“You can’t make us feel sorry for you,” Jace said. “Not after what you did. And what the hell were you afraid of, spending all your time in the library? Dust mites? We were the ones who went out and fought demons!”
“He was afraid of Valentine,” Simon said. “Don’t you get it—”
Jace shot him a venomous look. “Shut up, vampire. This isn’t in any way about you.”
“Not Valentine exactly,” Hodge said, looking at Simon for almost the first time since he’d been dragged from the cell. There was something in that look that surprised Clary—a tired almost-affection. “My own weakness where Valentine was concerned. I knew he would return someday. I knew he would make a bid for power again, a bid to rule the Clave. And I knew what he could offer me. Freedom from my curse. A life. A place in the world. I could have been a Shadowhunter again, in his world. I could never be one again in this one.” There was a naked longing in his voice that was painful to hear. “And I knew I would be too weak to refuse him if he offered it.”
“And look at the life you got,” Jace spat. “Rotting in the cells of the Gard. Was it worth it, betraying us?”
“You know the answer to that.” Hodge sounded exhausted. “Valentine took the curse off me. He’d sworn he would, and he did. I thought he’d bring me back to the Circle, or what remained of it then. He didn’t. Even he didn’t want me. I knew there would be no place for me in his new world. And I knew I’d sold out everything I did have for a lie.” He looked down at his clenched, filthy hands. “There was only one thing I had left—one chance to make something other than an utter waste out of my life. After I heard that Valentine had killed the Silent Brothers—that he had the Mortal Sword—I knew he would go after the Mortal Glass next. I knew he needed all three of the Instruments. And I knew the Mortal Glass was here in Idris.”
“Wait.” Alec held up a hand. “The Mortal Glass? You mean, you know where it is? And who has it?”
“No one has it,” said Hodge. “No one could own the Mortal Glass. No Nephilim, and no Downworlder.”
“You really did go crazy down there,” Jace said, jerking his chin toward the burned-out windows of the dungeons, “didn’t you?”
“Jace.” Clary was looking anxiously up at the Gard, its roof crowned with a thorny net of red-gold flames. “The fire is spreading. We should get out of here. We can talk down in the city—”
“I was locked in the Institute for fifteen years,” Hodge went on, as if Clary hadn’t spoken. “I couldn’t put so much as a hand or a foot outside. I spent all my time in the library, researching ways to remove the curse the Clave had put on me. I learned that only a Mortal Instrument could reverse it. I read book after book telling the story of the mythology of the Angel, how he rose from the lake bearing the Mortal Instruments and gave them to Jonathan Shadowhunter, the first Nephilim, and how there were three of them: Cup, Sword, and Mirror—”
“We know all this,” Jace interrupted, exasperated. “You taught it to us.”
“You think you know all of it, but you don’t. As I went over and over the various versions of the histories, I happened again and again on the same illustration, the same image—we’ve all seen it—the Angel rising out of the lake with the Sword in one hand and the Cup in the other. I could never understand why the Mirror wasn’t pictured. Then I realized. The Mirror is the lake. The lake is the Mirror. They are one and the same.”
Slowly Jace lowered the knife. “Lake Lyn?”
Clary thought of the lake, like a mirror rising to meet her, the water shattering apart on impact. “I fell in the lake when I first got here. There is something about it. Luke said it has strange properties and that the Fair Folk call it the Mirror of Dreams.”
“Exactly,” Hodge began eagerly. “And I realized the Clave wasn’t aware of this, that the knowledge had been lost to time. Even Valentine didn’t know—”
He was interrupted by a crashing roar, the sound of a tower at the far end of the Gard collapsing. It sent up a fireworks display of red and glittering sparks.
“Jace,” Alec said, raising his head in alarm. “Jace, we have to get out of here. Get up,” he said to Hodge, yanking him upright by the arm. “You can tell the Clave what you just told us.”
Hodge got shakily to his feet. What must it be like, Clary thought with a pang of unwelcome pity, to live your life ashamed not just of what you’d done but of what you were doing and of what you knew you’d do again? Hodge had given up a long time ago trying to live a better life or a different one; all he wanted was not to be afraid, and so he was afraid all the time.
