Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

  “Aw, look,” he heard one of the ladies whisper to the other, quietly enough so he wouldn’t have heard them if he did not still have Shadowhunter hearing. “He brought the baby again!”

  Jem bought pain au chocolat for Kit, because he liked it, and apple-and-raisin pastries for Tessa.

  “My wife doesn’t like chocolate,” he explained. “But my—but Kit does.”

  “Right, your wife’s . . . nephew?” The woman’s tone was friendly as well as curious.

  “Nephew, cousin.” Jem shrugged. “Same family. We were very glad when he agreed to come live with us.”

  The woman winked. “My little sister says he’s a total beast.”

  Jem didn’t think that was a very nice thing to say about Kit.

  “You guys seem like such a happy couple,” the woman continued, which was nice. “Have you been together long?”

  “We’ve only been married a few years,” said Jem. “But we had a very long engagement.” He accepted the paper bag of pastries with a smile and waved Mina’s dimpled hand at them. “Say bye to the kind ladies, Mina.”

  “So cute!” he heard the woman whisper as the door of the bakery closed behind them. “I’m dying.”

  “Hear that, Mina mine?” Jem murmured. “They think you’re cute. They’re right, of course.”

  Mina waved at the trees in loose uncoordinated movements, like a tiny queen accepting tribute. He took the long way through the woods, past the thatched pub where they had afternoon tea sometimes, and across the bridge so Mina could babble to the brook.

  Through the shifting green leaves and radiant splashes of sunlight, Jem saw the slate roof and uneven white plaster of the small manor house that was their home.

  This house, nestled on the edge of Dartmoor, had been in the Carstairs family for a long time. Jem’s uncle Elias Carstairs had owned it once and lived there with his family. Out of concern for Kit, Jem and Tessa had enlisted Magnus to put up wards around the house that prevented those with ill intentions from crossing onto the property.

  At the side of the house, blue-shuttered French doors hung open, showing a white-painted kitchen splashed with sunlight. Jem’s family was having breakfast at a massive farmer’s table. Tessa was in a white robe, and Kit was still in his superhero pajamas, and they hailed the coming of pastries with acclaim.

  “Mina and I journeyed far, and have returned bearing love and baked goods.”

  “My adventurous Mina,” said Tessa, kissing Mina’s silky hair, then tipping up her face for Jem’s kiss. “Are you ready to defeat evil vampires using your knowledge of technology and the train timetables, like in Dracula?”

  “Saw that movie,” said Kit.

  “Read that book,” Tessa shot back.

  “I have no idea what you two are talking about,” Jem said, on cue. “But Mina was much admired in town.”

  Tessa raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure she was.”

  “But one of the lady’s sisters was unkind about Kit. Don’t make friends with her, Kit. She called you a beast.”

  Kit beamed. “Really? Did someone really say that? Who said that?”

  “Oh, is that good?” asked Jem.

  “I have been working out,” said Kit happily to himself.

  “I didn’t know that was good either,” Tessa confided to Jem. “Language changes so often through the years, it’s hard to keep track of. Especially slang. It’s fascinating, but sometimes I liked the earlier meanings of the words best.”

  “Yeah, well, Min has to know how people speak in this day and age,” Kit said sternly.

  Mina cooed and reached out her hands to him, and Kit surrendered his forefinger to her grasp. He continued to eat pain au chocolat with his free hand.

  “You want the other kids to think you’re cool, right, Min?” he asked her as she burbled agreement. “You’re lucky I’m here.”

  Tessa swooped on Kit from behind, ruffling his golden hair with the hand not holding her pastry, on her way to get Jem coffee from the stove.

  “We’re all lucky you’re here,” she told him.

  Kit bowed his head, but not before Jem saw his face flush, pleased and shy.

  * * *

  Once he buried the kids, Janus went back and found that Magnus and Alec had wandered in the opposite direction, farther afield from the music. Alec and the kids were playing soccer with a fluorescent pink ball. Alec, being Alec, was half playing, half patiently teaching them. Janus remembered when they were kids, how whenever he or Isabelle wasn’t as good as Alec was, Alec would practice with them endlessly until they were better than Alec was himself. Every time, he would do that. Janus had forgotten, until now.

