City of Lost Souls

button on his jeans, the tip of her fingernail scraping across his flat stomach. He felt his muscles jump. Izzy was gorgeous, there was no denying that. She was also a little terrifying. He wondered how unassuming Simon managed to handle her at all. “You might want to button these all the way up. Nice boxers, by the by.” She moved past him, toward Simon’s bedroom. Jordan followed, buttoning his jeans and muttering about how there was nothing strange about having a pattern of dancing penguins on your underwear.

Isabelle ducked her head into Simon’s room. “He’s not here.” She slammed the door behind her and leaned back against the wall, looking at Jordan. “You did say it was two in the morning?”

“Yeah. He’s probably at Clary’s. He’s been sleeping there a lot lately.”

Isabelle bit her lip. “Right. Of course.”

Jordan was beginning to get that feeling he got sometimes, that he was saying something unfortunate, without knowing exactly what that thing was. “Is there a reason you came over here? I mean, did something happen? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” Isabelle threw up her hands. “You mean other than the fact that my brother has disappeared and has probably been brainwashed by the evil demon who murdered my other brother, and my parents are getting divorced and Simon is off with Clary—”

She stopped abruptly and stalked past him into the living room. He hurried after her. By the time he caught up, she was in the kitchen, rifling through the pantry shelves. “Do you have anything to drink? A nice Barolo? Sagrantino?”

Jordan took her by the shoulders and moved her gently out of the kitchen. “Sit,” he said. “I’ll get you some tequila.”

“Tequila?”

“Tequila’s what we have. That and cough syrup.”

Sitting down at one of the stools that lined the kitchen counter, she waved a hand at him. He would have expected her to have long red or pink fingernails, buffed to perfection, to match the rest of her, but no — she was a Shadowhunter. Her hands were scarred, the nails squared off and filed down. The Voyance rune shone blackly on her right hand. “Fine.”

Jordan grabbed the bottle of Cuervo, uncapped it, and poured her a shot. He pushed the glass across the counter. She downed it instantly, frowned, and slammed the glass down.

“Not enough,” she said, reached across the counter, and took the bottle out of his hand. She tilted her head back and swallowed once, twice, three times. When she set the bottle back down, her cheeks were flushed.

“Where’d you learn to drink like that?” He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or frightened.

“The drinking age in Idris is fifteen. Not that anyone pays attention. I’ve been drinking wine mixed with water along with my parents since I was a kid.” Isabelle shrugged. The gesture lacked a little of her usual fluid coordination.

“Okay. Well, is there a message you want me to give Simon, or anything I can say or—”

“No.” She took another swig out of the bottle. “I got all liquored up and came over to talk to him, and of course he’s at Clary’s. Figures.”

“I thought you were the one who told him he ought to go over there in the first place.”

“Yeah.” Isabelle fiddled with the label on the tequila bottle. “I did.”

“So,” Jordan said, in what he thought was a reasonable tone. “Tell him to stop.”

“I can’t do that.” She sounded exhausted. “I owe her.”

Jordan leaned on the counter. He felt a little like a bartender in a TV show, dispensing sage advice. “What do you owe her?”

“Life,” Isabelle said.

Jordan blinked. This was a little beyond his bartending and advice-offering skills. “She saved your life?”

“She saved Jace’s life. She could have had anything from the Angel Raziel, and she saved my brother. I’ve only ever trusted a few people in my life. Really trusted. My mother, Alec, Jace, and Max. I lost one of them already. Clary’s the only reason I didn’t lose another.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to really trust someone you aren’t related to?”

“I’m not related to Jace. Not really.” Isabelle avoided his gaze.

“You know what I mean,” said Jordan, with a meaningful glance at Simon’s room.

Izzy frowned. “Shadowhunters live by an honor code, werewolf,” she said, and for a moment she was all arrogant Nephilim, and Jordan remembered why so many Downworlders disliked them. “Clary saved a Lightwood. I owe her my life. If I can’t give her that — and I don’t see how she has any use for it — I can give her whatever will make her less unhappy.”

“You can’t give her Simon. Simon’s a person, Isabelle. He goes where he wants.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Well, he doesn’t seem to mind going where she is, does he?”

Jordan hesitated. There was something about what Isabelle was saying that seemed off, but she wasn’t completely wrong either. Simon had with Clary an ease that he never seemed to show with anyone else. Having been in love with only one girl in his life, and having stayed in love with her, Jordan didn’t feel he was qualified to hand out advice on that front — though he remembered Simon warning him, with wryness, that Clary had “the nuclear bomb of boyfriends.” Whether there had been jealousy under that wryness, Jordan wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure whether you could ever completely forget the first girl you loved either. Especially when she was right there in front of you, every day.

Isabelle snapped her fingers. “Hey, you. Are you even paying attention?” She tilted her head to the side, blowing dark strands of hair out of her face, and looked at him hard. “What’s going on with you and Maia, anyway?”

“Nothing.” The single word held volumes. “I’m not sure she’s ever going to stop hating me.”

“She might not, at that,” Isabelle said. “She’s got good reason.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t do false reassurances,” Izzy said, and pushed the tequila bottle away from her. Her eyes, on Jordan, were lively and dark. “Come here, werewolf boy.”

She’d dropped her voice. It was soft, seductive. Jordan swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. He remembered seeing Isabelle in her red dress outside the Ironworks and thinking, That’s the girl Simon was messing around on Maia with? Neither of them was the sort of girl who gave the impression you could cheat on her and survive it.

And neither one of them was the sort of girl you said no to. Warily he moved around the counter toward Isabelle. He was a few steps away when she reached out and pulled him toward her by the wrists. Her hands slid up his arms, over the swell of his biceps, the muscles of his shoulders. His heartbeat quickened. He could feel the warmth coming off her and could smell her perfume and sweet tequila. “You’re gorgeous,” she said. Her hands slid around to flatten themselves against his chest. “You know that, right?”

Jordan wondered if she could feel his heart beating through his shirt. He knew the way girls looked at him on the street — boys, too, sometimes — knew what he saw in the mirror every day, but he never thought about it much. He had been so focused on Maia for so long that it never seemed to matter beyond whether she would still find him attractive if they ever saw each other again. He’d been chatted up plenty, but not often by girls who looked like Isabelle, and never by anyone so blunt. He wondered if she was going to kiss him. He hadn’t kissed anyone but Maia since he was fifteen. But Isabelle was looking up at him, and her eyes were big and dark, and her lips were slightly parted and the color of strawberries. He wondered if they would taste like strawberries if he kissed her.

“And I just don’t care,” she said.

“Isabelle, I don’t think — Wait. What?”

“I should care,” she said. “I mean, there’s Maia to think about, so I probably wouldn’t just rip your clothes off blithely anyway, but the thing is, I don’t want to. Normally I would want to.”

“Ah,” Jordan said. He felt relief, and also the tiniest twinge of disappointment. “Well… that’s good?”

“I think about him all the time,” she said. “It’s awful. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“You mean Simon?”

“Scrawny little mundane bastard,” she said, and took her hands off Jordan’s chest. “Except he isn’t. Scrawny,