City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments #5)(49)
Author: Cassandra Clare

He thought of Isabelle. Then of his family-his mother, his father, and Becky. Clary, he thought lastly. Wherever you are, you’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend.

He raised the spell book and began to chant.

"No!" Clary stood up, dropping the wet towel. "Jace, you can’t. They’ll kill you."

He reached for a fresh shirt and shrugged it on, not looking at her as he did up the buttons. "They’ll try to separate me from Sebastian first," he said, though he didn’t sound as if he quite believed it. "If that doesn’t work, then they’ll kill me."

"Not good enough." She reached for him, but he turned away from her, jamming his feet into boots. When he turned back, his expression was grim.

"I don’t have a choice, Clary. This is the right thing to do."

"It’s insane. You’re safe here. You can’t throw away your life-"

"Saving myself is treason. It’s putting a weapon into the hands of the enemy."

"Who cares about treason? Or the Law?" she demanded. "I care about you. We’ll figure this out together-"

"We can’t figure this out." Jace pocketed the stele on the nightstand, then caught up the Mortal Cup. "Because I’m only going to be me for a little while longer. I love you, Clary." He tilted her face up and kissed her, lingeringly. "Do this for me," he whispered.

"I absolutely will not," she said. "I will not try to help you get yourself killed."

But he was already striding toward the door. He drew her with him, and they stumbled down the corridor, speaking in whispers.

"This is crazy," Clary hissed. "Putting yourself in the path of danger-"

He blew out an exasperated breath. "As if you don’t."

"Right, and it makes you furious," she whispered as she raced after him down the staircase. "Remember what you said to me in Alicante-"

They had reached the kitchen. He put the Cup down on the counter, reaching for his stele. "I had no right to say that," he told her. "Clary, this is what we are. We’re Shadowhunters. This is what we do. There are risks we take that aren’t just the risks you find in battle."

Clary shook her head, clutching both his wrists. "I won’t let you."

A look of pain crossed his face. "Clarissa-"

She drew a deep breath, barely able to believe what she was about to do. But in her mind was the image of the morgue in the Silent City, of Shadowhunter bodies stretched out on marble slabs, and she could not bear for Jace to be one of them. Everything she had done-coming here, enduring everything she had endured, had been to save his life, and not just for herself. She thought of Alec and Isabelle, who had helped her, and Maryse, who loved him, and almost without knowing she was about to do it, she raised her voice and called out:

"Jonathan!" she screamed. "Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern!"

Jace’s eyes widened into circles. "Clary-" he began, but it was too late already. She had let go of him and was backing away. Sebastian might already be coming; there was no way to tell Jace that it wasn’t that she trusted Sebastian but that Sebastian was the only weapon she had at her disposal that could possibly make him stay.

There was a flash of movement, and Sebastian was there. He hadn’t bothered with running down the stairs, just flipped himself over the side and landed between them. His hair was sleep-mussed; he wore a dark T-shirt and black pants, and Clary wondered distractedly if he slept in his clothes. He glanced between Clary and Jace, his black eyes taking in the situation. "Lovers’ spat?" he inquired. Something glinted in his hand. A knife?

Clary’s voice shook. "His rune’s damaged. Here." She put her hand over her heart. "He’s trying to go back, to give himself up to the Clave-"

Sebastian’s hand shot out and grabbed the Cup out of Jace’s hand. He slammed it down on the kitchen counter. Jace, still white with shock, watched him; he didn’t move a muscle as Sebastian stepped close and took Jace by the front of the shirt. The top buttons on the shirt popped open, baring his collar, and Sebastian slashed the point of his stele across it, gashing an iratze into the skin. Jace bit down on his lip, his eyes full of hatred as Sebastian released him and took a step back, stele in hand.

"Honestly, Jace," he said. "The idea that you thought you could get away with something like this just knocks me out."

