City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2)(39)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Jace heard Alec gasp. So the Inquisitor hadn’t been exaggerating. If he hit one of the prison walls too hard, he’d die.

Alec was on his feet, suddenly wavering. “Jace, I don’t know—”

“Shut up, Alec. And don’t watch me. It’s not helping.”

Whatever Alec said in response, Jace didn’t hear it. He was doing a slow pivot in place, his eyes focused on the rafters. The runes that gave him excellent long sight kicked in, the rafters coming into better focus: He could see their chipped edges, their whorls and knots, the black stains of age. But they were solid. They’d held up the Institute roof for hundreds of years. They could hold a teenage boy. He flexed his fingers, taking deep, slow, controlled breaths, just as his father had taught him. In his mind’s eye he saw himself leaping, soaring, catching hold of a rafter with ease and swinging himself up onto it. He was light, he told himself, light as an arrow, winging its way easily through the air, swift and unstoppable. It would be easy, he told himself. Easy.

“I am Valentine’s arrow,” Jace whispered. “Whether he knows it or not.”

And he jumped.

16

A STONE OF THE HEART

CLARY HIT THE BUTTON TO CALL SIMON BACK, BUT THE PHONE went straight to voice mail. Hot tears splashed down her cheeks and she threw her own phone at the dashboard. “Damn it, damn it—”

“We’re almost there,” Luke said. They’d gotten off the expressway and she hadn’t even noticed. They pulled up in front of Simon’s house, a wooden one-family whose front was painted a cheerful red. Clary was out of the car and running up the front walk before Luke had even yanked on the security brake. She could hear him yelling her name as she dashed up the steps and pounded frantically on the front door.

“Simon!” she shouted. “Simon!”

“Clary, enough.” Luke caught up to her on the front porch. “The neighbors—”

“Screw the neighbors.” She fumbled for the key ring on her belt, found the right key, and slid it into the lock. She swung the door open and stepped warily into the hallway, Luke just behind her. They peered through the first door on the left into the kitchen. Everything looked exactly as it always had, from the meticulously clean counter to the fridge magnets. There was the sink where she’d kissed Simon just a few days ago. Sunshine streamed in through the windows, filling the room with pale yellow light. Light that was capable of charring Simon away to ashes.

Simon’s room was the last one at the end of the hall. The door stood slightly open, though Clary could see nothing but darkness through the crack.

She slid her stele out of her pocket and gripped it tightly. She knew it wasn’t really a weapon, but the feel of it in her hand was calming. Inside, the room was dark, black curtains drawn across the windows, the only light coming from the digital clock on the bedside table. Luke was reaching across her to flip on the light when something—something that hissed and spit and snarled like a demon—launched itself at him out of the darkness.

Clary screamed as Luke seized her shoulders and pushed her roughly aside. She stumbled and nearly fell; when she righted herself, she turned to see an astonished-looking Luke holding a yowling, struggling white cat, its fur sticking out all over. It looked like a ball of cotton with claws.

“Yossarian!” Clary exclaimed.

Luke dropped the cat. Yossarian immediately shot between his legs and disappeared down the hall.

“Stupid cat,” Clary said.

“It’s not his fault. Cats don’t like me.” Luke reached for the light switch and flipped it on. Clary gasped. The room was completely in order, nothing at all out of place, not even the rug askew. Even the coverlet was folded neatly on the bed.

“Is it a glamour?”

“Probably not. Probably just magic.” Luke moved into the center of the room, looking around him thoughtfully. As he moved to pull one of the curtains aside, Clary saw something gleam in the carpet at his feet.

“Luke, wait.” She went to where he was standing and knelt to retrieve the object. It was Simon’s silver cell phone, badly bent out of shape, the antenna snapped off. Heart pounding, she flipped the phone open. Despite the crack that ran the length of the display screen, a single text message was still visible: NOW I HAVE THEM ALL.

Clary sank down on the bed in a daze. Distantly, she felt Luke pluck the phone out of her hand. She heard him suck in his breath as he read the message.

“What does that mean? ‘Now I have them all’?” asked Clary.

Luke set Simon’s phone down on the desk and passed a hand over his face. “I’m afraid it means that now he has Simon and, we might as well face it, Maia, too. It means he has everything he needs for the Ritual of Conversion.”

Clary stared at him. “You mean this isn’t just about getting at me—and you?”

“I’m sure Valentine regards that as a pleasant side effect. But it’s not his main goal. His main goal is to reverse the characteristics of the Soul-Sword. And for that he needs—”

“The blood of Downworlder children. But Maia and Simon aren’t children. They’re teenagers.”

“When that spell was created, the spell to turn the Soul-Sword to darkness, the word ‘teenager’ hadn’t even been invented. In Shadowhunter society, you’re an adult when you’re eighteen. Before that, you’re a child. For Valentine’s purposes, Maia and Simon are children. He has the blood of a faerie child already, and the blood of a warlock child. All he needed was a werewolf and a vampire.”

Clary felt as if the air had been punched out of her. “Then why didn’t we do something? Why didn’t we think of protecting them somehow?”

“So far Valentine has done what’s convenient. None of his victims were chosen for any other reason than that they were there and available. The warlock was easy to find; all Valentine had to do was hire him under the pretense of wanting a demon raised. It’s simple enough to spot faeries in the park if you know where to look. And the Hunter’s Moon is exactly where you’d go if you wanted to find a werewolf. Putting himself to this extra danger and trouble just to strike out at us when nothing’s changed—”

“Jace,” said Clary.

“What do you mean, Jace? What about him?”

