Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

  “What is this secret you want to know about?” Lily asked Jem.

  “Lily, it’s a secret,” Alec said reprovingly.

  There were crickets chirping in an odd beautiful melody beyond the walls.

  “I trust you both,” Jem said slowly. “You came here to help us. I trust this will go no further. I’m looking for someone who needs my help. There’s a hidden line of Shadowhunters I became aware of in the 1930s.”

  Lily shook her head. “The 1930s were such a disappointment. Every year, they insisted on not being the 1920s.”

  Will had died in the 1930s, and Tessa had been in agony. Jem had not liked the 1930s much either.

  “This family has been hunted for decades,” said Jem. “I don’t know why. I learned how they split off from the Nephilim, but I still didn’t know why faeries are hunting them. I met one of them, but she refused my help and ran away. Since then, I have looked for them, and friends I trust have asked discreetly around the Shadow Markets. The year I met you there, Lily, I was searching for Ragnor Fell, to find out what he could tell me. I want to know why they are being hunted, so that I can help them. Whoever their enemies are, they are mine, too.”

  Because the Carstairs owe the Herondales.

  “I asked in the Spiral Labyrinth as well,” said Tessa. “There was never any word. Until suddenly we heard that someone was telling stories to the children of this Market, stories of love and revenge and misery. We heard a whisper of the name Herondale.”

  She said the name that had once been hers very softly. Alec jumped as if someone had shouted it in his ear.

  Neither Jem nor Tessa mentioned Catarina Loss, who had carried the first lost Herondale child over the seas and raised him on strange shores. That wasn’t their secret to tell. Jem trusted Alec, but he was still a Shadowhunter, and his father was the Inquisitor. Jem and Tessa were both well aware of the sentence the Law would pass on Catarina for her act of love and mercy.

  “I’ll ask Juliette,” said Alec. “I’ll find out whatever I can. I won’t go home until I’ve helped you.”

  “Thank you,” Jem said.

  “Now Rafael has to go to bed,” said Alec.

  “We have a nice little room for you,” Tessa told Rafael in Spanish, her voice soft and encouraging. Rafael shook his head. “Do you not want to be alone?” Tessa asked. “That’s fine too. You can sleep with me and Jem.”

  When Tessa reached out her hands, Rafael turned his face into Alec’s bicep and screamed. Tessa drew back at the long mutinous howl. Alec automatically put his arm around the child.

  “Lily’s vulnerable during the day,” he said. “I’d rather stay with her. Will you be all right in the windowless room, Rafael?”

  Lily translated. Rafael nodded emphatically.

  Jem showed them the way. At the door, he caught Alec’s arm before he could follow Lily and Rafael.

  “I appreciate this,” said Jem. “I truly do. Please don’t tell Jace yet.”

  Jem still thought about Jace, that fierce helpless child he’d met on a dark sea, and the young man burning with heavenly fire. He’d imagined a hundred scenarios where he did better by Jace. If he’d been the Silent Brother who cared for Jace after his father left him, if he’d spent more time with Jace, if Jace had been just slightly older, the age Will had been when Jem first met him . . . maybe Jem would have known.

  But what could he have done for Jace, even if he had known?

  “I don’t want Jace to think he has family somewhere he won’t get to know,” said Jem. “Blood is not love, but it offers a chance for love. He never had the chance to know Céline Montclaire or Stephen Herondale. I don’t want him to feel he is missing another chance.”

  Jace was happy in New York, though Jem had not helped him be so. He had his love and his parabatai and his Institute. If Jem couldn’t help him, at least he did not want to hurt him.

  Jem still thought about Céline Montclaire, too. If he hadn’t been a Silent Brother, with his heart turning to stone in his breast, perhaps he would have understood how much trouble she was in. Perhaps he could have found a way to help her.

  He didn’t call Céline Jace’s mother, because Jem had seen how Jace looked at Maryse Lightwood. Maryse was Jace’s mother.

  Many years ago, when Jem was still a child, his uncle Elias had come to the London Institute and offered to take him away. “After all,” he’d said, “we are family.”

  “You should go,” Will had said stormily to Jem. “I don’t care.”

