The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (241 page)

“Just asking the same question over and over?”

“No, it says different things. Sometimes it swears. Azazel appears to be having some fun.”

“Can it hear us?” Jordan cocked his head to the side. “Hey, there, demon guy.”

The fiery letters rearranged themselves. HELLO, WEREWOLF.

Jordan took a step back and looked at Magnus. “Is this… normal?”

Magnus seemed deeply unhappy. “It is most decidedly not normal. I have never called up a demon as powerful as Azazel, but even so—I’ve been through the literature, and I can’t find an example of this happening before. It’s getting out of control.”

“Azazel must be sent back,” Alec said. “Like, permanently sent back.” He shook his head. “Maybe Jocelyn was right. No good can come from summoning demons.”

“I’m pretty sure I came from someone summoning a demon,” Magnus noted. “Alec, I’ve done this hundreds of times. I don’t know why this time would be different.”

“Azazel can’t get out, can he?” said Isabelle. “Of the pentagram, I mean.”

“No,” said Magnus, “but he shouldn’t be able to be doing any of the other things he’s doing either.”

Jordan leaned forward, his hands on his blue-jeaned knees. “What’s it like being in Hell, dude?” he asked. “Hot or cold? I’ve heard both.”

There was no reply.

“Good job, Jordan,” said Maia. “I think you annoyed him.”

Jordan poked at the edge of the pentagram. “Can it tell the future? So, pentagram, is our band going to make it big?”

“It’s a demon from Hell, not a Magic Eight Ball, Jordan,” said Magnus irritably. “And stay away from the borders of the pentagram. Summon a demon and trap it in a pentagram, and it can’t get out to harm you. But step into the pentagram, and you’ve put yourself in the demon’s range of power—”

At that moment the pillar of smoke began to coalesce. Magnus’s head whipped up, and Alec stood, almost knocking over his chair, as the smoke took on the form of Azazel. His suit formed first—a gray and silver pinstripe, with elegant cuffs—and then he seemed to fill it out, his flame eyes the last thing to appear. He looked around him in evident pleasure. “The gang’s all here, I see,” he said. “So, have you come to a decision?”

“We have,” said Magnus. “I don’t believe we’ll be requiring your services. Thanks anyway.”

There was a silence.

“You can go now.” Magnus wiggled his fingers in a goodbye wave. “Ta.”

“I don’t think so,” Azazel said pleasantly, whipping out his
handkerchief and buffing his nails with it. “I think I’ll stay. I like it here.”

Magnus sighed and said something to Alec, who went to the table and returned carrying a book, which he handed to the warlock. Magnus flipped it open and began to read.
“Damned spirit, begone. Return thou to the realm of smoke and flame, of ash and—”

“That won’t work on me,” said the demon in a bored voice. “Go ahead and try, if you like. I’ll still be here.”

Magnus looked at him with eyes smoldering with rage. “You can’t force us to bargain with you.”

“I can try. It’s hardly as if I have anything better to occupy—”

Azazel broke off as a familiar shape streaked through the room. It was Chairman Meow, hot on the heels of what looked like a mouse. As everyone watched in surprise and horror, the small cat dashed through the outline of the pentagram—and Simon, acting on instinct rather than rational thought, jumped into the pentagram after him and scooped him up into his arms.

“Simon!” He knew without turning around that it was Isabelle, her cry reflexive. He turned to look at her as she clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at him with wide eyes. They were all staring. Izzy’s face was drained white with horror, and even Magnus looked unsettled.

Summon a demon and trap it in a pentagram, and it can’t get out to harm you. But step into the pentagram, and you’ve put yourself in the demon’s range of power.

Simon felt a tap on his shoulder. He dropped Chairman Meow as he turned, and the small cat streaked out of the pentagram and across the room to hide under a sofa. Simon looked up. The massive face of Azazel loomed over him. This close, he
could see the cracks in the demon’s skin, like cracks in marble, and the flames deep in Azazel’s pitted eyes. When Azazel smiled, Simon saw that each of his teeth was tipped with a needle of iron.

Azazel exhaled. A cloud of hot sulfur spread around Simon. He was dimly aware of Magnus’s voice, rising and falling in a chant, and Isabelle screaming something as the demon’s hands clamped around his arms. Azazel lifted Simon off the ground so his feet were dangling in the air—and threw him.

