فصل 10

10

The second her fingers closed around the hilt of Maellartach, a searing blast of cold shot up Clary’s arm. Valentine watched with an expression of mild interest as she gasped with pain, her fingers going numb. She clutched desperately at the Sword, but it slipped from her grasp and clattered to the ground at her feet.

She barely saw Valentine move. A moment later he was standing in front of her with the Sword in his grasp. Clary’s hand was stinging. She glanced down and saw that a red, burning weal was rising along her palm.

“Did you really think,” Valentine said, a tinge of disgust coloring his voice, “that I’d let you near a weapon I thought you could use?” He shook his head. “You didn’t understand a word I said, did you? It appears that of my two children, only one seems capable of understanding the truth.”

Clary closed her injured hand into a fist, almost welcoming the pain. “If you mean Jace, he hates you too.”

Valentine swung the Sword up, bringing the tip of it level with Clary’s collarbone. “That is enough,” he said, “out of you.”

The tip of the Sword was sharp; when she breathed, it pricked her throat, and a trickle of blood threaded its way down her chest. The Sword’s touch seemed to spill cold through her veins, sending sizzling ice particles through her arms and legs, numbing her hands.

“Ruined by your upbringing,” Valentine said. “Your mother was always a stubborn woman. It was one of the things I loved about her in the beginning. I thought she would stand by her ideals.”

It was strange, Clary thought with a detached sort of horror, that when she had seen her father before at Renwick’s, his considerable personal charisma had been on display for Jace’s benefit. Now he wasn’t bothering, and without the surface patina of charm, he seemed—empty. Like a hollow statue, eyes cut out to show only darkness inside.

“Tell me, Clarissa—did your mother ever talk about me?”

“She told me my father was dead.” Don’t say anything else, she warned herself, but she was sure he could read the rest of the words in her eyes. And I wish she had been telling the truth.

“And she never told you you were different? Special?”

Clary swallowed, and the tip of the blade cut a little deeper. More blood trickled down her chest. “She never told me I was a Shadowhunter.”

“Do you know why,” Valentine said, looking down the length of the Sword at her, “your mother left me?”

Tears burned the back of Clary’s throat. She made a choking noise. “You mean there was only one reason?”

“She told me,” he went on, as if Clary hadn’t spoken, “that I had turned her first child into a monster. She left me before I could do the same to her second. You. But she was too late.”

The cold at her throat, in her limbs, was so intense that she was beyond shivering. It was as if the Sword was turning her to ice. “She’d never say that,” Clary whispered. “Jace isn’t a monster. Neither am I.”

“I wasn’t talking about—”

The trapdoor over their heads slammed open and two shadowy figures dropped from the hole, landing just behind Valentine. The first, Clary saw with a bright shock of relief, was Jace, falling through the air like an arrow shot from a bow, sure of its target. He hit the floor with an assured lightness. He was clutching a bloodstained steel strut in one hand, its end broken off to a wicked point.

The second figure landed beside Jace with the same lightness if not the same grace. Clary saw the outline of a slender boy with dark hair and thought, Alec. It was only when he straightened and she recognized the familiar face that she realized who it was.

She forgot the Sword, the cold, the pain in her throat, forgot everything. “Simon!”

Simon looked across the room at her. Their eyes met for just a moment and Clary hoped he could read in her face her full and overwhelming relief. The tears that had been threatening came, and spilled down her face. She didn’t move to wipe them away.

Valentine turned his head to look behind him, and his mouth sagged in the first expression of honest surprise Clary had ever seen on his face. He whirled to face Jace and Simon.

The moment the point of the Sword left Clary’s throat, the ice drained from her, taking all her strength with it. She sank to her knees, shivering uncontrollably. When she raised her hands to wipe the tears away from her face, she saw that the tips of her fingers were white with the beginnings of frostbite.

Jace stared at her in horror, then at his father. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” Valentine said, regaining control of himself. “Yet.”

To Clary’s surprise, Jace paled, as if his father’s words had shocked him.

“I’m the one who should be asking you what you’ve done, Jonathan,” Valentine said, and though he spoke to Jace, his eyes were on Simon. “Why is it still alive? Revenants can regenerate, but not with such little blood in them.”

“You mean me?” Simon demanded. Clary stared. Simon sounded different. He didn’t sound like a kid smarting off to an adult; he sounded like someone who felt like he could face Valentine Morgenstern on equal footing. Like someone who deserved to face him on equal footing. “Oh, that’s right, you left me for dead. Well, dead-er.”

“Shut up.” Jace shot a glare at Simon; his eyes were very dark. “Let me answer this.” He turned to his father. “I let Simon drink my blood,” he said. “So he wouldn’t die.”

Valentine’s already severe face settled into harder lines, as if the bones were pushing out through the skin. “You willingly let a vampire drink your blood?”

Jace seemed to hesitate for a moment—he glanced over at Simon, who was staring fixedly at Valentine with a look of intense hatred. Then he said, carefully, “Yes.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done, Jonathan,” said Valentine in a terrible voice. “No idea.”

“I saved a life,” said Jace. “One you tried to take. I know that much.”

“Not a human life,” said Valentine. “You resurrected a monster that will only kill to feed again. His kind are always hungry—”

“I’m hungry right now,” Simon said, and smiled to reveal that his fang teeth had slid from their sheaths. They glittered white and pointed against his lower lip. “I wouldn’t mind a little more blood. Of course your blood would probably choke me, you poisonous piece of—”

Valentine laughed. “I’d like to see you try it, revenant,” he said. “When the Soul-Sword cuts you, you will burn as you die.”

Clary saw Jace’s eyes go to the Sword, and then to her. There was an unspoken question in them. Quickly, she said, “The Sword isn’t turned. Not quite. He didn’t get Maia’s blood, so he didn’t finish the ceremony—”

Valentine turned toward her, Sword in hand, and she saw him smile. The Sword seemed to flick in his grasp, and then something hit her—it was like being knocked over by a wave, thrown down and then lifted against your will and tossed through the air. She rolled across the floor, helpless to stop herself, until she struck the bulkhead with bruising force. She crumpled at the base of it, gasping with breathlessness and pain.

