City of Ashes mi-2

by Cassandra Clare

  Isabelle watched him go with a scowl. "He is so broken up with."

  Jace made a sound like a choked laugh and flipped the collar of his wet jacket up. They were all shivering. The cold night smelled like dirt and plants and human modernity—Clary almost thought she could scent the iron on the air. The ring of city surrounding the park sparked with fierce lights: ice blue, cool green, hot red, and the pond lapped quietly against its dirt shores. The moon's reflection had moved to the pond's far edge and quivered there as if it were afraid of them.

  "We'd better get back." Isabelle drew her still-wet coat closer around her shoulders. "Before we freeze to death."

  "It's going to take forever to get back to Brooklyn," Clary said. "Maybe we should take a taxi."

  "Or we could just go to the Institute," suggested Isabelle. At Jace's look, she said quickly, "No one's there anyway—they're all in the Bone City, looking for clues. It'll just take a second to stop by and grab your clothes, change into something dry. Besides, the Institute is still your home, Jace."

  "It's fine," Jace said, to Isabella's evident surprise. "There's something I need from my room there anyway."

  Clary hesitated. "I don't know. I might just grab a cab back with Simon." Maybe if they spent a little time alone together, she could explain to him what had happened down in the Seelie Court, and that it wasn't what he thought.

  Jace had been examining his watch for water damage. Now he looked at her, eyebrows raised. "That might be a little difficult," he said, "seeing that he left already."

  "He what?" Clary whirled around and stared. Simon was gone; the three of them were alone by the pond. She ran a little way up the hill and shouted his name. In the distance, she could just see him, striding purposefully away along the concrete path that led out of the park and onto the avenue. She called out to him again, but he didn't turn around.

  9

  And Death Shall Have No Dominion

  Isabelle had been telling the truth: The Institute was entirely deserted. Almost entirely, anyway. Max was asleep on the red couch in the foyer when they came in. His glasses were slightly askew and he clearly hadn't meant to fall asleep: There was a book open on the floor where he'd dropped it and his sneakered feet dangled over the couch's edge in a manner that looked as if it were probably uncomfortable.

  Clary's heart went out to him immediately. He reminded her of Simon at the age of nine or ten, all glasses and awkward blinking and ears.

  "Max is like a cat. He can sleep anywhere." Jace reached down and plucked the glasses from Max's face, setting them down on a squat inlaid table nearby. There was a look on his face Clary had never seen before—a fierce protective gentleness that surprised her.

  "Oh, leave his stuff alone—you'll just get mud on it," said Isabelle crossly, unbuttoning her wet coat. Her dress clung to her long torso and water darkened the thick leather belt around her waist. The glitter of her coiled whip was just visible where the handle protruded from the edge of the belt. She was frowning. "I can feel a cold coming on," she said. "I'm going to take a hot shower."

  Jace watched her disappear down the corridor with a sort of reluctant admiration. "Sometimes she reminds me of the poem. 'Isabelle, Isabelle, didn't worry. Isabelle didn't scream or scurry—' "

  "Do you ever feel like screaming?" Clary asked him.

  "Some of the time." Jace shrugged off his wet coat and hung it on the peg next to Isabelle's. "She's right about the hot shower, though. I could certainly use one."

  "I don't have anything to change into," Clary said, suddenly wanting a few moments to herself. Her fingers itched to dial Simon's number on her cell phone, find out if he was all right. "I'll just wait for you here."

  "Don't be stupid. I'll lend you a T-shirt." His jeans were soaked and hung low on his hipbones, showing a strip of pale, tattooed skin between the denim and the edge of his T-shirt.

  Clary looked away. "I don't think—"

  "Come on." His tone was firm. "There's something I want to show you, anyway."

  Surreptitiously, Clary checked the screen on her phone as she followed Jace down the hall to his room. Simon hadn't tried to call. Ice seemed to crystallize inside her chest. Until two weeks ago, it had been years since she and Simon had had a fight. Now he seemed to be mad at her all the time.

