Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

Janus’s hands itched.

  He had beaten Sebastian once, long ago, when he was someone else.

  We were both trained by Valentine. But I tried harder, because I loved my father and I wanted to please him so badly. Then there was Robert and Maryse and Isabelle and Alec, always Alec, every one of them teaching me whatever they knew, so I could protect myself. Because they loved me. I was better than Sebastian. I was better.

  He’d trained with Clary, too, a few times. He’d meant to teach her everything he knew, so she could always protect herself. So they could fight together. Ash was as fearless and determined as she was. Janus could teach him everything, so Ash would always be safe. He did not know why, but it was important that Ash always be safe.

  When Janus watched Ash fight, he thought that when Ash was grown, he might beat Sebastian too. He crushed the treacherous idea down, but he couldn’t help smiling a small smile down at Ash.

  Ash’s lip curled back from his teeth. It was his father’s sneer, his father’s scorn, aimed at Sebastian himself. Then his green eyes passed with total withering indifference over Sebastian, and caught on Janus. Ash smiled up at him.

  Janus went cold.

  So did Sebastian’s voice. “My father,” he mused. “My sister.”

  “Please,” Janus begged. He couldn’t talk about Clary. “No. Please.”

  Sebastian never did have any mercy. “My father, my sister, my son. They were all mine. And yet they all wanted you more. Valentine’s sweet boy. Clary’s golden prince. Ash’s guardian angel.”

  Nobody else ever dared speak Clary’s name aloud.

  “You might as well know,” Sebastian said. “Nothing you feel for Ash is real. The Unseelie King gifted him with many gifts. The wings are but an outward expression of that. He also has the power to command perfect love and perfect loyalty. You have no choice but to want to protect him.”

  Janus froze. His heart beat slowly, thickly in his chest. It never occurred to him to doubt Sebastian. He had seen the way Annabel was with Ash. How she would have laid down on broken glass so he could walk on her.

  This was why. This was why. Nothing Janus felt for Ash was real.

  Sebastian ordered that the pit be closed. Ash flew up, straight and dark as an arrow, and knelt at the pit’s edge, his sword gleaming. His wings beat softly in the still air of Thule.

  “Are you angry, Jace?” Sebastian said. “That I told you the truth?”

  Janus had shaken his head. “No. I exist to serve you.”

  It was true. Sebastian was stronger. Whatever Janus had done once, Sebastian had beaten him in the end.

  “Yes.” Sebastian sounded thoughtful. “You’re mine. And so is the world. But the world’s hollow these days, isn’t it?”

  The world had been hollow since Clary died. Janus had never expected to find meaning again. He thought of that later, when he bound Ash’s wounds, and when they trained. If Ash had power over him, Janus thought, he didn’t use it. He never ordered Janus to do anything he didn’t want to do.

  Ash listened to him. He was careful. He didn’t defy Sebastian. He kept training. Ash was very good, but it didn’t please Sebastian any longer.

  Sometimes Janus caught Sebastian looking at Ash in a way Janus recognized. There was an edge and steel to that look, as if it were a dissecting knife.

  One day, when Sebastian was sleeping—it was a little easier to do certain things when Sebastian was sleeping—Janus took Ash outside and talked about traveling, about going somewhere, about not upsetting his father.

  Janus tried to explain, tried to work out how he could possibly explain. He couldn’t say: He wants to hurt you, and I don’t. That would be impossible. Janus and Sebastian only wanted the same things.

  Janus ended up on his knees in the ashes, trying to choke out the words. Ash did what his father had never done, and went on his knees too. He’d put his arms around Janus.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “I can’t,” Janus gasped through waves of agony. “You know I can’t.”

  He screamed then. It felt right, doing what Sebastian wanted, it was right. He didn’t know how to do anything else, and when he tried, it went wrong. It hurt too much. He kept screaming.

  “Don’t,” Ash said. “Don’t.”

  “Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?” Janus asked, his voice blurred. His head rang with pain and his mouth was full of blood from biting his tongue, but he was used to blood.

