Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  Clary wondered. She had seen Sebastian looking at Jace, even at herself, and knew there was some part of him as echoingly lonely as the blackest void of space. Loneliness drove him as much as a desire for power—loneliness and a need to be loved without any corresponding understanding that love was something you earned. But all she said was, “Well, let’s get with the thwarting, then.”

  A smile ghosted across his face. “You know I want to beg you to stay out of this, right? It’s going to be a vicious battle. More vicious than I think the Clave even begins to understand.”

  “But you’re not going to do that,” Clary said. “Because that would make you an idiot.”

  “You mean because we need your rune powers?”

  “Well, that, and—Did you not listen to anything you just said? That whole business about protecting each other?”

  “I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here.”

  “So what do you think it meant?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jace admitted, “but I know I look damn good delivering it.”

  “God, I forgot how annoying the un-possessed you is,” Clary muttered. “Need I remind you that you said that you have to accept you can’t protect me from everything? The only way that we can protect each other is if we are together. If we face things together. If we trust each other.” She looked him directly in the eye. “I shouldn’t have stopped you from going to the Clave by calling for Sebastian. I should respect the decisions you make. And you should respect mine. Because we’re going to be together a long time, and that’s the only way it’s going to work.”

  His hand inched toward her on the blanket. “Being under Sebastian’s influence,” he said, hoarsely. “It seems like a bad dream to me, now. That insane place—those closets of clothes for your mother—”

  “So you remember.” She almost whispered it.

  His fingertips touched hers, and she almost jumped. Both of them held their breath while he touched her; she didn’t move, watching as his shoulders slowly relaxed and the anxious look left his face. “I remember everything,” he said. “I remember the boat in Venice. The club in Prague. That night in Paris, when I was myself.”

  She felt the blood rush up under her skin, making her face burn.

  “In some ways, we’ve been through something no one else can ever understand but the two of us,” he said. “And it made me realize. We are always and absolutely better together.” He raised his face to hers. He was pale, and fire flickered in his eyes. “I am going to kill Sebastian,” he said. “I am going to kill him for what he did to me, and what he did to you, and what he did to Max. I am going to kill him because of what he has done, and what he will do. The Clave wants him dead, and they will hunt him. But I want my hand to be the one that cuts him down.”

  She reached out then, and put her hand on his cheek. He shuddered, and half-closed his eyes. She had expected his skin to be warm, but it was cool to the touch. “And what if I’m the one who kills him?”

  “My heart is your heart,” he said. “My hands are your hands.”

  His eyes were the color of honey and slid as slowly as honey over her body as he looked her up and down as if for the first time since she’d come into the room, from her windblown hair to her booted feet, and back again. When their gaze met again, Clary’s mouth was dry.

  “Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?”

  Clary nodded.

  “I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realized then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.”

  Clary licked her dry lips. “Well, you did,” she said. “Kiss me, I mean.”

  He reached up and took a curl of her hair between his fingers. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his soap and skin and hair. “Not enough,” he said, letting her hair slip through his fingers. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough.”

  He bent his head. She couldn’t help tilting her own face up. Her mind was full of the memory of Paris, holding on to him as if it would be the last time she ever held him, and it almost had been. The way he had tasted, felt, breathed. She could hear him breathing now. His eyelashes tickled her cheek. Their lips were millimeters apart and then not apart at all, they brushed lightly and then with firmer pressure; they leaned in to each other—

  And Clary felt a spark—not painful, more like a fillip of mild static electricity—pass between them. Jace drew quickly away. He was flushed. “We may need to work on that.”

  Clary’s mind was still whirling. “Okay.”

  He was staring straight ahead, still breathing hard. “I have something I want to give you.”

  “I gathered that.”

  At that he jerked his gaze back to hers and—almost reluctantly—grinned. “Not that.” He reached down into the collar of his shirt and drew out the Morgenstern ring on its chain. He pulled it over his head and, leaning forward, dropped it lightly into her hand. It was warm from his skin. “Alec got it back from Magnus for me. Will you wear it again?”

  Her hand closed around it. “Always.”

  His grin softened to a smile, and, daring, she put her head on his shoulder. She felt his breath catch, but he didn’t move. At first he sat still, but slowly the tension drained from his body and they leaned together. It wasn’t hot and heavy, but it was companionable and sweet.

  He cleared his throat. “You know this means that what we did—what we almost did in Paris—”

  “Going to the Eiffel Tower?”

  He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You never let me off the hook for a single minute, do you? Never mind. It’s one of the things I love about you. Anyway, that other thing we almost did in Paris—that’s probably off the table for a while. Unless you want that whole baby-I’m-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal.”

  “No kissing?”

  “Well, kissing, probably. But as for the rest of it . . .”

  She brushed her cheek lightly against his. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

  “Of course it’s not okay with me. I’m a teenage boy. As far as I’m concerned, this is the worst thing that’s happened since I found out why Magnus was banned from Peru.” His eyes softened. “But it doesn’t change what we are to each other. It’s like there’s always been a piece of my soul missing, and it’s inside you, Clary. I know I told you once that whether God exists or not, we’re on our own. But when I’m with you, I’m not.”

