City of Ashes

1 Valentine's Arrow

"Are you still mad?"

Alec, leaning against the wall of the elevator, glared across the small space at Jace. "I'm not mad."

"Oh, yes you are." Jace gestured accusingly at his stepbrother, then yelped as pain shot up his arm. Every part of him hurt from the thumping he'd taken that afternoon when he'd dropped three floors through rotted wood onto a pile of scrap metal. Even his fingers were bruised. Alec, who'd only recently put away the crutches he'd had to use after his fight with Abbadon, didn't look much better than Jace felt. His clothes were covered in mud and his hair hung down in lank, sweaty strips. There was a long cut down the side of his cheek.

"I am not," Alec said, through his teeth. "Just because you said dragon demons were extinct—"

"I said mostly extinct."

Alec jabbed a finger toward him. "Mostly extinct," he said, his voice trembling with rage, "is NOT EXTINCT ENOUGH."

"I see," said Jace. "I'll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from 'almost extinct' to 'not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.' Will that make you happy?"

"Boys, boys," said Isabelle, who'd been examining her face in the elevator's mirrored wall. "Don't fight." She turned away from the glass with a sunny smile. "All right, so it was a little more action than we were expecting, but I thought it was fun."

Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on you?"

Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt."

Jace snorted so loudly that she turned on him with a frown. He wiggled his mud-caked fingers at her. His nails were black crescents. "Filthy inside and out."

Isabelle was about to reply when the elevator ground to a halt with the sound of screeching brakes. "Time to get this thing fixed," she said, yanking the door open. Jace followed her out into the entryway, already looking forward to shucking his armor and weapons and stepping into a hot shower. He'd convinced his stepsiblings to come hunting with him despite the fact that neither of them was entirely comfortable going out on their own now that Hodge wasn't there to give them instructions. But Jace had wanted the oblivion of fighting, the harsh diversion of killing, and the distraction of injuries. And knowing he wanted it, they'd gone along with it, crawling through filthy deserted subway tunnels until they'd found the Dragonidae demon and killed it. The three of them working together in perfect unison, the way they always had. Like family.

He unzipped his jacket and slung it over one of the pegs hanging on the wall. Alec was sitting on the low wooden bench next to him, kicking off his muck-covered boots. He was humming tunelessly under his breath, letting Jace know he wasn't that annoyed. Isabelle was pulling the pins out of her long dark hair, allowing it to shower down around her. "Now I'm hungry," she said. "I wish Mom were here to cook us something."

"Better that she isn't," said Jace, unbuckling his weapons belt. "She'd already be shrieking about the rugs."

"You're right about that," said a cool voice, and Jace swung around, his hands still at his belt, and saw Maryse Lightwood, her arms folded, standing in the doorway. She wore a stiff black traveling suit and her hair, black as Isabelle's, was drawn back into a thick rope that hung halfway down her back. Her eyes, a glacial blue, swept over the three of them like a tracking searchlight.

"Mom!" Isabelle, recovering her composure, ran to her mother for a hug. Alec got to his feet and joined them, trying to hide the fact that he was still limping.

Jace stood where he was. There had been something in Maryse's eyes as her gaze had passed over him that froze him in place. Surely what he had said wasn't that bad? They joked about her obsession with the antique rugs all the time—

"Where's Dad?" Isabelle asked, stepping back from her mother. "And Max?"

There was an almost imperceptible pause. Then Maryse said, "Max is in his room. And your father, unfortunately, is still in Alicante. There was some business there that required his attention."

Alec, generally more sensitive to moods than his sister, seemed to hesitate. "Is something wrong?"

"I could ask you that." His mother's tone was dry. "Are you limping?"

Alec was a terrible liar. Isabelle picked up for him, smoothly:

"We had a run-in with a Dragonidae demon in the subway tunnels. But it was nothing."

"And I suppose that Greater Demon you fought last week, that was nothing too?"

Even Isabelle was silenced by that. She looked to Jace, who wished she hadn't.

"That wasn't planned for." Jace was having a hard time concentrating. Maryse hadn't greeted him yet, hadn't said so much as hello, and she was still looking at him with eyes like blue daggers. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that was beginning to spread. She'd never looked at him like this before, no matter what he'd done. "It was a mistake—"

"Jace!" Max, the youngest Lightwood, squeezed his way around Maryse and darted into the room, evading his mother's reaching hand. "You're back! You're all back." He turned in a circle, grinning at Alec and Isabelle in triumph. "I thought I heard the elevator."

"And I thought I told you to stay in your room," said Maryse.

"I don't remember that," said Max, with a seriousness that made even Alec smile. Max was small for his age—he looked about seven—but he had a self-contained gravity that, combined with his oversize glasses, gave him the air of someone older. Alec reached over and ruffled his brother's hair, but Max was still looking at Jace, his eyes shining. Jace felt the cold fist clenched in his stomach relax ever so slightly. Max had always hero-worshiped him in a way that he didn't worship his own older brother, probably because Jace was far more tolerant of Max's presence. "I heard you fought a Greater Demon," he said. "Was it awesome?"

"It was … different," Jace hedged. "How was Alicante?"

"It was awesome. We saw the coolest stuff. There's this huge armory in Alicante and they took me to some of the places where they make the weapons. They showed me a new way to make seraph blades too, so they last longer, and I'm going to try to get Hodge to show me—"

Jace couldn't help it; his eyes flicked instantly to Maryse, his expression incredulous. So Max didn't know about Hodge? Hadn't she told him?

Maryse saw his look and her lips thinned into a knifelike line. "That's enough, Max." She took her youngest son by the arm.

He craned his head to look up at her in surprise. "But I'm talking to Jace—"

"I can see that." She pushed him gently toward Isabelle. "Isabelle, Alec, take your brother to his room. Jace,"—there was a tightness in her voice when she spoke his name, as if invisible acid were drying up the syllables in her mouth—"get yourself cleaned up and meet me in the library as soon as you can."

"I don't get it," said Alec, looking from his mother to Jace, and back again. "What's going on?"

Jace could feel cold sweat start up along his spine. "Is this about my father?"

Maryse jerked twice, as if the words "my father" had been two separate slaps. "The library," she said, through clenched teeth. "We'll discuss the matter there."

Alec said, "What happened while you were gone wasn't Jace's fault. We were all in on it. And Hodge said—"

"We'll discuss Hodge later as well." Maryse's eyes were on Max, her tone warning.

"But, Mother," Isabelle protested. "If you're going to punish Jace, you should punish us as well. It would only be fair. We all did exactly the same things."

"No," said Maryse, after a pause so long that Jace thought perhaps she wasn't going to say anything at all. "You didn't."

"Rule number one of anime," Simon said. He sat propped up against a pile of pillows at the foot of his bed, a bag of potato chips in one hand and the TV remote in the other. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said I BLOGGED YOUR MOM and a pair of jeans with a hole ripped in one knee. "Never screw with a blind monk."

"I know," Clary said, taking a potato chip and dunking it into the can of dip balanced on the TV tray between them. "For some reason they're always way better fighters than monks who can see." She peered at the screen. "Are those guys dancing?"

"That's not dancing. They're trying to kill each other. This is the guy who's the mortal enemy of the other guy, remember? He killed his dad. Why would they be dancing?"

Clary crunched at her chip and stared meditatively at the screen, where animated swirls of pink and yellow clouds rippled between the figures of two winged men, who floated around each other, each clutching a glowing spear. Every once in a while one of them would speak, but since it was all in Japanese with Chinese subtitles, it didn't clarify much. "The guy with the hat," she said. "He was the evil guy?"

"No, the hat guy was the dad. He was the magical emperor, and that was his hat of power. The evil guy was the one with the mechanical hand that talks."

The telephone rang. Simon set the bag of chips down and made as if to get up and answer it. Clary put her hand on his wrist. "Don't. Just leave it."

"But it might be Luke. He could be calling from the hospital."

"It's not Luke," Clary said, sounding more sure than she felt. "He'd call my cell, not your house."

Simon looked at her a long moment before sinking back down on the rug beside her. "If you say so." She could hear the doubt in his voice, but also the unspoken assurance, I just want you to be happy. She wasn't sure "happy" was anything she was likely to be right now, not with her mother in the hospital hooked up to tubes and bleeping machines, and Luke like a zombie, slumped in the hard plastic chair next to her bed. Not with worrying about Jace all the time and picking up the phone a dozen times to call the Institute before setting it back down, the number still undialed. If Jace wanted to talk to her, he could call.

Maybe it had been a mistake to take him to see Jocelyn. She'd been so sure that if her mother could just hear the voice of her son, her firstborn, she'd wake up. But she hadn't. Jace had stood stiff and awkward by the bed, his face like a painted angel's, with blank indifferent eyes. Clary had finally lost her patience and shouted at him, and he'd shouted back before storming off. Luke had watched him go with a clinical sort of interest on his exhausted face. "That's the first time I've seen you act like sister and brother," he'd remarked.

Clary had said nothing in response. There was no point telling him how badly she wanted Jace not to be her brother. You couldn't rip out your own DNA, no matter how much you wished you could. No matter how much it would make you happy.

But even if she couldn't quite manage happy, she thought, at least here in Simon's house, in his bedroom, she felt comfortable and at home. She'd known him long enough to remember when he had a bed shaped like a fire truck and LEGOs piled in a corner of the room. Now the bed was a futon with a brightly striped quilt that had been a present from his sister, and the walls were plastered with posters of bands like Rock Solid Panda and Stepping Razor. There was a drum set wedged into the corner of the room where the LEGOs had been, and a computer in the other corner, the screen still frozen on an image from World of Warcraft. It was almost as familiar as being in her own bedroom at home—which no longer existed, so at least this was the next best thing.

"More chibis," said Simon gloomily. All the characters on-screen had turned into inch-high baby versions of themselves and were chasing each other around waving pots and pans. "I'm changing the channel," Simon announced, seizing the remote. "I'm tired of this anime. I can't tell what the plot is and no one ever has sex."

"Of course they don't," Clary said, taking another chip. "Anime is wholesome family entertainment."

"If you're in the mood for less wholesome entertainment, we could try the porn channels," Simon observed. "Would you rather watch The Witches of Breastwick or As I Lay Dianne?"

"Give me that!" Clary grabbed for the remote, but Simon, chortling, had already switched the TV to another channel.

His laughter broke off abruptly. Clary looked up in surprise and saw him staring blankly at the TV. An old black-and-white movie was playing—Dracula. She'd seen it before, with her mother. Bela Lugosi, thin and white-faced, was on-screen, wrapped in the familiar high-collared cloak, his lips curled back from his pointed teeth. "I never drink…wine," he intoned in his thick Hungarian accent.

"I love how the spiderwebs are made out of rubber," Clary said, trying to sound light. "You can totally tell."

But Simon was already on his feet, dropping the remote onto the bed. "I'll be right back," he muttered. His face was the color of winter sky just before it rained. Clary watched him go, biting her lip hard—it was the first time since her mother had gone to the hospital that she'd realized maybe Simon wasn't too happy either.

Toweling off his hair, Jace regarded his reflection in the mirror with a quizzical scowl. A healing rune had taken care of the worst of his bruises, but it hadn't helped the shadows under his eyes or the tight lines at the corners of his mouth. His head ached and he felt slightly dizzy. He knew he should have eaten something that morning, but he'd woken up nauseated and panting from nightmares, not wanting to pause to eat, just wanting the release of physical activity, to burn out his dreams in bruises and sweat.

Tossing the towel aside, he thought longingly of the sweet black tea Hodge used to brew from the night-blooming flowers in the greenhouse. The tea had taken away hunger pangs and brought a swift surge of energy. Since Hodge's death, Jace had tried boiling the plants' leaves in water to see if he could produce the same effect, but the only result was a bitter, ashy-tasting liquid that made him gag and spit.