  “Yes,” Ash had whispered. “I understand. You can stop.”

  The next time Ash and Sebastian were together, Ash pretended indifference as usual. But Janus caught a covert look in those green eyes, as cold as any in Sebastian’s. Ash hates Sebastian now, Janus realized, and he knew that he’d made everything worse.

  He’d known Ash was doomed. But Sebastian had died instead, and now Janus and Ash were in another world. It had not been easy to get here. But it was worth it. Everything could be different here.

  Janus finished his glass of water, and tried to breathe, and glanced over to where Ash stood. Ash was watching him, and Janus swept the pale hair off Ash’s brow. He tried to be gentle. It always made him feel steadier, in this world and the other, to look at Ash. Sebastian’s son, with Clary’s green eyes. The only thing besides Sebastian Janus was allowed to love. Ash, who was beloved and still not safe, Ash, who was all Janus had.

  For now.

  “There’s blood on your hands,” Ash murmured.

  Janus shrugged. “That’s nothing new.”

  He sat at the carven oak table, where the last acorn that had ever fallen from the dead tree was set in the table’s center. He laid his weary head in his arms. Once Sebastian had told Janus that Sebastian was always burning, but it was better when he had Janus, when they were burning together. Now Sebastian was dead, and Janus was still burning. Ash laid a cool hand on Janus’s shoulder.

  “I thought you would get better here,” Ash said, his voice low. “But you’re not. Are you?”

  Janus lifted his head, for Ash’s sake. “I will be,” he promised. “Soon.”

  “Oh yes. I’d almost forgotten,” Ash remarked, withdrawing. “When you go away and leave me.”

  Janus looked at him in surprise. “Why would I leave you?”

  “Because you only love me because you have to,” said Ash. “It’s the spell. Perfect loyalty. Did you think I didn’t know?”

  Ash’s eyes were green ice. They didn’t look anything like Clary’s then.

  * * *

  Janus went back to Magnus’s, hardly knowing why he did so. He was aware it would be madness to go near the Institute, but surely this was safe. He wore all black, like the Shadowhunter he used to be. He stood concealed by the shadow of a wall near Magnus’s loft, waiting for someone he knew to come out, but instead he saw light and movement behind the windows. Perhaps they were staying in this evening. It was a foggy, misty night, after all.

  Then a voice coming from the other direction said, “I’ll kill you, Jace Herondale.”

  The last time Janus had seen Simon in his world, Simon had said something similar.

  Simon’s face had been moon pale and sixteen years old, always sixteen years old. He’d looked like a lost child, but in that world so many were lost children.

  Now Simon was walking down a street in New York. He was taller and older, his skin tanned and runed, and he was carrying groceries.

  Simon wasn’t a vampire, Janus realized. He was—he was a Shadowhunter. What had happened in this world?

  “Yeah?” Simon said, his voice amused. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep bragging, it’s what you’re best at. Prepare to be decimated. You are not as good at video games as you think.”

  He shifted his brown paper shopping bag to the crook of his elbow, his phone pressed between shoulder and ear.

  “Yes, I got the cupcakes,” he added. “And you’re doing your job, right? Keep all the Lightwoods out of the kitchen! You can’t let them touch anything.”

  There was a p
ause.

  “Isabelle is the love of my life, but her seven-layer dip is like the nine circles of Hell,” said Simon. “Don’t tell her I said that! Are you telling her I said that literally while you are on the phone with me? You are so dead.”

  Simon hung up and dropped his phone in the pocket of his jeans, shaking his head. Then he let himself in through the door. He seemed to have a key. Janus sidled around to the fire escape and clambered up to the second floor. Kneeling, he peered in through the window.

  Through the rain-wet glass he saw someone dancing, laughing, long black hair swirling around her shoulders. After a dazed moment, Janus realized who it was. Isabelle, alive. Isabelle, striking poses and laughing. Alec went to the window and gave her a hug, one-armed, as she showered the squirming child tucked under Alec’s other arm with kisses.