Simon started toward her at a run. Valentine swung the Soul-Sword and a sheet of sheer, blazing fire rose up, sending him stumbling backward with its surging heat.

Clary struggled to raise herself onto her elbows. Her mouth was full of blood. The world swayed around her and she wondered how hard she’d hit her head and if she was going to pass out. She willed herself to stay conscious.

The fire had receded, but Simon was still crouched on the floor, looking dazed. Valentine glanced briefly at him, and then at Jace. “If you kill the revenant now,” he said, “you can still undo what you’ve done.”

“No,” Jace whispered.

“Just take the weapon you hold in your hand and drive it through his heart.” Valentine’s voice was soft. “One simple motion. Nothing you haven’t done before.”

Jace met his father’s stare with a level gaze. “I saw Agramon,” he said. “It had your face.”

“You saw Agramon?” The Soul-Sword glittered as Valentine moved toward his son. “And you lived?”

“I killed it.”

“You killed the Demon of Fear, but you won’t kill a single vampire, not even at my order?”

Jace stood watching Valentine without expression. “He’s a vampire, that’s true,” he said. “But his name is Simon.”

Valentine stopped in front of Jace, the Soul-Sword in his hand, burning with a harsh black light. Clary wondered for a terrified moment if Valentine meant to stab Jace where he stood, and if Jace meant to let him. “I take it, then,” Valentine said, “that you haven’t changed your mind? What you told me when you came to me before, that was your final word, or do you regret having disobeyed me?”

Jace shook his head slowly. One hand still clutched the broken strut, but his other hand—his right—was at his waist, drawing something from his belt. His eyes, though, never left Valentine’s, and Clary wasn’t sure Valentine saw what he was doing. She hoped not.

“Yes,” Jace said, “I regret having disobeyed you.”

No!

Clary thought, but her heart sank. Was he giving up, did he think it was the only way to save her and Simon?

Valentine’s face softened. “Jonathan—”

“Especially,” Jace said, “since I plan to do it again. Right now.” His hand moved, quick as a flash of light, and something hurtled through the air toward Clary. It fell a few inches from her, hitting the metal with a clang and rolling. Her eyes widened.

It was her mother’s stele.

Valentine began to laugh. “A stele? Jace, is this some sort of joke? Or have you finally—”

Clary didn’t hear the rest of what he said; she heaved herself up, gasping as pain lanced through her head. Her eyes watered, her vision blurred; she reached out a shaking hand for the stele—and as her fingers touched it, she heard a voice, as clear inside her head as if her mother stood beside her. Take the stele, Clary. Use it. You know what to do.

Her fingers closed spasmodically around it. She sat up, ignoring the wave of pain that went through her head and down her spine. She was a Shadowhunter, and pain was something you lived with. Dimly, she could hear Valentine call her name, hear his footsteps, coming nearer—and she flung herself at the bulkhead, thrusting the stele forward with such force that when its tip touched the metal, she thought she heard the sizzle of something burning.

She began to draw. As always happened when she drew, the world fell away and there was only herself and the stele and the metal she drew on. She remembered standing outside Jace’s cell whispering to herself, Open, open, open, and knew that she had drawn on all her strength to create the rune that had broken Jace’s bonds. And she knew that the strength she had put into that rune was not a tenth, not a hundredth, of the strength she was putting into this. Her hands burned and she cried out as she dragged the stele down the metal wall, leaving a thick black line like char behind it. Open.

All her frustration, all her disappointment, all her rage went through her fingers and into the stele and into the rune. Open. All her love, all her relief at seeing Simon alive, all her hope that they still might survive. Open!

Her hand, still holding the stele, dropped to her lap. For a moment there was utter silence as all of them—Jace, Valentine, even Simon—stared along with her at the rune that burned on the ship’s bulkhead.

It was Simon who spoke, turning to Jace. “What does it say?”

But it was Valentine who answered, not taking his eyes from the wall. There was a look on his face—not at all the look Clary had expected, a look that mixed triumph and horror, despair and delight. “It says,” he said, ‘“Mene mene tekel upharsin.’”

Clary staggered to her feet. “That’s not what it says,” she whispered. “It says open.”

Valentine met her eyes with his own. “Clary—”

The scream of metal drowned out his words. The wall Clary had drawn on, a wall made of sheets of solid steel, warped and shuddered. Rivets tore free of their housings and jets of water sprayed into the room.

She could hear Valentine calling, but his voice was drowned out by the deafening sounds of metal being wrenched from metal as every nail, every screw, and every rivet that held together the enormous ship began tearing free from its moorings.

She tried to run toward Jace and Simon, but fell to her knees as another surge of water came through the widening hole in the wall. This time the wave knocked her down, icy water drawing her under. Somewhere Jace was calling her name, his voice loud and desperate over the screaming of the ship. She shouted his name only once before she was sucked out the jagged hole in the bulkhead and into the river.

She spun and kicked in the black water. Terror gripped her, terror of the blind darkness and of the depths of the river, the millions of tons of water all around her, pressing in on her, choking out the air in her lungs. She couldn’t tell which way was up or which direction to swim. She could no longer hold her breath. She sucked in a lungful of filthy water, her chest bursting with the pain, stars exploding behind her eyes. In her ears the sound of rushing water was replaced by a high, sweet, impossible singing. I’m dying, she thought in wonder. A pair of pale hands reached out of the black water and drew her close. Long hair drifted around her. Mom, Clary thought, but before she could clearly see her mother’s face, the darkness closed her eyes.

Clary came back to consciousness with voices all around her and lights shining in her eyes. She was flat on her back on the corrugated steel of Luke’s truck bed. The gray-black sky swam overhead. She could smell river water all around her, mixed with the smell of smoke and blood. White faces hovered over her like balloons on strings. They swam into focus as she blinked her eyes.

Luke. And Simon. They were both looking down at her with expressions of anxious concern. For a moment she thought Luke’s hair had gone white; then, blinking, she realized it was full of ashes. In fact, so was the air—it tasted of ashes—and their clothes and skin were streaked with blackish grime.

She coughed, tasting ash in her mouth. “Where’s Jace?”

“He’s…” Simon’s eyes went to Luke, and Clary felt her heart contract.

