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

"You want me to steal something from the Institute?" Clary said, surprised. Of all the favors she might have guessed the Queen would ask for, this one wasn’t high on the list.

"It is not theft," said the Queen, "to return an item to its rightful owners."

"And then you’ll find Jace for us?" said Clary. "And don’t say ‘perhaps.’ What will you do exactly?"

"I will assist you in finding him," said the Queen. "I give you my word that my help would be invaluable. I can tell you, for instance, why all of your tracking spells have been for naught. I can tell you in what city he is most likely to be found-"

"But the Clave questioned you," interrupted Simon. "How did you lie to them?"

"They never asked the correct questions."

"Why lie to them?" demanded Isabelle. "Where is your allegiance in all this?"

"I have none. Jonathan Morgenstern could be a powerful ally if I do not make him an enemy first. Why endanger him or earn his ire at no benefit to ourselves? The Fair Folk are an old people; we do not make hasty decisions but first wait to see in what direction the wind blows."

"But these rings mean enough to you that if we get them, you’ll risk making him angry?" Alec asked.

But the Queen only smiled, a lazy smile, ripe with promise. "I think that is quite enough for today," she said. "Return to me with the rings and we will speak again."

Clary hesitated, turning to look at Alec, and then Isabelle. "You’re all right with this? Stealing from the Institute?"

"If it means finding Jace," Isabelle said.

Alec nodded. "Whatever it takes."

Clary turned back to the Queen, who was watching her with an expectant gaze. "Then, I think we have ourselves a bargain."

The Queen stretched and gave a contented smile. "Fare thee well, little Shadowhunters. And a word of warning, though you have done nothing to deserve it. You might well consider the wisdom of this hunt for your friend. For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him."

It was nearly eleven when Alec reached the front door of Magnus’s apartment in Greenpoint. Isabelle had persuaded Alec to come to Taki’s for dinner with Clary and Simon, and though he had protested, he was glad he had. He had needed a few hours to settle his emotions after what had happened in the Seelie Court. He did not want Magnus to see how badly the Queen’s glamour had shaken him.

He no longer had to ring the bell for Magnus to buzz him upstairs. He had a key, a fact he was obscurely proud of. He unlocked the door and headed upstairs, passing Magnus’s first-floor neighbor as he did so. Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first-floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone’s belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I’M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors’ business than you wanted to.

Magnus’s door was cracked slightly open, and the sounds of music playing softly wafted out into the hall. Today it was Tchaikovsky. Alec felt his shoulders relax as the door of the apartment shut behind him. He could never be quite sure how the place was going to look-it was minimalist right now, with white couches, red stacking tables, and stark black-and-white photos of Paris on the walls-but it had begun to feel increasingly familiar, like home. It smelled like the things he associated with Magnus: ink, cologne, Lapsang Souchong tea, the burned-sugar smell of magic. He scooped up Chairman Meow, who was dozing on a windowsill, and made his way into the study.

Magnus looked up as Alec came in. He was wearing what for Magnus was a somber ensemble-jeans and a black T-shirt with rivets around the collar and cuffs. His black hair was down, messy and tangled as if he’d run his hands through it multiple times in annoyance, and his cat’s eyes were heavy-lidded with tiredness. He dropped his pen when Alec appeared, and grinned. "The Chairman likes you."

"He likes anyone who scratches behind his ears," Alec said, shifting the dozing cat so that his purring seemed to rumble through Alec’s chest.

Magnus leaned back in his chair, the muscles in his arms flexing as he yawned. The table was strewn with pieces of paper covered in small, cramped handwriting and drawings-the same pattern over and over, variations on the design that had been splattered across the floor of the rooftop from which Jace had disappeared. "How was the Seelie Queen?"

"Same as usual."

"Raging bitch, then?"

"Pretty much." Alec gave Magnus the condensed version of what had happened in the faerie court. He was good at that-keeping things short, not a word wasted. He never understood people who chattered on incessantly, or even Jace’s love of overcomplicated wordplay.

"I worry about Clary," said Magnus. "I worry she’s getting in over her little red head."

Alec set Chairman Meow down on the table, where he promptly curled up into a ball and went back to sleep. "She wants to find Jace. Can you blame her?"

Magnus’s eyes softened. He hooked a finger into the top of Alec’s jeans and pulled him closer. "Are you saying you’d do the same thing if it were me?"

Alec turned his face away, glancing at the paper Magnus had just set aside. "You looking at these again?"

Looking a little disappointed, Magnus let Alec go. "There’s got to be a key," he said. "To unlocking them. Some language I haven’t looked at yet. Something ancient. This is old black magic, very dark, not like anything I’ve ever seen before." He looked at the paper again, his head tilted to the side. "Can you hand me that snuffbox over there? The silver one, on the edge of the table."

Alec followed the line of Magnus’s gesture and saw a small silver box perched on the opposite side of the big wooden table. He reached over and picked it up. It was like a miniature metal chest set on small feet, with a curved top and the initials W.S. picked out in diamonds across the top.

W, he thought. Will?

Will, Magnus had said when Alec had asked him about the name Camille had taunted him with. Dear God, that was a long time ago.

Alec bit his lip. "What is this?"

"It’s a snuffbox," said Magnus, not looking up from his papers. "I told you."

"Snuff? As in snuffing people out?" Alec eyed it.

Magnus looked up and laughed. "As in tobacco. It was very popular around the seventeenth, eighteenth century. Now I use the box to keep odds and ends in."

