City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2)(9)
Author: Cassandra Clare

“Are you?” asked Simon. They were out of pizza, so he reached over without looking and took one of Clary’s nibbled crusts. He knew she hated crust. “A wild card, I mean.”

“There’s nothing wild about me. I’m stolid. Middle-aged.”

“Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things,” Clary said.

“It could be worse,” Luke said. “Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels.”

“You’re only thirty-eight,” Simon pointed out. “That’s not middle-aged.”

“Thank you, Simon, I appreciate that.” Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh. “Though you did eat all the pizza.”

“I only had five slices,” Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs.

“How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?” Clary wanted to know.

“Less than five slices isn’t a meal. It’s a snack.” Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. “Does this mean you’re going to wolf out and eat me?”

“Certainly not.” Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. “You would be stringy and hard to digest.”

“But kosher,” Simon pointed out cheerfully.

“I’ll be sure to point any Jewish lycanthropes your way.” Luke leaned his back against the sink. “But to answer your earlier question, Clary, it was strange seeing Maryse Lightwood, but not because of her. It was the surroundings. The Institute reminded me too much of the Hall of Accords in Idris—I could feel the strength of the Gray Book’s runes all around me, after fifteen years of trying to forget them.”

“Did you?” Clary asked. “Manage to forget them?”

“There are some things you never forget. The runes of the Book are more than illustrations. They become part of you. Part of your skin. Being a Shadowhunter never leaves you. It’s a gift that’s carried in your blood, and you can no more change it than you can change your blood type.”

“I was wondering,” Clary said, “if maybe I should get some Marks myself.”

Simon dropped the pizza crust he’d been gnawing on. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Why would I joke about something like that? And why shouldn’t I get Marks? I’m a Shadowhunter. I might as well go for what protection I can get.”

“Protection from what?” Simon demanded, leaning forward so that the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a bang. “I thought all this Shadowhunting stuff was over. I thought you were trying to live a normal life.”

Luke’s tone was mild. “I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a normal life.”

Clary looked down at her arm, where Jace had drawn the only Mark she’d ever received. She could still see the lacelike white tracery it had left behind, more a memory than a scar. “Sure, I want to get away from the weirdness. But what if the weirdness comes after me? What if I don’t have a choice?”

“Or maybe you don’t want to get away from the weirdness that badly,” Simon muttered. “Not as long as Jace is still involved with it, anyway.”

Luke cleared his throat. “Most Nephilim go through levels of training before they receive their Marks. I wouldn’t recommend getting any until you’ve completed some instruction. And whether you even want to do that is up to you, of course. However, there is something you should have. Something every Shadowhunter should have.”

“An obnoxious, arrogant attitude?” Simon said.

“A stele,” said Luke. “Every Shadowhunter should have a stele.”

“Do you have one?” Clary asked, surprised.

Without responding, Luke headed out of the kitchen. He was back in a few moments, holding an object wrapped in black fabric. Setting the object down on the table, he unrolled the cloth, revealing a gleaming wandlike instrument, made of a pale, opaque crystal. A stele.

“Pretty,” said Clary.

“I’m glad you think so,” said Luke, “because I want you to have it.”

“Have it?” She looked at him in astonishment. “But it’s yours, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “This was your mother’s. She didn’t want to keep it at the apartment in case you happened across it, so she asked me to hold on to it for her.”

Clary picked the stele up. It felt cool to the touch, though she knew it would heat to a glow when used. It was a strange object, not quite long enough to be a weapon, not quite short enough to be an easily manipulated drawing tool. She supposed the odd size was just something you got used to over time.

“I can have it?”

“Sure. It’s an old model, of course, almost twenty years out of date. They may have refined the designs since. Still, it’s reliable enough.”

Simon watched her as she held the stele like a conductor’s baton, tracing invisible patterns lightly on the air between them. “This kind of reminds me of the time my grandfather gave me his old golf clubs.”

Clary laughed and lowered her hand. “Yeah, except you never used those.”

“And I hope you never have to use that,” Simon said, and looked quickly away before she could reply.

Smoke rose from the Marks in black spirals and he smelled the choking scent of his own skin burning. His father stood over him with the stele, its tip gleaming red like the tip of a poker left too long in the fire. “Close your eyes, Jonathan,” he said. “Pain is only what you allow it to be.” But Jace’s hand curled in on itself, unwillingly, as if his skin were writhing, twisting to get away from the stele. He heard the snap as one bone in his hand broke, and then another…

Jace opened his eyes and blinked up at the darkness, his father’s voice fading away like smoke in rising wind. He tasted pain, metallic on his tongue. He’d bitten the inside of his lip. He sat up, wincing.

The snap came again and involuntarily he glanced down at his hand. It was unmarked. He realized the sound was coming from outside the room. Someone knocking, albeit hesitantly, at the door.

He rolled off the bed, shivering as his bare feet hit the cold floor. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes and he looked down at his wrinkled shirt in distaste. He probably still smelled like wolf. And he ached all over.

The knock came again. Jace strode across the room and threw the door open. He blinked in surprise. “Alec?”

Alec, hands in his jeans pockets, shrugged self-consciously. “Sorry it’s so late. Mom sent me to get you. She wants to see you in the library.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

“What the hell are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” It looked like he was telling the truth. His blue eyes were surrounded by dark shadows.

