Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  The missing stairs baffled Clary. What did vampires have against stairs? They finally found an unharmed set, tucked away behind the laundry. Maids must have used it to carry linens up and down the stairs in the days before elevators. Dust lay thick on the steps now, like a layer of powdery gray snow that made Clary cough.

  “Shh,” hissed Raphael. “They will hear you. We are close to where they sleep.”

  “How do you know?” she whispered back. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. What gave him the right to lecture her about noise?

  “I can feel it.” The corner of his eye twitched, and she saw that he was as scared as she was. “Can’t you?”

  She shook her head. She felt nothing, other than strangely cold; after the stifling heat of the night outside, the chill inside the hotel was intense.

  At the top of the stairs was a door on which the painted word “Lobby” was barely legible beneath years of accumulated dirt. The door sprayed rust when Jace pushed it open. Clary braced herself—

  But the room beyond was empty. They were in a large foyer, its rotting carpeting torn back to show the splintered floorboards beneath. Once the centerpiece of this room had been a grand staircase, gracefully curving, lined with gilt banisters and richly carpeted in gold and scarlet. Now all that remained were the higher steps, leading up into blackness. The remainder of the staircase ended just above their heads, in midair. The sight was as surreal as one of the abstract Magritte paintings Jocelyn had loved. This one, Clary thought, would be called The Stairs to Nowhere.

  Her voice sounded as dry as the dust that coated everything. “What do vampires have against stairs?”

  “Nothing,” said Jace. “They just don’t need to use them.”

  “It is a way of showing that this place is one of theirs.” Raphael’s eyes were bright. He seemed almost excited. Jace glanced at him sideways.

  “Have you ever actually seen a vampire, Raphael?” he asked.

  Raphael glanced at him almost absently. “I know what they look like. They are paler, thinner than human beings, but very strong. They walk like cats and spring with the swiftness of serpents. They are beautiful and terrible. Like this hotel.”

  “You think it’s beautiful?” Clary asked, surprised.

  “You can see where it was, years ago. Like an old woman who was once beautiful, but time has taken her beauty away. You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people. Not the way it is now, so—” He broke off, searching for a word.

  “Truncated?” Jace suggested dryly.

  Raphael looked almost startled, as if Jace had broken him out of a reverie. He laughed shakily and turned away.

  Clary turned to Jace. “Where are they, anyway? The vampires, I mean.”

  “Upstairs, probably. They like to be high up when they sleep, like bats. And it’s nearly sunrise.”

  Like puppets with their heads attached to strings, Clary and Raphael both looked up at the same time. There was nothing above them but the frescoed ceiling, cracked and black in places as if it had been burned in a fire. An archway to their left led farther into darkness; the pillars on either side were engraved with a motif of leaves and flowers. As Raphael glanced back down, a scar at the base of his throat, very white against his brown skin, flashed like a winking eye. She wondered how he’d gotten it.

  “I think we should go back to the servants’ stairs,” she whispered. “I feel too exposed out here.”

  Jace nodded. “You realize, once we get there, you’ll have to call out for Simon and hope he can hear you?”

  She wondered if the fear she felt showed on her face. “I—”

  Her words were cut short by a bloodcurdling scream. Clary whirled.

  Raphael. He was gone, no marks in the dust showing where he might have walked—or been dragged. She reached for Jace, reflexively, but he was already moving, running toward the gaping arch in the far wall and the shadows beyond. She couldn’t see him but followed the darting witchlight he carried, like a traveler being led through a swamp by a treacherous will-o’-the-wisp.

  Beyond the arch was what had once been a grand ballroom. The ruined floor was white marble, now so badly cracked that it resembled a sea of floating arctic ice. Curved balconies ran along the walls, their railings veiled in rust. Gold-framed mirrors hung at intervals between them, each crowned with a gilded cupid’s head. Spiderwebs drifted in the clammy air like ancient wedding veils.

  Raphael was standing in the center of the room, his arms at his sides. Clary ran to him, Jace following more slowly behind her. “Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly.

