Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

  “For doing this to you,” he said.

  “Oh, Ty,” she said. “I would have done it for you. It isn’t a thing that should be done, but I would have done it anyway. And so we would be in just the same mess we’re in now. Besides, I think I’m getting the hang of this ghost thing.”

  Ty nodded. He turned the necklace over and over in his hand, then held it out, dangling the heron over the bed so that the sunlight caught the silver, and Irene batted it with her paw. Livvy thought of Kit sitting at the table in the kitchen, so carefully not asking her anything about Ty.

  She reached over and caught the chain in her hand. Gently untangled it from Irene’s sharp claws. Holding the necklace still, Livvy said, “This belonged to Kit. You’ll have to write him. To say thank you. You’ll write him and give the letter to Magnus to take back when he goes.”

  “Okay,” Ty said at last. “But he won’t write back.”

  “Then you’ll keep on writing until he does,” Livvy said. “Necromancy is bad. We’re all agreed on that. But postcards are pretty harmless. You know. Something scenic on the front.” Dimmet Tarn flashed in front of her. That black nothingness. “Wish you were here. That kind of thing.”

  She held the chain tighter. Rubbed the small links between her fingers. Maybe that was her future. Black nothingness. But right now she had Ty. She could choose the path that led away from Dimmet Tarn for as long as she could. She had an anchor. She would hold on as tightly as she could.

  Forever Fallen

  By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan

  Awake, arise! Or be forever fallen.

  —Milton

  New York, 2013

  Jem Carstairs and Kit Herondale came through the Portal together, from the black midnight velvet of the English woods into the orange-starred deep blue of a New York street in the evening. Kit eyed the silver stream of honking cars with the same expression he’d worn since Jem suggested going: a mixture of excitement and nerves.

  “They didn’t, uh, exactly welcome me at the L.A. Shadow Market the last few times I went,” Kit said. “You’re sure this will be okay?”

  “I am,” Jem assured him.

  The yellow and red lights of cars played over the intricate scrollwork and arched windows of the abandoned theater. The Shadow Market on Canal Street was much like he remembered it from a decade ago and more, though Jem himself was so different. To a mundane, steel shutters and boards covered the entrance. To Jem and Kit, they were silver and wood beads, a curtain that chimed a song as they passed through.

  A warlock woman paused when she saw them.

  “Hello, Hypatia,” said Jem. “I think you know Kit?”

  “I know that two Shadowhunters make even more trouble than one,” said Hypatia.

  She rolled her starry eyes and passed on, but a werewolf Jem knew from the Paris Shadow Market stopped and chatted with them for a moment. He said it was a pleasure to meet Kit, and always a pleasure to see Jem.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” he added.

  Jem glowed. “Thank you.”

  Jem had been surprised to find that he was welcome in most Shadow Markets now. He had been to many, over the years, and quite a few of the vendors and attendants were immortal. People remembered him, and after a time, they had stopped fearing him. He hadn’t even realized it, but he had become a familiar sight, his visits marking a Market night as lucky: he was the only Silent Brother most of them had ever seen. The first time he’d gone to a Shadow Market once he was no longer a Silent Brother, hand in hand with a warlock woman, seemed to confirm the Shadow Market people’s opinion that he was close to being one of their own. Showing up with Kit, who had basically grown up in the Shadow Market in Los Angeles, pretty much cemented that.

  “You see?” Jem murmured. “No problem.”

  Kit’s shoulders were relaxing and his blue eyes beginning to shine with a familiar wicked gleam. He pointed out several interesting features of the Market that Jem was already aware of, a Market boy showing off, and Jem smiled and encouraged him to keep talking.

  “They do it with magic mirrors,” Kit whispered in Jem’s ear when they stopped to see two mermaids doing tricks in a tank.

  The mermaid glared at Kit, and Kit laughed. They stopped at a stall to buy candied moonflowers, since Kit had a fiendish sweet tooth.

  “I know you,” said the faerie vendor. “Aren’t you Johnny Rook’s boy?”

