City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments #5)(10)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Clary looked at her curiously. "Who was the female warlock?"

"Jocelyn!" It was Luke calling from the kitchen. "The water’s boiling over!"

Jocelyn dropped a quick kiss on Clary’s head. "Sorry. Culinary emergency. See you in five?"

Clary nodded as her mother hurried from the room, then turned back to her desk. The rune she had been creating was still there, teasing the edge of her mind. She began to draw again, completing the design she had started. As she finished, she sat back and stared at what she’d made. It looked a little like the Opening rune but wasn’t. It was a pattern as simple as a cross and as new to the world as a just-born baby. It held a sleeping threat, a sense that it had been born out of her rage and guilt and impotent anger.

It was a powerful rune. But though she knew exactly what it meant and how it could be used, she couldn’t think of a single way in which it could possibly be helpful in the current situation. It was like having your car break down on a lonely road, rooting desperately around in the trunk, and triumphantly pulling out an electrical extension cord instead of jumper cables.

She felt as if her own power was laughing at her. With a curse, she dropped her pen onto the desk and put her face in her hands.

The inside of the old hospital had been carefully whitewashed, lending an eerie glow to each of the surfaces. Most of the windows were boarded up, but even in the dim light Maia’s enhanced sight could pick out details-the sifted dusting of plaster along the bare hallway floors, the marks where construction lights had been put in, bits of wiring glued to the walls by clumps of paint, mice scrabbling in the darkened corners.

A voice spoke from behind her. "I’ve searched the east wing. Nothing. What about you?"

Maia turned. Jordan stood behind her, wearing dark jeans and a black sweater half-zipped over a green T-shirt. She shook her head. "Nothing in the west wing either. Some pretty rickety staircases. Nice architectural detailing, if that sort of thing interests you."

He shook his head. "Let’s get out of here, then. This place gives me the creeps."

Maia agreed, relieved not to be the one who had to say it. She fell into step beside Jordan as they made their way down a set of stairs whose banister was so flaked with crumbling plaster that it resembled snow. She wasn’t sure why exactly she’d agreed to patrol with him, but she couldn’t deny that they made a decent team.

Jordan was easy to be with. Despite what had happened between them just before Jace had disappeared, he was respectful, keeping his distance without making her feel awkward. The moonlight was bright on both of them as they came out of the hospital and into the open space in front of it. It was a great white marble building whose boarded-over windows looked like blank eyes. A crooked tree, shedding its last leaves, hunched before the front doors.

"Well, that was a waste of time," said Jordan. Maia looked over at him. He was staring at the old naval hospital, which was how she preferred it. She liked looking at Jordan when he wasn’t looking at her. That way she could watch the angle of his jawline, the way his dark hair curled against the back of his neck, the curve of his collarbone under the V of his T-shirt, without feeling like he expected anything from her for looking.

He’d been a pretty hipster boy when she’d met him, all angles and eyelashes, but he was older-looking now, with scarred knuckles and muscles that moved smoothly under his close-fitting green T-shirt. He still had the olive tone to his skin that echoed his Italian heritage, and the hazel eyes she remembered, though they had the gold-ringed pupils of lycanthropy now. The same pupils she saw when she looked in the mirror every morning. The pupils she had because of him.

"Maia?" He was looking at her quizzically. "What do you think?"

"Oh." She blinked. "I, ah-No, I don’t think there was much point in searching the hospital. I mean, to be honest, I can’t see why they sent us down here at all. The Brooklyn Navy Yard? Why would Jace be here? It’s not like he had a thing for boats."

Jordan’s expression went from quizzical to something much darker. "When bodies wind up in the East River, a lot of times they wash up here. The navy yard."

"You think we’re looking for a body?"

"I don’t know." With a shrug he turned and started walking. His boots rustled in the dry, choppy grass. "Maybe at this point I’m just searching because it feels wrong to give up."

His pace was slow, unhurried; they walked shoulder to shoulder, nearly touching. Maia kept her eyes fixed on the Manhattan skyline across the river, a wash of brilliant white light reflecting in the water. As they neared the shallow Wallabout Bay, the arch of the Brooklyn Bridge came into view, and the lit-up rectangle of the South Street Seaport across the water. She could smell the polluted miasma of the water, the dirt and diesel of the navy yard, the scent of small animals moving in the grass.

"I don’t think Jace is dead," she said finally. "I think he doesn’t want to be found."

At that, Jordan did look at her. "Are you saying we shouldn’t be looking?"

"No." She hesitated. They had come out by the river, near a low wall; she trailed her hand along the top of it as they walked. There was a narrow strip of asphalt between them and the water. "When I ran away to New York, I didn’t want to be found. But I would have liked the idea that someone was looking for me as hard as everyone’s looking for Jace Lightwood."

"Did you like Jace?" Jordan’s voice was neutral.

"Like him? Well, not like that."

Jordan laughed. "I didn’t mean like that. Although, he seems to be generally considered stunningly attractive."

"Are you going to pull that straight-guy thing where you pretend that you can’t tell whether other guys are attractive or not? Jace, the hairy guy at the deli on Ninth, they all look the same to you?"

"Well, the hairy guy has that mole, so I think Jace comes out slightly ahead. If you like that whole chiseled, blond, Abercrombie-and-Fitch-wishes-they-could-afford-me thing." He looked at her through his eyelashes.

"I always liked dark-haired boys," she said in a low voice.

He looked at the river. "Like Simon."

"Well-yeah." Maia hadn’t thought about Simon that way in a while. "I guess so."

"And you like musicians." He reached up and pulled a leaf off a low-hanging branch overhead. "I mean, I’m a singer, and Bat was a DJ, and Simon-"

"I like music." Maia pushed her hair back from her face.