  He nodded slowly. “I thought I saw a movement in the shadows. It was nothing.”

  “We’ve decided to head back to the servants’ stairs,” Jace said. “There’s nothing on this floor.”

  Raphael nodded. “Good idea.”

  He headed for the door, not looking to see if they followed. He had gotten only a few steps when Jace said, “Raphael?”

  Raphael turned, eyes widening inquisitively, and Jace threw his knife.

  Raphael’s reflexes were quick, but not quick enough. The blade struck home, the force of the impact knocking him over. His feet went out from under him and he fell heavily to the cracked marble floor. In the dim witchlight his blood looked black.

  “Jace,” Clary hissed in disbelief, shock pounding through her. He’d said he hated mundanes, but he’d never—

  As she turned to go to Raphael, Jace shoved her brutally aside. He flung himself on the other boy and grabbed for the knife sticking out of Raphael’s chest.

  But Raphael was faster. He seized the knife, then screamed as his hand came in contact with the cross-shaped hilt. It clattered to the marble floor, blade smeared black. Jace had one hand fisted in the material of Raphael’s shirt, Sanvi in the other. It was glowing with such a bright light that Clary could see colors again: the peeling royal blue of the wallpaper, the gold flecks in the marble floor, the red stain spreading across Raphael’s chest.

  But Raphael was laughing. “You missed,” he said, and grinned for the first time, showing pointed white incisors. “You missed my heart.”

  Jace tightened his grip. “You moved at the last minute,” he said. “That was very inconsiderate.”

  Raphael frowned and spat, red. Clary stepped back, staring in dawning horror.

  “When did you figure it out?” he demanded. His accent had faded, his words more precise and clipped now.

  “I guessed in the alley,” Jace said. “But I figured you’d get us inside the hotel, then turn on us. Once we’d trespassed, we’d have been out of the protection of the Covenant. Fair game. When you didn’t, I thought I might have been wrong. Then I saw that scar on your throat.” He sat back a little, still holding the blade at Raphael’s throat. “I thought when I first saw that chain that it looked like the sort you’d hang a cross from. And you did, didn’t you, when you went out to see your family? What’s the scar of a little burn when your kind heal so quickly?”

  Raphael laughed. “Was that all? My scar?”

  “When you left the foyer, your feet didn’t leave marks in the dust. Then I knew.”

  “It wasn’t your brother who went in here looking for monsters and never came out, was it?” Clary said, realizing. “It was you.”

  “You are both very clever,” Raphael said. “Although not quite clever enough. Look up,” he said, and lifted a hand to point at the ceiling.

  Jace knocked the hand away without moving his glance from Raphael. “Clary. What do you see?”

  She raised her head slowly, dread curdling in the pit of her stomach.

  You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people. They were filled with people now, row on row of vampires with their dead white faces, their red stretched mouths, staring bemusedly down
ward.

  Jace was still looking at Raphael. “You called them. Didn’t you?”

  Raphael was still grinning. The blood had stopped spreading from the wound in his chest. “Does it matter? There are too many of them, even for you, Wayland.”

  Jace said nothing. Though he hadn’t moved, he was breathing in short quick pants, and Clary could almost feel the strength of his desire to kill the vampire boy, to shove the knife through his heart and wipe that grin off his face forever. “Jace,” she said warningly. “Don’t kill him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe we can use him as a hostage.”

  Jace’s eyes widened. “A hostage?”

  She could see them, more of them, filling the arched doorway, moving as silently as the Brothers of the Bone City. But the Brothers had not had skin so white and colorless, nor hands that curled into claws at the tips. . . .

  Clary licked her dry lips. “I know what I’m doing. Get him on his feet, Jace.”

  Jace looked at her, then shrugged. “All right.”

  Raphael snapped, “This isn’t funny.”

  “That’s why no one’s laughing.” Jace stood, hauling Raphael upright, jamming the tip of his knife between Raphael’s shoulder blades. “I can pierce your heart just as easily through your back,” he said. “I wouldn’t move if I were you.”

