City of Lost Souls (27 page)

“When will your roommate be back?” she asked into the suddenly uncomfortable silence. She wasn’t sure why they were both embarrassed. They certainly hadn’t been when they’d been in the truck together, but now, here in Jordan’s space, the years they had spent not speaking seemed to press them apart.

“Who knows? Nick’s on assignment. They’re dangerous. He might not come back.” Jordan sounded resigned. He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair. “Why don’t you lie down? I’m going to take a shower.” He headed for the bathroom, which, Maia was relieved to see, was attached to his room. She didn’t feel like dealing with one of those shared-bathroom-down-the-hall things.

“Jordan—,” she began, but he’d already closed the bathroom door behind him. She could hear water running. With a sigh she kicked off her shoes and lay down on the absent Nick’s bed. The blanket was dark blue plaid, and smelled like pinecones. She looked up and saw that the ceiling was wallpapered with photographs. The same laughing blond boy, who looked about seventeen, smiled down at her out of each picture. Nick, she guessed. He looked happy. Had Jordan been happy, here at the Praetor House?

She reached out and flipped the photograph of the two of them toward her. It had been taken years ago, when Jordan was skinny, with big hazel eyes that dominated his face. They had their arms around each other and looked sunburned and happy. Summer had darkened both their skins and put light streaks in Maia’s hair, and Jordan had his head turned slightly
toward her, as if he were going to say something or kiss her. She couldn’t remember which. Not anymore.

She thought of the boy whose bed she was sitting on, the boy who might never come back. She thought of Luke, slowly dying, and of Alaric and Gretel and Justine and Theo and all the others of her pack who had lost their lives in the war against Valentine. She thought of Max, and of Jace, two Lightwoods lost—for, she had to admit in her heart, she didn’t think they would ever get Jace back. And lastly and strangely she thought of Daniel, the brother she had never mourned for, and to her surprise she felt tears sting the backs of her eyes.

She sat up abruptly. She felt as if the world were tilting and she was clinging on helplessly, trying to keep from tumbling into a black abyss. She could feel the shadows closing in. With Jace lost and Sebastian out there, things could only get darker. There would only be more loss and more death. She had to admit, the most alive she’d felt in weeks had been those moments at dawn, kissing Jordan in his car.

As if she were in a dream, she found herself getting to her feet. She walked across the room and opened the door to the bathroom. The shower was a square of frosted glass; she could see Jordan’s silhouette through it. She doubted he could hear her over the running water as she pulled off her sweater and shimmied out of her jeans and underwear. With a deep breath she crossed the room, slid the shower door open, and stepped inside.

Jordan spun around, pushing the wet hair out of his eyes. The shower was running hot, and his face was flushed, making his eyes shine as if the water had polished them. Or maybe it wasn’t just the water making the blood rise under his skin as
his eyes took her in—all of her. She looked back at him steadily, not embarrassed, watching the way the Praetor Lupus pendant shone in the wet hollow of his throat, and the slide of the soap suds over his shoulders and chest as he stared at her, blinking water out of his eyes. He was beautiful, but then she had always thought so.

“Maia?” he said unsteadily. “Are you… ?”

“Shh.” She put her finger against his lips, drawing the shower door closed with her other hand. Then she stepped closer, wrapping both arms around him, letting the water wash both of them clean of the darkness. “Don’t talk. Just kiss me.”

So he did.

“What in the name of the Angel do you mean Clary isn’t there?” Jocelyn demanded, white-faced. “How do you know that, if you just woke up? Where has she gone?”

Simon swallowed. He had grown up with Jocelyn as almost a second mother to him. He was used to her protectiveness of her daughter, but she had always seen him as an ally in that, someone who would stand between Clary and the dangers of the world. Now she was looking at him like the enemy. “She texted me last night… ,” Simon began, then stopped as Magnus waved him over to the table.

“You might as well sit down,” he said. Isabelle and Alec were watching wide-eyed from either side of Magnus, but the warlock didn’t look particularly surprised. “Tell us all what’s going on. I have a feeling this is going to take a while.”

