City of Lost Souls

I had a feeling we might need them sometime. And I realized she was never going to give us any useful information. The rings seemed more valuable than another round with the Queen.”

Simon caught them up in his hand, hiding them from sight as Kaelie passed by. “Clary, you can’t just take things the Seelie Queen wants and keep them for yourself. She’s a very dangerous enemy to have.”

She looked at him pleadingly. “Can we at least see if they work?”

He sighed and handed her one of the rings; it felt light but was as soft as real gold. She worried for a moment that it wouldn’t fit, but as soon as she slipped it onto her right index finger, it seemed to mold to the shape of her finger, until it sat perfectly in the space below her knuckle. She saw Simon glancing down at his right hand, and realized the same thing had happened to him.

“Now we talk, I guess,” he said. “Say something to me. You know, mentally.”

Clary turned to Simon, feeling absurdly as if she were being asked to perform in a play whose lines she hadn’t memorized. Simon?

Simon blinked. “I think — Could you do that again?”

This time Clary concentrated, trying to focus her mind on Simon — the Simon-ness of him, the shape of the way he thought, the feeling of hearing his voice, the sense of him close. His whispers, his secrets, the way he made her laugh. So, she thought conversationally, now that I’m in your mind, want to see some naked mental pictures of Jace?

Simon jumped. “I heard that! And, no.”

Excitement fizzed in Clary’s veins; it was working. “Think something back to me.”

It took less than a second. She heard Simon, the way she heard Brother Zachariah, a voice without sound inside her mind. You’ve seen him naked?

Well, not entirely. But I—

“Enough,” he said out loud, and though his voice was caught between amusement and anxiety, his eyes sparked. “They work. Holy crap. They really work.”

She leaned forward. “So can I tell you my idea?”

He touched the ring on his finger, feeling its delicate tracery, the leaf-veins carved under his fingertips. Sure.

She began to explain, but she hadn’t yet reached the end of her description when Simon interrupted, out loud this time. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Simon,” she said. “It’s a perfectly fine plan.”

“The plan where you follow Jace and Sebastian off to some unknown dimensional pocket and we use these rings to communicate so those of us over here in the regular dimension of Earth can track you down? That plan?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said. “No, it isn’t.”

Clary sat back. “You don’t just get to say no.”

“This plan involves me! I get to say no! No.”

“Simon—”

Simon patted the seat beside him as if someone were sitting there. “Let me introduce you to my good friend No.”

“Maybe we can compromise,” she suggested, taking a bite of pie.

“No.”

“SIMON.”

“‘No’ is a magical word,” he told her. “Here’s how it goes. You say, ‘Simon, I have an insane, suicidal plan. Would you like to help me carry it out?’ And I say, ‘Why, no.’”

“I’ll do it anyway,” she said.

He stared at her across the table. “What?”

“I’ll do it whether you help me or not,” she said. “If I can’t use the rings, I’ll still follow Jace to wherever he is and try to get word back to you guys by sneaking away, finding telephones, whatever. If it’s possible. I’m going to do it, Simon. I just have a better chance of surviving if you help me. And there’s no risk to you.”

“I don’t care about risk to me,” he hissed, leaning forward across the table. “I care about what happens to you! Dammit, I’m practically indestructible. Let me go. You stay behind.”

“Yes,” Clary said, “Jace won’t find that odd at all. You can just tell him you’ve always been secretly in love with him and you can’t stand being parted.”

“I could tell him I’ve given it thought and I completely agree with his and Sebastian’s philosophy and decided to throw in my lot with theirs.”

“You don’t even know what their philosophy is.”

“There is that. I might have better luck telling him I’m in love with him. Jace thinks everyone’s in love with him anyway.”

“But I,” said Clary, “actually am.”

Simon looked at her for a long time over the table, silently. “You’re serious,” he said finally. “You’d actually do this. Without me — without any safety net.”

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Jace.”

Simon leaned his head back against the plastic booth seat. The Mark of Cain glowed a gentle silver against his skin. “Don’t say that,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you do anything for the people you love?”

“I’d do almost anything for you,” Simon said quietly. “I’d die for you. You know that. But would I kill someone else, someone innocent? What about a lot of innocent lives? What about the whole world? Is it really love to tell someone that if it came down to picking between them and every other life on the planet, you’d pick them? Is that — I don’t know, is that a moral sort of love at all?”

“Love isn’t moral or immoral,” said Clary. “It just is.”

“I know,” Simon said. “But the actions we take in the name of love, those are moral or immoral. And normally it wouldn’t matter. Normally — whatever I think of Jace being annoying — he’d never ask you to do anything that went against your nature. Not for him, not for anyone. But he isn’t exactly Jace anymore, is he? And I just don’t know, Clary. I don’t know what he might ask you to do.”

Clary leaned her elbow on the table, suddenly very tired. “Maybe he isn’t Jace. But he’s the closest thing to Jace I’ve got. There’s no way back to Jace without him.” She raised her eyes to Simon’s. “Or are you telling me it’s hopeless?”

There was a long silence. Clary could see Simon’s innate honesty warring with his desire to protect his best friend. Finally he said, “I’d never say that. I’m still Jewish, you know, even if I am a vampire. In my heart I remember and believe, even the words I can’t say. G—” He choked and swallowed. “He made a covenant with us, just like the Shadowhunters believe Raziel made a covenant with them. And we believe in his promises. Therefore you can never lose hope—hatikva—because if you keep hope alive, it will keep you alive.” He looked faintly embarrassed. “My rabbi used to say that.”

Clary slid her hand across the table and laid it atop Simon’s. He rarely talked about his religion with her or anyone, though she knew he believed. “Does that mean you agree?”

He groaned. “I think it means you crushed my spirit and beat me down.”

“Fantastic.”

“Of course you realize you’re leaving me in the position of being the one to tell everyone — your mother, Luke, Alec, Izzy, Magnus…”

“I guess I shouldn’t have said there would be no risk to you,” Clary said meekly.

“That’s right,” said Simon. “Just remember, when your mother’s gnawing my ankle like a furious mama bear separated from her cub, I did it for you.”

Jordan had only just fallen back asleep when the banging on the front door came again. He rolled over and groaned. The clock by the bed said 4:00 a.m. in blinking yellow numbers.

More banging. Jordan rolled reluctantly to his feet, dragged on his jeans, and staggered out into the hallway.