“Oh, custom.” The Queen waved away convention with a flip of her hand. “You were here. It seemed expedient.”
Jace gave her another narrow look and flipped his cell phone open. He gestured at Clary to stay where she was, and walked a little ways away. She could hear him saying, “Maryse?” as the phone was answered, and then his voice was swallowed up by shouts from the playing fields nearby.
With a feeling of cold dread, she looked back at the Queen. She had not seen the Lady of the Seelie Court since her last night in Idris, and then Clary had not exactly been polite to her. She doubted the Queen had forgotten or forgiven her for that. Would you truly refuse a favor from the Queen of the Seelie Court?
“I heard Meliorn got a seat on the Council,” Clary said now. “You must be pleased about that.”
“Indeed.” The Queen looked at her with amusement. “I am sufficiently delighted.”
“So,” Clary said. “No hard feelings, then?”
The Queen’s smile turned icy around the edges, like frost riming the sides of a pond. “I suppose you refer to my offer, which you so rudely declined,” she said. “As you know, my objective was accomplished regardless; the loss there, I imagine most would agree, was yours.”
“I didn’t want your deal.” Clary tried to keep the sharpness from her voice, and failed. “People can’t do what you want all the time, you know.”
“Do not presume to lecture me, child.” The Queen’s eyes followed Jace, who was pacing at the edge of the trees, phone in hand. “He is beautiful,” she said. “I can see why you love him. But did you ever wonder what draws him to you?”
Clary said nothing to that; there seemed nothing to say.
“The blood of Heaven binds you,” said the Queen. “Blood calls to blood, under the skin. But love and blood are not the same.”
“Riddles,” Clary said angrily. “Do you even mean anything when you talk like that?”
“He is bound to you,” said the Queen. “But does he love you?”
Clary felt her hands twitch. She longed to try out on the Queen some of the new fighting moves she’d learned, but she knew how unwise that would be. “Yes, he does.”
“And does he want you? For love and desire are not always as one.”
“That’s none of your business,” Clary said shortly, but she could see that the Queen’s eyes on her were as sharp as pins.
“You want him like you have never wanted anything else. But does he feel the same?” The Queen’s soft voice was inexorable. “He could have anything or anyone he pleases. Do you wonder why he chose you? Do you wonder if he regrets it? Has he changed toward you?”
Clary felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. “No, he hasn’t.” But she thought of his face in the elevator that night, and the way he had told her to go home when she’d offered to stay.
“You told me that you did not wish to make a compact with me, for there was nothing I could give you. You said there was nothing in the world you wanted.” The Queen’s eyes glittered. “When you imagine your life without him, do you still feel the same?”
Why are you doing this to me? Clary wanted to scream, but she said nothing, for the Faerie Queen glanced past her, and smiled, saying, “Wipe your tears, for he returns. It will do you no good for him to see you cry.”
Clary rubbed hastily at her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned; Jace was walking toward them, frowning. “Maryse is on her way to the Court,” he said. “Where did the Queen go?”
Clary looked at him, surprised. “She’s right here,” she began, turning—and broke off. Jace was right. The Queen was gone, only a swirl of leaves at Clary’s feet to show where she had stood.
Simon, his jacket wadded up under his head, was lying on his back, staring up at the hole-filled ceiling of Eric’s garage with a sense of grim fatality. His duffel bag was at his feet, his phone pressed against his ear. Right now the familiarity of Clary’s voice on the other end of it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely.
“Simon, I’m so sorry.” He could tell she was somewhere in the city. The loud blare of traffic sounded behind her, muffling her voice. “Are you seriously in Eric’s garage? Does he know you’re there?”
“No,” Simon said. “No one’s home at the moment, and I’ve got the garage key. It seemed like a place to go. Where are you, anyway?”