  She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her tears—happy tears, for the first time in a long time now. Despite everything, despite the fact that Jace’s hands remained carefully together in his lap, Clary felt a sense of relief so overwhelming that it drowned out everything else—the worry about where Sebastian was, the fear of an unknown future—everything receded into the background. None of it mattered. They were together, and Jace was himself again. She felt him turn his head and lightly kiss her hair.

  “I really wish you hadn’t worn that sweater,” he muttered into her ear.

  “It’s good practice for you,” she replied, her lips moving against his skin. “Tomorrow, fishnets.”

  Against her side, warm and familiar, she felt him laugh.

  “Brother Enoch,” said Maryse, rising from behind her desk. “Thank you for joining me and Brother Zachariah here on such short notice.”

  Is this in regards to Jace? Zachariah inquired, and if Maryse had not known better, she would have imagined a tinge of anxiety in his mental voice. I have checked in on him several times today. His condition has not changed.

  Enoch shifted within his robes. And I have been looking through the archives and the ancient documentation on the topic of Heaven’s fire. There is some information about the m
anner in which it may be released, but you must be patient. There is no need to call on us. Should we have news, we will call on you.

  “This is not about Jace,” said Maryse, and she moved around the desk, her heels clicking on the stone floor of the library. “This is about something else entirely.” She glanced down. A rug had been carelessly tossed across the floor, where no rug usually rested. It did not lie flat but was draped over an irregular humped shape. It obscured the delicate pattern of tiles that outlined the shape of the Cup, the Sword, and the Angel. She reached down, took hold of a corner of the rug, and yanked it aside.

  The Silent Brothers did not gasp, of course; they could make no sound. But a cacophony filled Maryse’s mind, the psychic echo of their shock and horror. Brother Enoch took a step back, while Brother Zachariah raised one long-fingered hand to cover his face, as if he could block his ruined eyes from the sight before him.

  “It was not here this morning,” said Maryse. “But when I returned this afternoon, it awaited me.”

  At the very first glimpse she had thought that some kind of large bird had found its way into the library and died, perhaps breaking its neck against one of the tall windows. But as she had moved closer, the truth of what she was looking at had dawned on her. She said nothing of the visceral shock of despair that had gone through her like an arrow, or the way she had staggered to the window and been sick out of it the moment she’d realized what she was looking at.

  A pair of white wings—not quite white, really, but an amalgamation of colors that shifted and flickered as she looked at it: pale silver, streaks of violet, dark blue, each feather outlined in gold. And then, there at the root, an ugly gash of sheared-off bone and sinew. Angel’s wings—angel’s wings that had been sliced from the body of a living angel. Angelic ichor, the color of liquid gold, smeared the floor.

  Atop the wings was a folded piece of paper, addressed to the New York Institute. After splashing water on her face, Maryse had taken the letter and read it. It was short—one sentence—and was signed with a name in a handwriting oddly familiar to her, for in it there was the echo of Valentine’s cursive, the flourishes of his letters, the strong, steady hand. But it was not Valentine’s name. It was his son’s.

  Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.

  She held it out now to Brother Zachariah. He took it from her fingers and opened it, reading, as she had, the single word of Ancient Greek scrawled in elaborate script across the top of the page.

  Erchomai, it said.

  I am coming.

  NOTES

  Magnus’s Latin invocationon page 237 that raises Azazel, beginning “Quod tumeraris: per Jehovam, Gehennam,” is taken from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.

  The snippets of the ballad Magnus listens to in the car on pages 391–393 are taken with permission from “Alack, for I Can Get No Play” by Elka Cloke. elkacloke.com

  The T-shirt CLEARLY I HAVE MADE SOME BAD DECISIONS is inspired by my friend Jeph Jacques’s comic at questionablecontent.net. The T-shirts can be purchased at topatoco.com. The idea of Magical Love Gentleman also belongs to him.

  And now, a sneak peek of the first book in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices trilogy, the prequel to the Mortal Instruments series.

  Travel back to Victorian London with an earlier generation of Shadowhunters.

  London. April, 1878.

  The demon exploded in a shower of ichor and guts.

  William Herondale jerked back the dagger he was holding, but it was too late: The viscous acid of the demon’s blood had already begun to eat away at the shining blade. He swore and tossed the weapon aside; it landed in a filthy puddle and commenced smoldering like a doused match. The demon itself, of course, had vanished—dispatched back to whatever hellish world it had come from, though not without leaving a mess behind.

  “Jem!” Will called, turning around. “Where are you? Did you see that? Killed it with one blow! Not bad, eh?”

  But there was no answer to Will’s shout. Will was positive his hunting partner had been standing behind him in the damp and crooked street a few moments before, guarding his back, but now Will was alone in the shadows. He frowned in annoyance—it was much less fun showing off without Jem to show off to. Will glanced behind him, to where the street narrowed into a passage that gave onto the black, heaving water of the Thames in the distance. Through the gap he could see the dark outlines of docked ships, a forest of masts like a leafless orchard. No Jem there; perhaps he had gone back to Narrow Street in search of better illumination. With a shrug Will headed back the way he had come.