Jace’s hands tightened into fists as the iratze, black as charcoal, began to sink into his skin. His words were eked out, breathless: "Next time… you want to be knocked out… I’d be happy to help you. Maybe with a brick."

Sebastian made a tsk noise. "You’ll thank me later. Even you have to admit this death wish of yours is a little extreme."

Clary expected Jace to snap back at him again. But he didn’t. His gaze traveled slowly across Sebastian’s face. For that moment there was only the two of them in the room, and when Jace spoke, his words came cold and clear. "I won’t remember this later," he said. "But you will. That person who acts like your friend-" He took a step forward, closing the space between himself and Sebastian. "That person who acts like they like you. That person isn’t real. This is real. This is me. And I hate you. I will always hate you. And there is no magic and no spell in this world or any other that will ever change that."

For a moment the grin on Sebastian’s face wavered. But Jace didn’t. Instead, he tore his gaze from Sebastian and looked at Clary. "I need you to know," he said, "the truth-I didn’t tell you all the truth."

"The truth is dangerous," said Sebastian, holding the stele before him like a knife. "Be careful what you say."

Jace winced. His chest was rising and falling rapidly; it was clear that the healing of the rune on his chest was causing him physical pain. "The plan," he said. "To raise Lilith, to make a new Cup, to create a dark army-that wasn’t Sebastian’s plan. It was mine."

Clary froze. "What?"

"Sebastian knew what he wanted," said Jace. "But I figured out how he could do it. A new Mortal Cup-I gave him that idea." He jerked in pain; she could imagine what was happening under the cloth of his shirt: the skin knitting together, healing, Lilith’s rune whole and shining once again. "Or, should I say, he did. That thing that looks like me but isn’t? He’ll burn down the world if Sebastian wants him to, and laugh while he’s doing it. That’s what you’re saving, Clary. That. Don’t you understand? I’d rather be dead-"

His voice choked off as he doubled over. The muscles in his shoulders tightened as ripples of what looked like pain went through him. Clary remembered holding him in the Silent City as the Brothers rooted through his mind for answers-Now he looked up, his expression bewildered.

His eyes shifted first not to her but to Sebastian. She felt her heart plummet, though she knew this was only her own doing.

"What’s going on?" Jace said.

Sebastian grinned at him. "Welcome back."

Jace blinked, looking momentarily confused-and then his gaze seemed to slide inward, the way it did whenever Clary tried to bring up something that he couldn’t process-Max’s murder, the war in Alicante, the pain he was causing his family.

"Is it time?" he said.

Sebastian made a show of looking at his watch. "Just about. Why don’t you go on ahead and we’ll follow? You can start getting things ready."

Jace glanced around. "The Cup-where is it?"

Sebastian took it off the kitchen counter. "Right here. Feeling a little absentminded?"

Jace’s mouth curled at the corner, and he grabbed the Cup back. Good-naturedly. There was no sign of the boy who had stood in front of Sebastian moments ago and told him he hated him. "All right. I’ll meet you there." He turned to Clary, who was still frozen in shock, and kissed her cheek. "And you."

He drew back and winked at her. There was affection in his eyes, but it didn’t matter. This was not her Jace, very clearly not her Jace, and she watched numbly as he crossed the room. His stele flashed, and a door opened in the wall; she caught a glimpse of sky and rocky plain, and then he stepped through it and was gone.

She dug her nails into her palms.

That thing that looks like me but isn’t? He’ll burn down the world if Sebastian wants him to, and laugh while he’s doing it. That’s what you’re saving, Clary. That. Don’t you understand? I’d rather be dead.

Tears burned at the back of her throat, and it was all she could do to hold them off as her brother turned to her, his black eyes very bright. "You called for me," he said.

"He wanted to give himself up to the Clave," she whispered, not sure who she was defending herself to. She had done what she’d had to, used the only weapon at hand, even if it was one she despised. "They would have killed him."

"You called for me," he said again, and took a step toward her. He reached out and lifted a long lock of her hair away from her face, tucking it back behind her ear. "He told you, then? The plan? All of it?"