  Kit’s smile died a swift death. “Not anymore.”

  “Whose are you now?”

  “Nobody’s,” Kit answered quietly.

  The faerie vendor blinked, a second eyelid sliding in sideways and making the blink rather impressive. Jem reached out to touch Kit’s shoulder, but Kit was already moving on, browsing the sweets as if he found them deeply fascinating.

  Jem cleared his throat. “I hear there is a special stall run by warlocks and faeries, offering potions and illusions? My friend Shade told me of it.”

  She nodded understanding and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

  The stall devoted to the faerie-and-warlock joint venture was a carved wooden caravan parked in an antechamber of the Canal Street building. The caravan was painted bright blue and adorned with paintings that moved: as Jem and Kit approached, birds took flight from several gilded cages and soared free over the bright-blue painted sky.

  The faerie woman had mushrooms growing in her hair, and ribbons looped around them. She seemed very young, and enthusiastic about selling Jem the medicine he asked for. Jem lifted the porcelain lid to examine its contents carefully and apologized for doing so.

  She waved this off. “Perfectly understandable, considering what it’s for. Lovely to meet you properly at last. Any friend of Shade’s. Such a distinguished gentleman. Perhaps it’s the Irish in me, but I do love a fellow in green.”

  Kit became overwhelmed by a fit of coughing. Jem smiled discreetly and patted him on the back.

  “Also . . . ,” the faerie said in a rush. “I saw you once, about eight years ago, when you were still . . . I only got one glimpse, but you seemed so hauntingly sad. And so hauntingly attractive.”

  “Thank you,” said Jem. “I’m very happy now. Your cough seems to be getting worse, Kit. Do you need medicine as well?”

  Kit straightened up. “Nope, I’m good. Come on, Brother Hauntingly Attractive.”

  “There’s no need to mention this to Tessa.”

  “And yet,” said Kit, “I’m gonna.”

  “Congratulations!” the faerie woman yelled after Jem.

  All of his knowledge as a Silent Brother told him the potion was harmless and would do its work. Jem offered another smile over his shoulder to the woman and let Kit pull him toward the row of stalls in the next room across the way. The Market was growing more crowded, so crowded that all the faeries who could take wing were flying overhead. One was being pursued by a werewolf, who was yelling that the faerie had unfairly snatched the last hat in her size. The fleeing faerie’s winged shadow darkened a golden head and broad shoulders that struck Jem as familiar.

  “Isn’t that Jace? I think that’s—” Jem began, turning to Kit. Then he saw Kit’s face was white.

  Kit was staring over at a tall boy with dark hair and headphones, browsing through a stall and running his fingers through the dried herbs. Jem laid his hand on Kit’s shoulder. Kit seemed oblivious, rooted to the spot, until the boy turned around and had blue eyes and a crooked nose, and was not Ty Blackthorn.

  “I have what we came for,” Jem said. He spoke with his usual, and carefully cultivated, calm. “Shall we go, or do you want to look around? We can do whatever you want.”

  Kit’s jaw was still set. Jem knew that look. Herondales were always flames, he thought. They loved and suffered as if they would burn away with the sheer force of their own fire.

  “Let’s go home,” Kit mumbled.

  In spite of his slight disappointment, Jem found himself smiling. It was the first time Kit had called their house that.

 
; * * *

  The man, who had never had the chance to be Jace Herondale and who was no longer Jace at all, was starting to think that coming here had been a bad idea.

  The Seelie Queen had been the one to insist he should have a new name, when he made his way to Faerie wanting protection for Ash and help with his plans. The Queen had answered all his questions about Clary, but her help hadn’t come free. Royalty tended to make demands.

  “I’m accustomed to the other Jace,” she said with a regal sneer. “Though I admit, not overly fond. What else can we call you?”

  Jonathan, he’d thought first, and flinched at even the thought of that name, which had surprised him. He hadn’t done much flinching in Thule.

  “Janus,” he’d told the Queen. “The god with two faces. The god of endings and beginnings, and passages between strange doorways.”