“Come on.” Alec, still gripping Hodge’s arm, propelled him forward. But Jace stepped in front of them both, blocking their way.
“If Valentine gets the Mortal Glass,” he said, “what then?”
“Jace,” Alec said, still holding Hodge’s arm, “not now—”
“If he tells it to the Clave, we’ll never hear it from them,” Jace said. “To them we’re just children. But Hodge owes us this.” He turned on his old tutor. “You said you realized you had to stop Valentine. Stop him doing what? What does the Mirror give him the power to do?”
Hodge shook his head. “I can’t—”
“And no lies.” The knife gleamed at Jace’s side; his hand was tight on the hilt. “Because maybe for every lie you tell me, I’ll cut off a finger. Or two.”
Hodge cringed back, real fear in his eyes. Alec looked stricken. “Jace. No. This is what your father’s like. It’s not what you’re like.”
“Alec,” said Jace. He didn’t look at his friend, but his tone was like the touch of a regretful hand. “You don’t really know what I’m like.”
Alec’s eyes met Clary’s across the grass. He can’t imagine why Jace is acting like this, she thought. He doesn’t know. She took a step foward. “Jace, Alec is right—we can take Hodge down to the Hall and he can tell the Clave what he’s just told us—”
“If he’d been willing to tell the Clave, he would have done it already,” Jace snapped without looking at her. “The fact that he didn’t proves he’s a liar.”
“The Clave isn’t to be trusted!” Hodge protested desperately. “There are spies in it—Valentine’s men—I couldn’t tell them where the Mirror is. If Valentine found the Mirror, he would be—”
He never finished his sentence. Something bright silver gleamed out in the moonlight, a nail head of light in the darkness. Alec cried out. Hodge’s eyes flew wide as he staggered, clawing at his chest. As he sank backward, Clary saw why: The hilt of a long dagger protruded from his rib cage, like the haft of an arrow bristling from its target.
Alec, leaping forward, caught his old tutor as he fell, and lowered him gently to the ground. He looked up helplessly, his face spattered with Hodge’s blood. “Jace, why—”
“I didn’t—” Jace’s face was white, and Clary saw that he still held his knife, gripped tightly at his side. “I . . .”
Simon spun around, and Clary turned with him, staring into the darkness. The fire lit the grass with a hellish orange glow, but it was black between the trees of the hillside—and then something emerged from the blackness, a shadowy figure, with familiar dark, tumbled hair. He moved toward them, the light catching his face and reflecting off his dark eyes; they looked as if they were burning.
“Sebastian?” Clary said.
Jace looked wildly from Hodge to Sebastian standing uncertainly at the edge of the garden; Jace looked almost dazed. “You,” he said. “You—did this?”
“I had to do it,” Sebastian said. “He would have killed you.”
“With what?” Jace’s voice rose and cracked. “He didn’t even have a weapon—”
“Jace.” Alec cut through Jace’s shouting. “Come here. Help me with Hodge.”
“He would have killed you,” Sebastian said again. “He would have—”
But Jace had gone to kneel beside Alec, sheathing his knife at his belt. Alec was holding Hodge in his arms, blood on his own shirtfront now.
“Take the stele from my pocket,” he said to Jace. “Try an iratze—”
Clary, stiff with horror, felt Simon stir beside her. She turned to look at him and was shocked—he was white as paper except for a hectic red flush on both cheekbones. She could see the veins snaking under his skin, like the growth of some delicate, branching coral. “The blood,” he whispered, not looking at her. “I have to get away from it.”
Clary reached to catch his sleeve, but he lurched back, jerking his arm out of her grasp.
“No, Clary, please. Let me go. I’ll be okay; I’ll be back. I just—” She started after him, but he was too quick for her to hold him back. He vanished into the darkness between the trees.