  The Shadowhunter boy was good at soccer when he was concentrating, but he was constantly abandoning the game and zigzagging back to Magnus, hovering by his side like an adoring bumblebee.

  Janus envisioned what Magnus had become in his world, the pitiful thing his body had been. It was odd to see Magnus whole and well, sitting under a cherry blossom tree. He was wearing buckled purple boots, skinny jeans, and a tank top that had BABE WITH THE POWER scrawled on it in pixie dust. He was leaning against the tree, cat’s eyes slitted lazily, but he smiled whenever the Shadowhunter boy returned to him, and after the fifth time he made a small gesture, and the falling cherry blossoms began to circle around the boy’s head, winding intricate patterns like bracelets around his arms, brushing against his plump cheeks and making him giggle.

  The warlock boy was very intense about soccer, short legs pumping furiously over the grass. Eventually he seemed to become concerned Alec might win, and he picked up the ball and ran away with it, back to Magnus and the other kid.

  “I won!” announced the warlock boy. “I always win.”

  Magnus kissed the boy on the cheek and laughed, and the sound of his laugh made a smile light on Alec’s face as he jogged up to them. Janus had forgotten how much more Alec had begun to smile, once Magnus was in his life.

  “I heard you lost your soccer game?” teased Magnus. “I heard the Consul is a big loser?”

  Alec shrugged. “No kiss for me, I guess.”

  He was flirting, Janus realized. Alec hadn’t lived long enough to learn how to do that, not in the confident way he was now.

  “Oh, there just might be,” said Magnus.

  The Shadowhunter kid was still playing with the floating blossoms. The warlock kid put his ball on the ground and trotted after it as it glided gently away.

  Alec leaned down, taking Magnus’s pixie dust shirt in both hands to pull Magnus up toward him. Magnus’s spiky head tipped back, and one of Alec’s arms went around Magnus’s waist.

  Janus remembered another world. Alec had still been clinging to what Magnus had become, at the very last. Those strong scarred archer’s hands, always swift to protect and defend, held him fast. Even in death, there seemed no way to break Alec’s grip.

  Janus hadn’t had the chance to take Clary in his arms one last time, as Alec had with Magnus. Janus understood the choice his parabatai had made, the only choice he could’ve made with evil on his threshold and all he loved in ruins.

  When Janus and Sebastian found them lying together in the rubble, Sebastian had been furious. He had wanted to capture Alec alive. Alec knew secrets about the resistance, about small pockets of hidden free humans: information Sebastian craved and that Alec had died to hide.

  With a howl, Sebastian had kicked at Alec’s body. The desolate lack where the parabatai bond had been screamed. It was one of the few times Janus was able to think, Kill him.

  Now, in the sunlight of the park, the undergrowth crackled. Janus spun around to face the enemy, cursing himself for being distracted, for being sentimental, as Sebastian and Valentine always said he was.

  “What’re you doing, Uncle Jace?” asked the warlock boy, clutching his ball and clearly pleased at making a much greater discovery. His round face was smiling and curious.

  Janus went still.

  “Are you playing hide-and-seek?” the
boy continued.

  Slowly, Janus’s hand moved toward his dagger.

  He whispered, “Yes.”

  The boy darted into the bushes and put his arms around Janus’s leg. Janus’s hand tightened on his knife.

  “I love you, Uncle Jace,” the boy whispered, with a conspiratorial grin, and Janus shuddered. “Don’t be sad. I won’t tell where you’re hiding.”

  Janus drew his knife. Warlocks were not safe to be around. It would be a quick, clean kill, and better for Alec, in the end.

  “Max!” Alec shouted. He didn’t sound concerned now, but if there was no response, he would be.

  Max, thought Janus. Long ago, the youngest Lightwood. In this world Magnus was alive, so Alec was alive. Alec was the Consul, and they had children. Alec had named his son for that lost Max.

  Janus let go of his knife. He let go of the boy. His hands were shaking too much to hold on to either.