  Janus had been with Valentine, and then with Sebastian, longer than he had been with these, his family. Sometimes it had seemed like a sentimental dream—more of your weakness, Jace—that he’d ever had the Lightwoods at all. Alec, Isabelle, Max, Maryse, Robert. His family.

  But what had he done to Maryse?

  What he’d had to do, Janus reminded himself, clenching his hand around his sword hilt. The best thing, the right thing. He couldn’t be weak.

  There was brightness at the edge of Janus’s vision, as there often was, taunting and tormenting, never coalescing into anything real. Except this time, it did. So many times since Clary died, Janus had swung around thinking he would see her, hoping desperately for a ghost, for a whisper, for anything but this endless darkness without her. He had to stop wishing for her, stop hoping for her, stop searching for her. He had to burn his heart out until there was nothing left but ash. No matter where he looked, she was never there.

  Until now.

  Now he understood why Isabelle had been striking poses.

  Clary was drawing her.

  She had wedged herself into a window seat opposite Isabelle, her sketchbook balanced between them, her profile outlined against the glass. This time, she did not fade away or go wrong. This time, she was real.

  She’d died in his world when she was a girl, but here she was a woman. She had scars from runes on her arms, her skin was a little darker and her freckles a little lighter, and her eyes were the color of the grass that no longer grew in Thule. Her hair was twisted up into a bun at the back of her head, a few fiery tendrils escaping. She glowed like a light. She was everything.

  Wherever you are is where I want to be.

  He was dizzy with the yearning to hold her, overwhelmed by the urge. Why not, he thought for a reckless moment, though he knew he was not allowed to be reckless. He had been once. He could see himself doing it: going to her, going to them. Telling Clary everything, and resting at last, with his head on her knee.

  Then he came into the room, and the world went black and red with furious despair.

  He was all in black, as Janus was, but he was smiling: looking around easily, casually, with an absolute air of belonging. Alec smiled at him. Isabelle leaned over and poked him in the side with a painted fingernail. And Clary, Clary, his Clary—she lifted her beautiful face up to his and gave him a kiss.

  He was there, the Jace from this world, and Janus hated him. Janus wanted to kill him, and he could do it. Why should he have everything, when Janus had nothing? He should have been the one to remain in this dimension. Not Jace.

  The rain hit the windows and blurred those within from his sight. He strained to see a glimpse of Clary’s bright hair, and could not. She was lost to him again. He was bitterly tired of her being lost. He couldn’t breathe with the pain of it. He clambered down the fire escape and stumbled to the nearest alley, where it was dark, where he would be hidden, where he could scream out all the agony in his soul. He tried, but as in a nightmare, no sound came out.

  Janus wanted to remember Clary’s face at the window. But he could not see hers without seeing Jace’s. That smooth young face, the bright head held arrogantly high, the clear golden eyes that had never seen his parabatai dead, the hands that had never killed Maryse and countless others. That face had never known a world blackened and ruined after the loss of Clary. That was the boy who fought on the side of the angels, all grown up. Valentine’s sweet boy. Clary’s golden prince. Janus understood the wretched, murderous jealousy in Sebastian’s voice now, the jealousy of all you could never be.

  Janus could never be that boy again or the man he had become.

  His shuddering breaths sounded almost like sobs, but he stopped breathing when he heard her voice. Clary’s. As if she was standing only a few feet away.

  “How can all the vampires be drunk?” said Clary. “No, I mean, I understand how, Maia, I just don’t know why anybody thought that would be a good idea.”

  There was a pause. Janus crept to the mouth of the alleyway. It still seemed impossible to believe, but she was there. Clary was standing outside, a phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear as she paced back and forth, a slim vivid shape against the darkness. She was fighting her way into a coat and trying to keep hold of an umbrella. In doing so, her stele fell to the sidewalk, unnoticed, rolling until it came to a stop against a trash can.

  “. . . Well, I assumed we both blamed Elliott,” Clary said. “Say no more! Simon the former Downworlder and his trusty parabatai are on their way to keep the peace.” Clary half turned toward him. Streetlights made the raindrops caught in her hair glimmer like a radiant veil.

