find Isabelle.

The corridor outside the infirmary was empty. Clary glanced down it, perplexed. It looked like the sort of hallway she sometimes found herself racing down in nightmares, shadowy and infinite. Glass lamps blown into the shapes of roses hung at intervals on the walls, and the air smelled like dust and candle wax.

In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale gray. Each side of the corridor was lined with closed doors.

The sound she was following grew louder. Now she could identify it as the sound of a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, though she couldn’t identify the tune.

Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A covered harp occupied the center of the room.

Jace was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his tawny hair ruffled up around his head as if he’d just woken up. Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Clary remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, his arms holding her up and the stars hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel.

She must have made some noise, because he twisted around on the stool, blinking into the shadows. “Alec?” he said. “Is that you?”

“It’s not Alec. It’s me.” She stepped farther into the room. “Clary.”

Piano keys jangled as he got to his feet. “Our own Sleeping Beauty. Who finally kissed you awake?”

“Nobody. I woke up on my own.”

“Was there anyone with you?”

“Isabelle, but she went off to get someone—Hodge, I think. She told me to wait, but—”

“I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you’re told.” Jace squinted at her. “Are those Isabelle’s clothes? They look ridiculous on you.”

“I could point out that you burned
my
clothes.”

“It was purely precautionary.” He slid the gleaming black piano cover closed. “Come on, I’ll take you to Hodge.”

The Institute was huge, a vast cavernous space that looked less like it had been designed according to a floor plan and more like it had been naturally hollowed out of rock by the passage of water and years. Through half-open doors Clary glimpsed countless identical small rooms, each with a stripped bed, a nightstand, and a large wooden wardrobe standing open. Pale arches of stone held up the high ceilings, many of the arches intricately carved with small figures. She noticed certain repeating motifs: angels and swords, suns and roses.

“Why does this place have so many bedrooms?” Clary asked. “I thought it was a research institute.”

“This is the residential wing. We’re pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here.”

“But most of these rooms are empty.”

“People come and go. Nobody stays for long. Usually it’s just us—Alec, Isabelle, Max, their parents—and me and Hodge.”

“Max?”

“You met the beauteous Isabelle? Alec is her elder brother. Max is the youngest, but he’s overseas with his parents.”

“On vacation?”

“Not exactly.” Jace hesitated. “You can think of them as—as foreign diplomats, and of this as an embassy, of sorts. Right now they’re in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very delicate peace negotiations. They brought Max with them because he’s so young.”

“Shadowhunter home country?” Clary’s head was spinning. “What’s it called?”

“Idris.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have.” That irritating superiority was back in his voice. “Mundanes don’t know about it. There are wardings—protective spells—up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you’d simply find yourself transported instantly from one border to the next. You’d never know what happened.”

“So it’s not on any maps?”

“Not mundie ones. For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France.”

“But there isn’t anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland.”

“Precisely,” said Jace.

“I take it you’ve been there. To Idris, I mean.”

“I grew up there.” Jace’s voice was neutral, but something in his tone let her know that more questions in that direction would not be welcome. “Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world. We have to be everywhere, because demonic activity is everywhere. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always ‘home.’”

“Like Mecca or Jerusalem,” said Clary, thoughtfully. “So most of you are brought up there, and then when you grow up—”

“We’re sent where we’re needed,” said Jace shortly. “And
there are a few, like Isabelle and Alec, who grow up away from the home country because that’s where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, with Hodge’s training—” He broke off. “This is the library.”

They had reached an arch-shaped set of wooden doors. A blue Persian cat with yellow eyes lay curled in front of them. It raised its head as they approached and yowled. “Hey, Church,” Jace said, stroking the cat’s back with a bare foot. The cat slit its eyes in pleasure.

“Wait,” said Clary. “Alec and Isabelle and Max—they’re the only Shadowhunters your age that you know, that you spend time with?”

Jace stopped stroking the cat. “Yes.”

“That must get kind of lonely.”

“I have everything I need.” He pushed the doors open. After a moment’s hesitation she followed him inside.

The library was circular, with a ceiling that tapered to a point, as if it had been built inside a tower. The walls were lined with books, the shelves so high that tall ladders set on casters were placed along them at intervals. These were no ordinary books either—these were books bound in leather and velvet, clasped with sturdy-looking locks and hinges made of brass and silver. Their spines were studded with dully glowing jewels and illuminated with gold script. They looked worn in a way that made it clear that these books were not just old but were well-used, and had been loved.

The floor was polished wood, inlaid with chips of glass and marble and bits of semiprecious stone. The inlay formed a pattern that Clary couldn’t quite decipher—it might have been the
constellations, or even a map of the world; she suspected she’d have to climb up into the tower and look down in order to see it properly.

In the center of the room sat a magnificent desk. It was carved from a single slab of wood, a great, heavy piece of oak that gleamed with the dull shine of years. The slab rested upon the backs of two angels, carved from the same wood, their wings gilded and their faces engraved with a look of suffering, as if the weight of the slab were breaking their backs. Behind the desk sat a thin man with gray-streaked hair and a long beaky noise.

“A book lover, I see,” he said, smiling at Clary. “You didn’t tell me that, Jace.”

Jace chuckled. Clary could tell that he had come up behind her and was standing there with his hands in his pockets, grinning that infuriating grin of his. “We haven’t done much talking during our short acquaintance,” he said. “I’m afraid our reading habits didn’t come up.”

Clary turned around and shot him a glare.

BOOK: Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series
2.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Secrets of Foxworth by V.C. Andrews
The Twinning Project by Robert Lipsyte
Claiming Their Maiden by Sue Lyndon
The Desert Princess by Jill Eileen Smith
The Sinner by Amanda Stevens
Autumn Rain by Anita Mills