Barefoot, he padded into the bedroom and threw on jeans and a clean shirt. He pushed back his wet blond hair, frowning. It was too long at the moment, falling into his eyes—something Maryse would be sure to chide him about. She always did. He might not be the Lightwoods' biological son, but they'd treated him like it since they'd adopted him at age ten, after the death of his own father. The supposed death, Jace reminded himself, that hollow feeling in his guts resurfacing again. He'd felt like a jack-o'-lantern for the past few days, as if his guts had been yanked out with a fork and dumped in a heap while a grinning smile stayed plastered on his face. He often wondered if anything he'd believed about his life, or himself, had ever been true. He'd thought he was an orphan—he wasn't. He'd thought he was an only child—he had a sister.

Clary. The pain came again, stronger. He pushed it down. His eyes fell on the bit of broken mirror that lay atop his dresser, still reflecting green boughs and a diamond of blue sky. It was nearly twilight now in Idris: The sky was dark as cobalt. Choking on hollowness, Jace yanked his boots on and headed downstairs to the library.

He wondered as he clattered down the stone steps just what it was that Maryse wanted to say to him alone. She'd looked like she'd wanted to haul off and smack him. He couldn't remember the last time she'd laid a hand on him. The Lightwoods weren't given to corporal punishment—quite a change from being brought up by Valentine, who'd concocted all sorts of painful castigations to encourage obedience. Jace's Shadowhunter skin always healed, covering all but the worst of the evidence. In the days and weeks after his father died Jace could remember searching his body for scars, for some mark that would be a token, a remembrance to tie him physically to his father's memory.

He reached the library and knocked once before pushing the door open. Maryse was there, sitting in Hodge's old chair by the fire. Light streamed down through the high windows and Jace could see the touches of gray in her hair. She was holding a glass of red wine; there was a cut-glass decanter on the table beside her.

"Maryse," he said.

She jumped a little, spilling some of the wine. "Jace. I didn't hear you come in."

He didn't move. "Do you remember that song you used to sing to Isabelle and Alec—when they were little and afraid of the dark—to get them to fall asleep?"

Maryse appeared taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

"I used to hear you through the walls," he said. "Alec's bedroom was next to mine then."

She said nothing.

"It was in French," Jace said. "The song."

"I don't know why you'd remember something like that." She looked at him as if he'd accused her of something.

"You never sang to me."

There was a barely perceptible pause. Then, "Oh, you," she said. "You were never afraid of the dark."

"What kind of ten-year-old is never afraid of the dark?"

Her eyebrows went up. "Sit down, Jonathan," she said. "Now."

He went, just slowly enough to annoy her, across the room, and threw himself into one of the wing-back chairs beside the desk. "I'd rather you didn't call me Jonathan."

"Why not? It's your name." She looked at him consideringly. "How long have you known?"

"Known what?"

"Don't be stupid. You know exactly what I'm asking you." She turned her glass in her fingers. "How long have you known that Valentine is your father?"

Jace considered and discarded several responses. Usually he could get his way with Maryse by making her laugh. He was one of the only people in the world who could make her laugh. "About as long as you have."

Maryse shook her head slowly. "I don't believe that."

Jace sat up straight. His hands were in fists where they rested on the chair arms. He could see a slight tremor in his fingers, wondered if he'd ever had it before. He didn't think so. His hands had always been as steady as his heartbeat. "You don't believe me?"

He heard the incredulity in his own voice and winced inwardly. Of course she didn't believe him. That had been obvious from the moment she had arrived home.

"It doesn't make sense, Jace. How could you not know who your own father is?"

"He told me he was Michael Wayland. We lived in the Wayland country house—"

"A nice touch," said Maryse, "that. And your name? What's your real name?"

"You know my real name."

"Jonathan Christopher. I knew that was Valentine's son's name. I knew Michael had a son named Jonathan too. It's a common enough Shadowhunter name—I never thought it was strange they shared it, and as for Michael's boy's middle name, I never inquired. But now I can't help wondering. What was Michael Wayland's son's real middle name? How long had Valentine been planning what he was going to do? How long did he know he was going to murder Jonathan Wayland—?" She broke off, her eyes fixed on Jace. "You never looked like Michael, you know," she said. "But sometimes children don't look like their parents. I didn't think about it before. But now I can see Valentine in you. The way you're looking at me. That defiance. You don't care what I say, do you?"

But he did care. All he was good at was making sure she couldn't see it. "Would it make a difference if I did?"

She set the glass down on the table beside her. It was empty. "And you answer questions with questions to throw me off, just like Valentine always did. Maybe I should have known."

"Maybe nothing. I'm still exactly the same person I've been for the past seven years. Nothing's changed about me. If I didn't remind you of Valentine before, I don't see why I would now."

Her glance moved over him and away as if she couldn't bear to look directly at him. "Surely when we talked about Michael, you must have known we couldn't possibly have meant your father. The things we said about him could never have applied to Valentine."

"You said he was a good man." Anger twisted inside him. "A brave Shadowhunter. A loving father. I thought that seemed accurate enough."

"What about photographs? You must have seen photographs of Michael Wayland and realized he wasn't the man you called your father." She bit her lip. "Help me out here, Jace."

"All the photographs were destroyed in the Uprising. That's what you told me. Now I wonder if it wasn't because Valentine had them all burned so nobody would know who was in the Circle. I never had a photograph of my father," Jace said, and wondered if he sounded as bitter as he felt.

Maryse put a hand to her temple and massaged it as if her head were aching. "I can't believe this," she said, as if to herself. "It's insane."

"So don't believe it. Believe me," Jace said, and felt the tremor in his hands increase.

She dropped her hand. "Don't you think I want to?" she demanded, and for a moment he heard the echo in her voice of the Maryse who'd come into his bedroom at night when he was ten years old and staring dry-eyed at the ceiling, thinking of his father—and she'd sat by the bed with him until he'd fallen asleep just before dawn.

"I didn't know," Jace said again. "And when he asked me to come with him back to Idris, I said no. I'm still here. Doesn't that count for anything?"

She turned to look back at the decanter, as if considering another drink, then seemed to discard the idea. "I wish it did," she said. "But there are so many reasons your father might want you to remain at the Institute. Where Valentine is concerned, I can't afford to trust anyone his influence has touched."

"His influence touched you," Jace said, and instantly regretted it at the look that flashed across her face.

"And I repudiated him," said Maryse. "Have you? Could you?" Her blue eyes were the same color as Alec's, but Alec had never looked at him like this. "Tell me you hate him, Jace. Tell me you hate that man and everything he stands for."

A moment passed, and another, and Jace, looking down, saw that his hands were so tightly fisted that the knuckles stood out white and hard like the bones in a fish's spine. "I can't say that."

Maryse sucked in her breath. "Why not?"

"Why can't you say that you trust me? I've lived with you almost half my life. Surely you must know me better than that?"

"You sound so honest, Jonathan. You always have, even when you were a little boy trying to pin the blame for something you'd done wrong on Isabelle or Alec. I've only ever met one person who could sound as persuasive as you."

Jace tasted copper in his mouth. "You mean my father."

"There were only ever two kinds of people in the world for Valentine," she said. "Those who were for the Circle and those who were against it. The latter were enemies, and the former were weapons in his arsenal. I saw him try to turn each of his friends, even his own wife, into a weapon for the Cause—and you want me to believe he wouldn't have done the same with his own son?" She shook her head. "I knew him better than that." For the first time, Maryse looked at him with more sadness than anger. "You are an arrow shot directly into the heart of the Clave, Jace. You are Valentine's arrow. Whether you know it or not."

Clary shut the bedroom door on the blaring TV and went to look for Simon. She found him in the kitchen, bent over the sink with the water running. His hands were braced on the draining board.

"Simon?" The kitchen was a bright, cheerful yellow, the walls decorated with framed chalk and pencil sketches Simon and Rebecca had done in grade school. Rebecca had some drawing talent, you could tell, but Simon's sketches of people all looked like parking meters with tufts of hair.

He didn't look up now, though she could tell by the tightening of his shoulder muscles that he'd heard her. She went over to the sink, laying a hand lightly on his back. She felt the sharp nubs of his spine through the thin cotton T-shirt and wondered if he'd lost weight. She couldn't tell by looking at him, but looking at Simon was like looking in a mirror—when you saw someone every day, you didn't always notice small changes in their outward appearance. "Are you okay?"

He turned the water off with a hard jerk of his wrist. "Sure. I'm fine."

She laid a finger against the side of his chin and turned his face toward her. He was sweating, the dark hair that lay across his forehead stuck to his skin, though the air coming through the half-open kitchen window was cool. "You don't look fine. Was it the movie?"

He didn't answer.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have laughed, it's just—"

"You don't remember?" His voice sounded hoarse.

"I…" Clary trailed off. That night, looking back, seemed a long haze of running, of blood and sweat, of shadows glimpsed in doorways, of falling through space. She remembered the white faces of the vampires, like paper cutouts against the darkness, and remembered Jace holding her, shouting hoarsely into her ear. "Not really. It's a blur."

His gaze flicked past her and then back. "Do I seem different to you?" he asked.

She raised her eyes to his. His were the color of black coffee—not really black, but a rich brown without a touch of gray or hazel. Did he seem different? There might have been an extra touch of confidence in the way he held himself since the day he'd killed Abbadon, the Greater Demon; but there was also a wariness about him, as if he were waiting or watching for something. It was something she had noticed about Jace as well. Perhaps it was only the awareness of mortality. "You're still Simon."

He half-closed his eyes as if in relief, and as his eyelashes lowered, she saw how angular his cheekbones looked. He had lost weight, she thought, and was about to say so when he leaned down and kissed her.

She was so surprised at the feel of his mouth on hers that she went rigid all over, grabbing for the edge of the draining board to support herself. She did not, however, push him away, and clearly taking this as a sign of encouragement, Simon slid his hand behind her head and deepened the kiss, parting her lips with his. His mouth was soft, softer than Jace's had been, and the hand that cupped her neck was warm and gentle. He tasted like salt.

She let her eyes fall shut and for a moment floated dizzily in the darkness and the heat, the feel of his fingers moving through her hair. When the harsh ring of the telephone cut through her daze, she jumped back as if he'd pushed her away, though he hadn't moved. They stared at each other for a moment, in wild confusion, like two people finding themselves suddenly transported to a strange landscape where nothing was familiar.

Simon turned away first, reaching for the phone that hung on the wall beside the spice rack. "Hello?" He sounded normal, but his chest was rising and falling fast. He held the receiver out to Clary. "It's for you."

Clary took the phone. She could still feel the pounding of her heart in her throat, like the fluttering wings of an insect trapped under her skin. It's Luke, calling from the hospital. Something's happened to my mother.

She swallowed. "Luke? Is it you?"

"No. It's Isabelle."

"Isabelle?" Clary looked up and saw Simon watching her, leaning against the sink. The flush on his cheeks had faded. "Why are you—I mean, what's up?"

There was a hitch in the other girl's voice, as if she'd been crying. "Is Jace there?"

Clary actually held out the phone so she could stare at it before bringing the receiver back to her ear. "Jace? No. Why would he be here?"

Isabelle's answering breath echoed down the phone line like a gasp. "The thing is … he's gone."

2 The Hunter's Moon

Maia had never trusted beautiful boys, which was why she hated Jace Wayland the first time she ever laid eyes on him.

Her twin brother, Daniel, had been born with her mother's honey-colored skin and huge dark eyes, and he'd turned out to be the sort of person who lit the wings of butterflies on fire to watch them burn and die as they flew. He'd tormented her as well, in small and petty ways at first, pinching her where the bruises wouldn't show, switching the shampoo in her bottle for bleach. She'd gone to her parents but they hadn't believed her. No one had, looking at Daniel; they'd confused beauty with innocence and harmlessness. When he broke her arm in ninth grade, she ran away from home, but her parents brought her back. In tenth grade, Daniel was knocked down in the street by a hit-and-run driver and killed instantly. Standing next to her parents at the graveside, Maia had been ashamed by her own overwhelming sense of relief. God, she thought, would surely punish her for being glad that her brother was dead.

