City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2)(24)
Author: Cassandra Clare

His hands tightened on hers. He breathed out—a harsh, ratcheting sound—and then did not breathe in again.

I love you. I love you. I love you. Her last words to Simon seemed to echo in Clary’s ears as he went limp in her grasp. Isabelle was suddenly next to her, saying something in her ear, but Clary couldn’t hear her. The sound of rushing water, like an oncoming tidal wave, filled her ears. She watched as Isabelle tried gently to pry her hands away from Simon’s, and couldn’t. Clary was surprised. She didn’t feel like she was holding on to him that tightly.

Giving up, Isabelle got to her feet and turned angrily on Raphael. She was shouting. Halfway through her tirade, Clary’s hearing switched back on, like a radio that had finally found a station within range. “—and now what are we supposed to do?” Isabelle screamed.

“Bury him,” said Raphael.

The candelabra swung up again in Jace’s hand. “That’s not funny.”

“It isn’t supposed to be,” said the vampire, unfazed. “It is how we are made. We are drained, blooded, and buried. When he digs his own way out of a grave, that is when a vampire is born.”

Isabelle made a faint sound of disgust. “I don’t think I could do that.”

“Some can’t,” said Raphael. “If no one is there to help them dig out, they stay like that, trapped like rats under the earth.”

A sound tore its way out of Clary’s throat. A sob that was as raw as a scream. She said, “I won’t put him in the ground.”

“Then he’ll stay like this,” said Raphael mercilessly. “Dead but not quite dead. Never waking.”

They were all staring down at her. Isabelle and Jace as if they were holding their breaths, waiting on her response. Raphael looked incurious, almost bored.

“You didn’t come into the Institute because you can’t, isn’t that right?” Clary said. “Because it’s holy ground and you’re unholy.”

“That’s not exactly—” Jace began, but Raphael cut him off with a gesture.

“I should tell you,” said the vampire boy, “that there is not much time. The longer we wait before putting him into the ground, the less likely he’ll be able to dig his own way back out of it.”

Clary looked down at Simon. He really would look as if he were sleeping, if it weren’t for the long gashes along his bare skin. “We can bury him,” she said. “But I want it to be in a Jewish cemetery. And I want to be there when he wakes up.”

Raphael’s eyes glittered. “It will not be pleasant.”

“Nothing ever is.” She set her jaw. “Let’s get going. We only have a few hours until dawn.”

10

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE

THE CEMETERY WAS IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF QUEENS, WHERE apartment buildings gave way to rows of orderly-looking Victorian houses painted gingerbread colors: pink, white, and blue. The streets were wide and mostly deserted, the avenue leading up to the cemetery unlit except by a single streetlight. It took them a short while with their steles to break in through the locked gates, and another while to find a spot hidden enough for Raphael to begin digging. It was at the top of a low hill, sheltered from the road below by a thick line of trees. Clary, Jace, and Isabelle were protected with glamour, but there was no way to hide Raphael, or to hide Simon’s body, so the trees provided a welcome cover.

The sides of the hill not facing the road were thickly layered with headstones, many of them bearing a pointed Star of David at the top. They gleamed white and smooth as milk in the moonlight. In the distance was a lake, its surface pleated with glittering ripples. A nice place, Clary thought. A good place to come and lay flowers on someone’s grave, to sit awhile and think about their life, what they meant to you. Not a good place to come at night, under cover of darkness, to bury your friend in a shallow dirt grave without the benefit of a coffin or a service.

“Did he suffer?” she asked Raphael.

He looked up from his digging, leaning on the handle of the shovel like the grave digger in Hamlet. “What?”

“Simon. Did he suffer? Did the vampires hurt him?”

“No. The blood death is not such a bad way to die,” said Raphael, his musical voice soft. “The bite drugs you. It is pleasant, like going to sleep.”

A wave of dizziness passed over her, and for a moment she thought she might faint.

“Clary.” Jace’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “Come on. You don’t have to watch this.”

He held out his hand to her. Looking past him, she could see Isabelle standing with her whip in her hand. They had wrapped Simon’s body in a blanket and it lay on the ground at her feet, as if she were guarding it. Not it, Clary reminded herself fiercely. Him. Simon.

“I want to be here when he wakes up.”

“I know. We’ll come right back.” When she didn’t move, Jace took her unresisting arm and drew her away from the clearing and down the side of the hill. There were boulders here, just above the first line of graves; he sat down on one, zipping up his jacket. It was surprisingly chilly out. For the first time this season Clary could see her breath when she exhaled.

She sat down on the boulder beside Jace and stared down at the lake. She could hear the rhythmic thump-thump of Raphael’s spade hitting the dirt and the shoveled dirt hitting the ground. Raphael wasn’t human; he worked fast. It wouldn’t take that long for him to dig a grave. And Simon wasn’t all that big a person; the grave wouldn’t have to be that deep.

A stab of pain twisted through her abdomen. She bent forward, hands splayed across her stomach. “I feel sick.”

“I know. That’s why I brought you out here. You looked like you were going to throw up on Raphael’s feet.”

She made a soft groaning noise.

“Might have wiped the smirk off his face,” Jace observed reflectively. “There’s that to consider.”

“Shut up.” The pain had eased. She tipped her head back, looking up at the moon, a circle of chipped silver polish floating in a sea of stars. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You’re right. It’s our fault.”

Jace turned toward her, exasperation clear in the lines of his shoulders. “How do you figure that?”