  Narrow Street cut across Limehouse, between the docks beside the river and the cramped slums spreading west toward Whitechapel. It was as narrow as its name suggested, lined with warehouses and lopsided wooden buildings. At the moment it was deserted; even the drunks staggering home from the Grapes up the road had found somewhere to collapse for the night. Will liked Limehouse, liked the feeling of being on the edge of the world, where ships left each day for unimaginably far ports. That the area was a sailor’s haunt, and consequently full of gambling hells, opium dens, and brothels, didn’t hurt either. It was easy to lose yourself in a place like this. He didn’t even mind the smell of it—smoke and dirt, rope and tar, foreign spices mixed with the river-water smell of the Thames.

  Looking up and down the empty street, he scrubbed the sleeve of his coat across his face, trying to rub away the ichor that stung and burned his skin. The cloth came away stained green and black. There was a cut on the back of his hand too, a nasty one. He could use a healing rune. One of Charlotte’s, preferably. She was particularly good at drawing iratzes.

  A shape detached itself from the shadows and moved toward Will. He started forward, then paused. It wasn’t Jem, but rather a mundane beat policeman wearing a bell-shaped helmet, a heavy overcoat, and a puzzled expression. He stared at Will, or rather through Will. However accustomed Will had become to glamour, it was always strange to be looked through as if he weren’t there. Will was seized with the sudden urge to grab the policeman’s truncheon and watch while the man flapped around, trying to figure out where it had gone; but Jem had scolded him the few times he’d done that before, and while Will never really could understand Jem’s objections to the whole enterprise, it wasn’t worth making him upset.

  With a shrug and a blink, the policeman moved past Will, shaking his head and muttering something under his breath about swearing off the gin before he truly started seeing things. Will stepped aside to let the man pass, then raised his voice to a shout: “James Carstairs! Jem! Where are you, you disloyal bastard?”

  This time a faint reply answered him. “Over here. Follow the witchlight.”

  Will moved toward the sound of Jem’s voice. It seemed to be coming from a dark opening between two warehouses: A faint gleam was visible within the shadows, like the darting light of a will-o’-the-wisp. “Did you hear me before? That Shax demon thought it could get me with its bloody great pincers, but I cornered it in an alley—”

  “Yes, I heard you.” The young man who appeared at the mouth of the alley was pale in the lamplight—paler even than he usually was, which was quite pale indeed. He was bare-headed, which drew the eye immediately to his hair. It was an odd bright silver color, like an untarnished shilling. His eyes were the same silver, and his fine-boned face was angular, the slight curve of his eyes the only clue to his heritage.

  There were dark stains across his white shirtfront, and his hands were thickly smeared with red.

  Will tensed. “You’re bleeding. What happened?”

  Jem waved away Will’s concern. “It’s not my blood.” He turned his head back toward the alley behind him. “It’s hers.”

  Will glanced past his friend into the thicker shadows of the alley. In the far corner of it was a crumpled shape—only a shadow in the darkness, but when Will looked closely, he could make out the shape of a pale hand, and a wisp of fair hair.

  “A dead woman?” Wi
ll asked. “A mundane?”

  “A girl, really. Not more than fourteen.”

  At that, Will cursed with great volume and fluency. Jem waited patiently for him to be done.

  “If we’d only happened along a little earlier,” Will said finally. “That bloody demon—”

  “That’s the peculiar thing. I don’t think this is the demon’s work.” Jem frowned. “Shax demons are parasites, brood parasites. It would have wanted to drag its victim back to its lair to lay eggs in her skin while she was still alive. But this girl—she was stabbed, repeatedly. And I don’t think it was here, either. There simply isn’t enough blood in the alley. I think she was attacked elsewhere, and she dragged herself here to die of her injuries.”

  Will’s mouth tightened. “But the Shax demon—”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t think it was the Shax. I think the Shax was pursuing her—hunting her down for something, or someone, else.”

  “Shaxes have a keen sense of scent,” Will allowed. “I’ve heard of warlocks using them to follow the tracks of the missing. And it did seem to be moving with an odd sort of purpose.” He looked past Jem, at the pitiful smallness of the crumpled shape in the alley. “You didn’t find the weapon, did you?”

  “Here.” Jem drew something from inside his jacket—a knife, wrapped in white cloth. “It’s a sort of misericord, or hunting dagger. Look how thin the blade is.”

  Will took it. The blade was indeed thin, ending in a handle made of polished bone. Both blade and hilt were stained with dried blood. With a frown he wiped the flat of the knife across the rough fabric of his sleeve, scraping it clean until a symbol, burned into the blade, became visible. Two serpents, each biting the other’s tail, forming a perfect circle.

  “Ouroboros,” Jem said, leaning in close to stare at the knife. “A double one. Now, what do you think that means?”

  “The end of the world,” said Will, still looking at the dagger, a small smile playing about his mouth, “and the beginning.”