  “The god?” the Queen repeated.

  “My father gave me a classical education,” Janus told her. “To go with my classical good looks.”

  That had made the Queen laugh. “I see some things do not change, no matter the world.”

  She saw nothing. Nobody in this world could know what he had been forced to become.

  It was in Faerie that Janus had heard of the faerie-and-warlock stall and the magic it could do, and he hadn’t been able to resist. He knew Shadowhunters were not welcome at Shadow Markets. He’d thought that if he wore a hood and cloak, the risk would be minimal.

  Unfortunately, several people were looking at him as if they recognized him. Well, let them think that the Jace of this world made a regular practice of haunting the Shadow Market. He had nothing invested in protecting that Jace’s reputation.

  Janus turned. A werewolf slammed into him and cursed.

  “Hey, Shadowhunter, watch where you’re going!”

  Janus had his hand on his dagger when another werewolf came by and slapped the first werewolf upside the head.

  “Do you know who you’re talking to?” he demanded. “That’s Jace Herondale, the head of the Institute.”

  The werewolf paled. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Please forgive him. He’s from a horrible desert wasteland and he doesn’t know what’s going on,” said the other werewolf.

  “I’m from Ohio!”

  “That’s what I said.”

  The two werewolves gazed at Janus in apologetic misery. Janus was very confused, but he slowly let go of the hilt of his dagger. This pair might be more useful alive.

  “So sorry,” the second werewolf stressed.

  “It’s . . .” Janus cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”

  “He’s also the Consul’s parabatai,” said the werewolf. “You know, Alec Lightwood.”

  Janus felt something twist deep in his gut. The sensation surprised him. He was used to feeling nothing at all.

  He held the thought of Alec being Consul in front of his mental eye, like a peculiar stone he was studying. He’d heard from the Queen that in this new strange world everything was different and everyone was alive, but when he had imagined those he’d known once alive again, he’d imagined them unchanged. Alec as Consul. He couldn’t imagine it.

  “I’m actually here on . . . a secret mission,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you kept quiet about seeing me.”

  “I thought so,” said the second werewolf. “Cloak. Hood. ‘Secret mission,’ I said to myself.”

  Janus’s smile became less real and far more easy. “I can tell you’re perceptive. Perhaps in the future, if I needed your help—”

  “Anything we can do!” the werewolves rushed to assure him. “Absolutely anything.”

  Janus kept smiling. “Oh good.”

  * * *

  It was good to make allies—especially those who were stupid and eager to please.

  Janus headed to what he had come for, the bright blue caravan where he had been assured that faeries and warlocks together could produce impenetrable glamours.

  In Thule, there was no more warlock magic. There were no more warlocks at all. But there were demons crawling everywhere across the surface of that world, thick as flies on spoiled meat, and Sebastian could make the demons create illusions. Very occasionally, when Janus had pleased Sebastian, he would give him such a gift. Only sometimes, and it was never enough.

  A faerie with mushrooms in her hair let him into the caravan. She seemed young, and she quailed when his eyes fell on her, but he paid the price she and the warlock demanded. It was exorbitant. He would have paid more.

  The inside of the caravan was a wooden shell that had a jewel hidden within. The faeries had not been wrong when they said the combined magic could produce an extraordinary result. She was the most convincing illusion he had ever seen.

  She was small, always so small. Her hair fell in red loops and swirls around her face and her shoulders. He had wanted to follow every loop with his finger, work out the precise shape of each curl, as he’d wanted to trace connections between every golden freckle. He’d wanted to know her completely.

  “Clary,” he said.

  Her name sounded foreign in his mouth. He hadn’t said it often, even in Thule, where whatever he felt had been buried under layers and layers of a weight like cement.

  “Come here,” he said. He was surprised by the roughness in his own voice. His hands were shaking. It felt like a distant, even despicable weakness.

  She moved toward him. He caught her by the wrists and pulled her roughly against his chest.

  Holding her was a mistake. That was where the illusion began to collapse. He could feel her trembling, and Clary would not have done that. Clary was the bravest person he knew.

