City of Lost Souls

“Isn’t it possible,” Isabelle said, “that Sebastian could wreak just as much destruction?”

“Like Magnus said,” Simon put in bitterly, “anything’s possible.”

“There could be almost no greater crime in the eyes of the Clave,” said Magnus. “Whoever loosed Azazel upon the world would be a wanted criminal.”

“But if it were to destroy Sebastian…” Isabelle began.

“We don’t have proof Sebastian’s plotting anything,” said Magnus. “For all we know, all he wants is to settle down in a nice country house in Idris.”

“With Clary and Jace?” Alec said incredulously.

Magnus shrugged. “Who knows what he wants with them? Maybe he’s just lonely.”

“No way did he kidnap Jace off that roof because he’s desperately in need of a bromance,” said Isabelle. “He’s planning something.”

They all looked at Simon. “Clary’s trying to find out what. She needs some time. And don’t say ‘We don’t have time,’” he added. “She knows that.”

Alec raked a hand through his dark hair. “Fine, but we just wasted a whole day. A day we didn’t have. No more stupid ideas.” His voice was uncharacteristically sharp.

“Alec,” Magnus said. He put a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder; Alec was standing still, staring angrily at the floor. “Are you okay?”

Alec looked at him. “Who are you again?”

Magnus gave a little gasp; he looked — for the first time Simon could remember — actually unnerved. It lasted only a moment, but it was there. “Alexander,” he said.

“Too soon to joke about the happy memory thing, I take it,” Alec said.

“You think?” Magnus’s voice soared. Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and Maia and Jordan came in. Their cheeks were red from the cold, and — Simon saw with a small start — Maia was wearing Jordan’s leather jacket.

“We just came from the station,” she said excitedly. “Luke hasn’t woken up yet, but it looks like he’s going to be all right—” She broke off, looking around at the still-glimmering pentagram, the clouds of black smoke, and the scorched patches on the floor. “Okay, what have you guys been doing?”

With the help of a glamour and Jace’s ability to swing himself one-armed up onto a curving old bridge, Clary and Jace escaped the Italian police without being arrested. Once they had stopped running, they collapsed against the side of a building, laughing, side by side, their hands interlinked. Clary felt a moment of pure sharp happiness and had to bury her head against Jace’s shoulder, reminding herself, in a hard internal voice, that this wasn’t him, before her laughter trailed off into silence.

Jace seemed to take her sudden quiet as a sign that she was tired. He held her hand lightly as they made their way back to the street they’d started out from, the narrow canal with bridges on both ends. In between them Clary recognized the blank, featureless townhouse they’d left. A shudder ran over her.

“Cold?” Jace pulled her toward him and kissed her; he was so much taller than she was that he either had to bend down or pick her up; in this case he did the latter, and she suppressed a gasp as he swung her up and through the wall of the house. Setting her down, he kicked a door — which had appeared suddenly behind them — shut with a bang, and was about to shuck off his jacket when there was the sound of a stifled chuckle.

Clary pulled away from Jace as lights blazed up around them. Sebastian sat on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table. His fair hair was tousled; his eyes were glossy black. He wasn’t alone, either. There were two girls there, one on either side of him. One was fair, a little scantily dressed, in a glittering short skirt and spangled top. She had her hand splayed out across Sebastian’s chest. The other was younger, softer-looking, with black hair cut short, a red velvet band around her head, and a lacy black dress.

Clary felt her nerves tighten. Vampire, she thought. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did — whether it was the waxy white sheen of the dark-haired girl’s skin or the bottomlessness of her eyes, or perhaps Clary was just learning to sense these things, the way Shadowhunters were supposed to. The girl knew she knew; Clary could tell. The girl grinned, showing her little pointed teeth, and then bent to run them over Sebastian’s collarbone. His lids fluttered, fair eyelashes lowering over dark eyes. He looked up at Clary through them, ignoring Jace.

“Did you enjoy your little date?”

Clary wished she could say something rude, but instead she just nodded.

“Well, then, would you like to join us?” he said, indicating himself and the two girls. “For a drink?”

The dark-haired girl laughed and said something in Italian to Sebastian, her voice questioning.

“No,” said Sebastian. “Lei e mia sorella.”

The girl sat back, looking disappointed. Clary’s mouth was dry. Suddenly she felt Jace’s hand against hers, his callused fingertips rough. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re going upstairs. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Sebastian wiggled his fingers, and the Morgenstern ring on his hand caught the light, sparking like a signal fire. “Ci vediamo.”

Jace led Clary out of the room and up the glass stairs; only when they were in the corridor did she feel like she had gotten her breath back. This different Jace was one thing. Sebastian was something else. The sense of menace that rose off him was like smoke off a fire. “What did he say?” she asked. “In Italian?”

“He said, ‘No, she is my sister,’” said Jace. He did not say what the girl had asked Sebastian.

“Does he do this much?” she asked. They had stopped in front of Jace’s room, on the threshold. “Bring girls back?”

Jace touched her face. “He does what he wants, and I don’t ask,” he said. “He could bring a six-foot tall pink rabbit in a bikini back home with him if he wanted to. It’s not my business. But if you’re asking me if I’ve brought any girls back here, the answer is no. I don’t want anybody but you.”

It hadn’t been what she was asking, but she nodded anyway, as if reassured. “I don’t want to go back downstairs.”

“You can sleep in my room with me tonight.” His gold eyes were luminous in the dark. “Or you can sleep in the master bedroom. You know I wouldn’t ever ask you—”

“I want to be with you,” she said, surprising herself with her own vehemence. Maybe it was just that the idea of sleeping in that bedroom, where Valentine had once slept, where he had hoped to live again with her mother, was too much. Or maybe it was that she was tired, and she had only ever spent one night in the same bed as Jace, and they had slept with only their hands touching, as if an unsheathed sword had lain between them.

“Give me a second to clean up the room. It’s a mess.”

“Yeah, when I was in there before, I think I might actually have seen a fleck of dust on the windowsill. You’d better get on that.”

He tugged a lock of her hair, running it through his fingers. “Not to actively work against my own interests, but do you need something to sleep in? Pajamas, or…”

She thought of the wardrobe full of clothes in the master bedroom. She was going to have to get used to the idea. Might as well start now. “I’ll get a nightgown.”

Of course, she thought several moments later, standing over an open drawer, the sort of nightgowns men bought because they wanted the women in their lives to wear them were not necessarily the kind of thing you might buy for yourself. Clary usually slept in a tank top and pajama shorts, but everything here was silky or lacy or barely there, or all three. She settled finally on a pale green silk shift that hit her midthigh. She thought of the red nails of the girl downstairs, the one with her hand on Sebastian’s chest. Her own nails were bitten, her toenails never decorated with much more than clear polish. She wondered what it would be like to be more like Isabelle, so aware of your own feminine power you could wield it as a weapon instead of gazing at it mystified, like someone presented with a housewarming gift they had no idea where to display.

She touched the gold ring on her finger for luck before heading into Jace’s bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, shirtless in black pajama bottoms, reading a book in the small pool of yellow light from the bedside lamp. She stood for a moment, watching him. She could see the delicate play of muscles under his skin as he turned the pages — and could see Lilith’s Mark, just over his heart. It didn’t look like the black lacework of the rest of his Marks; it was silvery-red, like blood-tinged mercury. It seemed not to belong on him.

The door slipped closed behind her with a click, and Jace looked up. Clary saw his face change. She might