She fought back a shiver of revulsion. "Not all of it. I don’t know what’s happening tonight. What did Jace mean ‘It’s time’?"

He leaned down and kissed her forehead; she felt the kiss burn, like a brand between her eyes. "You’ll find out," he said. "You’ve earned the right to be there, Clarissa. You can watch it all from your place at my side, tonight, at the Seventh Sacred Site. Both of Valentine’s children, together… at last."

Simon kept his eyes on the paper, chanting out the words Magnus had written for him. They had a rhythm to them that was like music, light and sharp and fine. He was reminded of reading aloud his haftarah portion during his bar mitzvah, though he had known what the words meant then, and now he didn’t.

As the chant went on, he felt a tightening around him, as if the air were becoming denser and heavier. It pressed down on his chest and shoulders. The air was growing warmer as well. If he were human, the heat might have been unbearable. As it was, he could feel the burn of it on his skin, singeing his eyelashes, his shirt. He kept his eyes fixed on the paper in front of him as a bead of blood ran from his hairline to drip onto the paper.

And then he was done. The last of the words-"Raziel"-was spoken, and he lifted his head. He could feel blood running down his face. The haze around him had cleared, and in front of him he saw the water of the lake, blue and sparkling, as untroubled as glass.

And then it exploded.

The center of the lake turned gold, then black. Water rushed away from it, pouring toward the edges of the lake, flying into the air until Simon was staring at a ring of water, like a circle of unbroken waterfalls, all shimmering and pouring upward and downward, the effect bizarre and strangely beautiful. Water droplets shivered down onto him, cooling his burning skin. He tipped his head back, just as the sky went black-all the blue of it gone, eaten up in a sudden shock of darkness and clamoring gray clouds. The water splashed back down into the lake, and from its center, the greatest density of its silver, rose a figure all of gold.

Simon’s mouth went dry. He had seen countless paintings of angels, believed in them, had heard Magnus’s warning. And still he felt as if he had been struck through with a spear as before him a pair of wings unfolded. They seemed to span the sky. They were vast, white and gold and silver, the feathers of them set with burning golden eyes. The eyes regarded him with scorn. Then the wings lifted, scattering clouds before them, and folded back, and a man-or the shape of a man, towering and many stories tall, unfolded itself and rose.

Simon’s teeth had started to chatter. He wasn’t sure why. But waves of power, of something more than power-of the elemental force of the universe-seemed to roll off the Angel as he rose to his full height. Simon’s first and rather bizarre thought was that it looked as if someone had taken Jace and blown him up to the size of a billboard. Only he didn’t quite look like Jace at all. He was gold all over, from his wings to his skin to his eyes, which had no whites at all, only a sheen of gold like a membrane. His hair was gold and looked cut from pieces of metal that curled like wrought ironwork. He was alien and terrifying. Too much of anything could destroy you, Simon thought. Too much darkness could kill, but too much light could blind.

Who dares to summon me? The Angel spoke in Simon’s mind, in a voice like great bells sounding.

Tricky question, Simon thought. If he were Jace, he could say "one of the Nephilim," and if he were Magnus, he could say he was one of Lilith’s children and a High Warlock. Clary and the Angel had already met, so he supposed they’d just chum it up. But he was Simon, without any titles to his name or any great deeds in his past. "Simon Lewis," he said finally, setting the spell book down and straightening up. "Night’s Child, and… your servant."

My servant? Raziel’s voice was frozen with icy disapproval. You summon me like a dog and dare to call yourself my servant? You shall be blasted from this world, that your fate may serve as a warning to others not to do likewise. It is forbidden for my own Nephilim to summon me. Why should it be different for you, Daylighter?

Simon supposed he should not be shocked that the Angel knew what he was, but it was startling nevertheless, as startling as the Angel’s size. Somehow he had thought Raziel would be more human. "I-"