City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments #3)(18)
Author: Cassandra Clare

“I hope that’s not because of me,” said Jace.

Alec went white and drew back, as if he were preparing to ward off a blow. “What do you mean?”

“I know how you think you feel about me,” Jace said. “You don’t, though. You just like me because I’m safe. There’s no risk. And then you never have to try to have a real relationship, because you can use me as an excuse.” Jace knew he was being cruel, and he barely cared. Hurting people he loved was almost as good as hurting himself when he was in this kind of mood.

“I get it,” Alec said tightly. “First Clary, then your hand, now me. To hell with you, Jace.”

“You don’t believe me?” Jace asked. “Fine. Go ahead. Kiss me right now.”

Alec stared at him in horror.

“Exactly. Despite my staggering good looks, you actually don’t like me that way. And if you’re blowing off Magnus, it’s not because of me. It’s because you’re too scared to tell anyone who you really love. Love makes us liars,” said Jace. “The Seelie Queen told me that. So don’t judge me for lying about how I feel. You do it too.” He stood up. “And now I want you to do it again.”

Alec’s face was stiff with hurt. “What do you mean?”

“Lie for me,” Jace said, taking his jacket down from the wall peg and shrugging it on. “It’s sunset. They’ll start coming back from the Gard about now. I want you to tell everyone I’m not feeling well and that’s why I’m not coming downstairs. Tell them I felt faint and tripped, and that’s how the window got broken.”

Alec tipped his head back and looked up at Jace squarely. “Fine,” he said. “If you tell me where you’re really going.”

“Up to the Gard,” said Jace. “I’m going to break Simon out of jail.”

Clary’s mother had always called the time of day between twilight and nightfall “the blue hour.” She said the light was strongest and most unusual then, and that it was the best time to paint. Clary had never really understood what she meant, but now, making her way through Alicante at twilight, she did.

The blue hour in New York wasn’t really blue; it was too washed out by streetlights and neon signs. Jocelyn must have been thinking of Idris. Here the light fell in swatches of pure violet across the golden stonework of the city, and the witchlight lamps cast circular pools of white light so bright Clary expected to feel heat when she walked through them. She wished her mother were with her. Jocelyn could have pointed out the parts of Alicante that were familiar to her, that had a place in her memories.

But she’d never tell you any of those things. She kept them secret from you on purpose. And now you may never know them. A sharp pain—half anger and half regret—caught at Clary’s heart.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Sebastian said. They were passing over a canal bridge, its stonework sides carved with runes.

“Just wondering how much trouble I’ll be in when I get back. I had to climb out a window to leave, but Amatis has probably noticed I’m gone by now.”

Sebastian frowned. “Why sneak out? Wouldn’t you be allowed to go see your brother?”

“I’m not supposed to be in Alicante at all,” Clary said. “I’m supposed to be home, watching safely from the sidelines.”

“Ah. That explains a lot.”

“Does it?” She cast a curious sideways glance at him. Blue shadows were caught in his dark hair.

“Everyone seemed to blanch when your name came up earlier. I gathered there was some bad blood between your brother and you.”

“Bad blood? Well, that’s one way to put it.”

“You don’t like him much?”

“Like Jace?” She’d given so much thought these past weeks as to whether she loved Jace Wayland and how, that she’d never much paused to consider whether she liked him.

“Sorry. He’s family—it’s not really about whether you like him or not.”

“I do like him,” she said, surprising herself. “I do; it’s just—he makes me furious. He tells me what I can and can’t do—”

“Doesn’t seem to work very well,” Sebastian observed.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to do what you want anyway.”

“I suppose.” The observation startled her, coming from a near stranger. “But it seems to have made him a lot angrier than I thought it had.”

“He’ll get over it.” Sebastian’s tone was dismissive.

Clary looked at him curiously. “Do you like him?”

“I like him. But I don’t think he likes me much.” Sebastian sounded rueful. “Everything I say seems to piss him off.”

They turned off the street into a wide cobble-paved square ringed with tall, narrow buildings. At the center was the bronze statue of an angel—the Angel, the one who’d given his blood to make the race of Shadowhunters. At the northern end of the square was a massive structure of white stone. A waterfall of wide marble steps led up to a pillared arcade, behind which was a pair of huge double doors. The overall effect in the evening light was stunning—and weirdly familiar. Clary wondered if she’d seen a picture of this place before. Maybe her mother had painted one?

“This is Angel Square,” Sebastian said, “and that was the Great Hall of the Angel. The Accords were first signed there, since Downworlders aren’t allowed into the Gard—now it’s called the Accords Hall. It’s a central meeting place—celebrations take place there, marriages, dances, that sort of thing. It’s the center of the city. They say all roads lead to the Hall.”

“It looks a bit like a church—but you don’t have churches here, do you?”

“No need,” said Sebastian. “The demon towers keep us safe. We need nothing else. That’s why I like coming here. It feels … peaceful.”

Clary looked at him in surprise. “So you don’t live here?”

“No. I live in Paris. I’m just visiting Aline—she’s my cousin. My mother and her father, my uncle Patrick, were brother and sister. Aline’s parents ran the Institute in Beijing for years. They moved back to Alicante about a decade ago.”

“Were they—the Penhallows weren’t in the Circle, were they?”

A startled look flashed across Sebastian’s face. He was silent as they turned and left the square behind them, making their way into a warren of dark streets. “Why would you ask that?” he said finally.