  Clary turned away from them to face the oncoming dark shapes. She flung out a hand. “Stop right there,” she said. “Or he’ll put that blade through Raphael’s heart.”

  A sort of murmur ran through the crowd that could have been whispering or laughter. “Stop,” Clary said again, and this time Jace did something, she didn’t see what, that made Raphael cry out in surprised pain.

  One of the vampires flung an arm out to hold back his companions. Clary recognized him as the thin blond boy with the earring that she’d seen at Magnus’s party. “She means it,” he said. “They are Shadowhunters.”

  Another vampire pushed her way through the crowd to stand at his side—a pretty blue-haired Asian girl in a silver foil skirt. Clary wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones. Maybe they didn’t make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn’t want to live forever. “Shadowhunters trespassing on our territory,” she said. “They are out of the protection of the Covenant. I say we kill them—they have killed enough of ours.”

  “Which of you is the master of this place?” Jace said, his voice very flat. “Let him step forward.”

  The girl bared her pointed teeth. “Do not use Clave language on us, Shadowhunter. You have broken your precious Covenant, coming in here. The Law will not protect you.”

  “That’s enough, Lily,” said the blond boy sharply. “Our master is not here. She is in Idris.”

  “Someone must rule you in her stead,” Jace observed.

  There was a silence. The vampires up in the balconies were hanging off the railings, leaning down to hear what was being said. Finally, “Raphael leads us,” said the blond vampire.

  The blue-haired girl, Lily, let out a hiss of disapproval. “Jacob—”

  “I propose a trade,” Clary said quickly, cutting off Lily’s tirade and Jacob’s retort. “By now you must know you took home too many people from the party tonight. One of them was my friend Simon.”

  Jacob raised his eyebrows. “You’re friends with a vampire?”

  “He’s not a vampire. And not a Shadowhunter, either,” she added, seeing Lily’s pale eyes narrow. “Just an ordinary human boy.”

  “We didn’t take any human boys home with us from Magnus’s party. That would have been a violation of the Covenant.”

  “He’d been transformed into a rat. A small brown rat,” said Clary. “Someone might have thought he was a pet, or . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. They were staring at her as if she were insane. Cold despair seeped into her bones.

  “Let me get this straight,” Lily said. “You’re offering to trade Raphael’s life for a rat?”

  Clary looked helplessly back at Jace. He gave her a look that said, This was your idea. You’re on your own.

  “Yes,” she said, turning back to the vampires. “That’s the trade we’re offering.”

  They stared at her, white faces nearly expressionless. In another context Clary would have said that they looked baffled.

  She could feel Jace standing behind her, hear the rasp of his breathing. She wondered if he was racking his brain trying to figure out why he’d let her drag them both here in the first place. She wondered if he was starting to hate her.

  “Do you mean this rat?”

  Clary blinked. Another vampire, a thin black boy with dreadlocks, had pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He was holding something in his hands, something brown that squirmed feebly. “Simon?” she whispered.

  The rat squeaked and started to thrash wildly in the boy’s grip. He looked down at the captive rodent with an expression of distaste. “Man, I thought he was Zeke. I wondered why he was copping such an attitude.” He shook his head, dreadlocks bouncing. “I say she can have him, dude. He’s already bitten me five times.”

  Clary reached out for Simon, her hands aching to hold him. But Lily stepped in front of her before she could take more than a step in his direction. “Wait,” Lily said. “How do we know you won’t just take the rat and kill Raphael anyway?”

  “We’ll give our word,” Clary said immediately, then tensed, waiting for them to laugh.

  Nobody laughed. Raphael swore softly in Spanish. Lily looked curiously at Jace.

  “Clary,” he said. There was an undercurrent of exasperated desperation in his voice. “Is this really a—”

  “No oath, no trade,” said Lily immediately, seizing on his uncertain tone. “Elliott, hold on to that rat.”

  The dreadlocked boy tightened his grip on Simon, who sank his teeth savagely into Elliott’s hand. “Man,” he said glumly. “That hurt.”