  Little Max darted out of the bushes with his arms outstretched, making a zooming sound as if he were an airplane, and ran back to his family. When they went home from the park, Max was still holding on to his ball, trotting at Magnus’s side as Magnus sang a soft Spanish lullaby, while the Shadowhunter boy slept, drooling on Alec’s shoulder.

  Janus did not follow them out of the park. He stayed by the gates and watched them go.

  The words of Janus’s parabatai oath echoed in his head, worse than a death sentence. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. He had not kept his oath, but he’d wanted to. Death would have been welcome. Death would have meant being with Clary.

  Long ago in the other world, when Sebastian was sleeping, Janus had gone back for Alec, but the bodies had vanished. Janus hoped now that they had not been eaten by the roving, starving demons. He hoped Maryse had burned Alec and Magnus both. He wished that a kind wind had carried their ashes away, and let them stay together.

  * * *

  When they first moved into Cirenworth Hall, the house in England that they intended to be their family’s home, Jem and Tessa had noticed how often Kit’s eyes fell on the valuables they had decorated the house with.

  One evening they collected up everything they could think of and placed all their most prized possessions in Kit’s room, lining them up on tables and windowsills.

  When Kit went into his room next, he stayed in there for some time and was absolutely quiet. Eventually Jem and Tessa tapped on his door. At his assenting mumble, they pushed open the door and looked inside. They found Kit standing in the middle of the room. He hadn’t touched anything.

  “What does all this mean?” Kit asked. “Do you think I’d take them and—do you want me to—?”

  He sounded lost. His blue eyes fell on Tessa’s first editions, on Jem’s Stradivarius violin, as though they were signposts and he was trying to find his way in a terribly strange land.

  Jem said, “We want you to stay, and to know that the choice is entirely yours, and we wanted to show you something. We want you to know there is nothing in this house more precious to us than you.”

  Kit had stayed.

  * * *

  The home the Seelie Queen had given them stood on a hollow hill near bone-white sea cliffs, a hundred leagues from either Seelie or Unseelie Court, and far from any prying eye that might spy the Queen’s long-lost and long-sought-for son.

  Within the house, the walls flickered with shadows. As Janus came through the doorway into the dark, the shadows trembled in the wind that crept in with him.

  Ash was draped over a sofa, long legs stretched out, dressed in the faerie clothes the Queen had provided. Black silk, green velvet. Nothing but the finest for her boy. Ash hadn’t aged much since they had come from Thule. He still looked sixteen, which was the age Janus believed him to be. He was holding up a piece of paper to the light, studying it intently.

  When he heard the door close, Ash turned his head, the white-gold gossamer-fine hair he had inherited from his father falling around his curved faerie ears, and hastily tucked the bloodstained piece of paper away into his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Janus asked.

  “Nothing important,” said Ash with a slow blink of his grass-green eyes. “You’re back.”

  “Do you think I would have had eyes that color,” Sebastian had said once, late at night when he was in one of his most melancholy moods, “if our father had not . . . done what he did, and made me what I am?”

  Janus had not been able to reply. He couldn’t imagine Sebastian or his flat shark’s eyes, dead as the sun and black as the eternal night in their world, as anything other than they were. When he looked in Ash’s eyes, green as springtime, green as new beginning, he thought of someone else entirely.

  It was hard to keep secrets from Sebastian. He always took them away. But Janus had kept that one.

  “It’s good to be back,” Janus told Ash slowly.

  He didn’t like it much in Faerie, but Ash was here. He’d needed a secure place for Ash. Ash was going to change everything. Ash was the key. Nothing bad could happen to him.

  Janus knew Ash wanted him to like it here more than he did. When they came here, Ash had asked the Queen, his mother, for a piano. Now the piano stood near the doors, sleek and shining darkly, reflected by all the mirrors. Janus tried not to look at it.

  “You said you used to play once,” Ash offered when the piano came.

  Ash seemed disappointed when Janus said he no longer remembered how.

  Janus had imagined Ash would be happy and safe, back with his mother, but the Queen said Ash couldn’t stay at Court.

  “I lost a daughter who will never return,” she’d told them, thorns in her voice. “I lost a son who returned past hope. I will never risk him again. He must be kept secret and secure.”