The next year, He did. She met Jordan. Long dark hair, slim hips in worn jeans, indie-boy rocker shirts and lashes like a girl's. She never thought he'd go for her—his type usually preferred skinny, pale girls in hipster glasses—but he seemed to like her rounded shape. He told her she was beautiful in between kisses. The first few months were like a dream; the last few months like a nightmare. He became possessive, controlling. When he was angry with her, he'd snarl and whip the back of his hand across her cheek, leaving a mark like too much blusher. When she tried to break up with him, he pushed her, knocked her down in her own front yard before she ran inside and slammed the door.

Later, she let him see her kissing another boy, just to get the point across that it was over. She didn't even remember that boy's name anymore. What she did remember was walking home that night, the rain misting her hair in fine droplets, mud splattering up the legs of her jeans as she took a shortcut through the park near her house. She remembered the dark shape exploding out from behind the metal merry-go-round, the huge wet wolf body knocking her into the mud, the savage pain as its jaws clamped down on her throat. She'd screamed and thrashed, tasting her own hot blood in her mouth, her brain screaming: This is impossible. Impossible. There weren't wolves in New Jersey, not in her ordinary suburban neighborhood, not in the twenty-first century.

Her cries brought lights on in the nearby houses, one after another of the windows lighting up like struck matches. The wolf let her go, its jaws trailing ribbons of blood and torn flesh.

Twenty-four stitches later, she was back in her pink bedroom, her mother hovering anxiously. The emergency room doctor had said the bite looked like a large dog's, but Maia knew better. Before the wolf had turned to race away, she'd heard a hot, familiar whispered voice in her ear, "You're mine now. You'll always be mine."

She never saw Jordan again—he and his parents packed up their apartment and moved, and none of his friends knew where he'd gone, or would admit they did. She was only half-surprised the next full moon when the pains started: tearing pains that ripped up and down her legs, forcing her to the ground, bending her spine the way a magician might bend a spoon. When her teeth burst out of her gums and rattled to the floor like spilled Chiclets, she fainted. Or thought she did. She woke up miles away from her house, naked and covered in blood, the scar on her arm pulsing like a heartbeat. That night she hopped the train to Manhattan. It wasn't a hard decision. It was bad enough being biracial in her conservative suburban neighborhood. God knew what they'd do to a werewolf.

It hadn't been that hard to find a pack to fall in with. There were several of them in Manhattan alone. She wound up with the downtown pack, the ones who slept in the old police station in Chinatown.

Pack leaders were mutable. There'd been Kito first, then Véronique, then Gabriel, and now Luke. She'd liked Gabriel all right, but Luke was better. He had a trustworthy look and kind blue eyes and wasn't too handsome, so she didn't dislike him on the spot. She was comfortable enough here with the pack, sleeping in the old police station, playing cards and eating Chinese food on nights when the moon wasn't full, hunting through the park when it was, and the next day drinking off the hangover of the Change at the Hunter's Moon, one of the city's better underground werewolf bars. There was ale by the yard, and nobody ever carded you to see if you were under twenty-one. Being a lycanthrope made you grow up fast, and as long as you sprouted hair and fangs once a month, you were good to drink at the Moon, no matter how old you were in mundane years.

These days she hardly thought of her family at all, but when the blond boy in the long black coat stalked his way into the bar, Maia stiffened all over. He didn't look like Daniel, not exactly—Daniel had had dark hair that curled close to the nape of his neck and honey skin, and this boy was all white and gold. But they had the same lean bodies, the same way of walking, like a panther on the lookout for prey, and the same total confidence in their own attraction. Her hand tightened convulsively around the stem of her glass and she had to remind herself: He's dead. Daniel's dead.

A rush of murmurs swept through the bar on the heels of the boy's arrival, like the froth of a wave spreading out from the stern of a boat. The boy acted as if he didn't notice anything, hooking a bar stool toward himself with a booted foot and settling onto it with his elbows on the bar. Maia heard him order a shot of single malt in the quiet that followed the murmurs. He downed half the drink with a neat flip of his wrist. The liquor was the same dark gold color as his hair. When he lifted his hand to set the glass back down on the bar, Maia saw the thick coiling black Marks on his wrists and the backs of his hands.

Bat, the guy sitting next to her—she'd dated him once, but they were friends now—muttered something under his breath that sounded like "Nephilim."

So that's it. The boy wasn't a werewolf at all. He was a Shadowhunter, a member of the arcane world's secret police force. They upheld the Law, backed by the Covenant, and you couldn't become one of them: You had to be born into it. Blood made them what they were. There were a lot of rumors about them, most unflattering: They were haughty, proud, cruel; they looked down on and despised Downworlders. There were few things a lycanthrope liked less than a Shadowhunter—except maybe a vampire.

People also said that the Shadowhunters killed demons. Maia remembered when she'd first heard that demons existed and had been told about what they did. It had given her a headache. Vampires and werewolves were just people with a disease, that much she understood, but expecting her to believe in all that heaven and hell crap, demons and angels, and still nobody could tell her for sure if there was a God or not, or where you went after you died? It wasn't fair. She believed in demons now—she'd seen enough of what they did that she wasn't able to deny it—but she wished she didn't have to.

"I take it," the boy said, leaning his elbows onto the bar, "that you don't serve Silver Bullet here. Too many bad associations?" His eyes gleamed, narrow and shining like the moon at a quarter full.

The bartender, Freaky Pete, just looked at the boy and shook his head in disgust. If the boy hadn't been a Shadowhunter, Maia guessed, Pete would have tossed him out of the Moon, but instead he just walked to the other end of the bar and busied himself polishing glasses.

"Actually," said Bat, who was unable to stay out of anything, "we don't serve it because it's really crappy beer."

The boy turned his narrow, shining gaze on Bat, and smiled delightedly. Most people didn't smile delightedly when Bat looked at them funny: Bat was six and a half feet tall, with a thick scar that disfigured half his face where silver powder had burned his skin. Bat wasn't one of the overnighters, the pack who lived in the police station, sleeping in the old cells. He had his own apartment, even a job. He'd been a pretty good boyfriend, right up until he dumped Maia for a redheaded witch named Eve who lived in Yonkers and ran a palmistry shop out of her garage.

"And what are you drinking?" the boy inquired, leaning so close to Bat that it was like an insult. "A little hair of the dog that bit—well, everyone?"

"You really think you're pretty funny." By this point the rest of the pack was leaning in to hear them, ready to back up Bat if he decided to knock this obnoxious brat into the middle of next week. "Don't you?"

"Bat," Maia said. She wondered if she were the only pack member in the bar who doubted Bat's ability to knock the boy into next week. It wasn't that she doubted Bat. It was something about the boy's eyes. "Don't."

Bat ignored her. "Don't you?"

"Who am I to deny the obvious?" The boy's eyes slid over Maia as if she were invisible and went back to Bat. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what happened to your face? It looks like—" And here he leaned forward and said something to Bat so quietly that Maia didn't hear it. The next thing she knew, Bat was swinging a blow at the boy that should have shattered his jaw, only the boy was no longer there. He was standing a good five feet away, laughing, as Bat's fist connected with his abandoned glass and sent it soaring across the bar to strike the opposite wall in a shower of shattering glass.

Freaky Pete was around the side of the bar, his big fist knotted in Bat's shirt, before Maia could blink an eye. "That's enough," he said. "Bat, why don't you take a walk and cool down."

Bat twisted in Pete's grasp. "Take a walk? Did you hear—"

"I heard." Pete's voice was low. "He's a Shadowhunter. Walk it off, cub."

Bat swore and pulled away from the bartender. He stalked toward the exit, his shoulders stiff with rage. The door banged shut behind him.

The boy had stopped smiling and was looking at Freaky Pete with a sort of dark resentment, as if the bartender had taken away a toy he'd intended to play with. "That wasn't necessary," he said. "I can handle myself."

Pete regarded the Shadowhunter. "It's my bar I'm worried about," he said finally. "You might want to take your business elsewhere, Shadowhunter, if you don't want any trouble."

"I didn't say I didn't want trouble." The boy sat back down on his stool. "Besides, I didn't get to finish my drink."

Maia glanced behind her, where the wall of the bar was soaked with alcohol. "Looks like you finished it to me."

For a second the boy just looked blank; then a curious spark of amusement lit in his golden eyes. He looked so much like Daniel in that moment that Maia wanted to back away.

Pete slid another glass of amber liquid across the bar before the boy could reply to her. "Here you go," he said. His eyes drifted to Maia. She thought she saw some admonishment in them.

"Pete—," she began. She didn't get to finish. The door to the bar flew open. Bat was standing there in the doorway. It took a moment for Maia to realize that the front of his shirt and his sleeves were soaked with blood.

She slid off her stool and ran to him. "Bat! Are you hurt?"

His face was gray, his silvery scar standing out on his cheek like a piece of twisted wire. "An attack," he said. "There's a body in the alley. A dead kid. Blood—everywhere." He shook his head, looked down at himself. "Not my blood. I'm fine."

"A body? But who—"

Bat's reply was swallowed in the commotion. Seats were abandoned as the pack rushed to the door. Pete came out from behind his counter and pushed his way through the mob. Only the Shadowhunter boy stayed where he was, his head bent over his drink.

Through gaps in the crowd around the door, Maia caught a glimpse of the gray paving of the alley, splashed with blood. It was still wet and had run between the cracks in the paving like the tendrils of a red plant. "His throat cut?" Pete was saying to Bat, whose color had come back. "How—"

"There was someone in the alley. Someone kneeling over him," Bat said. His voice was tight. "Not like a person—like a shadow. They ran off when they saw me. He was still alive. A little. I bent down over him, but—" Bat shrugged. It was a casual movement, but the cords in his neck were standing out like thick roots wrapping a tree trunk. "He died without saying anything."

"Vampires," said a buxom female lycanthrope—her name was Amabel, Maia thought—who was standing by the door. "The Night Children. It can't have been anything else."

Bat looked at her, then turned and stalked across the room toward the bar. He grabbed the Shadowhunter by the back of the jacket—or reached out as if he meant to, but the boy was already on his feet, turning fluidly. "What's your problem, werewolf?"

Bat's hand was still outstretched. "Are you deaf, Nephilim?" he snarled. "There's a dead boy in the alley. One of ours."

"Do you mean a lycanthrope or some other sort of Downworlder?" The boy arched his light eyebrows. "You all blend together to me."

There was a low growl—from Freaky Pete, Maia noted with some surprise. He had come back into the bar and was surrounded by the rest of the pack, their eyes fixed on the Shadowhunter. "He was only a cub," said Pete. "His name was Joseph."

The name didn't ring any bells for Maia, but she saw the tight set of Pete's jaw and felt a flutter in her stomach. The pack was on the warpath now and if the Shadowhunter had any sense, he'd be backpedaling like crazy. He wasn't, though. He was just standing there looking at them with those gold eyes and that funny smile on his face. "A lycanthrope boy?" he said.

"He was one of the pack," said Pete. "He was only fifteen."

"And what exactly do you expect me to do about it?" said the boy.

Pete was staring incredulously. "You're Nephilim," he said. "The Clave owes us protection in these circumstances."

The boy looked around the bar, slowly and with such a look of insolence that a flush spread over Pete's face.

"I don't see anything you need protecting from here," said the boy. "Except some bad décor and a possible mold problem. But you can usually clear that up with bleach."

"There's a dead body outside this bar's front door," said Bat, enunciating carefully. "Don't you think—"

"I think it's a little too late for him to need protection," said the boy, "if he's already dead."

Pete was still staring. His ears had grown pointed, and when he spoke, his voice was muffled by his thickening canine teeth. "You want to be careful, Nephilim," he said. "You want to be very careful."

The boy looked at him with opaque eyes. "Do I?"

"So you're going to do nothing?" Bat said. "Is that it?"

"I'm going to finish my drink," said the boy, eyeing his half-empty glass, still on the counter, "if you'll let me."