It did, though not as long as Simon might have hoped. When he was done explaining, hunched over on his chair and staring down at Magnus’s scratched table, he lifted his head to
see Jocelyn fixing him with a green stare as cold as arctic water. “You let my daughter go off… with
Jace
… to some unfindable, untraceable place where none of us can reach her?”

Simon looked down at his hands. “I can reach her,” he said, holding up his right hand with the gold ring on the finger. “I told you. I heard from her this morning. She said she was fine.”

“You never should have let her leave in the first place!”

“I didn’t
let
her. She was going to go anyway. I thought she might as well have some kind of a lifeline, since it’s not like I could stop her.”

“To be fair,” said Magnus, “I don’t think anyone could. Clary does what she wants.” He looked at Jocelyn. “You can’t keep her in a cage.”

“I
trusted
you,” she snapped at Magnus. “How did she get out?”

“She made a Portal.”

“But you said there were wards—”

“To keep threats out, not to keep guests in. Jocelyn, your daughter isn’t stupid, and she does what she thinks is right. You can’t stop her. No one can stop her.
She is a great deal like her mother
.”

Jocelyn looked at Magnus for a moment, her mouth slightly open, and Simon realized that of course Magnus must have known Clary’s mother when she was young, when she betrayed Valentine and the Circle and nearly died in the Uprising. “She’s a little girl,” she said, and turned to Simon. “You’ve spoken to her? Using these—these rings? Since she left?”

“This morning,” said Simon. “She said she was fine. That everything was fine.”

Instead of seeming reassured, Jocelyn only looked angrier.
“I’m sure that’s what she
said
. Simon, I can’t believe you allowed her to do this. You should have restrained her—”

“What, tied her up?” Simon said in disbelief. “Handcuffed her to the diner table?”

“If that’s what it took. You’re stronger than she is. I’m disappointed in—”

Isabelle stood up. “Okay, that’s enough.” She glared at Jocelyn. “It is totally and completely unfair to yell at Simon over something Clary decided to do
on her own
. And if Simon had tied her up for you, then what? Were you planning on keeping her tied up forever? You’d have to let her go eventually, and then what? She wouldn’t trust Simon anymore, and she already doesn’t trust you because you stole her memories. And that, if I recall, was because you were trying to protect her. Maybe if you hadn’t
protected
her so much, she would know more about what is dangerous and what isn’t, and be a little less secretive—and less reckless!”

Everyone stared at Isabelle, and for a moment Simon was reminded of something that Clary had said to him once—that Izzy rarely made speeches, but when she did, she made them
count
. Jocelyn was white around the lips.

“I’m going to the station to be with Luke,” she said. “Simon, I expect reports from you every twenty-four hours that my daughter is all right. If I don’t hear from you every night, I’m going to the Clave.”

And she stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard that a long crack appeared in the plaster beside it.

Isabelle sat back down, this time beside Simon. He said nothing to her but held out his hand, and she took it, slipping her fingers between his.

“So,” Magnus said finally, breaking the silence. “Who’s up for raising Azazel? Because we’re going to need a whole lot of candles.”

Jace and Clary spent the day wandering—through mazelike tiny streets than ran along canals whose water ranged from deep green to murky blue. They made their way among the tourists in Saint Mark’s Square, and over the Bridge of Sighs, and drank small, powerful cups of espresso at Caffè Florian. The disorienting maze of streets reminded Clary a bit of Alicante, though Alicante lacked Venice’s feeling of elegant decay. There were no roads here, no cars, only twisting little alleys, and bridges arching over canals whose water was as green as malachite. As the sky overhead darkened to the deep blue of late autumn twilight, lights began to go on—in tiny boutiques, in bars and restaurants that seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear again into shadow as she and Jace passed, leaving light and laughter behind.

When Jace asked Clary if she was ready for dinner, she nodded firmly, yes. She had begun to feel guilty that she had gotten no information out of him and that she was, actually, enjoying herself. As they crossed over a bridge to the Dorsoduro, one of the quieter sections of the city, away from the tourist throng, she determined that she would get
something
out of him that night, something worth relaying to Simon.