“Hodge—” Alec sounded panicked. “Hodge, hold still—”
But his tutor was struggling feebly, trying to pull away from him, away from the stele in Jace’s hand. “No.” Hodge’s face was the color of putty. His eyes darted from Jace to Sebastian, who was still hanging back in the shadows. “Jonathan—”
“Jace,” Jace said, almost in a whisper. “Call me Jace.”
Hodge’s eyes rested on him. Clary could not decipher the look in them. Pleading, yes, but something more than that, filled with dread, or something like it, and with need. He lifted a warding hand. “Not you,” he whispered, and blood spilled from his mouth with the words.
A look of hurt flashed across Jace’s face. “Alec, do the iratze—I don’t think he wants me to touch him.”
Hodge’s hand tightened into a claw; he clutched at Jace’s sleeve. The rattle of his breath was audible. “You were . . . never . . .”
And he died. Clary could tell the moment the life left him. It was not a quiet, instant thing, like in a movie; his voice choked off in a gurgle and his eyes rolled back and he went limp and heavy, his arm bent awkwardly under him.
Alec closed Hodge’s eyes with his fingertips. “Vale, Hodge Starkweather.”
“He doesn’t deserve that.” Sebastian’s voice was sharp. “He wasn’t a Shadowhunter; he was a traitor. He doesn’t deserve the last words.”
Alec’s head jerked up. He lowered Hodge to the ground and rose to his feet, his blue eyes like ice. Blood streaked his clothes. “You know nothing about it. You killed an unarmed man, a Nephilim. You’re a murderer.”
Sebastian’s lip curled. “You think I don’t know who that was?” He gestured at Hodge. “Starkweather was in the Circle. He betrayed the Clave then and was cursed for it. He should have died for what he did, but the Clave was lenient—and where did it get them? He betrayed us all again when he sold the Mortal Cup to Valentine just to get his curse lifted—a curse he deserved.” He paused, breathing hard. “I shouldn’t have done it, but you can’t say he didn’t deserve it.”
“How do you know so much about Hodge?” Clary demanded. “And what are you doing here? I thought you agreed to stay back at the Hall.”
Sebastian hesitated. “You were taking so long,” he said finally. “I got worried. I thought you might need my help.”
“So you decided to help us by killing the guy we were talking to?” Clary demanded. “Because you thought he had a shady past? Who—who does that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s because he’s lying,” Jace said. He was looking at Sebastian—a cold, considering look. “And not well. I thought you’d be a little faster on your feet there, Verlac.”
Sebastian met his look evenly. “I don’t know what you mean, Morgenstern.”
“He means,” said Alec, stepping forward, “that if you really think what you just did was justified, you won’t mind coming with us to the Accords Hall and explaining yourself to the Council. Will you?”
A beat passed before Sebastian smiled—the smile that had charmed Clary before, but now there was something a little off-kilter about it, like a picture hanging slightly crookedly on a wall. “Of course not.” He moved toward them slowly, almost strolling, as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. As if he hadn’t just committed murder. “Of course,” he said, “it is a little odd that you’re so upset that I killed a man when Jace was planning on cutting his fingers off one by one.”
Alec’s mouth tightened. “He wouldn’t have done it.”
“You—” Jace looked at Sebastian with loathing. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Or maybe,” Sebastian said, “you’re really just angry because I kissed your sister. Because she wanted me.”
“I did not,” Clary said, but neither of them was looking at her. “Want you, I mean.”
“She has this little habit, you know—the way she gasps when you kiss her, like she’s surprised?” Sebastian had come to a stop now, just in front of Jace, and was smiling like an angel. “It’s rather endearing; you must have noticed it.”
Jace looked as if he wanted to throw up. “My sister—”
“Your sister,” Sebastian said. “Is she? Because you two don’t act like it. You think other people can’t see the way you look at each other? You think you’re hiding the way you feel? You think everyone doesn’t think it’s sick and unnatural? Because it is.”
“That’s enough.” The look on Jace’s face was murderous.
“Why are you doing this?” Clary said. “Sebastian, why are you saying all these things?”