"So that's the attitude of the Clave, a week after the Accords?" said Pete with disgust. "The death of Downworlders is nothing to you?"

The boy smiled, and Maia's spine prickled. He looked exactly like Daniel just before Daniel reached out and yanked the wings off a ladybug. "How like Downworlders," he said, "expecting the Clave to clean your mess up for you. As if we could be bothered just because some stupid cub decided to splatter-paint himself all over your alley—"

And he used a word, a word for weres that they never used themselves, a filthily unpleasant word that implied an improper relationship between wolves and human women.

Before anyone else could move, Bat flung himself at the Shadowhunter—but the boy was gone. Bat stumbled and whirled around, staring. The pack gasped.

Maia's mouth dropped open. The Shadowhunter boy was standing on the bar, feet planted wide apart. He really did look like an avenging angel getting ready to dispatch divine justice from on high, as the Shadowhunters were meant to do. Then he reached out a hand and curled his fingers toward himself, quickly, a gesture familiar to her from the playground as Come and get me—and the pack rushed at him.

Bat and Amabel swarmed up onto the bar; the boy spun, so quickly that his reflection in the mirror behind the bar seemed to blur. Maia saw him kick out, and then the two were groaning on the floor in a flurry of smashed glass. She could hear the boy laughing even as someone else reached up and pulled him down; he sank into the crowd with an ease that spoke of willingness, and then she couldn't see him at all, just a welter of flailing arms and legs. Still, she thought she could hear him laughing, even as metal flashed—the edge of a knife—and she heard herself suck in her breath.

"That's enough."

It was Luke's voice, quiet, steady as a heartbeat. It was strange how you always knew your pack leader's voice. Maia turned and saw him standing just at the entrance to the bar, one hand against the wall. He looked not just tired, but ravaged, as if something were tearing him down from the inside; still, his voice was calm as he said again, "That's enough. Leave the boy alone."

The pack melted away from the Shadowhunter, leaving just Bat still standing there, defiant, one hand still gripping the back of the Shadowhunter's shirt, the other holding a short-bladed knife. The boy himself was bloody-faced but hardly looked like someone who needed saving; he was grinning a grin as dangerous-looking as the broken glass that littered the floor. "He's not a boy," Bat said. "He's a Shadowhunter."

"They're welcome enough here," said Luke, his tone neutral. "They are our allies."

"He said it didn't matter," said Bat angrily. "About Joseph—"

"I know," Luke said quietly. His eyes shifted to the blond boy. "Did you come in here just to pick a fight, Jace Wayland?"

The boy—Jace—smiled, stretching his split lip so that a thin trickle of blood ran down his chin. "Luke."

Bat, startled to hear their pack leader's first name come out of the Shadowhunter's mouth, let go of the back of Jace's shirt. "I didn't know—"

"There's nothing to know," said Luke, the tiredness in his eyes creeping into his voice.

Freaky Pete spoke, his voice a bass rumble. "He said the Clave wouldn't care about the death of a single lycanthrope, even a child. And it's a week after the Accords, Luke."

"Jace doesn't speak for the Clave," said Luke, "and there's nothing he could have done even if he'd wanted to. Isn't that right?"

He looked at Jace, who was very pale. "How do you—"

"I know what happened," said Luke. "With Maryse."

Jace stiffened, and for a moment Maia saw through the Daniel-like savage amusement to what was underneath, and it was dark and agonized and reminded her more of her own eyes in the mirror than of her brother's. "Who told you? Clary?"

"Not Clary." Maia had never heard Luke speak that name before, but he said it with a tone that implied that this was someone special to him, and to the Shadowhunter boy as well. "I'm the pack leader, Jace. I hear things. Now come on. Let's go to Pete's office and talk."

Jace hesitated for a moment before shrugging. "Fine," he said, "but you owe me for the Scotch I didn't drink."

"That was my last guess," Clary said with a defeated sigh, sinking down onto the steps outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art and staring disconsolately down Fifth Avenue.

"It was a good one." Simon sat down beside her, long legs sprawled out in front of him. "I mean, he's a guy who likes weapons and killing, so why not the biggest collection of weapons in the whole city? And I'm always up for a visit to Arms and Armor, anyway. Gives me ideas for my campaign."

She looked at him in surprise. "You still gaming with Eric and Kirk and Matt?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I thought gaming might have lost some of its appeal for you since…" Since our real lives started to resemble one of your campaigns. Complete with good guys, bad guys, really nasty magic, and important enchanted objects you had to find if you wanted to win the game.

Except in a game, the good guys always won, defeated the bad guys and came home with the treasure. Whereas in real life, they'd lost the treasure, and sometimes Clary still wasn't clear on who the bad and good guys actually were.

She looked at Simon and felt a wave of sadness. If he did give up gaming, it would be her fault, just like everything that had happened to him in the past weeks had been her fault. She remembered his white face at the sink that morning, just before he'd kissed her.

"Simon—," she began.

"Right now I'm playing a half-troll cleric who wants revenge on the Orcs who killed his family," he said cheerfully. "It's awesome."

She laughed just as her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket and flipped it open; it was Luke. "We didn't find him," she said, before he could say hello.

"No. But I did."

She sat up straight. "You're kidding. Is he there? Can I talk to him?" She caught sight of Simon looking at her sharply and dropped her voice. "Is he all right?"

"Mostly."

"What do you mean, mostly?"

"He picked a fight with a werewolf pack. He's got some cuts and bruises."

Clary half-closed her eyes. Why, oh why, had Jace picked a fight with a pack of wolves? What had possessed him? Then again, it was Jace. He'd pick a fight with a Mack truck if the urge took him.

"I think you should come down here," Luke said. "Someone has to reason with him and I'm not having much luck."

"Where are you?" Clary asked.

He told her. A bar called the Hunter's Moon on Hester Street. She wondered if it was glamoured. Flipping her phone shut, she turned to Simon, who was staring at her with raised eyebrows.

"The prodigal returns?"

"Sort of." She scrambled to her feet and stretched her tired legs, mentally calculating how long it would take them to get to Chinatown on the train and whether it was worth shelling out the pocket money Luke had given her for a cab. Probably not, she decided—if they got stuck in traffic, it would take longer than the subway.

"…come with you?" Simon finished, standing up. He was on the step below her, which made them almost the same height. "What do you think?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it again quickly. "Er…"

He sounded resigned. "You haven't heard a word I said these past two minutes, have you?"

"No," she admitted. "I was thinking about Jace. It sounded like he was in bad shape. Sorry."

His brown eyes darkened. "I take it you're rushing off to bind up his wounds?"

"Luke asked me to come down," she said. "I was hoping you'd come with me."

Simon kicked at the step above his with a booted foot. "I will, but—why? Can't Luke return Jace to the Institute without your help?"

"Probably. But he thinks Jace might be willing to talk to me about what's going on first."

"I thought maybe we could do something tonight," Simon said. "Something fun. See a movie. Get dinner downtown."

She looked at him. In the distance, she could hear water splashing into a museum fountain. She thought of the kitchen at his house, his damp hands in her hair, but it all seemed very far away, even though she could picture it—the way you might remember the photograph of an incident without really remembering the incident itself any longer.

"He's my brother," she said. "I have to go."

Simon looked as if he were too weary to even sigh. "Then I'll go with you."

The back office of Hunter's Moon was down a narrow corridor strewn with sawdust. Here and there the sawdust was churned up by footsteps and spotted with a dark liquid that didn't look like beer. The whole place smelled smoky and gamy, a little like—Clary had to admit it, though she wouldn't have said so to Luke—wet dog.

"He's not in a very good mood," said Luke, pausing in front of a closed door. "I shut him up in Freaky Pete's office after he nearly killed half my pack with his bare hands. He wouldn't talk to me, so"—Luke shrugged—"I thought of you." He looked from Clary's baffled face to Simon's. "What?"

"I can't believe he came here," Clary said.

"I can't believe you know someone named Freaky Pete," said Simon.

"I know a lot of people," said Luke. "Not that Freaky Pete is strictly people, but I'm hardly one to talk." He swung the office door wide. Inside was a plain room, windowless, the walls hung with sports pennants. There was a paper-strewn desk weighted down with a small TV set, and behind it, in a chair whose leather was so cracked it looked like veined marble, was Jace.

The moment the door opened, Jace seized up a yellow pencil lying on the desk and threw it. It sailed through the air and struck the wall just next to Luke's head, where it stuck, vibrating. Luke's eyes widened.

Jace smiled faintly. "Sorry, I didn't realize it was you."

Clary felt her heart contract. She hadn't seen Jace in days, and he looked different somehow—not just the bloody face and bruises, which were clearly new, but the skin on his face seemed tighter, the bones more prominent.

Luke indicated Simon and Clary with a wave of his hand. "I brought some people to see you."

Jace's eyes moved to them. They were as blank as if they had been painted on. "Unfortunately," he said, "I only had the one pencil."

"Jace—," Luke started.

"I don't want him in here." Jace jerked his chin toward Simon.

"That's hardly fair." Clary was indignant. Had he forgotten that Simon had saved Alec's life, possibly all their lives?

"Out, mundane," said Jace, pointing to the door.

Simon waved a hand. "It's fine. I'll wait in the hallway." He left, refraining from banging the door shut behind him, though Clary could tell he wanted to.

She turned back to Jace. "Do you have to be so—," she began, but stopped when she saw his face. It looked stripped down, oddly vulnerable.

"Unpleasant?" he finished for her. "Only on days when my adoptive mother tosses me out of the house with instructions never to darken her door again. Usually, I'm remarkably good-natured. Try me on any day that doesn't end in y."

Luke frowned. "Maryse and Robert Lightwood are not my favorite people, but I can't believe Maryse would do that."

Jace looked surprised. "You know them? The Lightwoods?"

"They were in the Circle with me," said Luke. "I was surprised when I heard they were heading the Institute here. It seems they made a deal with the Clave, after the Uprising, to ensure some kind of lenient treatment for themselves, while Hodge—well, we know what happened to him." He was silent a moment. "Did Maryse say why she was exiling you, so to speak?"

"She doesn't believe that I thought I was Michael Wayland's son. She accused me of being in it with Valentine all along—saying I helped him get away with the Mortal Cup."

"Then why would you still be here?" Clary asked. "Why wouldn't you have fled with him?"

"She wouldn't say, but I suspect she thinks I stayed to be a spy. A viper in their bosoms. Not that she used the word 'bosoms,' but the thought was there."

"A spy for Valentine?" Luke sounded dismayed.

"She thinks Valentine assumed that because of their affection for me, she and Robert would believe whatever I said. So Maryse has decided that the solution to that is not to have any affection for me."

"Affection doesn't work like that." Luke shook his head. "You can't turn it off, like a tap. Especially if you're a parent."

"They're not really my parents."

"There's more to parentage than blood. They've been your parents for seven years in all the ways that matter. Maryse is just hurt."

"Hurt?" Jace sounded incredulous. "She's hurt?"

"She loved Valentine, remember," said Luke. "As we all did. He hurt her badly. She doesn't want his son to do the same. She worries you've lied to them. That the person she thought you were all these years was a ruse, a trick. You have to reassure her."

Jace's expression was a perfect mixture of stubbornness and astonishment. "Maryse is an adult! She shouldn't need reassurance from me."

"Oh, come on, Jace," Clary said. "You can't wait for perfect behavior from everyone. Adults screw up too. Go back to the Institute and talk to her rationally. Be a man."

"I don't want to be a man," said Jace. "I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can't confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead."

"Well," said Luke, "you're doing a fantastic job."

"Jace," Clary said hastily, before they could start fighting in earnest, "you have to go back to the Institute. Think about Alec and Izzy, think what this will do to them."

"Maryse will make something up to calm them down. Maybe she'll say I ran off."

"That won't work," said Clary. "Isabelle sounded frantic on the phone."