“In the city.” To Brooklynites, Manhattan was always “the city.” No other metropolis existed. “I was training with Jace, but then he had to go back to the Institute for some kind of Clave business. I’m headed back to Luke’s now.” A car honked loudly in the background. “Look, do you want to stay with us? You could sleep on Luke’s couch.”
Simon hesitated. He had good memories of Luke’s. In all the years he’d known Clary, Luke had lived in the same ratty but pleasant old row house over the bookstore. Clary had a key, and she and Simon had whiled away a lot of pleasant hours there, reading books they’d “borrowed” from the store downstairs, or watching old movies on the TV.
Things were different now, though.
“Maybe my mom could talk to your mom,” Clary said, sounding worried by his silence. “Make her understand.”
“Make her understand that I’m a vampire? Clary, I think she does understand that, in a weird kind of way. That doesn’t mean she’s going to accept it or ever be okay with it.”
“Well, you can’t just keep making her forget it, either, Simon,” Clary said. “It’s not going to work forever.”
“Why not?” He knew he was being unreasonable, but lying on the hard floor, surrounded by the smell of gasoline and the whisper of spiders spinning their webs in the corners of the garage, feeling lonelier than he ever had, reasonable seemed very far away.
“Because then your whole relationship with her is a lie. You can’t never go home—”
“So what?” Simon interrupted harshly. “That’s part of the curse, isn’t it? ‘A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be.’”
Despite the traffic noises and the sound of chatter in the background, he could hear Clary’s sudden indrawn breath.
“You think I should tell her about that, too?” he said. “How you put the Mark of Cain on me? How I’m basically a walking curse? You think she’s going to want that in her house?”
The background sounds quieted; Clary must have ducked into a doorway. He could hear her struggling to hold back tears as she said, “Simon, I’m so sorry. You know I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault.” He suddenly felt bone-tired. That’s right, terrify your mother and then make your best friend cry. A banner day for you, Simon. “Look, obviously I shouldn’t be around people right now. I’m just going to stay here, and I’ll crash with Eric when he gets home.”
She made a snuffling laughing-through-tears sound. “What, doesn’t Eric count as people?”
“I’ll get back to you on that later,” he said, and hesitated. “I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”
“You’ll see me tomorrow. You promised to come to that dress fitting with me, remember?”
“Wow,” he said. “I must really love you.”
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
Simon clicked off the phone and lay back, holding it against his chest. It was funny, he thought. Now he could say “I love you” to Clary, when for years he’d struggled to say those words and had not been able to get them out of his mouth. Now that he no longer meant them the same way, it was easy.
Sometimes he did wonder what would have happened if there had never been a Jace Wayland. If Clary had never found out she was a Shadowhunter. But he pushed the thought away—pointless, don’t go down that road. You couldn’t change the past. You could only go forward. Not that he had any idea what forward entailed. He couldn’t stay in Eric’s garage forever. Even in his current mood, he had to admit it was a miserable place to stay. He wasn’t cold—he no longer felt either cold or heat in any real way—but the floor was hard, and he was having trouble s
leeping. He wished he could dull his senses. The loud noise of traffic outside was keeping him from resting, as was the unpleasant stench of gasoline. But it was the gnawing worry about what to do next that was the worst.
He’d thrown away most of his blood supply and stashed the rest in his knapsack; he had about enough for a few more days, and then he’d be in trouble. Eric, wherever he was, would certainly let Simon stay in the house if he wanted, but that might result in Eric’s parents calling Simon’s mom. And since she thought he was on a school field trip, that would do him no good at all.
Days, he thought. That was the amount of time he had. Before he ran out of blood, before his mother started to wonder where he was and called the school looking for him. Before she started to remember. He was a vampire now. He was supposed to have eternity. But what he had was days.
He had been so careful. Tried so hard for what he thought of as a normal life—school, friends, his own house, his own bedroom. It had been strained, but that was what life was. Other options seemed so bleak and lonely that they didn’t bear thinking about. And yet Camille’s voice rang in his head. What about in ten years, when you are supposed to be twenty-six? In twenty years? Thirty? Do you think no one will notice that as they age and change, you do not?