  Will had slammed the door on his way out, declaring he was off on a wild adventure. After Elias departed, Jem had found Will sitting in the dark in the music room, staring at Jem’s violin. He’d sat down on the floor beside Will.

  “Entreat me not to leave thee, idiot,” Jem had said, and Will had put his head down on Jem’s shoulder. Jem had felt him trembling with the effort not to laugh or cry, and known Will wanted to do both.

  Blood was not love.

  But Jem didn’t forget that Céline had never had the chance to be Jace’s mother. Life was full of broken hearts and missed chances, but Jem could try to redress some of the wrong done Céline by the world. He could do his best for Jace.

  Alec was studying Jem intently.

  “I won’t tell Jace,” he said. “Not yet. Not if you tell him soon.”

  “I hope I will,” said Jem.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Alec abruptly. “The Buenos Aires Institute is corrupted, and the Cold Peace is fraying our bonds with Downworlders. You could do a lot of good, if you were with us. Why did you stop being a Shadowhunter?”

  “I am with you,” said Jem. “Do I have to be a Shadowhunter to be that?”

  “No,” said Alec. “But I don’t understand—why you don’t want to be one anymore.”

  “Don’t you?” Jem asked. “You have a parabatai. Once, so did I. Can you imagine fighting without him?”

  Alec was holding on to the doorframe, and as Jem watched, his knuckles went white.

  “I have Tessa, so I have more joy every day than some do in their whole lives. Far more than I deserve. I have seen the world with my wife by my side, and we have our tasks to make life meaningful. We all have different ways to serve. She has the secrets from the Spiral Labyrinth, and I those of the Silent Brothers, and we have combined our knowledge and saved lives that I believe couldn’t have been saved by any other means. I do want to help, and I will. But not as a Shadowhunter. I will never be that again.”

  Alec looked at Jem, those blue eyes wide and sorrowful. He looked like Will, but he wasn’t Will, any more than Jace was. None of them could ever be Will.

  “When you fight, you should fight with your whole heart,” said Jem softly. “I don’t have the heart for life among the Nephilim, for that particular fight, not any longer. Too much of my heart is in a grave.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alec said awkwardly. “I do understand.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Jem told him.

  He went back to his room, where Tessa was waiting, a book open in her lap. She looked up when he came in, and she smiled. There was no smile like hers in the world.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  He looked down at her and said, “Yes.”

  Tessa shut her book and reached up to him. She was kneeling on the bed and he was standing beside it, and the world was filled with missed chances and heartbreak, but then there was Tessa.

  Tessa kissed him, and he felt her grin against his mouth. “Brother Snackariah,” she murmured. “Come here.”

  * * *

  The room might be windowless, but there was a brown jar crowded with red flowers on the table, and two white single beds. Lily had tossed her leather jacket onto the bed closest to the wall.

  Rafael was sitting on the other bed, turning over a metallic object thoughtfully in his hands. Alec suddenly understood why he had agreed to be carried.

  “What’s that you have there, sweetie?” Lily asked as Alec came in.
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  “What he has is my phone,” said Alec. “Which he stole.”

  In Rafael’s hands, Alec’s phone buzzed. Alec reached for it, but Rafael moved casually out of reach. He didn’t seem terribly concerned that Alec had grabbed for him. He was staring at the phone.

  Alec reached for the phone again, then stopped, caught off guard. As Rafael studied the phone, the sullen line of his mouth twitched, then slowly curved into a smile. The smile, slow and warm and sweet, altered his whole face.

  Alec’s hand dropped. Rafael turned a suddenly bright countenance up to him and chirped a question. Even his voice sounded different when he was happy.

  “I don’t understand you,” Alec said helplessly.

  Rafael waved the phone in Alec’s face to illustrate his point. Alec looked at the screen and kept looking. He’d had a sick unsteady feeling in his chest since he realized what the Shadowhunters might be doing here, but the world felt steady again now.

  Magnus had sent a photo with the caption BLUEBIRD AND I HOME FROM A WILD AND DANGEROUS MISSION WITH A SWING SET.