“He’s all right, isn’t he?” she demanded. She struggled to sit up and a hard pain shot through her head. “Where is he? Where is he?”

“I’m here.” Jace appeared at the edge of her vision, his face in shadow. He knelt down next to her. “I’m sorry. I should have been here when you woke up. It’s just…”

His voice cracked.

“It’s just what?” She stared at him; backlit by starlight, his hair was more silver than gold, his eyes bleached of color. His skin was streaked with black and gray.

“He thought you were dead too,” Luke said, and stood up abruptly. He was staring out at the river, at something Clary couldn’t see. The sky was full of swirls of black and scarlet smoke, as if it were on fire.

“Dead too? Who else—?” She broke off as a nauseating pain gripped her. Jace saw her expression and reached into his jacket, bringing out his stele.

“Hold still, Clary.” There was a burning pain in her forearm, and then her head began to clear. She sat up and saw that she was sitting on a wet plank shoved up against the back of the truck cab. The bed was full of several inches of sloshing water, mixed with swirls of the ash that was sifting down from the sky in a fine black rain.

She glanced at the place where Jace had drawn a healing Mark on the inside of her arm. Her weakness was already receding, as if he’d shot a jolt of strength into her veins.

He traced the line of the iratze he’d drawn on her arm with his fingers before he drew back. His hand felt as cold and wet as her skin did. The rest of him was wet too; his hair damp and his soaked clothes sticking to his body.

There was an acrid taste in her mouth, as if she’d licked the bottom of an ashtray. “What happened? Was there a fire?”

Jace glanced toward Luke, who was staring out at the heaving black-gray river. The water was dotted here and there with small boats, but there was no sign of Valentine’s ship. “Yes,” he said. “Valentine’s ship burned down to the waterline. There’s nothing left.”

“Where is everyone?” Clary moved her gaze to Simon, who was the only one of them who was dry. There was a faint greenish cast to his already pale skin, as if he were sick or feverish. “Where are Isabelle and Alec?”

“They’re on one of the other Shadowhunter boats. They’re fine.”

“And Magnus?” She twisted around to look into the truck cab, but it was empty.

“He was needed to tend to some of the more badly wounded Shadowhunters,” said Luke.

“But everyone’s all right? Alec, Isabelle, Maia—they are all right, aren’t they?” Clary’s voice sounded small and thin in her own ears.

“Isabelle was injured,” said Luke. “So was Robert Lightwood. He’ll be needing a good amount of time to heal. Many of the other Shadowhunters, including Malik and Imogen, are dead. This was a very hard battle, Clary, and it didn’t go well for us. Valentine is gone. So is the Sword. The Conclave is in tatters. I don’t know—”

He broke off. Clary stared at him. There was something in his voice that frightened her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This was my fault. If I hadn’t—”

“If you hadn’t done what you did, Valentine would have killed everyone on the ship,” said Jace fiercely. “You’re the only thing that kept this from being a massacre.”

Clary stared at him. “You mean what I did with the rune?”

“You tore that ship to fragments,” Luke said. “Every bolt, every rivet, anything that might have held it together, just snapped apart. The whole thing shuddered into pieces. The oil tanks came apart too. Most of us barely had time to jump into the water before it all started to burn. What you did—no one’s ever seen anything like it.”

“Oh,” Clary said in a small voice. “Was anyone—did I hurt anyone?”

“Quite a few of the demons drowned when the ship sank,” said Jace. “But none of the Shadowhunters were hurt, no.”

“Because they can swim?”

“Because they were rescued. Nixies pulled us all out of the water.”

Clary thought of the hands in the water, the impossible sweet singing that had surrounded her. So it hadn’t been her mother after all. “You mean water faeries?”

“The Queen of the Seelie Court came through, in her way,” said Jace. “She did promise us what aid was in her power.”

“But how did she …” How did she know? Clary was going to say, but she thought of the Queen’s wise and cunning eyes, and of Jace throwing that bit of white paper into the water by the beach in Red Hook, and decided not to ask.

“The Shadowhunter boats are starting to move,” said Simon, looking out at the river. “I guess they’ve picked up everyone they could.”

“Right.” Luke squared his shoulders. “Time to get going.” He moved slowly toward the truck cab—he was limping, though he seemed otherwise mostly uninjured.

Luke swung himself into the driver’s seat, and in a moment the truck’s engine was roiling again. They took off, skimming the water, the drops splashed up by the wheels catching the gray-silver of the lightening sky.

“This is so weird,” said Simon. “I keep expecting the truck to start sinking.”

“I can’t believe you just went through what we went through and you think this is weird,” said Jace, but there was no malice in his tone and no annoyance. He sounded only very, very tired.

“What will happen to the Lightwoods?” Clary asked. “After everything that’s happened—the Clave—”

Jace shrugged. “The Clave works in mysterious ways. I don’t know what they’ll do. They’ll be very interested in you, though. And in what you can do.”

Simon made a noise. Clary thought at first that it was a noise of protest, but when she looked closely at him, she saw he was greener than ever. “What’s wrong, Simon?”

“It’s the river,” he said. “Running water isn’t good for vampires. It’s pure, and—we’re not.”

“The East River’s hardly pure,” said Clary, but she reached out and touched his arm gently anyway. He smiled at her. “Didn’t you fall into the water when the ship came apart?”

“No. There was a piece of metal floating in the water and Jace tossed me onto it. I stayed out of the river.”

Clary looked over her shoulder at Jace. She could see him a little more clearly now; the darkness was fading. “Thank you,” she said. “Do you think…”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do I think what?”

“That Valentine might have drowned?”

“Never believe the bad guy is dead until you see a body,” said Simon. “That just leads to unhappiness and surprise ambushes.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Jace. “My guess is he isn’t dead. Otherwise we would have found the Mortal Instruments.”

“Can the Clave go on without them? Whether Valentine’s alive or not?” Clary wondered.

“The Clave always goes on,” said Jace. “That’s all it knows how to do.” He turned his face toward the eastern horizon. “The sun’s coming up.”

Simon went rigid. Clary stared at him in surprise for a moment, and then in shocked horror. She whirled to follow Jace’s gaze. He was right—the eastern horizon was a blood-red stain spreading out from a golden disc. Clary could see the first edge of the sun staining the water around them unearthly hues of green and scarlet and gold.