Jace held her hand firmly as they went over a final bridge and the street opened out into a great square on the side of an enormous canal the size of a river. The basilica of a domed church rose on their right. Across the canal more of the city lit the evening, throwing illumination onto the water, which
shifted and glimmered with light. Clary’s hands itched for chalk and pencils, to draw the light as it faded out of the sky, the darkening water, the jagged outlines of the buildings, their reflections slowly dimming in the canal. Everything seemed washed with a steely blueness. Somewhere church bells were chiming.

She tightened her hand on Jace’s. She felt very far away here from everything in her life, distant in a way that she had not felt in Idris. Venice shared with Alicante the sense of being a place out of time, torn from the past, as if she had stepped into a painting or the pages of a book. But it was also a
real
place, one she had grown up knowing about, wanting to visit. She looked sidelong at Jace, who was gazing down the canal. The steely blue light was on him, too, darkening his eyes, the shadows under his cheekbones, the lines of his mouth. When he caught her gaze on him, he looked over and smiled.

He led her around the church and down a flight of mossy steps to a path along the canal. Everything smelled of wet stone and water and dampness and years. As the sky darkened, something broke the surface of the canal water a few feet from Clary. She heard the splash and looked in time to see a green-haired woman rise from the water and grin at her; she had a beautiful face but sharklike teeth and a fish’s yellow eyes. Pearls were wound through her hair. She sank again below the water, without a ripple.

“Mermaid,” said Jace. “There are old families of them that have lived here in Venice a long, long time. They’re a little odd. They do better in clean water, far out to sea, living on fish instead of garbage.” He looked toward the sunset. “The whole city is sinking,” he said. “It’ll all be under water in a hundred
years. Imagine swimming down into the ocean and touching the top of Saint Mark’s Basilica.” He pointed across the water.

Clary felt a flicker of sadness at the thought of all this beauty being lost. “Isn’t there anything they can do?”

“To raise a whole city? Or hold back the ocean? Not much,” Jace said. They had come to a set of stairs leading up. The wind came off the water and lifted his dark gold hair off his forehead, his neck. “All things tend toward entropy. The whole universe is moving outward, the stars pulling away from one another, God knows what falling through the cracks between them.” He paused. “Okay, that sounded a little crazy.”

“Maybe it was all the wine at lunch.”

“I can hold my liquor.” They turned a corner, and a fairyland of lights gleamed out at them. Clary blinked, her eyes adjusting. It was a small restaurant with tables set outside and inside, heat lamps wound with Christmas lights like a forest of magical trees between the tables. Jace detached himself from her long enough to get them a table, and soon they were sitting by the side of the canal, listening to the splash of water against stone and the sound of small boats bobbing up and down with the tide.

Tiredness was beginning to wash over Clary in waves, like the lap of water against the sides of the canal. She told Jace what she wanted and let him order in Italian, relieved when the waiter went away so she could lean forward and rest her elbows on the table, her head on her hands.

“I think I have jet lag,” she said. “Interdimensional jet lag.”

“You know, time
is
a dimension,” Jace said.

“Pedant.” She flicked a bread crumb from the basket on the table at him.

He grinned. “I was trying to remember all the deadly sins the other day,” he said. “Greed, envy, gluttony, irony, pedantry…”

“I’m pretty sure irony isn’t a deadly sin.”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Lust,” she said. “Lust is a deadly sin.”

“And spanking.”

“I think that falls under lust.”

“I think it should have its own category,” said Jace. “Greed, envy, gluttony, irony, pedantry, lust, and spanking.” The white Christmas lights were reflected in his eyes. He looked more beautiful than he ever had, Clary thought, and correspondingly more distant, more hard to touch. She thought of what he had said about the city sinking, and the spaces between the stars, and remembered the lines of a Leonard Cohen song that Simon’s band used to cover, not very well.
“There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
There had to be a crack in Jace’s calm, some way she could reach through to the real him she believed was still in there.