  The illusions were never convincing enough. No illusion could love you back. No illusion would ever look at him the way Clary had once looked at him. And though he didn’t know why he needed that, he did. He had needed it before, and the severing of his bond with Sebastian had made it a thousand times worse.

  Clary. Clary. Clary.

  He fooled himself for another moment, pressing his lips against her forehead, then her cheek, then burying his face in the cloud of her bright hair.

  “Oh, my darling,” he murmured, reaching for his knife as her eyes widened in realization and fear. “My darling. Why did you have to die?”

  * * *

  Kit ran up the stone steps to his room, slamming the door behind him, as soon as they retured to Cirenworth Hall. Jem thought it might be best to give him privacy, for a little while.

  He was still slightly worried as he climbed the steps himself, following the sound of a song echoing off the slate walls.

  “Black for hunting through the night

  For death and mourning the color’s white

  Gold for a bride in her wedding gown

  And red to call enchantment down.

  Saffron lights the victory march,

  Green will mend our broken hearts.

  Silver for the demon towers,

  And bronze to summon wicked powers.”

  It was a variation on an ancient Shadowhunter song; Jem could not have guessed how old. His father had sung it to him when he was a child.

  When he pushed open the door, the world narrowed down for a moment to a single room, and that room was full of soft light. There was a cluster of shining witchlights arranged in the old-fashioned iron grate, and pearlescent rays caught in Tessa’s brown curls as she bent over the cradle, rocking it gently. The cradle had been carved more than a hundred years ago from an oak felled in these woods. Jem had seen it made, with careful hands and patient love. The cradle rocked just as smoothly now as it had then.

  Plaintive grizzling drifted from the cradle, and Jem leaned over to see its occupant. She lay on soft white bedding, piles on piles of fleeciness so it seemed she slept on a cloud. Her shock of hair was very black against the sheets and her small face was screwed up in outraged distress.

  Wilhelmina Yiqiang Ke Carstairs. For their lost Will, the first and only possible nam
e, and wild rose, because all those who Jem loved best grew in beautiful rebellion. He’d wanted a Chinese name for his darling, and wanted to commemorate lost Rosemary, who had trusted Jem and Tessa with what was infinitely precious to her and was now infinitely precious to him: Rosemary had trusted him with Kit. Rosemary was the herb meant for remembrance, and Zachariah meant remember. The longer Jem lived, the more surely he believed that life was a wheel, coming full circle, and bringing you to those you were meant to love. She had an imposing name, their little one, and it might have been longer had they included Gray, but Tessa said that warlocks chose their own name, if she chose to be a warlock. Mina might choose to be a Shadowhunter. She might be anything she pleased. She was everything already.

  Jem was often lost in admiring her, but he did not let himself do so for long tonight. Instead he lifted her in his arms. Her hands flew out like startled starfish and came to rest, the smallest tenderest weights, against his collarbone. Mina’s dark eyes popped open all the way, and she went quiet.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Jem’s wife whispered, laughing softly. “Daddy’s girl.”

  “She knows I brought her something from the Market,” said Jem, and gently rubbed the faerie salve on Mina’s soft pink gums.

  Mina wriggled and fussed as he did so, kicking her legs as if she were swimming in a race, but when Jem was finished the salve seemed to do its work quickly. Then she settled, her small face bewildered but happy, as if Jem had performed some peculiar and marvelous feat.

  Tessa said it was early for a baby to start teething. Mina was remarkable and advanced in all sorts of ways, Jem considered proudly.

  “Qiān jīn,” Jem murmured to her. “You are more like your mother every day.”

  She was very like Tessa. Whenever he pointed this out, Tessa and Kit seemed skeptical.

  “I mean, she’s a baby, so she mostly looks like a kind of screwed-up turnip,” said Kit. “In . . . uh, a good way. But if she looks like anyone . . .”

  Kit had shrugged. Tessa had the same expression on her face now as Kit had worn then.

  “Still no,” Tessa informed him. “She looks just like you.”