City of Lost Souls

Take some small comfort in the fact that Jonathan Morgenstern is as bound as your Jace is. He cannot harm or hurt Jace, nor would he want to, Zachariah added.

Alec threw his hands up. “So they love each other now? They’re best friends?” The hurt and jealousy was plain in his tone.

No. They are each other now. They see as the other sees. They know the other is somehow indispensable to them. Sebastian is the leader, the primary of the two. What he believes, Jace will believe. What he wants, Jace will do.

“So he’s possessed,” Alec said flatly.

In a possession there is often some part of the person’s original consciousness left intact. Those who have been possessed speak of watching their own actions from the outside, crying out but unable to be heard. But Jace is fully inhabiting his body and mind. He believes himself sane. He believes that this is what he wants.

“So what did he want from me?” Clary demanded in a shaking voice. “Why did he come to my room tonight?” She hoped her cheeks didn’t burn. She tried to push back the memory of kissing him, the pressure of his body against hers in the bed.

He still loves you, said Brother Zachariah, and his voice was surprisingly gentle. You are the central point about which his world spins. That has not changed.

“And that’s why we had to leave,” Jocelyn said tensely. “He’ll come back for her. We couldn’t stay at the police station. I don’t know where will be safe—”

“Here,” Magnus said. “I can put up wards that will keep Jace and Sebastian out.”

Clary saw relief flood her mother’s eyes. “Thank you,” Jocelyn said.

Magnus waved an arm. “It’s a privilege. I do love fending off angry Shadowhunters, especially of the possessed variety.”

He is not possessed, Brother Zachariah reminded them.

“Semantics,” said Magnus. “The question is, what are the two of them up to? What are they planning?”

“Clary said that when she saw them in the library, Sebastian told Jace he’d be running the Institute soon enough,” said Alec. “So they’re up to something.”

“Carrying on Valentine’s work, probably,” said Magnus. “Down with Downworlders, kill all recalcitrant Shadowhunters, blah blah.”

“Maybe.” Clary wasn’t sure. “Jace said something about Sebastian serving a greater cause.”

“The Angel only knows what that indicates,” Jocelyn said. “I was married to a zealot for years. I know what ‘a greater cause’ means. It means torturing the innocent, brutal murder, turning your back on your former friends, all in the name of something that you believe is bigger than yourself but is no more than greed and childishness dressed up in fanciful language.”

“Mom,” Clary protested, worried to hear Jocelyn sound so bitter.

But Jocelyn was looking at Brother Zachariah. “You said no weapon in this world can wound only one of them,” she said. “No weapon you know of…”

Magnus’s eyes glowed suddenly, like a cat’s when caught in a beam of light. “You think…”

“The Iron Sisters,” said Jocelyn. “They are the experts on weapons and weaponry. They might perhaps have an answer.”

The Iron Sisters, Clary knew, were the sister sect to the Silent Brothers; unlike their brethren, they did not have their mouths or eyes sewed shut but instead lived in almost total solitude in a fortress whose location was unknown. They were not fighters — they were creators, the hands who shaped the weapons, the steles, the seraph blades that kept the Shadowhunters alive. There were runes only they could carve, and only they knew the secrets of molding the silvery-white substance called adamas into demon towers, steles, and witchlight rune-stones. Rarely seen, they did not attend Council meetings or venture into Alicante.

It is possible, Brother Zachariah said after a long pause.

“If Sebastian could be killed — if there is a weapon that could kill him but leave Jace alive — does that mean Jace would be free of his influence?” Clary asked.

There was an even longer pause. Then, Yes, said Brother Zachariah. That would be the most likely outcome.

“Then, we should go to see the Sisters.” Exhaustion hung on Clary like a cloak, weighting her eyes, souring the taste in her mouth. She rubbed her eyes, trying to scrub it away. “Now.”

“I can’t go,” said Magnus. “Only female Shadowhunters can enter the Adamant Citadel.”

“And you’re not going,” Jocelyn said to Clary in her sternest No-you-are-not-going-out-clubbing-with-Simon- after-midnight voice. “You’re safer here, where you’re warded.”

“Isabelle,” said Alec. “Isabelle can go.”

“Do you have any idea where she is?” Clary said.

“Home, I’d imagine,” said Alec, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I can call her—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Magnus said, smoothly removing his cell phone from his pocket and punching in a text with the skill of the long-practiced. “It’s late, and we don’t need to wake her up. Everyone needs rest. If I’m to send any of you through to the Iron Sisters, it will be tomorrow.”

“I’ll go with Isabelle,” Jocelyn said. “No one’s looking for me specifically, and it’s better that she not go alone. Even if I’m not technically a Shadowhunter, I was once. It’s only required that one of us be in good standing.”

“This isn’t fair,” Clary said.

Her mother didn’t even look at her. “Clary…”

Clary rose to her feet. “I’ve been practically a prisoner for the past two weeks,” she said in a shaking voice. “The Clave wouldn’t let me look for Jace. And now that he came to me—to me—you won’t even let me come with you to the Iron Sisters—”

“It isn’t safe. Jace is probably tracking you—”

Clary lost it. “Every time you try to keep me safe, you wreck my life!”

“No, the more involved you get with Jace the more you wreck your life!” her mother snapped back. “Every risk you’ve taken, every danger you’ve been in, is because of him! He held a knife to your throat, Clarissa—”

“That wasn’t him,” Clary said in the softest, deadliest voice she could imagine. “Do you think I’d stay for one second with a boy who threatened me with a knife, even if I loved him? Maybe you’ve been living too long in the mundane world, Mom, but there is magic. The person who hurt me wasn’t Jace. It was a demon wearing his face. And the person we’re looking for now isn’t Jace. But if he dies…”

“There’s no chance of getting Jace back,” said Alec.

“There may already be no chance,” said Jocelyn. “God, Clary, look at the evidence. You thought you and Jace were brother and sister! You sacrificed everything to save his life, and a Greater Demon used him to get to you! When are you going to face the fact that the two of you are not meant to be together?”

Clary jerked back as if her mother had hit her. Brother Zachariah stood as still as a statue, as if no one were shouting at all. Magnus and Alec were staring; Jocelyn was red-cheeked, her eyes glittering with anger. Not trusting herself to speak, Clary spun on her heel, stalked down the hallway to Magnus’s spare bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.

“All right, I’m here,” Simon said. A cold wind was blowing across the flat expanse of the roof garden, and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t really feel the cold, but he felt like he ought to. He raised his voice. “I showed up. Where are you?”

The roof garden of the Greenwich Hotel — now closed, and therefore empty of people — was done up like an English garden, with carefully shaped dwarf box trees, elegantly scattered wicker and glass furniture, and Lillet umbrellas that flapped in the stiff wind. The trellises of climbing roses, bare in the cold, spider-webbed the stone walls that surrounded the roof, above which Simon could see a gleaming view of downtown New York. “I am here,” said a voice, and a slender shadow detached itself from a wicker armchair and rose. “I had begun to wonder if you were coming, Daylighter.”

“Raphael,” Simon said in a resigned voice. He walked forward, across the hardwood planks that wound between the flower borders and artificial pools lined with shining quartz. “I was wondering myself.”