Jace ran a hand through his tousled hair. “All right. Hang on a second while I change my shirt.” Heading to the wardrobe, he rummaged through neatly folded square stacks until he found a dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt. He peeled the shirt he was wearing off carefully—in some places it was stuck to his skin with dried blood.

Alec looked away. “What happened to you?” His voice was oddly constricted.

“Picked a fight with a pack of werewolves.” Jace slid the blue shirt over his head. Dressed, he padded after Alec into the hallway. “You have something on your neck,” he observed.

Alec’s hand flew to his throat. “What?”

“Looks like a bite mark,” said Jace. “What have you been doing all night, anyway?”

“Nothing.” Beet red, his hand still clamped to his neck, Alec started down the corridor. Jace followed him. “I went walking in the park. Tried to clear my head.”

“And ran into a vampire?”

“What? No! I fell.”

“On your neck?” Alec made a noise, and Jace decided the issue was clearly better dropped. “Fine, whatever. What did you need to clear your head about?”

“You. My parents,” Alec said. “My mother explained why they were so angry after you left. And she explained about Hodge. Thanks for not telling me that, by the way.”

“Sorry.” It was Jace’s turn to flush. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it, somehow.”

“Well, it doesn’t look good.” Alec finally dropped his hand from his neck and turned to look accusingly at Jace. “It looks like you were hiding things. Things about Valentine.”

Jace stopped in his tracks. “Do you think I was lying? About not knowing Valentine was my father?”

“No!” Alec looked startled, either at the question or at Jace’s vehemence in asking it. “And I don’t care who your father is either. It doesn’t matter to me. You’re still the same person.”

“Whoever that is.” The words came out cold, before he could stop them.

“I’m just saying.” Alec’s tone was placating. “You can be a little—harsh sometimes. Just think before you talk, that’s all I’m asking. No one’s your enemy here, Jace.”

“Well, thanks for the advice,” Jace said. “I can walk myself the rest of the way to the library.”

“Jace—”

But Jace was already gone, leaving Alec’s distress behind. Jace hated it when other people were worried on his behalf. It made him feel like maybe there really was something to worry about.

The library door was half open. Not bothering to knock, Jace went in. It had always been one of his favorite rooms in the Institute—there was something comforting about its old-fashioned mix of wood and brass fittings, the leather-and-velvet-bound books ranged along the walls like old friends waiting for him to return. Now a blast of cold air hit him the moment the door swung open. The fire that usually blazed in the huge fireplace all through the fall and winter was a heap of ashes. The lamps had been switched off. The only light came through the narrow louvered windows and the tower’s skylight, high above.

Not wanting to, Jace thought of Hodge. If he were here, the fire would be lit, the gas lamps turned up, casting shaded pools of golden light onto the parquet floor. Hodge himself would be slouched in an armchair by the fire, Hugo on one shoulder, a book propped at his side—

But there was someone in Hodge’s old armchair. A thin, gray someone, who rose from the armchair, fluidly uncoiling like a snake charmer’s cobra, and turned toward him with a cool smile.

It was a woman. She wore a long, old-fashioned dark gray cloak that fell to the tops of her boots. Beneath it was a fitted slate-colored suit with a mandarin collar, the stiff points of which pressed into her neck. Her hair was a sort of colorless pale blond, pulled tightly back with combs, and her eyes were flinty gray chips. Jace could feel them, like the touch of freezing water, as her gaze traveled from his filthy, mud-splattered jeans, to his bruised face, to his eyes, and locked there.

For a second something hot flickered in her gaze, like the glow of a flame trapped under ice. Then it vanished. “You are the boy?”

Before Jace could reply, another voice answered: It was Maryse, having come into the library behind him. He wondered why he hadn’t heard her approaching and realized she had abandoned her heels for slippers. She wore a long robe of patterned silk and a thin-lipped expression. “Yes, Inquisitor,” she said. “This is Jonathan Morgenstern.”

The Inquisitor moved toward Jace like drifting gray smoke. She stopped in front of him and held out a hand—long-fingered and white, it reminded him of an albino spider. “Look at me, boy,” she said, and suddenly those long fingers were under his chin, forcing his head up. She was incredibly strong. “You will call me Inquisitor. You will not call me anything else.” The skin around her eyes was mazed with fine lines like cracks in paint. Two narrow grooves ran from the edges of her mouth to her chin. “Do you understand?”

For most of his life the Inquisitor had been a distant half-mythical figure to Jace. Her identity, even many of her duties, were shrouded in the secrecy of the Clave. He had always imagined she would be like the Silent Brothers, with their self-contained power and hidden mysteries. He had not imagined someone so direct—or so hostile. Her eyes seemed to cut at him, to slice away his armor of confidence and amusement, stripping him down to the bone.

“My name is Jace,” he said. “Not boy. Jace Wayland.”

“You have no right to the name of Wayland,” she said. “You are Jonathan Morgenstern. To claim the name of Wayland makes you a liar. Just like your father.”

“Actually,” said Jace, “I prefer to think that I’m a liar in a way that’s uniquely my own.”

“I see.” A small smile curved her pale mouth. It was not a nice smile. “You are intolerant of authority, just as your father was. Like the angel whose name you both bear.” Her fingers gripped his chin with a sudden ferocity, her nails digging in painfully. “Lucifer was rewarded for his rebellion when God cast him into the pits of hell.” Her breath was sour as vinegar. “If you defy my authority, I can promise that you will envy him his fate.”