  Jace's room was just as she remembered it: neat as a pin and bare as a monk's cell. There was nothing about the room that told you anything about Jace: no posters on the walls, no books stacked on the night table. Even the duvet on the bed was plain white.

  He went to the dresser and pulled a folded long-sleeved blue T-shirt out of a drawer. He tossed it to Clary. "That one shrank in the wash," he said. "It'll probably still be big on you, but…" He shrugged. "I'm going to shower. Yell if you need anything."

  She nodded, holding the shirt across her chest as if it were a shield. He looked as if he were about to say something else, but apparently thought better of it; with another shrug, he disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Clary sank down onto the bed, the shirt across her lap, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. She dialed Simon's number. After four rings, it went to voice mail. "Hi, you've reached Simon. Either I'm away from the phone or I'm avoiding you. Leave me a message and—"

  "What are you doing?"

  Jace stood in the open doorway of the bathroom. Water ran loudly in the shower behind him and the bathroom was half full of steam. He was shirtless and barefoot, damp jeans riding low on his hips, showing the deep indentations above his hipbones, as if someone had pressed their fingers to the skin there.

  Clary snapped her phone closed and dropped it onto the bed. "Nothing. Checking the time."

  "There's a clock next to the bed," Jace pointed out. "You were calling the mundane, weren't you?"

  "His name is Simon." Clary wadded Jace's shirt into a ball between her fists. "And you don't have to be such a bastard about him all the time. He's helped you out more than once." Jace's eyes were lidded, thoughtful. The bathroom was rapidly filling with steam, making his hair curl more.

  He said, "And now you feel guilty because he's run off. I wouldn't bother calling him. I'm sure he's avoiding you."

  Clary didn't try to keep the anger out of her voice. "And you know this because you and he are so close?"

  "I know it because I saw the look on his face before he took off," Jace said. "You didn't. You weren't looking at him. But I was."

  Clary raked her still-dank hair out of her eyes. Her clothes itched where they clung to her skin, and she suspected she smelled like the bottom of a pond, and she couldn't stop seeing Simon's face when he'd looked at her in the Seelie Court—as if he hated her. "It's your fault," she said suddenly, rage gathering around her heart. "You shouldn't have kissed me like that."

  He had been leaning against the door frame; now he stood up straight. "How should I have kissed you? Is there another way you like it?"

  "No." Her hands trembled in her lap. They were cold, white, wrinkled by water. She laced her fingers together to stop the shaking. "I just don't want to be kissed by you."

  "It didn't seem to me that either of us had a choice in the matter."

  "That's what I don't understand!" Clary burst out. "Why did she make you kiss me? The Queen, I mean. Why force us to do—that? What pleasure could she possibly have gotten out of it?"

  "You heard what the Queen said. She thought she was doing me a favor."

  "That's not true."

  "It is true. How many times do I have to tell you? The Fair Folk don't lie."

  Clary thought of what Jace had said back at Magnus's. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you—with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place. "Then she was wrong."

  "She wasn't wrong." Jace's tone was bitter. "She saw the way I looked at you, and you at me, and Simon at you, and she played us like the instruments we are to her."

  "I don't look
at you," Clary whispered.

  "What?"

  "I said, I don't look at you." She released the hands that had been clasped together in her lap. There were red marks where her fingers had gripped each other. "At least I try not to."

  His eyes were narrowed, just a glint of gold showing through the lashes, and she remembered the first time she had seen him and how he had reminded her of a lion, golden and deadly. "Why not?"

  "Why do you think?" Her words were almost soundless, barely a whisper.

  "Then why?" His voice shook. "Why all this with Simon, why keep pushing me away, not letting me near you—"

  "Because it's impossible," she said, and the last word came out as a sort of wail, despite her efforts at control. "You know that as well as I do!"

  "Because you're my sister," Jace said.

  She nodded without speaking.

  "Possibly," said Jace. "And because of that, you've decided your old friend Simon makes a useful distraction?"

  "It's not like that," she said. "I love Simon."