“Well—because the Lightwoods were.”

They passed under a streetlight. Clary glanced sideways at Sebastian. In his long dark coat and white shirt, under the pool of white light, he looked like a black-and-white illustration of a gentleman from a Victorian scrapbook. His dark hair curled close against his temples in a way that made her itch to draw him in pen and ink. “You have to understand,” he said. “A good half of the young Shadowhunters in Idris were part of the Circle, and plenty of those who weren’t in Idris too. Uncle Patrick was in the early days, but he got out of the Circle once he started to realize how serious Valentine was. Neither of Aline’s parents was part of the Uprising—my uncle went to Beijing to get away from Valentine and met Aline’s mother at the Institute there. When the Lightwoods and the other Circle members were tried for treason against the Clave, the Penhallows voted for leniency. Got them sent away to New York instead of cursed. So the Lightwoods have always been grateful.”

“What about your parents?” Clary said. “Were they in it?”

“Not really. My mother was younger than Patrick—he sent her to Paris when he went to Beijing. She met my father there.”

“Your mother was younger than Patrick?”

“She’s dead,” said Sebastian. “My father, too. My aunt Élodie brought me up.”

“Oh,” Clary said, feeling stupid. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remember them,” Sebastian said. “Not really. When I was younger, I wished I had an older sister or a brother, someone who could tell me what it was like having them as parents.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Can I ask you something, Clary? Why did you come to Idris at all when you knew how badly your brother would take it?”

Before she could answer him, they emerged from the narrow alley they’d been following into a familiar unlit courtyard, the disused well at its center gleaming in the moonlight. “Cistern Square,” Sebastian said, an unmistakable note of disappointment in his voice. “We got here faster than I thought we would.”

Clary glanced over the masonry bridge that spanned the nearby canal. She could see Amatis’s house in the distance. All the windows were lit. She sighed. “I can get back myself from here, thanks.”

“You don’t want me to walk you to the—”

“No. Not unless you want to get in trouble too.”

“You think I’d get in trouble? For being gentlemanly enough to walk you home?”

“No one’s supposed to know I’m in Alicante,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a secret. And no offense, but you’re a stranger.”

“I’d like not to be,” he said. “I’d like to get to know you better.” He was looking at her with a mixture of amusement and a certain shyness, as if he wasn’t sure how what he’d just said would be received.

“Sebastian,” she said, with a sudden feeling of overwhelming tiredness. “I’m glad you want to get to know me. But I just don’t have the energy to get to know you. Sorry.”

“I didn’t mean—”

But she was already walking away from him, toward the bridge. Halfway there she turned around and glanced back at Sebastian. He was looking oddly forlorn in a patch of moonlight, his dark hair falling over his face.

“Ragnor Fell,” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“You asked me why I came here even though I wasn’t supposed to,” Clary said. “My mother is sick. Really sick. Maybe dying. The only thing that can help her, the only person who can help her, is a warlock named Ragnor Fell. Only I have no idea where to find him.”

“Clary—”

She turned back toward the house. “Good night, Sebastian.”

It was harder climbing up the trellis than it had been climbing down. Clary’s boots slipped a number of times on the damp stone wall, and she was relieved when she finally hauled herself up over the sill of the window and half-jumped, half-fell into the bedroom.

Her euphoria was short-lived. No sooner had her boots hit the floor than a bright light flared up, a soft explosion that lit the room to a daylight brightness.

Amatis was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back very straight, a witchlight stone in her hand. It burned with a harsh light that did nothing to soften the hard planes of her face or the lines at the corners of her mouth. She stared at Clary in silence for several long moments. Finally she said, “In those clothes, you look just like Jocelyn.”

Clary scrambled to her feet. “I—I’m sorry,” she said. “About going out like that—”

Amatis closed her hand around the witchlight, snuffing its glow. Clary blinked in the sudden dimness. “Change out of that gear,” Amatis said, “and meet me downstairs in the kitchen. And don’t even think about sneaking back out through the window,” she added, “or the next time you return to this house, you’ll find it sealed against you.”

Swallowing hard, Clary nodded.

Amatis rose to her feet and left without another word. Quickly Clary shucked off her gear and dressed in her own clothes, which hung over the bedpost, now dry—her jeans were a little stiff, but it was nice to pull on her familiar T-shirt. Shaking her tangled hair back, she headed downstairs.

The last time she’d seen the lower floor of Amatis’s house, she’d been delirious and hallucinating. She remembered long corridors stretching out to infinity and a huge grandfather clock whose ticks had sounded like the beats of a dying heart. Now she found herself in a small, homely living room, with plain wooden furniture and a rag rug on the floor. The small size and bright colors reminded her a little of her own living room at home in Brooklyn. She crossed through in silence and entered the kitchen, where a fire burned in the grate and the room was full of warm yellow light. Amatis was sitting at the table. She had a blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders; it made her hair seem more gray.

“Hi.” Clary hovered in the doorway. She couldn’t tell if Amatis was angry or not.

“I suppose I hardly need to ask where you went,” Amatis said, without looking up from the table. “You went to see Jonathan, didn’t you? I suppose it was only to be expected. Perhaps if I’d ever had children of my own, I’d know when a child was lying to me. But I had so hoped that, this time at least, I wouldn’t completely disappoint my brother.”