The situation he had created for himself, had carved so carefully in the shape of his old life, had never been permanent, he thought now, with a sinking in his chest. It never could have been. He’d been clinging to shadows and memories. He thought again of Camille, of her offer. It sounded better now than it had before. An offer of a community, even if it wasn’t the community he wanted. He had only about three more days before she’d come looking for his answer. And what would he tell her when she did? He’d thought he knew, but now he wasn’t so sure.
A grinding noise interrupted his reverie. The garage door was ratcheting upward, bright light spearing into the dark interior of the space. Simon sat up, his whole body suddenly on the alert.
“Eric?”
“Nah. It’s me. Kyle.”
“Kyle?” Simon said blankly, before he remembered—the guy they’d agreed to take on as a lead singer. Simon almost flopped back down onto the ground again. “Oh. Right. None of the other guys are here right now, so if you were hoping to practice . . .”
“It’s cool. That’s not why I came.” Kyle stepped into the garage, blinking in the darkness, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “You’re whatshisname, the bassist, right?”
Simon got to his feet, brushing garage floor dust off his clothes. “I’m Simon.”
Kyle glanced around, a perplexed furrow between his brows. “I left my keys here yesterday, I think. Been looking for them everywhere. Hey, there they are.” He ducked behind the drum set and emerged a second later, rattling a set of keys triumphantly in his hand. He looked much the same as he had the day before. He had a blue T-shirt on today under a leather jacket, and a gold saint’s medal sparkled around his neck. His dark hair was messier than ever. “So,” Kyle said, leaning against one of the speakers. “Were you, like, sleeping here? On the floor?”
Simon nodded. “Got thrown out of my house.” It wasn’t precisely true, but it was all he felt like saying.
Kyle nodded sympathetically. “Mom found your weed stash, huh? That sucks.”
“No. No . . . weed stash.” Simon shrugged. “We had a difference of opinion about my lifestyle.”
“So, she found out about your two girlfriends?” Kyle grinned. He was good-looking, Simon had to admit, but unlike Jace, who seemed to know exactly how good-looking he was, Kyle looked like someone who probably hadn’t brushed his hair in weeks. There was an open, friendly puppyishness about him that was appealing, though. “Yeah, Kirk told me about it. Good for you, man.”
Simon shook his head. “It wasn’t that.”
There was a short silence between them. Then:
“I . . . don’t live at home either,” Kyle said. “I left a couple of years ago.” He hugged his arms around himself, hanging his head down. His voice was low. “I haven’t talked to my parents since then. I mean, I’m doing all right on my own but . . . I get it.”
“Your tattoos,” Simon said, touching his own arms lightly. “What do they mean?”
Kyle stretched his arms out. “Shaantih shaantih shaantih,” he said. “They’re mantras from the Upanishads. Sanskrit. Prayers for peace.”
Normally Simon would have thought that getting yourself tattooed in Sanskrit was kind of pretentious. But right now, he didn’t. “Shalom,” he said.
Kyle blinked at him. “What?”
“Means peace,” said Simon. “In Hebrew. I was just thinking the words sounded sort of alike.”
Kyle gave him a long look. He seemed to be deliberating. Finally he said, “This is going to sound sort of crazy—”
“Oh, I don’t know. My definition of crazy has become pretty flexible in the past few months.”
“—but I have an apartment. In Alphabet City. And my roommate just moved out. It’s a two-bedroom, so you could crash in his space. There’s a bed in there and everything.”
Simon hesitated. On the one hand he didn’t know Kyle at all, and moving into the apartment of a total stranger seemed like a stupid move of epic proportions. Kyle could turn out to be a serial killer, despite his peace tattoos. On the other hand he didn’t know Kyle at all, which meant no one would come looking for him there. And what did it matter if Kyle did turn out to be a serial killer? he thought bitterly. It would turn out worse for Kyle than it would for him, just like it had for that mugger last night.