"What else do you like?" Jordan tore at the leaf in his fingers. He paused and hoisted himself up to sit on the low wall, swinging around to face her. "I mean, is there anything you like so much you think you might want to do it for, like, a living?"

She looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Do you remember when I got these?" He unzipped his sweater and shrugged it off. The shirt he wore underneath was short-sleeved. Wrapped around each of his biceps were the Sanskrit words of the Shanti Mantras. She remembered them well. Their friend Valerie had inked them, after hours, for free, in her tattoo shop in Red Bank. Maia took a step toward him. With him sitting and her standing, they were nearly eye to eye. She reached out and hesitantly ran her fingers around the letters inked on his left arm. His eyes fluttered shut at her touch.

"Lead us from the unreal to the real," she read aloud. "Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality." His skin felt smooth under her fingertips. "From the Upanishads."

"They were your idea. You were the one who was always reading. You were the one who knew everything…." He opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyes were shades lighter than the water behind him. "Maia, whatever you want to do, I’ll help you. I’ve saved up a lot of my salary from the Praetor. I could give it to you…. It could cover your tuition to Stanford. Well, most of it. If you still wanted to go."

"I don’t know," she said, her mind whirling. "When I joined the pack, I thought you couldn’t be a werewolf and anything else. I thought it was just about living in the pack, not really having an identity. I felt safer that way. But Luke, he has a life. He owns a bookstore. And you, you’re in the Praetor. I guess… you can be more than one thing."

"You always have been." His voice was low, throaty. "You know, what you said earlier-that when you ran away you would have liked to think someone was looking for you." He took a deep breath. "I was looking for you. I never stopped."

She met his hazel eyes. He didn’t move, but his hands, gripping his knees, were white-knuckled. Maia leaned forward, close enough to see the faint stubble along his jaw, to smell the scent of him, wolf-smell and toothpaste and boy. She placed her hands over his. "Well," she said. "You found me."

Their faces were only inches away from each other. She felt his breath against her lips before he kissed her, and she leaned into it, her eyes closing. His mouth was as soft as she remembered, his lips brushing hers gently, sending shivers all through her. She raised her arms to wind them around his neck, to slide her fingers under his curling dark hair, to lightly touch the bare skin at the nape of his neck, the edge of the worn collar of his shirt.

He pulled her closer. He was shaking. She felt the heat of his strong body against hers as his hands slid down her back. "Maia," he whispered. He started to lift the hem of her sweater, his fingers gripping the small of her back. His lips moved against hers. "I love you. I never stopped loving you."

You’re mine. You’ll always be mine.

Her heart hammering, she jerked away from him, pulling her sweater down. "Jordan-stop."

He looked at her, his expression dazed and worried. "I’m sorry. Was that not any good? I haven’t kissed anyone but you, not since…" He trailed off.

She shook her head. "No, it’s just-I can’t."

"All right," he said. He looked very vulnerable, sitting there, dismay written all over his face. "We don’t have to do anything-"

She groped for words. "It’s just too much."

"It was only a kiss."

"You said you loved me." Her voice shook. "You offered to give me your savings. I can’t take that from you."

"Which?" he said, hurt sparking in his voice. "My money, or the love part?"

"Either. I just can’t, okay? Not with you, not right now." She started to back away. He was staring after her, his lips parted. "Don’t follow me, please," she said, and turned to hurry back the way they had come.

5 : Valentine’s Son

She was dreaming of icy landscapes again. Bitter tundra that stretched in all directions, ice floes drifting out on the black waters of the Arctic sea, snow-capped mountains, and cities carved out of ice whose towers sparkled like the demon towers of Alicante.

In front of the frozen city was a frozen lake. Clary was skidding down a steep slope, trying to reach the lake, though she was not sure why. Two dark figures stood out in the center of the frozen water. As she neared the lake, skidding on the surface of the slope, her hands burning from contact with the ice, and snow filling her shoes, she saw that one was a boy with black wings that spread out from his back like a crow’s. His hair was as white as the ice all around them. Sebastian. And beside Sebastian was Jace, his gold hair the only color in the frozen landscape that was not black or white.

As Jace turned away from Sebastian and began to walk toward Clary, wings burst from his back, white-gold and shimmering. Clary slid the last few feet to the frozen surface of the lake and collapsed to her knees, exhausted. Her hands were blue and bleeding, her lips cracked, her lungs seared with each icy breath.

"Jace," she whispered.

And he was there, lifting her to her feet, his wings wrapping around her, and she was warm again, her body thawing from her heart down through her veins, bringing her hands and feet to life with half-painful, half-pleasurable tingles. "Clary," he said, stroking her hair tenderly. "Can you promise me that you won’t scream?"

Clary’s eyes opened. For a moment she was so disoriented that the world seemed to swing around her like the view from a moving carousel. She was in her bedroom at Luke’s-the familiar futon beneath her, the wardrobe with its cracked mirror, the strip of windows that looked out onto the East River, the radiator spitting and hissing. Dim light spilled through the windows, and a faint red glow came from the smoke alarm over the closet. Clary was lying on her side, under a heap of blankets, and her back was deliciously warm. An arm was draped along her side. For a moment, in the half-conscious dizzy space between waking and sleeping, she wondered if Simon had crawled in the window while she slept and lain down beside her, the way they used to sleep in the same bed together when they were children.

But Simon had no body heat.

Her heart skittered in her chest. Now entirely awake, she twisted around under the covers. Beside her was Jace, lying on his side, looking down at her, his head propped on his hand. Dim moonlight made a halo out of his hair, and his eyes glittered gold like a cat’s. He was fully dressed, still wearing the short-sleeved white T-shirt she had seen him in earlier that day, and his bare arms were twined with runes like climbing vines.