"Isabelle always sounds frantic," said Jace, but he looked pleased. He leaned back in the chair. The bruises along his jaw and cheekbone stood out like dark, shapeless Marks against his skin. "I won't go back to a place where I'm not trusted. I'm not ten years old anymore. I can take care of myself."

Luke looked as if he weren't sure about that. "Where will you go? How will you live?"

Jace's eyes glittered. "I'm seventeen. Practically an adult. Any adult Shadowhunter is entitled to—"

"Any adult. But you're not one. You can't draw a salary from the Clave because you're too young, and in fact the Lightwoods are bound by the Law to care for you. If they won't, someone else would be appointed or—"

"Or what?" Jace sprang up from the chair. "I'll go to an orphanage in Idris? Be dumped on some family I've never met? I can get a job in the mundane world for a year, live like one of them—"

"No, you can't," Clary said. "I ought to know, Jace, I was one of them. You're too young for any job you'd want and besides, the skills you have—well, most professional killers are older than you. And they're criminals."

"I'm not a killer."

"If you lived in the mundane world," said Luke, "that's all you'd be."

Jace stiffened, his mouth tightening, and Clary knew Luke's words had hit him where it hurt. "You don't get it," he said, a sudden desperation in his voice. "I can't go back. Maryse wants me to say I hate Valentine. And I can't do that."

Jace raised his chin, his jaw set, his eyes on Luke as if he half-expected the older man to respond with derision or even horror. After all, Luke had more reason to hate Valentine than almost anyone else in the world.

"I know," said Luke. "I loved him once too."

Jace exhaled, almost a sound of relief, and Clary thought suddenly, This is why he came here, to this place. Not just to start a fight, but to get to Luke. Because Luke would understand. Not everything Jace did was insane and suicidal, she reminded herself. It just seemed that way.

"You shouldn't have to claim you hate your father," said Luke. "Not even to reassure Maryse. She ought to understand."

Clary looked at Jace closely, trying to read his face. It was like a book written in a foreign language she'd studied all too briefly. "Did she really say she never wanted you to come back?" Clary asked. "Or did you just assume that was what she meant, so you left?"

"She told me it would probably be better if I found somewhere else to be for a while," Jace said. "She didn't say where."

"Did you give her a chance to?" Luke said. "Look, Jace. You're absolutely welcome to stay with me as long as you need to. I want you to know that."

Clary's stomach flipped. The thought of Jace in the same house she lived in, always nearby, filled her with a mixture of exultation and horror.

"Thanks," said Jace. His voice was even, but his eyes had gone instantly, helplessly, to Clary, and she could see in them the same awful mixture of emotions she felt herself. Luke, she thought. Sometimes I wish you weren't quite so generous. Or so blind.

"But," Luke went on, "I think you should at least go back to the Institute long enough to talk to Maryse and find out what's really going on. It sounds like there's more to this than she's telling you. More, maybe, than you were willing to hear."

Jace tore his gaze from Clary's. "All right." His voice was rough. "But on one condition. I don't want to go by myself."

"I'll go with you," Clary said quickly.

"I know." Jace's voice was low. "And I want you to. But I want Luke to come too."

Luke looked startled. "Jace—I've lived here fifteen years and I've never gone to the Institute. Not once. I doubt Maryse is any fonder of me—"

"Please," Jace said, and though his voice was flat and he spoke quietly, Clary could almost feel, like a palpable thing, the pride he'd had to fight down to say that single word.

"All right." Luke nodded, the nod of a pack leader used to doing what he had to do, whether he wanted to or not. "Then I'll come with you."

Simon leaned against the wall in the corridor outside Pete's office and tried not to feel sorry for himself.

The day had started off well. Fairly well, anyway. First there'd been that bad episode with the Dracula film on television making him feel sick and faint, bringing up all the emotions, the longings, he'd been trying to push down and forget about. Then somehow the sickness had knocked the edge off his nerves and he'd found himself kissing Clary the way he'd wanted to for so many years. People always said that things never turned out the way you imagined they would. People were wrong.

And she'd kissed him back…

But now she was in there with Jace, and Simon had a knotting, twisting feeling in his stomach, like he'd swallowed a bowl full of worms. It was a sick feeling he'd grown used to lately. It hadn't always been like this, even after he'd realized how he felt about Clary. He'd never pressed her, never pushed his feelings on her. He'd always been sure that one day she would wake up out of her dreams of animated princes and kung fu heroes and realize what was staring them both in the face: They belonged together. And if she hadn't seemed interested in Simon, at least she hadn't seemed interested in anyone else either.

Until Jace. He remembered sitting on the porch steps of Luke's house, watching Clary as she explained to him who Jace was, what he did, while Jace examined his nails and looked superior. Simon had barely heard her. He'd been too busy noticing how she looked at the blond boy with the strange tattoos and the angular, pretty face. Too pretty, Simon had thought, but Clary clearly hadn't thought so: She'd looked at him as though he were one of her animated heroes come to life. He had never seen her look at anyone that way before, and had always thought that if she ever did, it would be him. But it wasn't, and that hurt more than he'd ever imagined anything could hurt.

Finding out that Jace was Clary's brother was like being marched up in front of a firing squad and then being handed a reprieve at the last minute. Suddenly the world seemed full of possibilities again.

Now he wasn't so sure.

"Hey, there." Someone was coming along the corridor, a not-very-tall someone picking their way gingerly among the blood spatters. "Are you waiting to see Luke? Is he in there?"

"Not exactly." Simon moved away from the door. "I mean, sort of. He's in there with a friend of mine."

The person, who had just reached him, stopped and stared. Simon could see that she was a girl, about sixteen years old, with smooth light brown skin. Her brown-gold hair was braided close to her head in dozens of small braids, and her face was nearly the exact shape of a heart. She had a compact, curvy body, wide hips flaring out from a smaller waist. "That guy from the bar? The Shadowhunter?"

Simon shrugged.

"Well, I hate to tell you this," she said, "but your friend is an asshole."

"He's not my friend," said Simon. "And I couldn't agree with you more, actually."

"But I thought you said—"

"I'm waiting for his sister," said Simon. "She's my best friend."

"And she's in there with him right now?" The girl jerked her thumb toward the door. She wore rings on each of her fingers, primitive-looking bands hammered out of bronze and gold. Her jeans were worn but clean and when she turned her head, he saw the scar that ran along her neck, just above the collar of her T-shirt. "Well," she said grudgingly, "I know about asshole brothers. I guess it's not her fault."

"It's not," said Simon. "But she's maybe the only person he might listen to."

"He didn't strike me as the listening type," said the girl, and caught his sidelong look with a look of her own. Amusement flickered across her face. "You're looking at my scar. It's where I was bitten."

"Bitten? You mean you're a—"

"A werewolf," said the girl. "Like everyone else here. Except you, and the asshole. And the asshole's sister."

"But you weren't always a werewolf. I mean, you weren't born one."

"Most of us aren't," said the girl. "That's what makes us different than your Shadowhunter buddies."

"What?"

She smiled fleetingly. "We were human once."

Simon said nothing to that. After a moment the girl held her hand out. "I'm Maia."

"Simon." He shook her hand. It was dry and soft. She looked up at him through golden-brown eyelashes, the color of buttered toast. "How do you know Jace is an asshole?" he said. "Or maybe I should say, how did you find out?"

She took her hand back. "He tore up the bar. Punched out my friend Bat. Even knocked a couple of the pack unconscious."

"Are they all right?" Simon was alarmed. Jace hadn't seemed perturbed, but knowing him, Simon had no doubt he could kill several people in a single morning and go out for waffles afterward. "Did they get to a doctor?"

"A warlock," said the girl. "We don't have much to do with mundane doctors, our kind."

"Downworlders?"

Her eyebrows went up. "Someone taught you all the lingo, didn't they?"

Simon was nettled. "How do you know I'm not one of them? Or you? A Shadowhunter or a Downworlder, or—"

She shook her head until her braids bounced. "It just shines out of you," she said, a little bitterly, "your humanity."

The intensity in her voice almost made him shiver. "I could knock on the door," he suggested, feeling suddenly lame. "If you want to talk to Luke."

She shrugged. "Just tell him Magnus is here, checking out the scene in the alley." He must have looked startled, because she said, "Magnus Bane. He's a warlock."

I know, Simon wanted to say, but didn't. The whole conversation had been weird enough already. "Okay."

Maia turned as if to go, but paused partway down the hall, one hand on the doorjamb. "You think she'll be able to talk sense into him?" she asked. "His sister?"

"If he listens to anyone, it would be her."

"That's sweet," said Maia. "That he loves his sister like that."

"Yeah," Simon said. "It's precious."

3 The Inquisitor

The first time Clary had ever seen the Institute, it had looked like a dilapidated church, its roof broken in, stained yellow police tape holding the door closed. Now she didn't have to concentrate to dispel the illusion. Even from across the street she could see it exactly as it was, a towering Gothic cathedral whose spires seemed to pierce the dark blue sky like knives.

Luke fell silent. It was clear from the look on his face that some kind of struggle was taking place inside him. As they mounted the steps, Jace reached inside his shirt as if from habit, but when he drew his hand out, it was empty. He laughed without any mirth. "I forgot. Maryse took my keys from me before I left."

"Of course she did." Luke was standing directly in front of the Institute's doors. He gently touched the symbols carved into the wood, just below the architrave. "These doors are just like the ones at the Council Hall in Idris. I never thought I would see their like again."

Clary almost felt guilty interrupting Luke's reverie, but there were practical matters to attend to. "If we don't have a key—"

"One shouldn't be necessary. An Institute should be open to any of the Nephilim who mean no harm to the inhabitants."

"What if they mean harm to us?" Jace muttered.

Luke's mouth quirked at the corner. "I don't think that makes a difference."

"Yeah, the Clave always stacks the deck its way." Jace's voice sounded muffled—his lower lip was swelling, his left eyelid turning purple.

Why didn't he heal himself? Clary wondered. "Did she take your stele, too?"

"I didn't take anything when I left," Jace said. "I didn't want to take anything the Lightwoods got for me."

Luke looked at him with some concern. "Every Shadowhunter must have a stele."

"So I'll get another one," said Jace, and put his hand to the Institute's door. "In the name of the Clave," he said, "I ask entry to this holy place. And in the name of the Angel Raziel, I ask your blessings upon my mission against—"

The doors swung open. Clary could see the cathedral's interior through them, the shadowy darkness illuminated here and there by candles in tall iron candelabras.

"Well, that's convenient," said Jace. "I guess blessings are easier to come by than I thought. Maybe I should ask for blessings on my mission against all those who wear white after Labor Day."

"The Angel knows what your mission is," said Luke. "You don't have to say the words aloud, Jonathan."

For a moment Clary thought she saw something flicker across Jace's face—uncertainty, surprise—and maybe even relief? But all he said was, "Don't call me that. It's not my name."

They made their way through the ground floor of the cathedral, past the empty pews and the light burning forever on the altar. Luke looked around him curiously, and even seemed surprised when the elevator, like a gilded birdcage, arrived to carry them up. "This must have been Maryse's idea," he said as they stepped into it. "It's entirely her taste."

"It's been here as long as I have," said Jace, as the door clanged shut behind them. The ride up was brief, and none of them spoke. Clary played nervously with the fringe of her scarf. She felt a little guilty about having told Simon to go home and wait for her to call him later. She had seen from the annoyed set of his shoulders as he stalked off down Canal Street that he'd felt summarily dismissed. Still, she couldn't imagine having him—a mundane—here while Luke petitioned Maryse Lightwood on Jace's behalf; it would just make everything awkward.

The elevator came to a clanging stop and they stepped out to find Church waiting for them in the entryway, a slightly dilapidated red bow around his neck. Jace bent to rub the back of his hand along the cat's head. "Where's Maryse?"

Church made a noise in his throat, halfway between a purr and a growl, and headed off down the corridor. They followed, Jace silent, Luke glancing around with evident curiosity. "I never thought I'd see the inside of this place."