  "Like you love Luke," said Jace. "Like you love your mother."

  "No." Her voice was as cold and pointed as an icicle. "Don't tell me what I feel."

  A small muscle jumped at the side of his mouth. "I don't believe you."

  Clary stood up. She couldn't meet his eyes, so instead she fixed her gaze on the thin star-shaped scar on his right shoulder, a memory of some old injury. This life of scars and killing, Hodge had said once. You have no part in it. "Jace," she said. "Why are you doing this to me?"

  "Because you're lying to me. And you're lying to yourself." Jace's eyes were blazing, and even though his hands were stuffed into his pockets, she could see that they were knotted into fists.

  Something inside Clary cracked and broke, and words came pouring out. "What do you want me to tell you? The truth? The truth is that I love Simon like I should love you, and I wish he was my brother and you weren't, but I can't do anything about that and neither can you! Or do you have some ideas, since you're so goddamned smart?"

  Jace sucked a breath in, and she realized he had never expected her to say what she'd just said, not in a million years. The look on his face said as much.

  She scrambled to regain her composure. "Jace, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

  "No. You're not sorry. Don't be sorry." He moved toward her, almost tripping over his feet—Jace, who never stumbled, never tripped over anything, never made an ungraceful move. His hands came up to cup her face; she felt the warmth of his fingertips, millimeters from her skin; knew she ought to pull away, but stood frozen, staring up at him. "You don't understand," he said. His voice shook. "I've never felt this way about anyone. I didn't think I could. I thought—the way I grew up—my father—"

  "To love is to destroy," she said numbly. "I remember."

  "I thought that part of my heart was broken," he said, and there was a look on his face as he spoke as if he were surprised to hear himself saying these words, saying my heart. "Forever. But you—"

  "Jace. Don't." She reached up and covered his hand with hers, folding his fingers into her own. "It's pointless."

  "That's not true." There was desperation in his voice. "If we both feel the same way—"

  "It doesn't matter what we feel. There's nothing we can do." She heard her voice as if a stranger were speaking: remote, miserable. "Where would we go to be together? How could we live?"

  "We could keep it a secret."

  "People would find out. And I don't want to lie to my family, do you?"

  His reply was bitter. "What family? The Lightwoods hate me anyway."

  "No, they don't. And I could never tell Luke. And my mother, what if she woke up, what would we say to her? This, what we want, it would be sickening to everyone we care about—"

  "Sickening?" He dropped his hands from her face as if she'd pushed him away. He sounded stunned. "What we feel—what I feel—it's sickening to you?"

  She caught her breath at the look on his face. "Maybe," she said, in a whisper. "I don't know."

  "Then you should have said that to begin with."

  "Jace—"

  But he was gone from her, his expression shut and locked like a door. It was hard to believe he'd ever looked at her another way. "I'm sorry I said anything, then." His voice was stiff, formal. "I won't be kissing you again. You can count on that."

  Clary's heart did a slow, purposeless somersault as he moved away from her, plucked a towel off the top of the dresser, and headed back toward the bathroom. "But—Jace, what are you doing?"

  "Finishing my shower. And if you've made me run through all the hot water, I'll be very annoyed." He stepped into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him.

  Clary collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was as blank as Jace's face had been before he turned his back on her. Rolling over, she realized she was lying on top of his blue shirt: It even smelled like him, like soap and smoke and coppery blood. Curling around it like she'd once curled around her favorite blanket when she was very small, she closed her eyes.

  In the dream, she looked down on shimmering water, spread out below her like an endless mirror that reflected the night sky. And like a mirror, it was solid and hard, and she could walk on it. She walked, smelling night air and wet leaves and the smell of the city, glittering in the far distance like a faerie castle wreathed in lights—and where she walked, spiderwebbing cracks fissured out from her footsteps and slivers of glass splashed up like water.