“You know,” he said, “I think I’ll take you up on that, if it’s okay.”
Kyle nodded. “My truck’s just outside if you want to ride into the city with me.”
Simon bent to grab his duffel bag and straightened with it slung over his shoulder. He slid his phone into his pocket and spread his hands wide, indicating his readiness. “Let’s go.”
5
HELL CALLS HELL
Kyle’s apartment turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Simon expected a filthy walk-up in an Avenue D tenement, with roaches crawling on the walls and a bed made out of mattress foam and milk crates. In reality it was a clean two-bedroom with a small living area, a ton of bookshelves, and lots of photos on the walls of famous surfing spots. Admittedly, Kyle seemed to be growing marijuana plants on the fire escape, but you couldn’t have everything.
Simon’s room was basically an empty box. Whoever had lived there before had left nothing behind but a futon mattress. It had bare walls, bare floors, and a single window, through which Simon could see the neon sign of the Chinese restaurant across the street. “You like it?” Kyle inquired, hovering in the doorway, his hazel eyes open and friendly.
“It’s great,” Simon replied honestly. “Exactly what I needed.”
The most expensive item in the apartment was the flat-screen TV in the living room. They threw themselves down on the futon couch and watched bad TV as the sunlight dimmed outside. Kyle was cool, Simon decided. He didn’t poke, didn’t pry, didn’t ask questions. He didn’t seem to want anything in exchange for the room except for Simon to pitch in grocery money. He was just a friendly guy. Simon wondered if he’d forgotten what ordinary human beings were like.
After Kyle headed out to work an evening shift, Simon went into his room, collapsed on the mattress, and listened to the traffic going by on Avenue B.
He’d been haunted by thoughts of his mother’s face since he’d left: the way she’d looked at him with loathing and fear, as if he were an intruder in her house. Even if he didn’t need to breathe, the thought of it had still constricted his chest. But now . . .
When he was a kid, he’d always liked traveling, because being in a new place had meant being away from all his problems. Even here, just a river away from Brooklyn, the memories that had been eating at him like acid—the mugger’s death, his mother’s reaction to the truth of what he was—seemed blurred and distant.
May
be that was the secret, he thought. Keep moving. Like a shark. Go to where no one can find you. A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth.
But that only worked if there was no one you cared about leaving behind.
He slept fitfully all night. His natural urge was to sleep during the day, despite his Daylighter powers, and he fought off restlessness and dreams before waking up late with the sun streaming in through the window. After throwing on clean clothes from his knapsack, he left the bedroom to find Kyle in the kitchen, frying bacon and eggs in a Teflon pan.
“Hey, roommate,” Kyle greeted him cheerfully. “Want some breakfast?”
The sight of the food made Simon feel vaguely sick to his stomach. “No, thanks. I’ll take some coffee, though.” He perched himself on one of the slightly lopsided bar stools.
Kyle pushed a chipped mug across the counter toward him. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, bro. Even if it’s already noon.”
Simon put his hands around the mug, feeling the heat seep into his cold skin. He cast about for a topic of conversation—one that wasn’t how little he ate. “So, I never asked you yesterday—what do you do for a living?”
Kyle picked a piece of bacon out of the pan and bit into it. Simon noticed that the gold medal at his throat had a pattern of leaves on it, and the words “Beati Bellicosi.” “Beati,” Simon knew, was a word that had something to do with saints; Kyle must be Catholic. “Bike messenger,” he said, chewing. “It’s awesome. I get to ride around the city, seeing everything, talking to everyone. Way better than high school.”
“You dropped out?”
“Got my GED senior year. I prefer the school of life.” Simon would have thought Kyle sounded ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that he said “school of life” the way he said everything else—with total sincerity. “What about you? Any plans?”
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