He held out his hand, and Alec gave the box up. "Do you ever wonder," Alec began, and then started again. "Does it bother you that Camille’s out there somewhere? That she got away?" And that it was my fault? Alec thought but didn’t say. There was no need for Magnus to know.

"She’s always been out there somewhere," said Magnus. "I know the Clave isn’t terribly pleased, but I’m used to imagining her living her life, not contacting me. If it ever bothered me, it hasn’t in a long time."

"But you did love her. Once."

Magnus ran his fingers over the diamond insets in the snuffbox. "I thought I did."

"Does she still love you?"

"I don’t think so," Magnus said dryly. "She wasn’t very pleasant the last time I saw her. Of course that could be because I’ve got an eighteen-year-old boyfriend with a stamina rune and she doesn’t."

Alec sputtered. "As the person being objectified, I… object to that description of me."

"She always was the jealous type." Magnus grinned. He was awfully good at changing the subject, Alec thought. Magnus had made it clear that he didn’t like talking about his past love life, but somewhere during their conversation, Alec’s sense of familiarity and comfort, his feeling of being at home, had vanished. No matter how young Magnus looked-and right now, barefoot, with his hair sticking up, he looked about eighteen-uncrossable oceans of time divided them.

Magnus opened the box, took out some tacks, and used them to fix the paper he had been looking at to the table. When he glanced up and saw Alec’s expression, he did a double take. "Are you okay?"

Instead of replying, Alec reached down and took Magnus’s hands. Magnus let Alec pull him to his feet, a questioning look in his eyes. Before he could say anything, Alec drew him closer and kissed him. Magnus made a soft, pleased sound, and gripped the back of Alec’s shirt, rucking it up, his fingers cool on Alec’s spine. Alec leaned into him, pinning Magnus between the table and his own body. Not that Magnus seemed to mind.

"Come on," Alec said against Magnus’s ear. "It’s late. Let’s go to bed."

Magnus bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder at the papers on the table, his gaze fixed on ancient syllables in forgotten languages. "Why don’t you go on ahead?" he said. "I’ll join you-five minutes."

"Sure." Alec straightened up, knowing that when Magnus was deep in his studies, five minutes could easily become five hours. "I’ll see you there."

"Shhh."

Clary put her finger to her lips before motioning for Simon to go before her through the front door of Luke’s house. All the lights were off, and the living room was dark and silent. She shooed Simon toward her room and headed into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Halfway there she froze.

Her mother’s voice was audible down the hall. Clary could hear the strain in it. Just like losing Jace was Clary’s worst nightmare, she knew that her mother was living her worst nightmare too. Knowing that her son was alive and out there in the world, capable of anything, was ripping her apart from the inside out.

"But they cleared her, Jocelyn," Clary overheard Luke reply, his voice dipping in and out of a whisper. "There won’t be any punishment."

"All of it is my fault." Jocelyn sounded muffled, as if she had buried her head against Luke’s shoulder. "If I hadn’t brought that… creature into the world, Clary wouldn’t be going through this now."

"You couldn’t have known…" Luke’s voice faded off into a murmur, and though Clary knew he was right, she had a brief, guilty flash of rage against her mother. Jocelyn should have killed Sebastian in his crib before he’d ever had a chance to grow up and ruin all their lives, she thought, and was instantly horrified at herself for thinking it. She turned and swung back toward the other end of the house, darting into her bedroom and closing the door behind her as if she were being followed.

Simon, who had been sitting on the bed playing with his DS, looked up at her in surprise. "Everything okay?"

She tried to smile at him. He was a familiar sight in this room-they’d slept over at Luke’s often enough when they were growing up. She’d done what she could to make this room hers instead of a spare room. Photos of herself and Simon, the Lightwoods, herself with Jace and with her family, were stuck haphazardly into the frame of the mirror over the dresser. Luke had given her a drawing board, and her art supplies were sorted neatly into a stack of cubbyholes beside it. She had tacked up posters of her favorite animes: Fullmetal Alchemist, Rurouni Kenshin, Bleach.

Evidence of her Shadowhunter life lay scattered about as well-a fat copy of The Shadowhunter’s Codex with her notes and drawings scribbled into the margins, a shelf of books on the occult and paranormal, her stele atop her desk, and a new globe, given to her by Luke, that showed Idris, bordered in gold, in the center of Europe.

And Simon, sitting in the middle of her bed, cross-legged, was one of the few things that belonged both to her old life and her new one. He looked at her with his eyes dark in his pale face, the glimmer of the Mark of Cain barely visible on his forehead.

"My mom," she said, and leaned against the door. "She’s really not doing well."

"Isn’t she relieved? I mean about you being cleared?"

"She can’t get past thinking about Sebastian. She can’t get past blaming herself."

"It wasn’t her fault, the way he turned out. It was Valentine’s."

Clary said nothing. She was recalling the awful thing she had just thought, that her mother should have killed Sebastian when he was born.

"Both of you," said Simon, "blame yourselves for things that aren’t your fault. You blame yourself for leaving Jace on the roof-"

She jerked her head up and looked at him sharply. She wasn’t aware she’d ever said she blamed herself for that, though she did. "I never-"

"You do," he said. "But I left him, Izzy left him, Alec left him-and Alec’s his parabatai. There’s no way we could have known. And it might have been worse if you’d stayed."

"Maybe." Clary didn’t want to talk about it. Avoiding Simon’s gaze, she headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull on her fuzzy pajamas. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror. She hated how pale she looked, the shadows under her eyes. She was strong; she wasn’t going to fall apart. She had a plan. Even if it was a little insane, and involved robbing the Institute.