Clary asked, "Does it look like you thought it would?"

"I've been to the Institutes in London and Paris; this is not unlike those, no. Though somehow—"

"Somehow what?" Jace was several strides ahead.

"Colder," said Luke.

Jace said nothing. They had reached the library. Church sat down as if to indicate that he planned to go no farther. Voices were faintly audible through the thick wooden door, but Jace pushed it open without knocking and strode inside.

Clary heard a voice exclaim in surprise. For a moment her heart contracted as she thought of Hodge, who had all but lived in this room. Hodge, with his gravelly voice, and Hugin, the raven who was his almost constant companion—and who had, at Hodge's orders, nearly ripped out her eyes.

It wasn't Hodge, of course. Behind the enormous mahogany plank desk that balanced on the backs of two kneeling stone angels sat a middle-aged woman with Isabelle's ink black hair and Alec's thin, wiry build. She wore a neat black suit, very plain, in contrast to the multiple brightly colored rings that burned on her fingers.

Beside her stood another figure: a slender teenage boy, slightly built, with curling dark hair and honey-colored skin. As he turned to look at them, Clary couldn't hold back an exclamation of surprise. "Raphael?"

For a moment the boy looked taken aback. Then he smiled, his teeth very white and sharp—not surprising, considering that he was a vampire. "Dios," he said, addressing himself to Jace. "What happened to you, brother? You look as if a pack of wolves tried to tear you apart."

"That's either a shockingly good guess," said Jace, "or you heard about what happened."

Raphael's smile turned into a grin. "I hear things."

The woman behind the desk rose to her feet. "Jace," she said, her voice full of anxiety. "Did something happen? Why are you back so soon? I thought you were going to stay with—" Her gaze moved past him to Luke and Clary. "And who are you?"

"Jace's sister," Clary said. Maryse's eyes rested on Clary. "Yes, I can see it. You look like Valentine." She turned back to Jace. "You brought your sister with you? And a mundane, as well? It's not safe for any of you here right now. And especially a mundane—"

Luke, smiling faintly, said, "But I'm not a mundane." Maryse's expression changed slowly from bewilderment to shock as she looked at Luke—really looked at him—for the first time. "Lucian?"

"Hello, Maryse," said Luke. "It's been a long time."

Maryse's face was very still, and in that moment she looked suddenly much older, older even than Luke. She sat down carefully. "Lucian," she said again, her hands flat on the desk. "Lucian Graymark."

Raphael, who had been watching the proceedings with the bright, curious gaze of a bird, turned to Luke. "You killed Gabriel."

Who was Gabriel? Clary stared at Luke, puzzled. He gave a slight shrug. "I did, yes, just like he killed the pack leader before him. That's how it works with lycanthropes."

Maryse looked up at that. "The pack leader?"

"If you lead the pack now, it's time for us to talk," said Raphael, inclining his head graciously in Luke's direction, though his eyes were wary. "Though not at this exact moment; perhaps."

"I'll send someone over to arrange it," said Luke. "Things have been busy lately. I might be behind on the niceties."

"You might," was all that Raphael said. He turned back to Maryse. "Is our business here concluded?"

Maryse spoke with an effort. "If you say the Night Children aren't involved in these killings, then I'll take you at your word. I'm required to, unless other evidence comes to light."

Raphael frowned. "To light?" he said. "That is not a phrase I like." He turned then, and Clary saw with a start that she could see through the edges of him, as if he were a photograph that had blurred around the margins. His left hand was transparent, and through it she could see the big metal globe Hodge had always kept on the desk. She heard herself make a little noise of surprise as the transparency spread up his arms from his hands—and down his chest from his shoulders, and in a moment he was gone, like a figure erased from a sketch. Maryse exhaled a sigh of relief.

Clary gaped. "Is he dead?"

"What, Raphael?" said Jace. "Not likely. That was just a projection of him. He can't come into the Institute in his corporeal body."

"Why not?"

"Because this is hallowed ground," said Maryse. "And he is damned." Her wintry eyes lost none of their coldness when she turned her glance on Luke. "You, head of the pack here?" she asked. "I suppose I should hardly be surprised. It does seem to be your method, doesn't it?"

Luke ignored the bitterness in her tone. "Was Raphael here about the cub who was killed today?"

"That, and a dead warlock," Maryse said. "Found murdered downtown, two days apart."

"But why was Raphael here?"

"The warlock was drained of blood," said Maryse. "It seems that whoever murdered the werewolf was interrupted before the blood could be taken, but suspicion naturally fell on the Night Children. The vampire came here to assure me his folk had nothing to do with it."

"Do you believe him?" Jace said.

"I don't care to talk about Clave business with you right now, Jace—especially not in front of Lucian Graymark."

"I'm just called Luke now," Luke said placidly. "Luke Garroway."

Maryse shook her head. "I hardly recognized you. You look like a mundane."

"That's the idea, yes."

"We all thought you were dead."

"Hoped," said Luke, still placidly. "Hoped I was dead."

Maryse looked as if she'd swallowed something sharp. "You might as well sit down," she said finally, pointing toward the chairs in front of the desk. "Now," said Maryse, once they'd taken their seats, "perhaps you might tell me why you're here."

"Jace," said Luke, without preamble, "wants a trial before the Clave. I'm willing to vouch for him. I was there that night at Renwick's, when Valentine revealed himself. I fought him and we nearly killed each other. I can confirm that everything Jace says happened is the truth."

"I'm not sure," countered Maryse, "what your word is worth."

"I may be a lycanthrope," said Luke, "but I'm also a Shadowhunter. I'm willing to be tried by the Sword, if that will help."

By the Sword? That sounded bad. Clary looked over at Jace. He was outwardly calm, his fingers laced together in his lap, but there was a shuddering tension about him, as if he were a hairsbreadth from exploding. He caught her look and said, "The Soul-Sword. The second of the Mortal Instruments. It's used in trials to determine if a Shadowhunter is lying."

"You're not a Shadowhunter," said Maryse to Luke, as if Jace hadn't spoken. "You haven't lived by the Law of the Clave in a long, long time."

"There was a time when you didn't live by it either," said Luke. High color flooded Maryse's cheeks. "I would have thought," he went on, "that by now you would have gotten past not being able to trust anyone, Maryse."

"Some things you never forget," she said. Her voice held a dangerous softness. "You think pretending his own death was the biggest lie Valentine ever told us? You think charm is the same as honesty? I used to think so. I was wrong." She stood up and leaned on the table with her thin hands. "He told us he would lay down his life for the Circle and that he expected us to do the same. And we would have—all of us—I know it. I nearly did it." Her gaze swept over Jace and Clary and her eyes locked with Luke's. "You remember," she said, "the way he told us that the Uprising would be nothing, hardly a battle, a few unarmed ambassadors against the full might of the Circle. I was so confident in our swift victory that when I rode out to Alicante, I left Alec at home in his cradle. I asked Jocelyn to watch my children while I was away. She refused. I know why now. She knew—and so did you. And you didn't warn us."

"I'd tried to warn you about Valentine," said Luke. "You didn't listen."

"I don't mean about Valentine. I mean about the Uprising! When we arrived, there were fifty of us against five hundred Downworlders—"

"You'd been willing to slaughter them unarmed when you thought there would be only five of them," said Luke quietly.

Maryse's hands clenched on the desk. "We were slaughtered," she said. "In the midst of the carnage, we looked to Valentine to lead us. But he wasn't there. By that time the Clave had surrounded the Hall of Accords. We thought Valentine had been killed, we're ready to give our own lives in a final desperate rush. Then I remembered Alec—if I died, what would happen to my little boy?" Her voice caught. "So I laid my arms down and gave myself up to the Clave."

"You did the right thing, Maryse," said Luke.

She turned on him, eyes blazing. "Don't patronize me, werewolf. If it weren't for you—"

"Don't yell at him!" Clary cut in, almost rising to her feet herself. "It's your fault for believing Valentine in the first place—"

"You think I don't know that?" There was a ragged edge to Maryse's voice now. "Oh, the Clave made that point nicely when they questioned us—they had the Soul-Sword and they knew when we were lying, but they couldn't make us talk—nothing could make us talk, until—"

"Until what?" It was Luke who spoke. "I've never known. I always wondered what they told you to make you turn on him."

"Just the truth," Maryse said, sounding suddenly tired. "That Valentine hadn't died there in the Hall. He'd fled—left us there to die without him. He'd died later, we were told, burned to death in his house. The Inquisitor showed us his bones, the charred amulet he used to wear. Of course, that was another lie…" Her voice trailed off, and then she rallied again, her words crisp: "It was all coming apart by then, anyway. We were finally talking to one another, those of us in the Circle. Before the battle, Valentine had drawn me aside, told me that out of all the Circle, I was the one he trusted most, his closest lieutenant. When the Clave questioned us I found out he'd said the same thing to everyone."

"Hell hath no fury," Jace muttered, so quietly that only Clary heard him.

"He lied not just to the Clave but to us. He used our loyalty and our affection. Just as he did when he sent you to us," Maryse said, looking directly at Jace now. "And now he's back, and he has the Mortal Cup. He's been planning all this for years, all along, all of it. I can't afford to trust you, Jace. I'm sorry."

Jace said nothing. His face was expressionless, but he'd gone paler as Maryse spoke, his new bruises standing out livid on his jaw and cheek.

"Then what?" Luke said. "What is it you expect him to do? Where is he supposed to go?"

Her eyes rested for a moment on Clary. "Why not to his sister?" she said. "Family—"

"Isabelle is Jace's sister," interrupted Clary. "Alec and Max are his brothers. What are you going to tell them? They'll hate you forever if you throw Jace out of your house."

Maryse's eyes rested on her. "What do you know about it?"

"I know Alec and Isabelle," said Clary. The thought of Valentine came, unwelcome; she pushed it away. "Family is more than blood. Valentine isn't my father. Luke is. Just like Alec and Max and Isabelle are Jace's family. If you try to tear him out of your family, you'll leave a wound that won't ever heal."

Luke was looking at her with a sort of surprised respect. Something flickered in Maryse's eyes—uncertainty?

"Clary," Jace said softly. "Enough." He sounded defeated. Clary turned on Maryse.

"What about the Sword?" she demanded.

Maryse looked at her for a moment with genuine puzzlement. "The Sword?"

"The Soul-Sword," said Clary. "The one you can use to tell if a Shadowhunter is lying or not. You can use it on Jace."

"That's a good idea." There was a spark of animation in Jace's voice.

"Clary, you mean well, but you don't know what the Sword entails," Luke said. "The only one who can use it is the Inquisitor."

Jace sat forward. "Then call on her. Call the Inquisitor. I want to end this."

"No," Luke said, but Maryse was looking at Jace.

"The Inquisitor," she said reluctantly, "is already on her way—"

"Maryse." Luke's voice cracked. "Tell me you haven't called her into this!"

"I didn't! Did you think the Clave wouldn't involve itself in this wild tale of Forsaken warriors and Portals and staged deaths? After what Hodge did? We're all under investigation now, thanks to Valentine," she finished, seeing Jace's white and stunned expression. "The Inquisitor could put Jace in prison. She could strip his Marks. I thought it would be better…"

"If Jace were gone when she arrived," said Luke. "No wonder you've been so eager to send him away."

"Who is the Inquisitor?" Clary demanded. The word conjured up images of the Spanish Inquisition, of torture, the whip and the rack. "What does she do?"

"She investigates Shadowhunters for the Clave," said Luke. "She ensures the Law hasn't been broken by Nephilim. She investigated all the Circle members after the Uprising."

"She cursed Hodge?" Jace said. "She sent you here?"

"She chose our exile and his punishment. She has no love for us, and hates your father."

"I'm not leaving," said Jace, still very pale. "What will she do to you if she gets here and I'm gone? She'll think you conspired to hide me. She'll punish you—you and Alec and Isabelle and Max."

Maryse said nothing.