  Magnus was leaning against their front door. Max was laughing, all dimples, the way he did whenever Magnus did magic to amuse him. There were blue and golden lights streaming all around them, and huge iridescent bubbles that seemed made of light too. Magnus was smiling a small fond smile, the black spikes of his hair wreathed with radiant ribbons of magic.

  Alec had asked Magnus to send him pictures whenever he was away, after their first mission when Max was a baby. To remind Alec what he was fighting for.

  Lily cleared her throat. “The kid asked: ‘Who is that cool man?’ ”

  “Oh,” said Alec, kneeling by the bed. “Oh, that’s—that’s Magnus. His name is Magnus Bane. He’s my—I’m his—he and I are going to get married.”

  One day they would.

  Alec wasn’t sure why it felt important to tell this child.

  Lily translated. Rafael looked from the phone to Alec’s face, then back again, his brow furrowed in clear surprise. Alec waited, and listened apprehensively as Rafael said something Alec couldn’t understand. He’d heard kids say terrible things before now. Adults poured poison in their minds, and then it came out of their mouths.

  Lily laughed.

  “He said,” she reported with unholy joy, “ ‘What is that cool man doing with you?’ ”

  Alec said, “Rafael, give me back my phone.”

  “Let him have it for a bit while he goes to sleep,” said Lily, who was one of the reasons Max was spoiled.

  Alec glanced over and found Lily wearing an unusually serious look.

  “Come here to me a minute,” she said. “I promised to tell you why I didn’t want you to go near that faerie woman at the Shadow Market. I have a story I want you to hear, that I think might help Jem. I don’t want to tell anybody but you.”

  Alec let Rafael keep the phone. In return, Rafael let Alec tuck him into bed. Alec took the chair by the door and placed it by Lily’s bed. They waited until Rafael’s eyes fell shut, with Alec’s phone on the pillow beside him.

  Lily studied the striped pillow on her bed as if it were fascinating.

  “Are you hungry?” Alec asked at last. “If you—need blood, you can take mine.”

  Lily glanced up, her face startled. “No. I don’t want that. You’re not for that.”

  Alec tried not to show how relieved he was. Lily looked back down at the pillow and squared her shoulders.

  “Remember when you asked me if I was a jazz baby, and I said to call me the jazz baby?”

  “I’m still not going to do that.”

  “I still think you should,” Lily argued. “But that’s . . . not what I meant. The 1920s were my favorite decade, but . . . I may have been misleading you about my age.” She grinned. “It’s a lady’s prerogative.”

  “Okay,” Alec said, not sure where this was going. “So—how old are you, then?”

  “I was born in 1885,” said Lily. “I think. My mother was a Japanese peasant girl, and she was—sold to my father, a rich Chinese merchant.”

  “Sold!” said Alec. “That’s not—”

  “It wasn’t legal,” Lily said in a tight voice. “But it happened. They lived together for a few years, in Hong Kong, where he worked. I was born there. My mother thought my father would take us back home with him. She taught me to speak the way he would want and dress the way he would want, like a Chinese lady. She loved him. He got tired of her. He left, and before he left, he sold us off. I grew up in a place called the House of Eternal Pearl.”

  She looked up from the pillow.

  “I don’t have to tell you, do I?” she asked. “What kind of place it was, where women were sold, and men came and went?”

  “Lily,” Alec breathed, in horror.

  Lily shook her black-and-pink head defiantly. “They called it the House of Eternal Pearl because—some men want women to be young and beautiful forever. Pearls are created from a center of dirt that can’t be washed away. In the cellar without windows, in the heart of that house, were chained women. Those women were cold and lovely forever. They would never age and would do anything for blood. They were for the richest men, they fetched the highest prices, and they had to be fed. My mother grew too old, so they fed her to the vampires. And that night, I crept down and I made a deal with one of them. I promised if she Turned me, I’d free us all. She kept her side of the bargain, but I didn’t keep mine.” Lily studied the toes of her pointed boots. “I woke up and killed a lot of people. I don’t mean that I drank from somebody, though I did that, too. I burned the place to the ground. Nobody got out, not the men, not the women. Nobody but me. I didn’t care about anybody but myself.”