  So Ash lived in this isolated house, this cliff-top palace, and Janus lived here with him. For now.

  Janus didn’t like the idea of abandoning Ash to live in the New York Institute. But that was where Clary was.

  Wherever you are is where I want to be.

  Janus needed water to wash away the bitter taste in his mouth. He went to get it, and Ash followed him. Ash’s step was faerie soft and Shadowhunter trained, entirely noiseless, like having a pale shadow.

  When Ash first came to Thule, Sebastian had been pleased. Sebastian had always liked the idea of blood binding someone to him. He’d seen it as a sign that he was doing everything right, that another world had delivered an heir to him, since in Thule, the Seelie Queen had died before she had ever given birth.

  It pleased Sebastian’s vanity that Ash resembled him. Sebastian had thought that finally here was what he had always wanted: someone like him. Sebastian embraced Ash and allowed Janus to do the same. For a while Sebastian played with Ash, tried to teach him, but Sebastian grew tired of his toys quickly and broke them.

  Sebastian had not been patient with Ash for some time before the end.

  Once Sebastian had been training Ash, and Ash had made a mistake. Sebastian had gone for Ash with a whip.

  Sebastian’s face was startled and offended when Janus moved between them and caught the lash between his hands. The whip split Janus’s palms open, and blood dappled the ground.

  “Why not whip him? Father did it to me.” Sebastian’s voice was the whip now. “And I’m strong. He didn’t do it to you, and you were weak until I got my hands on you. I should do the best thing for my boy, shouldn’t I?”

  Janus was already convinced. He should drop the whip and let Sebastian hurt Ash.

  But his words were racing ahead of his thoughts, as if he couldn’t control them. “Of course. It’s just that there are so many things for you to do. Training a boy should be the general’s work, not the ruler’s. You are higher than this. You know I want only to serve you and never to fail you. Let me train him, and if he isn’t satisfactory, then the lash can be his guide.”

  He could feel Sebastian was bored with training anyway. After a moment Sebastian cast whip and boy aside and strode
off. Ash watched Sebastian walk away.

  “Hell of a father,” Ash murmured.

  “Don’t talk like that,” Janus ordered.

  Ash’s face changed when he transferred his gaze from Sebastian to Janus, lingering on Janus’s bloody hands. When Ash’s eyes were not so hard and guarded, he reminded Janus of Clary. It made him think of how Clary had once looked at Simon or at Luke, before Clary and Luke died and Simon disappeared. When Sebastian came for Clary’s mother, Luke had tried to stand in Sebastian’s way.

  “I will do as you tell me,” Ash offered suddenly. “Since you’re going to be my teacher. You’ll see. I’ll make you proud.”

  After that, Janus trained Ash, but Janus should never have stepped in. Sebastian noted how many hours Janus spent with Ash and decided he wanted to see results from all this training.

  Sebastian kept a pit of demons under the floor of Psychopomp, his favorite nightclub. It made for a nice showpiece and a convenient method of disposing of those disloyal to the Star. Sebastian ordered that Ash be given a sword and dropped into it.

  Ash did not protest or struggle. He let Janus lead him forward, to the very edge of the pit. Then he stepped out into the empty air and fell.

  A dark wave of demons closed over him.

  Sebastian and Janus both leaned forward, Janus sick with a pain he did not understand and Sebastian smiling like a guardian angel. They watched as Ash’s head broke through the wave of demons, a swimmer fighting his way to the surface in a dark sea. He rose—and rose, and rose again. He soared into the air, black wings spreading from his back.

  “Ah.” Sebastian sounded delighted. “So it has come to pass.”

  “What is it?” Janus had demanded. “What’s happening to him?”

  “He is becoming more,” said Sebastian. “The Unseelie King worked magic upon him, and he has the blood of Lilith in him. Those are the wings of an angel—one of the fallen sort. They were always in his blood, but Thule has drawn them out of him.”

  Sebastian was applauding, laughing as Ash spun and flew low, slashing with his silver sword, slicing through the necks of a dozen demons at once. Ichor splashed the walls of the pit.