"Maryse, don't be a fool," Luke said. "She'll blame you more if you let Jace go. Keeping him here and allowing the trial by Sword would be a sign of good faith."

"Keeping Jace—you can't be serious, Luke!" Clary said. She knew using the Sword had been her idea, but she was beginning to regret ever having brought it up. "She sounds awful."

"But if Jace leaves," said Luke, "he can never come back. He'll never be a Shadowhunter again. Like it or not, the Inquisitor is the Law's right hand. If Jace wants to stay a part of the Clave, he has to cooperate with her. He does have something on his side, something the members of the Circle did not have after the Uprising."

"And what's that?" Maryse asked.

Luke smiled faintly. "Unlike you," he said, "Jace is telling the truth."

Maryse took a hard breath, then turned to Jace. "Ultimately, it's your decision," she said. "If you want the trial, you can stay here until the Inquisitor comes."

"I'll stay," Jace said. There was a firmness in his tone, devoid of anger, that surprised Clary. He seemed to be looking past Maryse, a light flickering in his eyes, as if of reflected fire. In that moment Clary couldn't help but think that he looked very like his father.

4 The Cuckoo in the Nest

"Orange juice, molasses, eggs—weeks past their sell-by date, though—and something that looks kind of like lettuce."

"Lettuce?" Clary peered over Simon's shoulder into the fridge. "Oh. That's some mozzarella."

Simon shuddered and kicked Luke's fridge door shut. "Order pizza?"

"I already did," said Luke, coming into the kitchen with the cordless phone in hand. "One large veggie pie, three Cokes. And I called the hospital," he added, hanging the phone up. "There's been no change with Jocelyn."

"Oh," Clary said. She sat down at the wooden table in Luke's kitchen. Usually Luke was pretty neat, but at the moment the table was covered in unopened mail and stacks of dirty plates. Luke's green duffel hung across the back of a chair. She knew she should be helping with the cleaning up, but lately she just hadn't had the energy. Luke's kitchen was small and a little dingy at the best of times—he wasn't much of a cook, as evidenced by the fact that the spice rack that hung over the old-fashioned gas stove was empty of spices. Instead, he used it to hold boxes of coffee and tea.

Simon sat down next to her as Luke cleared the dirty dishes off the table and dumped them into the sink. "Are you okay?" he asked in a low voice.

"I'm all right." Clary managed a smile. "I didn't expect my mom to wake up today, Simon. I have this feeling she's—waiting for something."

"Do you know what?"

"No. Just that something's missing." She looked up at Luke, but he was involved in vigorously scrubbing the plates clean in the sink. "Or someone."

Simon looked quizzically at her, then shrugged. "So it sounds like the scene at the Institute was pretty intense."

Clary shuddered. "Alec and Isabelle's mom is scary."

"What's her name again?"

"May-ris," said Clary, copying Luke's pronunciation.

"It's an old Shadowhunter name." Luke dried his hands on a dishcloth.

"And Jace decided to stay there and deal with this Inquisitor person? He didn't want to leave?" Simon said.

"It's what he has to do if he ever wants to have a life as a Shadowhunter," said Luke. "And being that—one of the Nephilim—means everything to him. I knew other Shadowhunters like him, back in Idris. If you took that away from him—"

The familiar buzz of the doorbell sounded. Luke tossed the dishcloth onto the counter. "I'll be right back."

As soon as he was out of the kitchen, Simon said, "It's really weird thinking of Luke as someone who was once a Shadowhunter. Weirder than it is thinking of him as a werewolf."

"Really? Why?"

Simon shrugged. "I've heard of werewolves before. They're sort of a known element. So he turns into a wolf once a month, so what. But the Shadowhunter thing—they're like a cult."

"They're not like a cult."

"Sure they are. Shadowhunting is their whole lives. And they look down on everyone else. They call us mundanes. Like they're not human beings. They're not friends with ordinary people, they don't go to the same places, they don't know the same jokes, they think they're above us." Simon pulled one gangly leg up and twisted the frayed edge of the hole in the knee of his jeans. "I met another werewolf today."

"Don't tell me you were hanging out with Freaky Pete at the Hunter's Moon." There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she couldn't have said exactly what was causing it. Probably free-floating stress.

"No. It was a girl," Simon said. "About our age. Named Maia."

"Maia?" Luke was back in the kitchen carrying a square white pizza box. He dropped it onto the table and Clary reached over to pop it open. The smell of hot dough, tomato sauce, and cheese reminded her how starved she was. She tore off a slice, not waiting for Luke to slide a plate across the table to her. He sat down with a grin, shaking his head.

"Maia's one of the pack, right?" Simon asked, taking a slice himself.

Luke nodded. "Sure. She's a good kid. I've had her over here a few times looking out for the bookstore while I've been at the hospital. She lets me pay her in books."

Simon looked at Luke over his pizza. "Are you low on money?"

Luke shrugged. "Money's never been important to me, and the pack looks after its own."

Clary said, "My mom always said that when we ran low on money she'd sell one of my dad's stocks. But since the guy I thought was my dad wasn't my dad, and I doubt Valentine has any stocks—"

"Your mother was selling her jewelry off bit by bit," said Luke. "Valentine had given her some of his family's pieces, jewelry that had been with the Morgensterns for generations. Even a small piece would fetch a high price at auction." He sighed. "Those are gone now—though Valentine may have recovered them from the wreckage of your old apartment."

"Well, I hope it gave her some satisfaction, anyway," Simon said. "Selling off his stuff like that." He took a third piece of pizza. It was truly amazing, Clary thought, how much teenage boys were able to eat without ever gaining weight or making themselves sick.

"It must have been weird for you," she said to Luke. "Seeing Maryse Lightwood like that, after such a long time."

"Not precisely weird. Maryse isn't that different now from how she was then—in fact, she's more like herself than ever, if that makes sense."

Clary thought it did. The way that Maryse Lightwood had looked recollected to her the slim dark girl in the photo Hodge had given her, the one with the haughty tilt to her chin. "How do you think she feels about you?" she asked. "Do you really think they hoped you were dead?"

Luke smiled. "Maybe not out of hatred, no, but it would have been more convenient and less messy for them if I had died, certainly. That I'm not just alive but am leading the downtown pack can't be something they'd hoped for. It's their job, after all, to keep the peace between Downworlders—and here I come, with a history with them and plenty of reason to want revenge. They'll be worried I'm a wild card."

"Are you?" asked Simon. They were out of pizza, so he reached over without looking and took one of Clary's nibbled crusts. He knew she hated crust. "A wild card, I mean."

"There's nothing wild about me. I'm stolid. Middle-aged."

"Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things," Clary said.

"It could be worse," Luke said. "Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels."

"You're only thirty-eight," Simon pointed out. "That's not middle-aged."

"Thank you, Simon, I appreciate that." Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh. "Though you did eat all the pizza."

"I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs.

"How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to know.

"Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this mean you're going to wolf out and eat me?"

"Certainly not." Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. "You would be stringy and hard to digest."

"But kosher," Simon pointed out cheerfully.

"I'll be sure to point any Jewish lycanthropes your way." Luke leaned his back against the sink. "But to answer your earlier question, Clary, it was strange seeing Maryse Lightwood, but not because of her. It was the surroundings. The Institute reminded me too much of the Hall of Accords in Idris—I could feel the strength of the Gray Book's runes all around me, after fifteen years of trying to forget them."

"Did you?" Clary asked. "Manage to forget them?"

"There are some things you never forget. The runes of the Book are more than illustrations. They become part of you. Part of your skin. Being a Shadowhunter never leaves you. It's a gift that's carried in your blood, and you can no more change it than you can change your blood type."

"I was wondering," Clary said, "if maybe I should get some Marks myself."

Simon dropped the pizza crust he'd been gnawing on. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm not. Why would I joke about something like that? And why shouldn't I get Marks? I'm a Shadowhunter. I might as well go for what protection I can get."

"Protection from what?" Simon demanded, leaning forward so that the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a bang. "I thought all this Shadowhunting stuff was over. I thought you were trying to live a normal life."

Luke's tone was mild. "I'm not sure there's such a thing as a normal life."

Clary looked down at her arm, where Jace had drawn the only Mark she'd ever received. She could still see the lacelike white tracery it had left behind, more a memory than a scar. "Sure, I want to get away from the weirdness. But what if the weirdness comes after me? What if I don't have a choice?"

"Or maybe you don't want to get away from the weirdness that badly," Simon muttered. "Not as long as Jace is still involved with it, anyway."

Luke cleared his throat. "Most Nephilim go through levels of training before they receive their Marks. I wouldn't recommend getting any until you've completed some instruction. And whether you even want to do that is up to you, of course. However, there is something you should have. Something every Shadowhunter should have."

"An obnoxious, arrogant attitude?" Simon said.

"A stele," said Luke. "Every Shadowhunter should have a stele."

"Do you have one?" Clary asked, surprised.

Without responding, Luke headed out of the kitchen. He was back in a few moments, holding an object wrapped in black fabric. Setting the object down on the table, he unrolled the cloth, revealing a gleaming wandlike instrument, made of a pale, opaque crystal. A stele.

"Pretty," said Clary.

"I'm glad you think so," said Luke, "because I want you to have it."

"Have it?" She looked at him in astonishment. "But it's yours, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "This was your mother's. She didn't want to keep it at the apartment in case you happened across it, so she asked me to hold on to it for her."

Clary picked the stele up. It felt cool to the touch, though she knew it would heat to a glow when used. It was a strange object, not quite long enough to be a weapon, not quite short enough to be an easily manipulated drawing tool. She supposed the odd size was just something you got used to over time.

"I can have it?"

"Sure. It's an old model, of course, almost twenty years out of date. They may have refined the designs since. Still, it's reliable enough."

Simon watched her as she held the stele like a conductor's baton, tracing invisible patterns lightly on the air between them. "This kind of reminds me of the time my grandfather gave me his old golf clubs."

Clary laughed and lowered her hand. "Yeah, except you never used those."

"And I hope you never have to use that," Simon said, and looked quickly away before she could reply.

Smoke rose from the Marks in black spirals and he smelled the choking scent of his own skin burning. His father stood over him with the stele, its tip gleaming red like the tip of a poker left too long in the fire. "Close your eyes, Jonathan," he said. "Pain is only what you allow it to be." But Jace's hand curled in on itself, unwillingly, as if his skin were writhing, twisting to get away from the stele. He heard the snap as one bone in his hand broke, and then another…

Jace opened his eyes and blinked up at the darkness, his father's voice fading away like smoke in rising wind. He tasted pain, metallic on his tongue. He'd bitten the inside of his lip. He sat up, wincing.

The snap came again and involuntarily he glanced down at his hand. It was unmarked. He realized the sound was coming from outside the room. Someone knocking, albeit hesitantly, at the door.

He rolled off the bed, shivering as his bare feet hit the cold floor. He'd fallen asleep in his clothes and he looked down at his wrinkled shirt in distaste. He probably still smelled like wolf. And he ached all over.

The knock came again. Jace strode across the room and threw the door open. He blinked in surprise. "Alec?"

Alec, hands in his jeans pockets, shrugged self-consciously. "Sorry it's so early. Mom sent me to get you. She wants to see you in the library."

"What time is it?"

"Five a.m."

"What the hell are you doing up?"

"I never went to bed." It looked like he was telling the truth. His blue eyes were surrounded by dark shadows.

Jace ran a hand through his tousled hair. "All right. Hang on a second while I change my shirt." Heading to the wardrobe, he rummaged through neatly folded square stacks until he found a dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt. He peeled the shirt he was wearing off carefully—in some places it was stuck to his skin with dried blood.

Alec looked away. "What happened to you?" His voice was oddly constricted.

"Picked a fight with a pack of werewolves." Jace slid the blue shirt over his head. Dressed, he padded after Alec into the hallway. "You have something on your neck," he observed.

Alec's hand flew to his throat. "What?"

"Looks like a bite mark," said Jace. "What were you doing out all night, anyway?"