She looked at him silently for a moment. He needed a haircut. His hair curled the way vines did when they got too long, in looping tendrils, the color of white gold in the moonlight. The scars on his face and throat looked like they had been etched there with metallic ink. He was beautiful, she thought miserably, beautiful and there was nothing there in him, not an expression, not a slant of cheekbone or shape of jaw or curve of lips that bespoke any family resemblance to herself or her mother at all. He didn’t even really look like Valentine.

“What?” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob at the exact same time that she wanted to pound on him with her fists. Instead, she said, “If it weren’t for what happened in the faerie court, Simon would still be alive.”

He reached down and savagely yanked a hunk of grass out of the ground. Dirt still clung to the roots. He tossed it aside. “We were forced to do what we did. It’s not as if we did it for fun, or to hurt him. Besides,” he said, with the ghost of a smile, “you’re my sister.”

“Don’t say it like that—”

“What, ‘sister’?” He shook his head. “When I was a little kid, I realized that if you say any word over and over fast enough, it loses all its meaning. I’d lie awake saying the words over and over to myself—‘sugar,’ ‘mirror,’ ‘whisper,’ ‘dark.’ ‘Sister,’” he said, softly. “You’re my sister.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you say it. It’ll still be true.”

“And it doesn’t matter what you won’t let me say, that’ll still be true too.”

“Jace!” Another voice, calling his name. It was Alec, slightly out of breath from running. He was holding a black plastic bag in one hand. Behind him stalked Magnus, impossibly tall and thin and glowering in a long leather coat that flapped in the wind like a bat’s wing. Alec came to a stop in front of Jace and held out the bag. “I brought blood,” he said. “Like you asked.”

Jace opened the top of the bag, peered in, and wrinkled his nose. “Do I want to ask you where you got this?”

“From a butcher shop in Greenpoint,” said Magnus, joining them. “They bleed their meat to make it halal. It’s animal blood.”

“Blood is blood,” said Jace, and stood up. He looked down at Clary and hesitated. “When Raphael said this wouldn’t be pleasant, he wasn’t lying. You can stay here. I’ll send Isabelle down to wait with you.”

She tipped her head back to look up at him. The moonlight cast the shadow of branches across his face. “Have you ever seen a vampire rise?”

“No, but I—”

“Then you don’t really know, do you?” She stood up, and Isabelle’s blue coat fell around her in rustling folds. “I want to be there. I have to be there.”

She could see only part of his face in the shadows, but she thought he looked almost—impressed. “I know better than to tell you there’s anything you can’t do,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Raphael was tamping down a large rectangle of dirt when they came back into the clearing, Jace and Clary a little ahead of Magnus and Alec, who seemed to be arguing about something. Simon’s body was gone. Isabelle was sitting on the ground, her whip coiled at her ankles in a golden circle. She was shivering. “Jesus, it’s cold,” Clary said, pulling Isabelle’s heavy coat close around her. The velvet was warm, at least. She tried to ignore the fact that the hem of it was stained with Simon’s blood. “It’s as if it turned to winter overnight.”

“Be glad it isn’t winter,” said Raphael, setting the spade against the trunk of a nearby tree. “The ground freezes like iron in winter. Sometimes it is impossible to dig and the fledgling must wait months, starving underground, before it can be born.”

“Is that what you call them? Fledglings?” said Clary. The word seemed wrong, too friendly somehow. It reminded her of ducklings.

“Yes,” said Raphael. “It means the not-yet or newly born.” He caught sight of Magnus then, and for a split second looked surprised before he wiped the expression carefully from his features. “High Warlock,” he said. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”

“I was curious,” said Magnus, his cat eyes glittering. “I’ve never seen one of the Night Children rise.”

Raphael glanced at Jace, who was lounging against a tree trunk. “You keep surprisingly illustrious company, Shadowhunter.”

“Are you talking about yourself again?” asked Jace. He smoothed the churned dirt with the tip of a boot. “That seems boastful.”

“Maybe he meant me,” said Alec. Everyone looked at him in surprise. Alec so rarely made jokes. He smiled nervously. “Sorry,” he said. “Nerves.”

“There’s no need for that,” said Magnus, reaching to touch Alec’s shoulder. Alec moved quickly out of range, and Magnus’s outstretched hand fell to his side.

“So what do we do now?” Clary demanded, hugging herself for warmth. Cold seemed to have seeped into every pore of her body. Surely it was too cold for late summer.

Raphael, noticing her gesture, smiled minutely. “It is always cold at a rising,” he said. “The fledgling draws strength from the living things that surround it, taking from them the energy to rise.”

Clary glared at him resentfully. “You don’t seem cold.”

“I’m not living.” He stepped back a little from the edge of the grave—Clary forced herself to think of it as a grave, since that’s exactly what it was—and gestured to the others to do the same. “Make room,” he said. “Simon can hardly rise if you are all standing on top of him.”

They moved hastily backward. Clary found Isabelle clutching her elbow and turned to see that the other girl was white to the lips. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Isabelle said. “Clary, maybe we should have just let him go—”

“Let him die, you mean.” Clary jerked her arm out of Isabelle’s grip. “Of course that’s what you think. You think everyone who isn’t just like you is better off dead anyway.”

Isabelle’s face was the picture of misery. “That isn’t—”

A sound tore through the clearing, a sound unlike any Clary had ever heard before—a sort of pounding rhythm coming from deep underground, as if suddenly the heartbeat of the world had become audible.