City of Lost Souls

that she could feel every detail of his bones and muscles against her body—

She felt a wave of embarrassment so acute, it was dizzying. What made it worse was that Jace didn’t seem in the least bit awkward, or as if the previous night had affected him as much as it had her. He seemed only… annoyed. Annoyed, and sweaty, and hot.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “the next time you decide to sneak out of our magically warded apartment through a door that shouldn’t really exist, leave a note.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you being sarcastic?”

He threw one of his knives into the air and caught it. “Possibly.”

“I took Clary to see Magdalena,” Sebastian said. He had taken a throwing star down from the wall and was examining it. “We brought the adamas.”

Jace had tossed the second knife into the air; he missed catching it this time, and it stuck point-down into the floor. “You did?”

“I did,” Sebastian said. “And I told Clary the plan. I told her that we were planning to lure Greater Demons here so we could destroy them.”

“But not how you planned to accomplish that,” Clary said. “You never told me that part.”

“I thought it would be better to tell you with Jace here,” said Sebastian. He snapped his wrist forward suddenly, and the throwing star flew toward Jace, who blocked it with a swift flick of his knife. It clattered to the ground. Sebastian whistled. “Fast,” he commented.

Clary whirled on her brother. “You could have hurt him—”

“Anything that injures him injures me,” said Sebastian. “I was showing you how much I trust him. Now I want you to trust us.” His black eyes bored into her. “Adamas,” he said. “The stuff I brought to the Iron Sister today. Do you know what’s made out of it?”

“Of course. Seraph blades. The demon towers of Alicante. Steles…”

“And the Mortal Cup.”

Clary shook her head. “The Mortal Cup is gold. I’ve seen it.”

“Adamas dipped in gold. The Mortal Sword, too, has a hilt of the stuff. They say it’s the material the palaces of Heaven are built from. And it isn’t easy to get hold of. Only the Iron Sisters can work the stuff, and only they’re supposed to have access to it.”

“So why did you give some to Magdalena?”

“So she could make a second Cup,” said Jace.

“A second Mortal Cup?” Clary looked from one of them to the other, incredulous. “But you can’t just do that. Just make another Mortal Cup. If you could, the Clave wouldn’t have panicked so much when the original Mortal Cup went missing. Valentine wouldn’t have needed it so badly—”

“It’s a cup,” said Jace. “However crafted, it will always be a cup until the Angel voluntarily pours his blood into it. That’s what makes it what it is.”

“And you think you can get Raziel to voluntarily pour his blood into a second cup for you?” Clary couldn’t keep the razor edge of disbelief from her voice. “Good luck.”

“It’s a trick, Clary,” said Sebastian. “You know how everything has an alliance? Seraphic or demonic? What the demons believe is that we want the demonic equivalent of Raziel. A demon great in power who will mix his blood with ours and create a new race of Shadowhunters. Ones not bound by the Law, or the Covenant, or the rules of the Clave.”

“You told them you want to make… backward Shadowhunters?”

“Something like that.” Sebastian laughed, raking fingers through his fair hair. “Jace, do you want to help me explain?”

“Valentine was a zealot,” said Jace. “He was wrong about a lot of things. He was wrong to consider killing Shadowhunters. He was wrong about Downworlders. But he wasn’t wrong about the Clave or the Council. Every Inquisitor we’ve had has been corrupt. The Laws handed down by the Angel are arbitrary and nonsensical, and their punishments are worse. ‘The Law is hard, but it is the Law.’ How many times have you heard that? How many times have we had to duck and avoid the Clave and its Laws even when we were trying to save them? Who put me in prison? — the Inquisitor. Who put Simon in prison? The Clave. Who would have let him burn?”

Clary’s heart had started to pound. Jace’s voice, so familiar, saying these words, made her bones feel weak. He was right and also wrong. As Valentine had been. But she wanted to believe him in a way she hadn’t wanted to believe Valentine.

“Fine,” she said. “I understand the Clave is corrupt. But I don’t see what that has to do with making deals with demons.”

“Our mandate is to destroy demons,” said Sebastian. “But the Clave has been pouring all its energy into other tasks. The wards have been weakening, and more and more demons have been spilling into earth, but the Clave turns a blind eye. We have opened a gate in the far north, on Wrangel Island, and we will lure demons through it with the promise of this Cup. Only, when they pour their blood into it, they will be destroyed. I have made deals like this with several Greater Demons. When Jace and I have killed them, the Clave will see we are a power to be reckoned with. They will have to listen to us.”

Clary stared. “Killing Greater Demons isn’t that easy.”

“I did it earlier today,” said Sebastian. “Which is incidentally why neither of us is going to get in trouble for killing all those bodyguard demons. I killed their master.”

Clary looked from Jace to Sebastian and back again. Jace’s eyes were cool, interested; Sebastian’s gaze was more intense. It was as if he were trying to see into her head. “Well,” she said slowly. “That’s a lot to take in. And I don’t like the idea of you putting yourselves in that kind of danger. But I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.”

“I told you,” Jace said. “I told you she’d understand.”

“I never said she wouldn’t.” Sebastian didn’t take his eyes off Clary’s face.

She swallowed hard. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. “I need to rest.”

“Too bad,” said Sebastian. “I was going to ask if you wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower.” His eyes were dark, unreadable; she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Before she could say anything in reply, Jace’s hand slid into hers.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “I didn’t sleep that well myself.” He nodded at Sebastian. “See you for dinner.”

Sebastian made no reply. They were nearly to the steps when Sebastian called out: “Clary.”

She turned around, drawing her hand out of Jace’s. “What?”

“My scarf.” He held out his hand for it.

“Oh. Right.” Taking a few steps toward him, she tugged with nervous fingers at the knotted cloth around her throat. After a moment of watching her, Sebastian made an impatient noise and stalked across the room toward her, his long legs covering the space between them quickly. She stiffened as he put his hand to her throat and deftly undid the knot with a few motions, then unwrapped the scarf. She thought for a moment that he lingered before unwrapping it fully, his fingers brushing her throat—

She remembered him kissing her on the hill by the burned remains of the Fairchild manor, and how she had felt as if she were falling, into a dark and abandoned place, lost and terrified. She backed up hastily, and the scarf fell away from her neck as she turned. “Thanks for lending it to me,” she said, and darted back to follow Jace down the stairs, not looking behind to see her brother watch her go, holding the scarf, a quizzical expression on his face.

Simon stood among the dead leaves and looked up the path; once more the human impulse to take a deep breath came on him. He was in Central Park, near the Shakespeare Garden. The trees had lost the last of their autumn luster, the gold and green and red turning to brown and black. Most of the branches were bare.

He touched the ring on his finger again. Clary?

Again there was no reply. His muscles felt as tense as strung wires. It had been too long since he had been able to raise her using the ring. He told himself over and over that she could be sleeping, but nothing could untie the terrible knot of tension in his stomach. The ring was his only connection to her, and right now it felt like nothing more than a hunk of dead metal.