Or tried to. His hands slipped off Simon; Simon dropped to the ground in a crouch as Azazel shot backward and seemed to hit an invisible barrier. There was a sound like stone shattering. Azazel slid to his knees, then painfully rose to his feet. He looked up with a roar, teeth flashing, and stalked toward Simon—who, realizing belatedly what was going on, reached up with a shaking hand and pushed the hair back from his forehead.

Azazel stopped in his tracks. His hands, the nails tipped with the same sharp iron as his teeth, curled in toward his sides. “Wanderer,” he breathed. “Is it you?”

Simon stayed frozen. Magnus was still chanting softly in the background, but everyone else was silent. Simon was afraid to look around, to catch the eye of any of his friends. Clary and Jace, he thought, had already seen the work of the Mark, its blazing fire. No one else had. No wonder they were wordless.

“No,” Azazel said, his fiery eyes narrowing. “No, you are too young, and the world too old. But who would dare place Heaven’s mark on a vampire? And why?”

Simon lowered his hand. “Touch me again and find out,” he said.

Azazel gave a rumbling sound—half laughter, half disgust. “I think not,” he said. “If you have been dabbling in bending the will of Heaven, even my freedom is not worth gambling for by allying my fate with yours.” He glanced around the room. “You are all madmen. Good luck, human children. You will need it.”

And he vanished in a burst of flame, leaving searing black smoke—and the stink of sulfur—behind.

“Hold still,” Jace said, taking the Herondale dagger in his hand and using the tip of it to slice Clary’s shirt open from the collar to the hem. He took the two halves of it and pushed them gingerly off her shoulders, leaving her sitting on the edge of the sink in just her jeans and a camisole. Most of the ichor and venom had gotten on her jeans and coat, but the fragile silk shirt was trashed. Jace dropped it into the sink, where it sizzled in the water, and applied his stele to her shoulder, tracing the outlines of the healing rune lightly.

She closed her eyes, feeling the burn of the rune, and then a rush as the relief from pain spread up her arms and down her back. It was like Novocain, but without making her numb.

“Better?” Jace asked.

She opened her eyes. “Much.” It wasn’t perfect—the
irazte
didn’t have much effect on burns caused by demon venom, but those tended to heal quickly on Shadowhunter skin. As it was, they stung only a little, and Clary, still feeling the high of the battle, barely noticed it. “Your turn?”

He grinned and offered her the stele. They were in the back of the antiques store. Sebastian had gone to lock up and dim the lights up front, lest they attract mundane attention. He was excited about “celebrating” and when he had left them,
had been debating whether to go back to the apartment and change, or straight to the nightclub in the Malá Strana.

If there was a part of Clary that felt the wrongness of it, the idea of celebrating anything, it was lost in the humming of her blood. Amazing that it had taken fighting alongside
Sebastian
of all people to flip the switch inside her that seemed to turn her Shadowhunter instincts on. She wanted to leap tall buildings in a single bound, do a hundred flips, learn to scissor her blades the way Jace did. Instead she took the stele from him and said, “Take your shirt off, then.”

He pulled it over his head, and she tried to look unaffected. He had a long cut along his side, angry purple-red along the edges, and the burns of demon blood across his collarbone and right shoulder. Still, he was the most beautiful person she had ever known. Pale gold skin, broad shoulders, narrow waist and hips, that thin line of golden hair that ran from his navel to the waistband of his jeans. She pulled her eyes away from him and set the stele to his shoulder, industriously carving into his skin what had to be the millionth healing rune he’d ever gotten.

“Good?” she asked when she was finished.

“Mmm-hmm.” He leaned in, and she could smell the scent of him—blood and charcoal, sweat, and the cheap soap they’d found by the sink. “I liked that,” he said. “Didn’t you? Fighting together like that?”

“It was… intense.” He was standing between her legs already; he moved closer, fingers looping into the waistband of her jeans. Her hands fluttered to his shoulders, and she saw the gleam of the gold leaf-ring on her finger. It sobered her slightly.
Don’t get distracted; don’t get lost in this. This isn’t Jace, isn’t Jace, isn’t Jace.

His lips brushed hers. “I thought it was incredible.
You
were incredible.”