  The sky began to shine. It was alight with points of fire, like burning match tips. They fell, a rain of hot coals from the sky, and she cowered, throwing up her arms. One fell just in front of her, a hurtling bonfire, but when it struck the ground it became a boy. It was Jace, all in burning gold with his gold eyes and gold hair, and white-gold wings sprouted from his back, wider and more thickly feathered than any bird's.

  He smiled like a cat and pointed behind her, and Clary turned to see that a dark-haired boy—was it Simon?—was standing there, and wings spread from his back as well, feathered black as midnight, and each feather was tipped with blood.

  Clary woke up gasping, her hands knotted in Jace's shirt. It was dark in the bedroom, the only light streaming from the one narrow window beside the bed. She sat up. Her head felt heavy and the back of her neck ached. She scanned the room slowly and jumped as a bright pinpoint of light, like a cat's eyes in the darkness, shone out at her.

  Jace was sitting in an armchair beside the bed. He was wearing jeans and a gray sweater and his hair looked nearly dry. He was holding something in his hand that gleamed like metal. A weapon? Though what he might be guarding against, here in the Institute, Clary couldn't guess.

  "Did you sleep well?"

  She nodded. Her mouth felt thick. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

  "I thought you could use the rest. Besides, you were sleeping like the dead. You even drooled," he added. "On my shirt."

  Clary's hand flew to her mouth. "Sorry."

  "It's not often you get to see someone drool," Jace observed. "Especially with such total abandon. Mouth wide open and everything."

  "Oh, shut up." She felt around among the bedcovers until she located her phone and checked it again, though she knew what it would say. No calls. "It's three in the morning," she noted with dismay. "Do you think Simon's all right?"

  "I think he's weird, actually," said Jace. "Though that has little to do with the time."

  She shoved the phone into her jeans pocket. "I'm going to change."

  Jace's white-painted bathroom was no bigger than Isabelle's, though it was considerably neater. There wasn't much variation among the rooms in the Institute, Clary thought, closing the door behind her, but at least there was privacy. She shucked off her wet shirt and hung it on the towel rack, splashed water over her face, and ran a comb through her wildly curling hair.

  Jace's shirt was too big for her, but the material was soft against her skin. She rolled the sleeves up and went back into the bedroom, wh
ere she found Jace sitting exactly where he had been before, staring moodily down at the glinting object in his hands. She leaned on the back of the armchair. "What is that?"

  Instead of answering, he turned it over so that she could see it properly. It was a jagged piece of broken glass, but instead of reflecting her own face, it held an image of green grass and blue sky and the bare black branches of trees.

  "I didn't know you kept that," she said. "That piece of the Portal."

  "It's why I wanted to come here," he said. "To get this." Longing and loathing were mixed in his voice. "I keep thinking maybe I'll see my father in a reflection. Figure out what he's up to."

  "But he's not there, is he? I thought he was somewhere here. In the city."

  Jace shook his head. "Magnus has been looking for him and he doesn't think so."

  "Magnus has been looking for him? I didn't know that. How—"

  "Magnus didn't get to be High Warlock for nothing. His power extends through the city and beyond. He can sense what's out there, to an extent."

  Clary snorted. "He can feel disturbances in the Force?"

  Jace slewed around in the chair and frowned at her. "I'm not joking. After that warlock was killed down in TriBeCa, he started looking into it. When I went to stay with him, he asked me for something of my father's to make the tracking easier. I gave him the Morgenstern ring. He said he'd let me know if he senses Valentine anywhere in the city, but so far he hasn't."

  "Maybe he just wanted your ring," Clary said. "He sure wears a lot of jewelry."

  "He can have it." Jace's hand tightened around the bit of mirror in his grasp; Clary noted with alarm the blood welling up around the jagged edges where they cut into his skin. "It's worthless to me."

  "Hey," she said, and leaned down to take the glass out of his hand. "Easy there." She slid the piece of Portal into the pocket of his jacket where it hung on the wall. The edges of the glass were dark with blood, Jace's palms scored with red lines. "Maybe we should get you back to Magnus's," she said as gently as she could. "Alec's been there a long time, and—"