“I think it’s Jace he’s trying to get back at. Jace must have done something last night on the boat, something that really pissed Valentine off. Pissed him off enough to abandon whatever plan he had before and make a new one.”

Luke looked baffled. “What makes you think that Valentine’s change of plans had anything to do with your brother?”

“Because,” Clary said with grim certainty, “only Jace can piss someone off that much.”

“Isabelle!” Alec pounded on his sister’s door. “Isabelle, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

The door opened a crack. Alec tried to peer through it, but no one appeared to be on the other side. “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” said a well-known voice.

Alec glanced down and saw gray eyes glaring at him from behind a bent pair of spectacles. “Max,” he said. “Come on, little brother, let me in.”

“I don’t want to talk to you either.” Max started to push the door shut, but Alec, quick as a flick of Isabelle’s whip, wedged his foot into the gap.

“Don’t make me knock you over, Max.”

“You wouldn’t.” Max pushed back with all his might.

“No, but I might go get our parents, and I have a feeling Isabelle doesn’t want that. Do you, Izzy?” he demanded, pitching his voice loud enough for his sister, inside the room, to hear.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Isabelle sounded furious. “All right, Max. Let him in.”

Max stepped away and Alec pushed his way in, letting the door swing half-shut behind him. Isabelle was kneeling in the embrasure of the window beside her bed, her gold whip coiled around her left arm. She was wearing her hunting gear, the tough black trousers and skintight shirt with their silvery, near-invisible design of runes. Her boots were buckled up to her knees and her black hair whipped in the breeze from the open window. She glared at him, reminding him for a moment of nothing more than Hugo, Hodge’s black raven.

“What the hell are you doing? Trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded, striding furiously across the room toward his sister.

Her whip snaked out, coiling around his ankles. Alec stopped dead, knowing that with a single flick of her wrist Isabelle could jerk him off his feet and land him in a trussed bundle on the hardwood floor. “Don’t come any closer to me, Alexander Lightwood,” she said in her angriest voice. “I’m not feeling very charitable toward you at the moment.”

“Isabelle—”

“How could you just turn on Jace like that? After all he’s been through? And you swore that oath to watch out for each other too—”

“Not,” he reminded her, “if it meant breaking the Law.”

“The Law”!” Isabelle snapped in disgust. “There’s a higher law than the Clave, Alec. The law of family. Jace is your family.”

“The law of family? I’ve never heard of that before,” Alec said, nettled. He knew he ought to be defending himself, but it was hard not to be distracted by the lifelong habit of correcting one’s younger siblings when they were wrong. “Could that be because you just made it up?”

Isabelle flicked her wrist. Alec felt his feet go out from under him and twisted to absorb the impact of falling with his hands and wrists. He landed, rolled onto his back, and looked up to see Isabelle looming over him. Max was beside her. “What should we do with him, Maxwell?” Isabelle asked. “Leave him tied up here for the parents to find?”

Alec had had enough. He whipped a blade from the sheath at his wrist, twisted, and slashed it through the whip around his ankles. The electrum wire parted with a snap and he sprang to his feet as Isabelle drew her arm back, the wire hissing around her.

A low chuckle broke the tension. “All right, all right, you’ve tortured him enough. I’m here.”

Isabelle’s eyes flew wide. “Jace!”

“The same.” Jace ducked into Isabelle’s room, shutting the door behind him. “No need for the two of you to fight—” He winced as Max careened into him, yelping his name. “Careful there,” he said, gently disentangling the boy. “I’m not in the best shape right now.”

“I can see that,” Isabelle said, her eyes raking him anxiously. His wrists were bloody, his fair hair was plastered sweatily to his neck and forehead, and his face and hands were stained with dirt and ichor. “Did the Inquisitor hurt you?”

“Not too badly.” Jace’s eyes met Alec’s across the room. “She just locked me up in the weapons gallery. Alec helped me get out.”

The whip drooped in Isabelle’s hand like a flower. “Alec, is that true?”

“Yes.” Alec brushed dust from the floor off his clothes with deliberate ostentation. He couldn’t resist adding: “So there.”

“Well, you should have said.”

“And you should have had some faith in me—”

“Enough. There’s no time for bickering,” Jace said. “Isabelle, what kind of weapons do you have in here? And bandages, any bandages?”

“Bandages?” Isabelle set her whip down and took her stele out of a drawer. “I can fix you up with an iratze—”

Jace raised his wrists. “An iratze would be good for my bruises, but it won’t help these. These are rune burns.” They looked even worse in the bright light of Isabelle’s room—the circular scars were black and cracked in places, oozing blood and clear fluid. He lowered his hands as Isabelle paled. “And I’ll need some weapons, too, before I—”

“Bandages first. Weapons later.” She set her stele down on top of the dresser and herded Jace into the bathroom with a basketful of ointments, gauze pads, and bandage strips. Alec watched them through the half-open door, Jace leaning against the sink as his adoptive sister sponged his wrists and wrapped them in white gauze. “Okay, now take your shirt off.”

“I knew there was something in this for you.” Jace slid off his jacket and drew his T-shirt over his head, wincing. His skin was pale gold, layered over hard muscle. Black ink Marks twined his slim arms. A mundane might have thought the white scars that snowflaked Jace’s skin, remnants of old runes, made him less than perfect, but Alec didn’t. They all had those scars; they were badges of honor, not flaws.

Jace, seeing Alec watching him through the half-open door, said, “Alec, can you get the phone?”

“It’s on the dresser.” Isabelle didn’t look up. She and Jace were conversing in low tones; Alec couldn’t hear them, but suspected this was because they were trying not to scare Max.