City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments #3)(8)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Luke caught her by the shoulders. “Clary, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She pointed. “There—look—”

But it was gone. The grass stretched out ahead of her, green and even, the white mausoleums neat and plain in their orderly rows.

She twisted to look up at him. “I saw my own gravestone,” she said. “It said I was going to die—now—this year.” She shuddered.

Luke looked grim. “It’s the lake water,” he said. “You’re starting to hallucinate. Come on—we haven’t got much time left.”

Jace marched Simon upstairs and down a short hallway lined with doors; he paused only to straight-arm one of them open, a scowl on his face. “In here,” he said, half-shoving Simon through the doorway. Simon saw what looked like a library inside: rows of bookshelves, long couches, and armchairs. “We should have some privacy—”

He broke off as a figure rose nervously from one of the armchairs. It was a little boy with brown hair and glasses. He had a small, serious face, and there was a book clutched in one of his hands. Simon was familiar enough with Clary’s reading habits to recognize it as a manga volume even at a distance.

Jace frowned. “Sorry, Max. We need the room. Grown-up talk.”

“But Izzy and Alec already kicked me out of the living room so they could have grown-up talk,” Max complained. “Where am I supposed to go?”

Jace shrugged. “Your room?” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Time to do your duty for your country, kiddo. Scram.”

Looking aggrieved, Max stalked past them both, his book clutched to his chest. Simon felt a twinge of sympathy—it sucked to be old enough to want to know what was going on, but so young you were always dismissed. The boy shot him a look as he went past—a scared, suspicious glance. That’s the vampire, his eyes said.

“Come on.” Jace hustled Simon into the room, shutting and locking the door behind them. With the door closed the room was so dimly lit even Simon found it dark. It smelled like dust. Jace walked across the floor and threw open the curtains at the far end of the room, revealing a tall, single-paned picture window that gave out onto a view of the canal just outside. Water splashed against the side of the house just a few feet below them, under stone railings carved with a weather-beaten design of runes and stars.

Jace turned to Simon with a scowl. “What the hell is your problem, vampire?”

“My problem? You’re the one who practically dragged me out of there by my hair.”

“Because you were about to tell them that Clary never canceled her plans to come to Idris. You know what would happen then? They’d contact her and arrange for her to come. And I already told you why that can’t happen.”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t get you,” he said. “Sometimes you act like all you care about is Clary, and then you act like—”

Jace stared at him. The air was full of dancing dust motes; they made a shimmering curtain between the two boys. “Act like what?”

“You were flirting with Aline,” Simon said. “It didn’t seem like all you cared about was Clary then.”

“That is so not your business,” Jace said. “And besides, Clary is my sister. You do know that.”

“I was there in the faerie court too,” Simon replied. “I remember what the Seelie Queen said. The kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires.”

“I bet you remember that. Burned into your brain, is it, vampire?”

Simon made a noise in the back of his throat that he hadn’t even realized he was capable of making. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not having this argument. I’m not fighting over Clary with you. It’s ridiculous.”

“Then why did you bring all this up?”

“Because,” Simon said. “If you want me to lie—not to Clary, but to all your Shadowhunter friends—if you want me to pretend that it was Clary’s own decision not to come here, and if you want me to pretend that I don’t know about her powers, or what she can really do, then you have to do something for me.”

“Fine,” Jace said. “What is it you want?”

Simon was silent for a moment, looking past Jace at the line of stone houses fronting the sparkling canal. Past their crenellated roofs he could see the gleaming tops of the demon towers. “I want you to do whatever you need to do to convince Clary that you don’t have feelings for her. And don’t—don’t tell me you’re her brother; I already know that. Stop stringing her along when you know that whatever you two have has no future. And I’m not saying this because I want her for myself. I’m saying it because I’m her friend and I don’t want her hurt.”

Jace looked down at his hands for a long moment without answering. They were thin hands, the fingers and knuckles scuffed with old calluses. The backs of them were laced with the thin white lines of old Marks. They were a soldier’s hands, not a teenage boy’s. “I’ve already done that,” he said. “I told her I was only interested in being her brother.”

“Oh.” Simon had expected Jace to fight him on this, to argue, not to just give up. A Jace who just gave up was new—and left Simon feeling almost ashamed for having asked. Clary never mentioned it to me, he wanted to say, but then why would she have? Come to think of it, she had seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn lately whenever Jace’s name had come up. “Well, that takes care of that, I guess. There’s one last thing.”

“Oh?” Jace spoke without much apparent interest. “And what’s that?”

“What was it Valentine said when Clary drew that rune on the ship? It sounded like a foreign language. Meme something—?”

“Mene mene tekel upharsin,” Jace said with a faint smile. “You don’t recognize it? It’s from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That’s your book, isn’t it?”

“Just because I’m Jewish doesn’t mean I’ve memorized the Old Testament.”

“It’s the Writing on the Wall. ‘God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ It’s a portent of doom—it means the end of an empire.”

“But what does that have to do with Valentine?”