“Because I finally can,” Sebastian said. “You’ve no idea what it’s been like, being around the lot of you these past few days, having to pretend I could stand you. That the sight of you didn’t make me sick. You,” he said to Jace, “every second you’re not panting after your own sister, you’re whining on and on about how your daddy didn’t love you. Well, who could blame him? And you, you stupid bitch”—he turned to Clary—“giving that priceless book away to a half-breed warlock; have you got a single brain cell in that tiny head of yours? And you—” He directed his next sneer at Alec. “I think we all know what’s wrong with you. They shouldn’t let your kind in the Clave. You’re disgusting.”
Alec paled, though he looked more astonished than anything else. Clary couldn’t blame him—it was hard to look at Sebastian, at his angelic smile, and imagine he could say these things. “Pretend you could stand us?” she echoed. “But why would you have to pretend that unless you were . . . unless you were spying on us,” she finished, realizing the truth even as she spoke it. “Unless you were a spy for Valentine.”
Sebastian’s handsome face twisted, the full mouth flattening, his long, elegant eyes narrowing to slits. “And finally they get it,” he said. “I swear, there are utterly lightless demon dimensions out there that are less dim than the bunch of you.”
“We may not be all that bright,” Jace said, “but at least we’re alive.”
Sebastian looked at him in disgust. “I’m alive,” he pointed out.
“Not for long,” said Jace. Moonlight exploded off the blade of his knife as he flung himself at Sebastian, his motion so fast that it seemed blurred, faster than any human movement Clary had ever seen.
Until now.
Sebastian darted aside, missing the blow, and caught Jace’s knife arm as it descended. The knife clattered to the ground, and then Sebastian had Jace by the back of his jacket. He lifted him and flung him with incredible strength. Jace flew through the air, hit the wall of the Gard with bone-cracking force, and crumpled to the ground.
“Jace!” Clary’s vision went white. She ran at Sebastian to choke the life out of him. But he sidestepped her and brought his hand down as casually as if he were swatting an insect aside. The blow caught her hard on the side of the head, sending her spinning to the ground. She rolled over, blinking a red mist of pain out of her eyes.
Alec had taken his bow from his back; it was drawn, an arrow notched at the ready. His hands didn’t waver as he aimed at Sebastian. “Stay where you are,” he said, “and put your hands behind your back.”
Sebastian laughed. “You wouldn’t really shoot me,” he said. He moved toward Alec with an easy, careless step, as if he were striding up the stairs to his o
wn front door.
Alec’s eyes narrowed. His hands went up in a graceful, even series of movements; he drew the arrow back and loosed it. It flew toward Sebastian—
And missed. Sebastian had ducked or moved somehow, Clary couldn’t tell, and the arrow had gone past him, lodging in the trunk of a tree. Alec had time only for a momentary look of surprise before Sebastian was on him, wrenching the bow out of his grasp. Sebastian snapped it in his hands—cracked it in half, and the crack of the splintering made Clary wince as if she were hearing bones splinter. She tried to drag herself into a sitting position, ignoring the searing pain in her head. Jace was lying a few feet away from her, utterly still. She tried to get up, but her legs didn’t seem to be working properly.
Sebastian tossed the shattered halves of the bow aside and closed in on Alec. Alec already had a seraph blade out, glittering in his hand, but Sebastian swept it aside as Alec came at him—swept it aside and caught Alec by the throat, almost lifting him off his feet. He squeezed mercilessly, viciously, grinning as Alec choked and struggled. “Lightwood,” he breathed. “I’ve taken care of one of you already today. I hadn’t expected I’d be lucky enough to get to do it twice.”
He jerked backward, like a puppet whose strings had been yanked. Released, Alec slumped to the ground, his hands at his throat. Clary could hear his rattling, desperate breath—but her eyes were on Sebastian. A dark shadow had affixed itself to his back and was clinging to him like a leech. He clawed at his throat, gagging and choking as he spun in place, clawing at the thing that had hold of his throat. As he turned, the moonlight fell on him, and Clary saw what it was.
Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series Page 104