“No!”

she whispered.

Jace looked at her in surprise, and then at Simon, who sat motionless, staring at the rising sun like a trapped mouse staring at a cat. Jace got quickly to his feet and walked over to the truck cab. He spoke in a low voice. Clary saw Luke turn to look at her and Simon, and then back at Jace. He shook his head.

The truck lurched forward. Luke must have pressed his foot to the gas. Clary grabbed for the side of the truck bed to steady herself. Up front, Jace was shouting at Luke that there had to be some way to make the damn thing go faster, but Clary knew they’d never outrun the dawn.

“There must be something,” she said to Simon. She couldn’t believe that in less than five minutes she’d gone from incredulous relief to incredulous horror. “We could cover you, maybe, with our clothes—”

Simon was still staring at the sun, white-faced. “A pile of rags won’t work,” he said. “Raphael explained—it takes walls to protect us from sunlight. It’ll burn through cloth.”

“But there must be something—”

“Clary.” She could see him clearly now, in the gray predawn light, his eyes huge and dark in his white face. He held out his hands to her. “Come here.”

She fell against him, trying to cover as much of his body as she could with her own. She knew it was useless. When the sun touched him, he’d fall away to ashes.

They sat for a moment in perfect stillness, arms wrapped around each other. Clary could feel the rise and fall of his chest—habit, she reminded herself, not necessity. He might not breathe, but he could still die.

“I won’t let you die,” she said.

“I don’t think you get a choice.” She felt him smile. “I didn’t think I’d get to see the sun again,” he said. “I guess I was wrong.”

“Simon—”

Jace shouted something. Clary looked up. The sky was flooded with rose-colored light, like dye poured into clear water. Simon tensed under her. “I love you,” he said. “I have never loved anyone else but you.”

Gold threads shot through the rosy sky like the gold veining in expensive marble. The water around them blazed with light and Simon went rigid, his head falling back, his open eyes filling with gold as if molten liquid were rising inside of him. Black lines appeared on his skin like cracks in a shattered statue.

“Simon!”

Clary screamed. She reached for him but felt herself hauled suddenly backward; it was Jace, his hands gripping her shoulders. She tried to pull away but he held her tightly; he was saying something in her ear, over and over, and only after a few moments did she even begin to understand him:

“Clary, look. Look.”

“No !” Her hands flew to her face. She could taste the brackish water from the bottom of the truck bed on her palms. It was salty, like tears. “I don’t want to look. I don’t want to—”

“Clary.” Jace’s hands were at her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face. The dawn light stung her eyes. “Look.”

She looked. And heard her own breath whistle harshly in her lungs as she gasped. Simon was sitting up at the back of the truck, in a patch of sunlight, openmouthed and staring down at himself. The sun danced on the water behind him and the edges of his hair glinted like gold. He had not burned away to ash, but sat unscorched in the sunlight, and the pale skin of his face and arms and hands was entirely unmarked.

Outside the Institute, night was falling. The faint red of sunset glowed in through the windows of Jace’s bedroom as he stared at the pile of his belongings on the bed. The pile was much smaller than he thought it would be. Seven whole years of life in this place, and this was all he had to show for it: half a duffel bag’s worth of clothes, a small stack of books, and a few weapons.

He had debated whether he should bring the few things he’d saved from the manor house in Idris with him when he left tonight. Magnus had given him back his father’s silver ring, which he no longer felt comfortable wearing. He had hung it on a loop of chain around his throat. In the end, he had decided to take everything: There was no point leaving anything of himself behind in this place.

He was packing the duffel with clothes when a knock sounded at the door. He went to it, expecting Alec or Isabelle.

It was Maryse. She wore a severe black dress and her hair was pulled back sharply from her face. She looked older than he remembered her. Two deep lines ran from the corners of her mouth to her jaw. Only her eyes had any color. “Jace,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“You can do what you like,” he said, returning to the bed. “It’s your house.” He grabbed up a handful of shirts and stuffed them into the duffel bag with possibly unnecessary force.

“Actually, it’s the Clave’s house,” said Maryse. “We’re only its guardians.”

Jace shoved books into the bag. “Whatever.”

“What are you doing?” If Jace hadn’t known better, he would have thought her voice wavered slightly.

“I’m packing,” he said. “It’s what people generally do when they’re moving out.”

She blanched. “Don’t leave,” she said. “If you want to stay—”

“I don’t want to stay. I don’t belong here.”

“Where will you go?”

“Luke’s,” he said, and saw her flinch. “For a while. After that, I don’t know. Maybe to Idris.”

“Is that where you think you belong?” There was an aching sadness in her voice.

Jace stopped packing for a moment and stared down at his bag. “I don’t know where I belong.”

“With your family.” Maryse took a tentative step forward. “With us.”

“You

threw me out.” Jace heard the harshness in his own voice, and tried to soften it. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning to look at her. “About everything that’s happened. But you didn’t want me before, and I can’t imagine you want me now. Robert’s going to be sick awhile; you’ll be needing to take care of him. I’ll just be in the way.”

“In the way?” She sounded incredulous. “Robert wants to see you, Jace—”

“I doubt that.”

“What about Alec? Isabelle, Max—they need you. If you don’t believe me that I want you here—and I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t—you must know that they do. We’ve been through a bad time, Jace. Don’t hurt them more than they’re already hurt.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t blame you if you hate me.” Her voice was wavering. Jace swung around to stare at her in surprise. “But what I did— even throwing you out—treating you as I did, it was to protect you. And because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of me?”

She nodded.

“Well, that makes me feel much better.”

Maryse took a deep breath. “I thought you would break my heart like Valentine did,” she said. “You were the first thing I loved, you see, after him, that wasn’t my own blood. The first living creature. And you were just a child—”

“You thought I was someone else.”

“No. I’ve always known just who you are. Ever since the first time I saw you getting off the ship from Idris, when you were ten years old—you walked into my heart, just as my own children did when they were born.” She shook her head. “You can’t understand. You’ve never been a parent. You never love anything like you love your children. And nothing can make you angrier.”