“Not just Valentine,” said Jace. “All of us. The Clave and the Law—what Clary can do overturns everything they know to be true. No human being can create new runes, or draw the sort of runes Clary can. Only angels have that power. And since Clary can do that—well, it seems like a portent. Things are changing. The Laws are changing. The old ways may never be the right ways again. Just as the rebellion of the angels ended the world as it was—it split heaven in half and created hell—this could mean the end of the Nephilim as they currently exist. This is our war in heaven, vampire, and only one side can win it. And my father means it to be his.”

* * *

Though the air was still cold, Clary was boiling hot in her wet clothes. Sweat ran down her face in rivulets, dampening the collar of her coat as Luke, his hand on her arm, hurried her along the road under a rapidly darkening sky. They were within sight of Alicante now. The city was in a shallow valley, bisected by a silvery river that flowed into one end of the city, seemed to vanish, and flowed again out the other. A tumble of honey-colored buildings with red slate roofs and a tangle of steeply winding dark streets backed up against the side of a steep hill. On the crown of the hill rose a dark stone edifice, pillared and soaring, with a glittering tower at each cardinal direction point: four in all. Scattered among the other buildings were the same tall, thin, glasslike towers, each one shimmering like quartz. They were like glass needles piercing the sky. The fading sunlight struck dull rainbows from their surfaces like a match striking sparks. It was a beautiful sight, and very strange.

You have never seen a city until you have seen Alicante of the glass towers.

“What was that?” Luke said, overhearing. “What did you say?”

Clary hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. Embarrassed, she repeated her words, and Luke looked at her in surprise. “Where did you hear that?”

“Hodge,” Clary said. “It was something Hodge said to me.”

Luke peered at her more closely. “You’re flushed,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Clary’s neck was aching, her whole body on fire, her mouth dry. “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s just get there, okay?”

“Okay.” Luke pointed; at the edge of the city, where the buildings ended, Clary could see an archway, two sides curving to a pointed top. A Shadowhunter in black gear stood watch inside the shadow of the archway. “That’s the North Gate—it’s where Downworlders can legally enter the city, provided they’ve got the paperwork. Guards are posted there night and day. Now, if we were on official business, or had permission to be here, we’d go in through it.”

“But there aren’t any walls around the city,” Clary pointed out. “It doesn’t seem like much of a gate.”

“The wards are invisible, but they’re there. The demon towers control them. They have for a thousand years. You’ll feel it when you pass through them.” He glanced one more time at her flushed face, concern crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. They moved away from the gate, along the east side of the city, where buildings were more thickly clustered. With a gesture to be quiet, Luke drew her toward a narrow opening between two houses. Clary shut her eyes as they approached, almost as if she expected to be smacked in the face with an invisible wall as soon as they stepped onto the streets of Alicante. It wasn’t like that. She felt a sudden pressure, as if she were in an airplane that was dropping. Her ears popped—and then the feeling was gone, and she was standing in the alley between the buildings.

Just like an alley in New York—like every alley in the world, apparently—it smelled like cat pee.

Clary peered around the corner of one of the buildings. A larger street stretched away up the hill, lined with small shops and houses. “There’s no one around,” she observed, with some surprise.

In the fading light Luke looked gray. “There must be a meeting going on up at the Gard. It’s the only thing that could get everyone off the streets at once.”

“But isn’t that good? There’s no one around to see us.”

“It’s good and bad. The streets are mostly deserted, which is good. But anyone who does happen by will be much more likely to notice and remark on us.”

“I thought you said everyone was at the Gard.”

Luke smiled faintly. “Don’t be so literal, Clary. I meant most of the city. Children, teenagers, anyone exempted from the meeting, they won’t be there.”

Teenagers. Clary thought of Jace, and, despite herself, her pulse leaped forward like a horse charging out of the starting gate at a race.

Luke frowned, almost as if he could read her thoughts. “As of now, I’m breaking the Law by being in Alicante without declaring myself to the Clave at the gate. If anyone recognizes me, we could be in real trouble.” He glanced up at the narrow strip of russet sky visible between the rooftops. “We have to get off the streets.”

“I thought we were going to your friend’s house.”

“We are. And she’s not a friend, precisely.”

“Then who—?”

“Just follow me.” Luke ducked into a passage between two houses, so narrow that Clary could reach out and touch the walls of both houses with her fingers as they made their way down it and onto a cobblestoned winding street lined with shops. The buildings themselves looked like a cross between a Gothic dreamscape and a children’s fairy tale. The stone facings were carved with all manner of creatures out of myth and legend—the heads of monsters were a prominent feature, interspersed with winged horses, something that looked like a house on chicken legs, mermaids, and, of course, angels. Gargoyles jutted from every corner, their snarling faces contorted. And everywhere there were runes: splashed across doors, hidden in the design of an abstract carving, dangling from thin metal chains like wind chimes that twisted in the breeze. Runes for protection, for good luck, even for good business; staring at them all, Clary began to feel a little dizzy.

They walked in silence, keeping to the shadows. The cobblestone street was deserted, shop doors shut and barred. Clary cast furtive glances into the windows as they passed. It was strange to see a display of expensive decorated chocolates in one window and in the next an equally lavish display of deadly-looking weapons—cutlasses, maces, nail-studded cudgels, and an array of seraph blades in different sizes. “No guns,” she said. Her own voice sounded very far away.

Luke blinked at her. “What?”