  Clary took the opportunity to whisper to Jace. “Just swear! What can it hurt?”

  “Swearing for us isn’t like it is for you mundanes,” he snapped back angrily. “I’ll be bound forever to any oath I make.”

  “Oh, yeah? What would happen if you broke it?”

  “I wouldn’t break it, that’s the point—”

  “Lily is right,” said Jacob. “An oath is required. Swear that you won’t hurt Raphael. Even if we give you the rat back.”

  “I won’t hurt Raphael,” Clary said immediately. “No matter what.”

  Lily smiled at her tolerantly. “It isn’t you we’re worried about.” She shot a pointed look at Jace, who was holding Raphael so tightly that his knuckles were white. A patch of sweat darkened the cloth of his shirt, just between his shoulder blades.

  He said, “All right. I swear it.”

  “Speak the Oath,” Lily said swiftly. “Swear on the Angel. Say it all.”

  Jace shook his head. “You swear first.”

  His words fell into the silence like stones, sending a rippling murmur through the crowd. Jacob looked concerned; Lily furious. “Not a chance, Shadowhunter.”

  “We have your leader.” The tip of Jace’s knife dug farther into Raphael’s throat. “And what have you got there? A rat.”

  Simon, pinned in Elliott’s hands, squeaked furiously. Clary longed to snatch him up, but held herself back. “Jace—”

  Lily looked toward Raphael. “Master?”

  Raphael had his head down, his dark curls falling to hide his face. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, trickled down the bare brown skin underneath. “A pretty important rat,” he said, “for you to come all the way here for him. It is you, Shadowhunter, I think, who will swear first.”

  Jace’s grip on him tightened convulsively. Clary saw the swell of the muscles under his skin, the whitening of his fingers and at the sides of his mouth as he fought his anger. “The rat’s a mundane,” he said sharply. “If you kill him, you’ll be subject to the Law—”

  “He is on o
ur territory. Trespassers are not protected by the Covenant, you know that—”

  “You brought him here,” Clary interjected. “He didn’t trespass.”

  “Technicalities,” said Raphael, grinning at her despite the knife at his throat. “Besides. You think we do not hear the rumors, the news that is running through Downworld like blood through veins? Valentine is back. There will be no Accords and no Covenant soon enough.”

  Jace’s head jerked up. “Where did you hear that?”

  Raphael frowned scornfully. “All Downworld knows it. He paid a warlock to raise a pack of Raveners only a week ago. He has brought his Forsaken to seek the Mortal Cup. When he finds it, there will be no more false peace between us, only war. No Law will prevent me from tearing your heart out on the street, Shadowhunter—”

  That was enough for Clary. She dove for Simon, shouldering Lily aside, and snatched the rat out of Elliott’s hands. Simon scrabbled up her arm, gripping her sleeve with frantic paws.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, “it’s okay.” Though she knew it wasn’t. She turned to run, and felt hands catch at her jacket, holding her. She struggled, but her efforts to tear herself free of the hands that held her—Lily’s, narrow and bony with black fingernails—were hampered by her fear of dislodging Simon, who clung to her shirt with paws and teeth. “Let go!” she screamed, kicking out at the vampire girl. Her booted toe connected, hard, and Lily shouted in pain and rage. She whipped her hand forward, striking Clary’s cheek with enough force to rock her head back.

  Clary staggered and nearly fell. She heard Jace shout her name, and turned to see that he had let go of Raphael and was racing toward her. Clary tried to go to him, but her shoulders were gripped by Jacob, his fingers digging into her skin.

  Clary cried out—and the noise was lost in a larger shriek as Jace, snatching one of the glass vials from his jacket, flung its contents toward her. She felt cool wetness splash her face, and heard Jacob scream as the water touched his skin. Smoke rose from his fingers and he released Clary, howling a high animal howl. Lily darted toward him, crying out his name, and in the pandemonium, Clary felt someone seize her wrist. She struggled to yank herself away.