“I did notice the angry part,” Jace said, after a pause.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Maryse said. “But if you’d stay for Isabelle and Alec and Max, I’d be so grateful—”

It was the wrong thing to say. “I don’t want your gratitude,” Jace said, and turned back to the duffel bag. There was nothing left to put in it. He tugged at the zipper.

“A la claire fontaine,” Maryse said, “m’en allent promener.”

He turned to look at her. “What?”

“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. Jamais je ne t’oublierai—it’s the old French ballad I used to sing to Alec and Isabelle. The one you asked me about.”

There was very little light in the room now, and in the dimness Maryse looked to him almost as she had when he was ten years old, as if she had not changed at all in the past seven years. She looked severe and worried, anxious—and hopeful. She looked like the only mother he’d ever known.

“You were wrong that I never sang it to you,” she said. “It’s just that you never heard me.”

Jace said nothing, but he reached out and yanked the zipper open on the duffel bag, letting his belongings spill out onto the bed.

Epilogue

“Clary!”

Simon’s mother beamed all over her face at the sight of the girl standing on her doorstep. “I haven’t seen you for ages. I was starting to worry you and Simon had had a fight.”

“Oh, no,” Clary said. “I just wasn’t feeling well, that’s all.” Even when you’ve got magic healing runes, apparently you’re not invulnerable. She hadn’t been surprised to wake up the morning after the battle to find she had a pounding headache and a fever; she’d thought she had a cold—who wouldn’t, after freezing in wet clothes on the open water for hours at night?—but Magnus said she had most likely exhausted herself creating the rune that had destroyed Valentine’s ship.

Simon’s mother clucked sympathetically. “The same bug Simon had the week before last, I bet. He could barely get out of bed.”

“He’s better now, though, right?” Clary said. She knew it was true, but she didn’t mind hearing it again.

“He’s fine. He’s out in the back garden, I think. Just go on through the gate.” She smiled. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

The redbrick row houses on Simon’s street were divided by pretty white wrought iron fences, each of which had a gate that led to a tiny patch of garden in the back of the house. The sky was bright blue and the air cool, despite the sunny skies. Clary could taste the tang of future snow on the air.

She fastened the gate shut behind her and went looking for Simon. He was in the back garden, as promised, lying on a plastic lounging chair with a comic open in his lap. He pushed it aside when he saw Clary, sat up, and grinned. “Hey, baby.”

“Baby?”

She perched beside him on the chair. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I was trying it out. No?”

“No,” she said firmly, and leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. When she drew back, his fingers lingered in her hair, but his eyes were thoughtful.

“I’m glad you came over,” he said.

“Me too. I would have come sooner, but—”

“You were sick. I know.” She’d spent the week texting him from Luke’s couch, where she’d lain wrapped up in a blanket watching CSI reruns. It was comforting to spend time in a world where every puzzle had a detectable, scientific answer.

“I’m better now.” She glanced around and shivered, pulling her white cardigan closer around her body. “What are you doing lying around outside in this weather, anyway? Aren’t you freezing?”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t really feel cold or heat anymore. Besides”—his mouth curled into a smile—”I want to spend as much time in the sunlight as I can. I still get sleepy during the day, but I’m fighting it.”

She touched the back of her hand to his cheek. His face was warm from the sun, but underneath, the skin was cool. “But everything else is still… still the same?”

“You mean am I still a vampire? Yeah. It looks like it. Still want to drink blood, still no heartbeat. I’ll have to avoid the doctor, but since vampires don’t get sick…” He shrugged.

“And you talked to Raphael? He still has no idea why you can go out into the sun?”

“None. He seems pretty pissed about it too.” Simon blinked at her sleepily, as if it were two in the morning instead of the afternoon. “I think it upsets his ideas about the way things should be. Plus he’s going to have a harder job getting me to roam the night when I’m determined to roam the day instead.”

“You’d think he’d be thrilled.”

“Vampires don’t like change. They’re very traditional.” He smiled at her, and she thought, He’ll always look like this. When I’m fifty or sixty, he’ll still look sixteen. It wasn’t a happy thought. “Anyway, this’ll be good for my music career. If that Anne Rice stuff is anything to go by, vampires make great rock stars.”

“I’m not sure that information is reliable.”

He leaned back against the chair. “What is? Besides you, of course.”

“Reliable?

Is that how you think of me?” she demanded in mock indignation. “That’s not very romantic.”

A shadow passed across his face. “Clary…”

“What? What is it?” She reached for his hand and held it. “You’re using your bad news voice.”

He looked away from her. “I don’t know if it’s bad news or not.”

“Everything’s one or the other,” Clary said. “Just tell me you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” he said. “But—I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Clary almost fell off the lounge chair. “You don’t want to be friends anymore?”

“Clary-“

“Is it because of the demons? Because I got you turned into a vampire?” Her voice was rising higher and higher. “I know everything’s been crazy, but I can keep you away from all that. I can—”

Simon winced. “You’re starting to sound like a dolphin, do you know that? Stop.”

Clary stopped.

“I still want to be friends,” he said. “It’s the other stuff I’m not so sure about.”

“Other stuff?”

He started to blush. She hadn’t known vampires could blush. It looked startling against his pale skin. “The girlfriend-boyfriend stuff.”

She was silent for a long moment, searching for words. Finally, she said: “At least you didn’t say ‘the kissing stuff.’ I was afraid you were going to call it that.”

He looked down at their hands, where they lay intertwined on the plastic of the lounge chair. Her fingers looked small against his, but for the first time, her skin was a shade darker. He stroked his thumb absently over her knuckles and said, “I wouldn’t have called it that.”

“I thought this was what you wanted,” she said. “I thought you said that—”

He looked up at her through his dark lashes. “That I loved you? I do love you. But that’s not the whole story.”

“Is this because of Maia?” Her teeth had started to chatter, only partly from the cold. “Because you like her?”

Simon hesitated. “No. I mean, yes, I like her, but not the way you mean. It’s just that when I’m around her—I know what it’s like to have someone like me that way. And it’s not like it is with you.”

“But you don’t love her—”

“Maybe I could someday.”

“Maybe I could love you someday.”

“If you ever do,” he said, “come and let me know. You know where to find me.”

