City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments #4)(38)
Author: Cassandra Clare

The path dead-ended at a row of raised, tiled steps, atop which was a wide square bordered on three sides by the high wall that encircled the garden. It was clearly intended to be an area where the building’s eventual residents would socialize. There was a big concrete block in the center of the square, which would probably someday hold a grill, Simon guessed, and the area was encircled by neatly clipped rosebushes that in June would bloom, just as the bare trellises adorning the walls would one day vanish under a covering of leaves. It would be an attractive space eventually, a luxury Upper East Side penthouse garden where you could relax on a lounge chair, with the East River glittering under the sunset, and the city stretched out before you, a mosaic of shimmering light.

Except. The tile floor had been defaced, splattered with some sort of black, sticky fluid that had been used to draw a rough circle, inside a larger circle. The space between the two circles was filled with scrawled runes. Though Simon wasn’t a Shadowhunter, he’d seen enough Nephilim runes to recognize what came from the Gray Book. These didn’t. They looked menacing and wrong, like a curse scrawled in an unfamiliar language.

In the very center of the circle was the concrete block. On top of it a bulky rectangular object sat, draped with a dark cloth. The shape of it was not unlike that of a coffin. More runes were scribbled around the base of the block. If Simon’s blood had run, it would have run cold.

Maureen clapped her hands together. "Oh," she said in her elfin little voice. "It’s pretty."

"Pretty?" Simon looked quickly at the hunched shape on top of the concrete block. "Maureen, what the hell-"

"So you brought him." It was a woman’s voice that spoke, cultured, strong, and-familiar. Simon turned. Standing on the pathway behind him was a tall woman with short dark hair. She was very slender, wearing a long dark coat, belted around the middle like a femme fatale from a forties spy movie. "Maureen, thank you," she went on. She had a hard, beautiful face, sharply planed, with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes. "You’ve done very well. You may go now." She turned her gaze on Simon. "Simon Lewis," she said. "Thank you for coming."

The moment she said his name he recognized her. The last time he’d seen her she’d been standing in pouring rain outside the Alto Bar. "You. I remember you. You gave me your card. The music promoter. Wow, you must really want to promote my band. I didn’t even think we were that good."

"Don’t be sarcastic," the woman said. "There’s no point in it." She glanced sideways. "Maureen. You may go." Her voice was firm this time, and Maureen, who had been hovering like a little ghost, gave a tiny squeak and darted back the way they’d come. He watched as she vanished through the doors that led to the elevators, feeling almost sorry to see her go. Maureen wasn’t much company, but without her he felt very alone. Whoever this strange woman was, she gave off a clear aura of dark power he’d been too blood-drugged to notice before.

"You led me a dance, Simon," she said, and now her voice was coming from another direction, several feet away. Simon spun, and saw that she was standing beside the concrete block, in the center of the circle. The clouds were blowing swiftly across the moon, casting a moving pattern of shadows across her face. Because he was at the foot of the steps, he had to crane his head back to look up at her. "I thought getting hold of you would be easy. Dealing with a simple vampire. A newly made one, at that. Even a Daylighter is nothing I haven’t encountered before, though there has not been one for a hundred years. Yes," she added, with a smile at his glance, "I am older than I look."

"You look pretty old."

She ignored the insult. "I sent my best people after you, and only one returned, with some babbled tale about holy fire and the wrath of God. He was quite useless to me after that. I had to have him put down. It was most annoying. After that I decided I ought to deal with you myself. I followed you to your silly musical show, and afterward, when I came up to you, I saw it. Your Mark. As one who knew Cain personally, I am intimately familiar with its shape."

"Knew Cain personally?" Simon shook his head. "You can’t expect me to believe that."

"Believe it or do not believe it," she said. "It makes no difference to me. I am older than the dreams of your kind, little boy. I walked the paths of the Garden of Eden. I knew Adam before Eve did. I was his first wife, but I would not be obedient to him, so God cast me out and made for Adam a new wife, one fashioned of his own body that she might ever be subservient." She smiled faintly. "I have many names. But you may call me Lilith, first of all demons."

At that, Simon, who had not felt cold in months, finally shivered. He had heard the name Lilith before. He couldn’t remember where exactly, but he knew it was a name associated with darkness, with evil and terrible things.

"Your Mark presented me with a conundrum," said Lilith. "I need you, you see, Daylighter. Your life force-your blood. But I could not force you or harm you."

She said this as if needing his blood were the most natural thing in the world.

"You-drink blood?" Simon asked. He felt dazed, as if he were trapped in a strange dream. Surely this couldn’t really be happening.