“Jace,” she whispered, and then there was a banging on the door. Jace let go of her in surprise, and she slid backward, knocking into the faucet, which immediately turned on, spraying them both with water. She yelped with surprise, and Jace burst out laughing, turning to throw the door open as Clary twisted around to turn the faucet off.

It was Sebastian, of course. He looked remarkably clean, considering what they’d been through. He’d discarded his stained leather jacket in favor of an antique military coat, which, thrown over his T-shirt, lent him a look of thrift-store chic. He was carrying something in his hands, something black and shiny.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Is there a reason you just threw my sister into the sink?”’

“I was sweeping her off her feet,” said Jace, bending down to grab his shirt. He yanked it back on. Like Sebastian’s, his outerwear had sustained most of the damage, though there was a rip down the side of the shirt where a demon’s claw had slashed through.

“I brought you something to wear,” said Sebastian, handing the shiny black thing to Clary, who had wriggled out of the sink and was now standing, dripping soapy water onto the tiled floor. “It’s vintage. It looks about your size.”

Startled, Clary handed Jace back his stele and took the proffered garment. It was a dress—a slip, really—jet-black, with elaborately beaded straps and a lace hem. The straps were adjustable, and the fabric was stretchy enough that she suspected Sebastian was right, it probably
would
fit her. Part of her
didn’t like the idea of wearing something Sebastian had picked, but she couldn’t exactly go out to a club in an unraveling camisole and a pair of soaking-wet jeans. “Thanks,” she said finally. “All right, both of you get out of here while I change.”

They left, closing the door behind them. She could hear them, raised boys’ voices, and though she couldn’t hear the words, she could tell they were joking with each other. Comfortably. Familiarly. It was so strange, she thought as she shucked off her jeans and cami and slipped the dress over her head. Jace, who hardly ever opened up to anyone, was laughing and joking around with Sebastian.

She turned to look at herself in the mirror. The black washed the color out of her skin, made her eyes look big and dark and her hair redder, her arms and legs long and thin and pale. Her eyes were smudged with dark shadow. The boots she had been wearing under her jeans added a certain toughness to the outfit. She wasn’t sure if she looked pretty exactly, but she sure looked like she was someone who shouldn’t be messed with.

She wondered if Isabelle would approve.

She unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out. She was in the dim back of the store, where all the junk that wasn’t housed up front had been tossed carelessly. A velvet curtain separated it from the rest of the establishment. Jace and Sebastian were on the other side of the curtain, talking, though she still couldn’t make out the words. She pulled the curtain aside and stepped out.

The lights were on, though the metal awning had been lowered over the glass front of the store, rendering the inside invisible to passersby. Sebastian was going through the stuff on the shelves, his long careful hands taking down object after
object, subjecting them to a cursory inspection, and placing them back on the shelf.

Jace was the first one to see Clary. She saw his eyes spark, and remembered the first time he had seen her dressed up, wearing Isabelle’s clothes, on her way to Magnus’s party. As they had then, his eyes traveled slowly from the boots, up her legs, hips, waist, chest, and came to rest on her face. He smiled lazily.

“I could point out that that’s not a dress, that’s underwear,” he said, “but I doubt it would be in my best interest.”

“Need I remind you,” said Sebastian, “that
that is my sister
?”

“Most brothers would be delighted to see such a clean-cut gentleman as myself squiring their sisters about town,” said Jace, grabbing an army jacket off one of the racks and sliding his arms into it.

“Squiring?” Clary echoed. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re a rogue and a rake.”

“And then it’s pistols at dawn,” said Sebastian, striding toward the velvet curtain. “I’ll be right back. I’ve got to wash the blood out of my hair.”

“Fussy, fussy,” Jace called after him with a grin, then reached for Clary and pulled her against him. His voice dropped to a low whisper. “Remember when we went to Magnus’s party? You came out into the lobby with Isabelle, and Simon almost had an apoplectic fit?”

“Funny, I was thinking about the same thing.” She tipped her head back to look up at him. “I don’t remember you saying anything at the time about the way I looked.”

His fingers slid under the straps of her slip dress, the tips brushing her skin. “I didn’t think you liked me much. And I
didn’t think a detailed description of all the things I wanted to do to you, delivered in front of an audience, would have been the thing to change your mind.”