Her teeth were chattering harder. “I can’t lose you, Simon. I can’t.”

“You never will. I’m not leaving you. But I’d rather have what we have, which is real and true and important, than have you pretend anything else. When I’m with you, I want to know I’m with the real you, the real Clary.”

She leaned her head against his, closing her eyes. He still felt like Simon, despite everything; still smelled like him, like his laundry soap. “Maybe I don’t know who that is.”

“But I do.”

Luke’s brand-new pickup was idling by the curb when Clary left Simon’s house, fastening the gate shut behind her.

“You dropped me off. You didn’t have to pick me up too,” she said, swinging herself up into the cab beside him. Trust Luke to replace his old, destroyed truck with a new one that was exactly like it.

“Forgive me my paternal panic,” said Luke, handing her a waxed paper cup of coffee. She took a sip—no milk and lots of sugar, the way she liked it. “I tend to get a little nervous when you’re not in my immediate line of sight these days.”

“Oh, yeah?” Clary held the coffee tightly to keep it from spilling as they bumped down the potholed road. “How long do you think that’s going to go on for?”

Luke looked considering. “Not long. Five, maybe six years.”

“Luke!”

“I plan to let you start dating when you’re thirty, if that helps.”

“Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. I may not be ready until I’m thirty.”

Luke looked at her sideways. “You and Simon… ?”

She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the coffee cup. “Don’t ask.”

“I see.” He probably did. “Did you want me to drop you at home?”

“You’re going to the hospital, right?” She could tell from the nervous tension underlying his jokes. “I’ll go with you.”

They were on the bridge now, and Clary looked out over the river, nursing her coffee thoughtfully. She never got tired of this view, the narrow river of water between the canyon walls of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It glittered in the sun like aluminum foil. She wondered why she’d never tried to draw it. She remembered asking her mother once why she’d never used her as a model, never drawn her own daughter. “To draw something is to try to capture it forever,” Jocelyn had said, sitting on the floor with a paintbrush dripping cadmium blue onto her jeans. “If you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change.”

But I hate change.

She took a deep breath. “Luke,” she said. “Valentine said something to me when I was on the ship, something about—”

“Nothing good ever starts with the words ‘Valentine said,’” muttered Luke.

“Maybe not. But it was about you and my mom. He said you were in love with her.”

Silence. They were stopped in traffic on the bridge. She could hear the sound of the Q train rumbling past. “Do you think that’s true?” Luke said at last.

“Well.” Clary could sense the tension in the air and tried to choose her words carefully. “I don’t know. I mean, he said it before and I just dismissed it as paranoia and hatred. But this time I started thinking, and well—it is sort of weird that you’ve always been around, you’ve been like a dad to me, we practically lived on the farm in the summer, and yet neither you nor my mom ever dated anyone else. So I thought maybe…”

“You thought maybe what?”

“That maybe you’ve been together all this time and you just didn’t want to tell me. Maybe you thought I was too young to get it. Maybe you were afraid it would start me asking questions about my dad. But I’m not too young to get it anymore. You can tell me. I guess that’s what I’m saying. You can tell me anything.”

“Maybe not anything.” There was another silence as the truck inched forward in the crawling traffic. Luke squinted into the sun, his fingers tapping on the wheel. Finally, he said, “You’re right. I am in love with your mother.”

“That’s great,” Clary said, trying to sound supportive despite how gross the idea happened to be of people her mom’s and Luke’s age being in love.

“But,” he said, finishing, “she doesn’t know it.”

“She doesn’t know it?” Clary made a wide sweeping gesture with her arm. Fortunately, her coffee cup was empty. “How could she not know? Haven’t you told her?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Luke, slamming his foot down on the gas so that the truck lurched forward, “no.”

“Why not?”

Luke sighed and rubbed his stubbled chin tiredly. “Because,” he said. “It never seemed like the right time.”

“That is a lame excuse, and you know it.”

Luke managed to make a noise halfway between a chuckle and a grunt of annoyance. “Maybe, but it’s the truth. When I first realized how I felt about Jocelyn, I was the same age you are. Sixteen. And we’d all just met Valentine. I wasn’t any competition for him. I was even a little glad that if it wasn’t going to be me she wanted, it was going to be someone who really deserved her.” His voice hardened. “When I realized how wrong I was about that, it was too late. When we ran away together from Idris, and she was pregnant with you, I offered to marry her, to take care of her. I said it didn’t matter who the father of her baby was, I’d raise it like my own. She thought I was being charitable. I couldn’t convince her I was being as selfish as I knew how to be. She told me she didn’t want to be a burden on me, that it was too much to ask of anyone. After she left me in Paris, I went back to Idris but I was always restless, never happy. There was always that part of me missing, the part that was Jocelyn. I would dream that she was somewhere needing my help, that she was calling out to me and I couldn’t hear her. Finally I went looking for her.”

“I remember she was happy,” Clary said in a small voice. “When you found her.”

“She was and she wasn’t. She was glad to see me, but at the same time I symbolized for her that whole world she’d run from, and she wanted no part of it. She agreed to let me stay when I promised I’d give up all ties to the pack, to the Clave, to Idris, to all of it. I would have offered to move in with both of you, but Jocelyn thought my transformations would be too hard to hide from you, and I had to agree. I bought the bookstore, took a new name, and pretended Lucian Graymark was dead. And for all intents and purposes, he has been.”

“You really did a lot for my mom. You gave up a whole life.”

“I would have done more,” Luke said matter-of-factly. “But she was so adamant about wanting nothing to do with the Clave or Downworld, and whatever I might pretend, I’m still a lycanthrope. I’m a living reminder of all of that. And she was so sure she wanted you never to know any of it. You know, I never agreed with the trips to Magnus, to altering your memories or your Sight, but it was what she wanted and I let her do it because if I’d tried to stop her, she would have sent me away. And there’s no way—no way—she would have let me marry her, be your father and not tell you the truth about myself. And that would have brought down everything, all those fragile walls she’d tried so hard to build between herself and the Invisible World. I couldn’t do that to her. So I stayed silent.”

“You mean you never told her how you felt?’