She laughed. "Blood is not the food of demons, silly child. What I want from you is not for myself." She held out a slender hand. "Come closer."

Simon shook his head. "I’m not stepping inside that circle."

She shrugged. "Very well, then. I intended only to give you a better view." She moved her fingers slightly, almost negligently, the gesture of someone twitching a curtain aside. The black cloth covering the coffin-shaped object between them vanished.

Simon stared at what was revealed. He had not been wrong about the coffin shape. It was a big glass box, just long and wide enough for a person to lie down in. A glass coffin, he thought, like Snow White’s. But this was no fairy tale. Inside the coffin was a cloudy liquid, and floating in that liquid-naked from the waist up, his white-blond hair drifting around him like pale seaweed-was Sebastian.

There were no messages stuck to Jordan’s apartment door, nothing on or under the welcome mat, and nothing immediately obvious inside the apartment, either. While Alec stood guard downstairs and Maia and Jordan rummaged through Simon’s backpack in the living room, Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon’s bedroom, looked silently at the place he’d been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty-just four walls, nak*d of any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B.

She could hear the city-the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the quiet of Idris terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon’s small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone.

Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d ever seen his bedroom at home, which presumably was covered with band posters, sports trophies, boxes of those games he loved to play, musical instruments, books-all the flotsam and jetsam of a normal life. She’d never asked to come over, and he’d never suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his mother, of doing anything that might bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing to make. But now, looking at this empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of the city all around her, she felt a twinge of fear for Simon-mixed with an equal twinge of regret.

She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia’s voice. She didn’t sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to hate Jordan.

"Nothing," she was saying. "Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on them." Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon’s backpack. Jordan, on the other side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was doing-that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by every move you made. "I’ll check his wallet."

Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned. "Weird that he left it. Can I see?" He reached across the counter.

Maia jerked back so fast she dropped the wallet, her hand flying out.

"I wasn’t…" Jordan drew his hand back slowly. "I’m sorry."

Maia took a deep breath. "Look," she said, "I talked to Simon. I know you never meant to Turn me. I know you didn’t know what was happening to you. I remember what that was like. I remember being terrified."

Jordan put his hands down slowly, carefully, on the countertop. It was odd, Isabelle thought, watching someone so tall try to make himself look harmless and small. "I should have been there for you."

"But the Praetor wouldn’t let you be," Maia said. "And let’s face it, you didn’t know anything about being a werewolf; we would have been like two blindfolded people stumbling around in a circle. Maybe it’s better you weren’t there. It made me run away to where I could get help. From the Pack."

"At first I hoped the Praetor Lupus would bring you in," he whispered. "So I could see you again. Then I realized that was selfish and I should be wishing that I didn’t pass on the disease to you. I knew it was fifty-fifty. I thought you might be one of the lucky ones."

"Well, I wasn’t," she said, matter-of-factly. "And over the years I built you up in my head to be this sort of monster. I thought you knew what you were doing when you did this to me. I thought it was revenge on me for kissing that boy. So I hated you. And hating you made everything easier. Having someone to blame."

"You should blame me," he said. "It is my fault."

She ran her finger along the countertop, avoiding his eyes. "I do blame you. But … not the way I did before."

Jordan reached up and grabbed his own hair with his fists, tugging on it hard. "There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think about what I did to you. I bit you. I Turned you. I made you what you are. I raised my hand to you. I hurt you. The one person I loved more than anything else in the world."

Maia’s eyes were shining with tears. "Don’t say that. That doesn’t help. You think that helps?"

Isabelle cleared her throat loudly, stepping into the living room. "So. Have you found anything?"

Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, "Not really. We were just about to go through his wallet." He picked it up from where Maia had dropped it. "Here." He tossed it to Isabelle.

She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state nondriver’s ID, a guitar pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye-a business card, shoved carelessly behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.

Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name.

Satrina Kendall. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind.

Isabelle held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each other. "What do you think of this?"

Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was scowling. "Have you found anything? I’ve been standing down there for thirty minutes, and nothing even remotely threatening has come by. Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps."

"Here," Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. "Look at this. Does anything strike you as odd?"

"You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis’s sucky band?" Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared between his eyes. "Satrina?"

"Does that name mean something to you?" Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady.

"Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why warlocks are called Lilith’s children," said Alec. "Because she mothered demons, and they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks."

"And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?" Jordan sounded dubious.

Alec gave him a cold look. "Who are you again?"

"Oh, shut up, Alec," Isabelle said, in the tone she only ever took with her brother. "Look, not all of us have your memory for boring facts. I don’t suppose you recall the other names of Lilith?"

With a superior look Alec rattled them off, "Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto-"