  This was another world. There were still angels here. Janus crept from the alleyway, picking up her stele.

  “. . . Who invited a stripper called Faerie Buns?” Clary demanded into the phone.

  She stepped closer to him. His hand tightened on the stele. He knew that to approach her in his current state was madness, but she was so close. . . .

  “I don’t even know what to say about the stripper. Bye, Maia,” said Clary, shaking her head as she ended the call.

  Janus took a few steps and was beside her, just outside the pool of the streetlights.

  “Hey,” Clary said, still distracted by her phone. “I thought you were staying behind.”

  She wasn’t looking up at him. He swallowed and held out the stele. “I chased after you,” he said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. “You left this inside. You should have it with you.”

  “Oh,” Clary said, taking it from him and slipping it into her coat. “Thanks. I thought it was in my pocket.”

  She lifted the umbrella so it sheltered him, too, and leaned slightly against him. No more fantasies, no more dreams. He knew then that none of the illusions he’d tried to fool himself with had ever even come close. Every detail had been wrong, everything in the world had been wrong, and everything about himself.

  He’d been crawling across the scorching sand of the desert where her dead body lay for years, but now there was a shimmering oasis before him. She was here. She was alive again. She was with him, and he would have suffered through every long day of every hopeless year again to touch her for a moment more.

  Clary was warm, and breathing. She was staying that way, no matter what he had to do or who he had to kill to keep her safe, to keep her with him. She leaned against him with perfect trust.

  A rain-bright curl brushed against Janus’s shoulder, and he felt blessed, saved, though he’d failed to save her. It could all be different here.

  “The vampire-and-werewolf meet ’n’ greet has descended into total chaos,” Clary reported, her voice indescribably sweet in his ears. “But Simon and I will get things under control. You go have a good time.”

  He wanted her to go on talking, to let him hold her and drink up every word, but she was waiting for him to say something. He had to say something. He knew he was being stiff and strange, and he knew from the tension in her body that she could tell something was not right, but he had no idea how to fix it, how to relax, how to be the person he once was.

  His voice cracked. “I—I missed you.”


  She had to believe him. He had never meant any words so much.

  “Aw,” said Clary, her cheek against his shoulder. “Nobody but me would ever believe you’re as sweet as you are.”

  His whisper was hoarse. “Nobody but you would ever believe I’m sweet at all.”

  She laughed. He’d made her laugh. It had been so many silent years since he last heard that sound. “This shouldn’t take long. I told Maia that Simon and I would drop in and maybe escort a couple of the worst offenders back to the Hotel Dumort. Normally Lily would keep a handle on things, but Maia says Lily’s really drunk too.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Janus breathed in the scent of her hair. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  “No need,” Clary told him. She began to draw away.

  Janus held on, crushing her against him. He would not let her leave him. Not again.

  She lifted her head. He glimpsed her beautiful face in a flash of moonlight followed by shadow, saw her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong with you, Jace? You’re acting really weird—”

  No. No. You believe it’s me, you know it’s me, you know I’m the one who really belongs with you.

  The words stuttered through Janus’s mind. He wanted to quiet the unease in her voice. He wanted her to lean against him again. Her touch made the world right.

  There was the sound of a van’s wheels, squealing to a stop on the street outside. “That’s Simon,” Clary said. “Don’t worry. I’ll come back soon.”

  You will come back. But not to me.

  He let her go. It took all his strength. She smiled when he did, clearly puzzled by the way he was acting. She knows, he thought in terror, but then he had his reward.

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on his starving mouth. The memory of a thousand years ago came to him, kissing Clary in an alley full of rain, the feel of her wet skin, the scent of her sweat and perfume and the taste of her mouth. Her arms were around him; her body was curvier now, fuller, and the roundness of her hips under his hands and the feel of her breasts through her jacket overwhelmed his reeling senses, making him dizzy. He could scarcely breathe, but he would rather have her than air. The kiss painted every shadow gold.