“Your mother isn’t stupid, Clary,” said Luke. He sounded calm, but there was a certain tightness in his voice. “She must have known. I offered to marry her. However kind her denials might have been, I do know one thing: She knows how I feel and she doesn’t feel the same way.”

Clary was silent.

“It’s all right,” Luke said, trying for lightness. “I accepted it a long time ago.”

Clary’s nerves were singing with a sudden tension that she didn’t think was from the caffeine. She pushed back thoughts about her own life. “You offered to marry her, but did you say it was because you loved her? It doesn’t sound like it.”

Luke was silent.

“I think you should have told her the truth. I think you’re wrong about how she feels.”

“I’m not, Clary.” Luke’s voice was firm: That’s enough now.

“I remember once I asked her why she didn’t date,” Clary said, ignoring his admonishing tone. “She said it was because she’d already given her heart. I thought she meant to my dad, but now—now I’m not so sure.”

Luke looked actually astonished. “She said that?” He caught himself, and added, “Probably she did mean Valentine, you know.”

“I don’t think so.” She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. “Besides, don’t you hate it? Not ever saying how you really feel?”

This time the silence lasted until they were off the bridge and rumbling down Orchard Street, lined with shops and restaurants whose signs were in beautiful Chinese characters of curling gold and red. “Yes, I hated it,” Luke said. “At the time, I thought what I had with you and your mother was better than nothing. But if you can’t tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.”

There was a sound like rushing water in Clary’s ears. Looking down, she saw that she’d crushed the empty waxed-paper cup she was holding into an unrecognizable ball.

“Take me to the Institute,” she said. “Please.”

Luke looked over at her in surprise. “I thought you wanted to come to the hospital?”

“I’ll meet you there when I’m finished,” she said. “There’s something I have to do first.”

The lower level of the Institute was full of sunlight and pale dust motes. Clary ran down the narrow aisle between the pews, threw herself at the elevator, and stabbed at the button. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. “Come—”

The golden doors creaked open. Jace was standing inside the elevator. His eyes widened when he saw her.

“—on,” Clary finished, and dropped her arm. “Oh. Hi.”

He stared at her. “Clary?”

“You cut your hair,” she said without thinking. It was true—the long metallic strands were no longer falling in his face, but were neatly and evenly cut. It made him look more civilized, even a little older. He was dressed neatly too, in a dark blue sweater and jeans. Something silver glinted at his throat, just under the collar of the sweater.

He raised a hand. “Oh. Right. Maryse cut it.” The door of the elevator began to slide closed; he held it back. “Did you need to come up to the Institute?”

She shook her head. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” He looked a little surprised at that, but stepped out of the elevator, letting the door clang shut behind him. “I was just running over to Taki’s to pick up some food. No one really feels like cooking…”

“I understand,” Clary said, then wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t as if the Lightwoods’ desire to cook or not cook had anything to do with her.

“We can talk there,” Jace said. He started toward the door, then paused and looked back at her. Standing between two of the burning candelabras, their light casting a pale gold overlay onto his hair and skin, he looked like a painting of an angel. Her heart constricted. “Are you coming, or not?” he snapped, not sounding angelic in the least.

“Oh. Right. I’m coming.” She hurried to catch up with him.

As they walked to Taki’s, Clary tried to keep the conversation away from topics related to her, Jace, or her and Jace. Instead, she asked him how Isabelle, Max, and Alec were doing.

Jace hesitated. They were crossing First and a cool breeze was blowing up the avenue. The sky was a cloudless blue, a perfect New York autumn day.

“I’m sorry.” Clary winced at her own stupidity. “They must be pretty miserable. All these people they knew are dead.”

“It’s different for Shadowhunters,” Jace said. “We’re warriors. We expect death in a way you—”

Clary couldn’t help a sigh. “‘You mundanes don’t.’ That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

“I was,” he admitted. “Sometimes it’s hard even for me to know what you really are.”

They had stopped in front of Taki’s, with its sagging roof and blacked-out windows. The ifrit who guarded the front door gazed down at them with suspicious red eyes.

“I’m Clary,” she said.

Jace looked down at her. The wind was blowing her hair across her face. He reached out and pushed it back, almost absently. “I know.”

Inside, they found a corner booth and slid into it. The diner was nearly empty: Kaelie, the pixie waitress, lounged against the counter, lazily fluttering her blue-white wings. She and Jace had dated once. A pair of werewolves occupied another booth. They were eating raw shanks of lamb and arguing about who would win in a fight: Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books or Magnus Bane.

“Dumbledore would totally win,” said the first one. “He has the badass Killing Curse.”

The second lycanthrope made a trenchant point. “But Dumbledore isn’t real.”

“I don’t think Magnus Bane is real either,” scoffed the first. “Have you ever met him?”

“This is so weird,” said Clary, slinking down in her seat. “Are you listening to them?”

“No. It’s rude to eavesdrop.” Jace was studying the menu, which gave Clary the opportunity to covertly study him. I never look at you, she’d told him. It was true too, or at least she never looked at him the way she wanted to, with an artist’s eye. She would always get lost, distracted by a detail: the curve of his cheekbone, the angle of his eyelashes, the shape of his mouth.

“You’re staring at me,” he said, without looking up from the menu. “Why are you staring at me? Is something wrong?”

Kaelie’s arrival at their table saved Clary from having to answer. Her pen, Clary noticed, was a silvery birch twig. She regarded Clary curiously out of all-blue eyes. “Do you know what you want?”

Unprepared, Clary ordered a few random items off the menu. Jace asked for a plate of sweet potato fries and a number of dishes to be boxed up and brought home to the Lightwoods. Kaelie departed, leaving behind the faint smell of flowers.

“Tell Alec and Isabelle I’m sorry about everything that happened,” Clary said when Kaelie was out of earshot. “And tell Max that I’ll take him to Forbidden Planet anytime.”

“Only mundanes say they’re sorry when what they mean is ‘I share your grief,’” Jace observed. “None of it was your fault, Clary.” His eyes were suddenly bright with hate. “It was Valentine’s.”

“I take it there’s been no …”

“No sign of him? No. I’d guess he’s holed up somewhere until he can finish what he started with the Sword. After that…” Jace shrugged.

“After that, what?”