  Alec moved his chair closer to her, but Lily drew her legs up onto the bed, making herself as small as possible.

  “Nobody knows all that,” she said. “A few people know a little. Magnus knows I wasn’t made in the 1920s, but he could tell that I didn’t want to say. He never asked for any of my secrets.”

  “No,” said Alec. “He wouldn’t.”

  Magnus knew all about painful secrets. Alec had learned.

  “Raphael bribed somebody to find out,” said Lily. “I don’t know who, or how much he paid. He could have asked me, but he wasn’t like that. I only knew that he knew because he was sweet to me for a few nights. In his way. We never talked about it. I’ve never told anybody. Not until you.”

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Alec promised.

  The corner of Lily’s mouth lifted. “I know you won’t, Alec.”

  Some of the tension went out of her thin shoulders.

  “I told you so you’d understand what happened next,” she said. “I couldn’t stay in Hong Kong. I came to London, I think it was 1903, and I met Shadowhunters for the first time.”

  “Shadowhunters!” said Alec.

  He understood why Downworlders said the word with fear sometimes. Already he couldn’t bear what had happened to Lily. He didn’t want to hear about Shadowhunters doing anything worse to his friend.

  But Lily was smiling now, just a little. “I noticed one in particular, a girl with hair the color of blood in shadows. I barely knew what Shadowhunters were, but she was brave and kind. She protected people. Her name was Cordelia Carstairs. I asked around about Shadowhunters. I heard about a faerie woman with a grudge against all Shadowhunters, particularly against one family. We saw her at the Shadow Market tonight. Tell Jem to ask the woman with dandelion hair about the Herondales. She knows something.”

  Lily fell silent. Alec knew he had to say something, but he didn’t know how. “Thanks, Lily,” he said at last. “Not for the information. Thanks for telling me.”

  Lily smiled, as though she didn’t think what Alec had said was too dumb. “After London I traveled on and met Camille Belcourt in Russia. Camille was fun. She was bright and heartless and hard to hurt. I wanted to be like her. When Camille traveled to New York and became head of the vampire clan there, I went with her.”
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br />   Lily bowed her head. After a long moment sunk in memory, she looked up.

  “Want to know something dumb? When Camille and I reached New York after the Great War,” she said brightly, “I looked around for Shadowhunters. Wasn’t that stupid? Most Shadowhunters are not like you or Jem or Cordelia. I encountered Nephilim who made it very clear the angelic warriors were not sent to shield a creature like me. I didn’t care about anybody, and nobody cared about me, and that was how it was, for decades and decades. It was really fun.”

  “Was it?” Alec asked.

  He kept his voice noncommittal. She sounded so brittle.

  “The twenties in New York were the brightest time for both of us, when the whole world seemed as frenzied as we were. Decades later Camille was still trying to replicate them, and so was I, but even I thought Camille went too far sometimes. There was an emptiness in her she was always trying to fill. She’d permit her vampires to do anything. Once, in the 1950s, she let a very old vampire called Louis Karnstein stay at the hotel. He preyed on children. I thought he was disgusting, but I didn’t care much. I was very good at not caring by then.”

  Lily shrugged and laughed. The sound was not convincing.

  “Maybe I hoped the Shadowhunters would come, but they didn’t. Someone else came instead. A pack of scruffy mundane boys who wanted to defend their streets from the monster. They all died, except one. He always did what he set out to do. He killed the monster. He was my Raphael.”

  Lily stroked the leather jacket where it lay in a heap on her bed.

  “Before he killed the monster, Raphael was made into a vampire himself. Your Magnus came to Raphael’s aid, but I didn’t. Raphael could have died then, and I would never have even known. I met Raphael later. He came upon a bunch of us feeding in an alley and gave us a terrible lecture. He was so solemn, I thought he was funny. I didn’t take him seriously at all. But when he came to live at the hotel, I was pleased. Because hey, it seemed like more fun. Who doesn’t want more fun? There was nothing else in the world.”

  Magnus had told Alec this story, though Magnus had never painted himself as anyone’s savior. It was strange to hear it from Lily, and stranger to hear knowing how the story ended.