“I don’t know. He’s a lunatic. It’s hard to guess what a lunatic will do next.” But he avoided her eyes, and Clary knew what he was thinking: War. That was what Valentine wanted. War with the Shadowhunters. And he would get it too. It was only a matter of where he would strike first. “Anyway, I doubt that’s what you came to talk to me about, is it?”

“No.” Now that the moment had come, Clary was having a hard time finding words. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the silvery side of the napkin holder. White cardigan, white face, hectic flush in her cheeks. She looked like she had a fever. She felt a little like it too. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for the past few days—”

“You could have fooled me.” His voice was unnaturally sharp. “Every time I called you, Luke said you were sick. I figured you were avoiding me. Again.”

“I wasn’t.” It seemed to her that there were vast amounts of empty space between them, though the booth wasn’t that big and they weren’t sitting that far apart. “I did want to talk to you. I’ve been thinking about you all the time.”

He made a noise of surprise and held his hand out across the table. She took it, a wave of relief breaking over her. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

His grip was warm on hers, comforting, and she remembered how she’d held him at Renwick’s as he’d rocked back and forth, holding the bloody shard of the Portal in his hands that was all that was left of his old life. “I really was sick,” she said. “I swear. I almost died back there on the ship, you know.”

He let her hand go, but he was staring at her, almost as if he meant to memorize her face. “I know,” he said. “Every time you almost die, I almost die myself.”

His words made her heart rattle in her chest as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of caffeine. “Jace. I came to tell you that—”

“Wait. Let me talk first.” He held his hands up as if to ward off her next words. “Before you say anything, I wanted to apologize to you.”

“Apologize? For what?”

“For not listening to you.” He raked his hair back with both hands and she noticed a little scar, a tiny silver line, on the side of his throat. It hadn’t been there before. “You kept telling me that I couldn’t have what I wanted from you, and I kept pushing at you and pushing at you and not listening to you at all. I just wanted you and I didn’t care what anybody else had to say about it. Not even you.”

Her mouth went suddenly dry, but before she could say anything, Kaelie was back, with Jace’s fries and a number of plates for Clary. Clary stared down at what she’d ordered. A green milk shake, what looked like raw hamburger steak, and a plate of chocolate-dipped crickets. Not that it mattered; her stomach was knotted up too much to even consider eating. “Jace,” she said, as soon as the waitress was gone. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You—”

“No. Let me finish.” He was staring down at his fries as if they held the secrets of the universe. “Clary, I have to say it now or—or I won’t say it.” His words tumbled out in a rush: “I thought I’d lost my family. And I don’t mean Valentine. I mean the Lightwoods. I thought they’d finished with me. I thought there was nothing left in my world but you. I—I was crazy with loss and I took it out on you and I’m sorry. You were right.”

“No. I was stupid. I was cruel to you—”

“You had every right to be.” He raised his eyes to look at her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn’t stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind or water. “What you said was true. We don’t live or love in a vacuum. There are people around us who care about us who would be hurt, maybe destroyed, if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel. To be that selfish, it would mean—it would mean being like Valentine.”

He spoke his father’s name with such finality that Clary felt it like a door slamming in her face.

“I’ll just be your brother from now on,” he said, looking at her with a hopeful expectation that she would be pleased, which made her want to scream that he was smashing her heart into pieces and he had to stop. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

It took her a long time to answer, and when she did, her own voice sounded like an echo, coming from very far away. “Yes,” she said, and she heard the rush of waves in her ears, and her eyes stung as if from sand or salt spray. “That’s what I wanted.”

Clary walked numbly up the wide steps that led up to Beth Israel’s big glass front doors. In a way, she was glad she was here rather than anywhere else. What she wanted more than anything was to throw herself into her mother’s arms and cry, even if she could never explain to her mother what she was crying about. Since she couldn’t do that, sitting next to her mother’s bed and crying seemed like the next best option.

She’d held it together pretty well at Taki’s, even hugging Jace good-bye when she left. She hadn’t started bawling till she’d gotten on the subway, and then she’d found herself crying about everything she hadn’t cried about yet, Jace and Simon and Luke and her mother and even Valentine. She’d cried loudly enough that the man sitting across from her had offered her a tissue, and she’d screamed, What do you think you’re looking at, jerk? at him, because that was what you did in New York. After that she felt a little better.

As she neared the top of the stairs, she realized there was a woman standing there. She was wearing a long dark cloak over a dress, not the sort of thing you usually saw on a Manhattan street. The cloak was made of a dark velvety material and had a wide hood, which was up, hiding her face. Glancing around, Clary saw that no one else on the hospital steps or standing by its doors seemed to notice the apparition. A glamour, then.

She reached the top step and paused, looking up at the woman. She still couldn’t see her face. She said, “Look, if you’re here to see me, just tell me what you want. I’m not really in the mood for all this glamour and secrecy stuff right now.”

She noticed people around her stopping to stare at the crazy girl who was talking to no one. She fought the urge to stick out her tongue at them.

“All right.” The voice was gentle, oddly familiar. The woman reached up and pushed back her hood. Silver hair spilled out over her shoulders in a flood. It was the woman Clary had seen staring at her in the courtyard of the Marble Cemetery, the same woman who’d saved them from Malik’s knife at the Institute. Up close, Clary could see that she had the sort of face that was all angles, too sharp to be pretty, though her eyes were an intense and lovely hazel. “My name is Madeleine. Madeleine Bellefleur.”

“And… ?” Clary said. “What do you want from me?”

The woman—Madeleine—hesitated. “I knew your mother, Jocelyn,” she said. “We were friends in Idris.”

“You can’t see her,” Clary said. “No visitors but family until she gets better.”

“But she won’t get better.”

Clary felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Madeleine said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that I know what’s wrong with Jocelyn, and there’s nothing a mundane hospital can do for her now. What happened to her—she did it to herself, Clarissa.”

“No. You don’t understand. Valentine—”

“She did it before Valentine got to her. So he couldn’t get any information out of her. She planned it that way. It was a secret, a secret she shared with only one other person, and she told only one other person how the spell could be reversed. That person was me.”

“You mean—”

“Yes,” Madeleine said. “I mean I can show you how to wake your mother up.”