"Nothing." Beet red, his hand still clamped to his neck, Alec started down the corridor. Jace followed him. "I went walking in the park. Tried to clear my head."

"And ran into a vampire?"

"What? No! I fell."

"On your neck?" Alec made a noise, and Jace decided the issue was clearly better dropped. "Fine, whatever. What did you need to clear your head about?"

"You. My parents," Alec said. "They came and explained why they were so angry after you left. And they explained about Hodge. Thanks for not telling me that, by the way."

"Sorry." It was Jace's turn to flush. "I couldn't bring myself to do it, somehow."

"Well, it doesn't look good." Alec finally dropped his hand from his neck and turned to look accusingly at Jace. "It looks like you were hiding things. Things about Valentine."

Jace stopped in his tracks. "Do you think I was lying? About not knowing Valentine was my father?"

"No!" Alec looked startled, either at the question or at Jace's vehemence in asking it. "And I don't care who your father is either. It doesn't matter to me. You're still the same person."

"Whoever that is." The words came out cold, before he could stop them.

"I'm just saying." Alec's tone was placating. "You can be a little—harsh sometimes. Just think before you talk, that's all I'm asking. No one's your enemy here, Jace."

"Well, thanks for the advice," Jace said. "I can walk myself the rest of the way to the library."

"Jace—"

But Jace was already gone, leaving Alec's distress behind. Jace hated it when other people were worried on his behalf. It made him feel like maybe there really was something to worry about.

The library door was half open. Not bothering to knock, Jace went in. It had always been one of his favorite rooms in the Institute—there was something comforting about its old-fashioned mix of wood and brass fittings, the leather- and velvet-bound books ranged along the walls like old friends waiting for him to return. Now a blast of cold air hit him the moment the door swung open. The fire that usually blazed in the huge fireplace all through the fall and winter was a heap of ashes. The lamps had been switched off. The only light came through the narrow louvered windows and the tower's skylight, high above.

Not wanting to, Jace thought of Hodge. If he were here, the fire would be lit, the gas lamps turned up, casting shaded pools of golden light onto the parquet floor. Hodge himself would be slouched in an armchair by the fire, Hugo on one shoulder, a book propped at his side—

But there was someone in Hodge's old armchair. A thin, gray someone, who rose from the armchair, fluidly uncoiling like a snake charmer's cobra, and turned toward him with a cool smile.

It was a woman. She wore a long, old-fashioned dark gray cloak that fell to the tops of her boots. Beneath it was a fitted slate-colored suit with a mandarin collar, the stiff points of which pressed into her neck. Her hair was a sort of colorless pale blond, pulled tightly back with combs, and her eyes were flinty gray chips. Jace could feel them, like the touch of freezing water, as her gaze traveled from his filthy, mud-splattered jeans, to his bruised face, to his eyes, and locked there.

For a second something hot flickered in her gaze, like the glow of a flame trapped under ice. Then it vanished. "You are the boy?"

Before Jace could reply, another voice answered: It was Maryse, having come into the library behind him. He wondered why he hadn't heard her approaching and realized she had abandoned her heels for slippers. She wore a long robe of patterned silk and a thin-lipped expression. "Yes, Inquisitor," she said. "This is Jonathan Morgenstern."

The Inquisitor moved toward Jace like drifting gray smoke. She stopped in front of him and held out a hand—long-fingered and white, it reminded him of an albino spider. "Look at me, boy," she said, and suddenly those long fingers were under his chin, forcing his head up. She was incredibly strong. "You will call me Inquisitor. You will not call me anything else." The skin around her eyes was mazed with fine lines like cracks in paint. Two narrow grooves ran from the edges of her mouth to her chin. "Do you understand?"

For most of his life the Inquisitor had been a distant half-mythical figure to Jace. Her identity, even many of her duties, were shrouded in the secrecy of the Clave. He had always imagined she would be like the Silent Brothers, with their self-contained power and hidden mysteries. He had not imagined someone so direct—or so hostile. Her eyes seemed to cut at him, to slice away his armor of confidence and amusement, stripping him down to the bone.

"My name is Jace," he said. "Not boy. Jace Wayland."

"You have no right to the name of Wayland," she said. "You are Jonathan Morgenstern. To claim the name of Wayland makes you a liar. Just like your father."

"Actually," said Jace, "I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own."

"I see." A small smile curved her pale mouth. It was not a nice smile. "You are intolerant of authority, just as your father was. Like the angel whose name you both bear." Her fingers gripped his chin with a sudden ferocity, her nails digging in painfully. "Lucifer was rewarded for his rebellion when God cast him into the pits of hell." Her breath was sour as vinegar. "If you defy my authority, I can promise that you will envy him his fate."

She released Jace and stepped back. He could feel the slow trickle of blood where her nails had cut his face. His hands shook with anger, but he refused to raise one to wipe the blood away.

"Imogen—," began Maryse, then corrected herself. "Inquisitor Herondale. He's agreed to a trial by the Sword. You can find out whether he's telling the truth."

"About his father? Yes. I know I can." Inquisitor Herondale's stiff collar dug into her throat as she turned to look at Maryse. "You know, Maryse, the Clave is not pleased with you. You and Robert are the guardians of the Institute. You're just lucky your record over the years has been relatively clean. Few demonic disturbances until recently, and everything's been quiet the past few days. No reports, even from Idris, so the Clave is feeling lenient. We have sometimes wondered if you'd actually rescinded your allegiance to Valentine. As it is, he set a trap for you and you fell right into it. One might think you'd know better."

"There was no trap," Jace cut in. "My father knew the Lightwoods would raise me if they thought I was Michael Wayland's son. That's all."

The Inquisitor stared at him as if he were a talking cockroach. "Do you know about the cuckoo bird, Jonathan Morgenstern?"

Jace wondered if perhaps being the Inquisitor—it couldn't be a pleasant job—had left Imogen Herondale a little unhinged. "The what?"

"The cuckoo bird," she said. "You see, cuckoos are parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests. When the egg hatches, the baby cuckoo pushes the other baby birds out of the nest. The poor parent birds work themselves to death trying to find enough food to feed the enormous cuckoo child who has murdered their babies and taken their places."

"Enormous?" said Jace. "Did you just call me fat?"

"It was an analogy."

"I am not fat."

"And I," said Maryse, "don't want your pity, Imogen. I refuse to believe the Clave will punish either myself or my husband for choosing to bring up the son of a dead friend." She squared her shoulders. "It isn't as if we didn't tell them what we were doing."

"And I've never harmed any of the Lightwoods in any way," said Jace. "I've worked hard, and trained hard—say whatever you want about my father, but he made a Shadowhunter out of me. I've earned my place here."

"Don't defend your father to me," the Inquisitor said. "I knew him. He was—is—the vilest of men."

"Vile? Who says 'vile'? What does that even mean?"

The Inquisitor's colorless lashes grazed her cheeks as she narrowed her eyes, her gaze speculative. "You are arrogant," she said at last. "As well as intolerant. Did your father teach you to behave this way?"

"Not to him," Jace said shortly.

"Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him."

"Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply—I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe."

Maryse let out a sound much like a groan of horror. "Jace—"

But the Inquisitor cut her off. "And just like your father, you can't keep your temper," she said. "The Lightwoods have coddled you and let your worst qualities run rampant. You may look like an angel, Jonathan Morgenstern, but I know exactly what you are."

"He's just a boy," said Maryse. Was she defending him? Jace looked at her quickly, but her eyes were averted.

"Valentine was just a boy once. Now before we do any digging around in that blond head of yours to find out the truth, I suggest you cool your temper. And I know just where you can do that best."

Jace blinked. "Are you sending me to my room?"

"I'm sending you to the prisons of the Silent City. After a night there I suspect you'll be a great deal more cooperative."

Maryse gasped. "Imogen—you can't!"

"I certainly can." Her eyes gleamed like razors. "Do you have anything to say to me, Jonathan?"

Jace could only stare. There were levels and levels to the Silent City, and he had seen only the first two, where the archives were kept and where the Brothers sat in council. The prison cells were at the very lowest level of the City, beneath the graveyard levels where thousands of buried Shadowhunter dead rested in silence. The cells were reserved for the worst of criminals: vampires gone rogue, warlocks who broke the Covenant Law, Shadowhunters who spilled each other's blood. Jace was none of those things. How could she even suggest sending him there?

"Very wise, Jonathan. I see you're already learning the best lesson the Silent City has to teach you." The Inquisitor's smile was like a grinning skull's. "How to keep your mouth shut."

Clary was in the middle of helping Luke clean up the remains of dinner when the doorbell rang again. She straightened up, her gaze flicking to Luke. "Expecting someone?"

He frowned, drying his hands on the dish towel. "No. Wait here." She saw him reach up to grab something off one of the shelves as he left the kitchen. Something that glinted.

"Did you see that knife?" Simon whistled, standing up from the table. "Is he expecting trouble?"

"I think he's always expecting trouble," Clary said, "these days." She peered around the side of the kitchen door, saw Luke at the open front door. She could hear his voice, but not what he was saying. He didn't sound upset, though.

Simon's hand on her shoulder pulled her back. "Keep away from the door. What are you, crazy? What if there's some demon thing out there?"

"Then Luke could probably use our help." She looked down at his hand on her shoulder, grinning. "Now you're all protective? That's cute."

"Clary!" Luke called her from the front room. "Come here. I want you to meet someone."

Clary patted Simon's hand and set it aside. "Be right back."

Luke was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. The knife in his hand had magically disappeared. A girl stood on the front steps of the house, a girl with curling brown hair in multiple braids and a tan corduroy jacket. "This is Maia," Luke said. "Who I was just telling you about."

The girl looked at Clary. Her eyes under the bright porch light were a strange amber green. "You must be Clary."

Clary admitted that this was the case.

"So that kid—the boy with the blond hair who tore up the Hunter's Moon—he's your brother?"

"Jace," Clary said shortly, not liking the girl's intrusive curiosity.

"Maia?" It was Simon, coming up behind Clary, hands thrust into the pockets of his jean jacket.

"Yeah. You're Simon, right? I suck at names, but I remember you." The girl smiled past Clary at him.

"Great," said Clary. "Now we're all friends."

Luke coughed and straightened up. "I wanted you to meet each other because Maia's going to be working around the bookshop for the next few weeks," he said. "If you see her going in and out, don't worry about it. She's got a key."

"And I'll keep an eye out for anything weird," Maia promised. "Demons, vamps, whatever."

"Thanks," said Clary. "I feel so safe now."

Maia blinked. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"We're all a little tense," Simon said. "I for one am happy to know someone will be around here keeping an eye on my girlfriend when no one else is home."

Luke raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Clary said, "Simon's right. Sorry I snapped at you."

"It's all right." Maia looked sympathetic. "I heard about your mom. I'm sorry."

"Me too," Clary said, turned around, and went back to the kitchen. She sat down at the table and put her face in her hands. A moment later Luke followed her.

"Sorry," he said. "I guess you weren't in the mood to meet anyone."

Clary looked at him through splayed fingers. "Where's Simon?"

"Talking to Maia," Luke said, and indeed Clary could hear their voices, soft as murmurs, from the other end of the house. "I just thought it would be good for you to have a friend right now."

"I have Simon."

Luke pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Did I hear him call you his girlfriend?"

She almost laughed at his bewildered expression. "I guess so."

"Is that something new, or is this something I'm already supposed to know, but forgot?"

"I hadn't heard it before myself." She took her hands away from her face and looked at them. She thought of the rune, the open eye, that decorated the back of the right hand of every Shadowhunter. "Somebody's girlfriend," she said. "Somebody's sister, somebody's daughter. All these things I never knew I was before, and I still don't really know what I am."

"Isn't that always the question," Luke said, and Clary heard the door shut at the other end of the house, and Simon's footsteps approaching the kitchen. The smell of cold night air came in with him.

"Would it be okay if I crashed here tonight?" he asked. "It's a little late to head home."

"You know you're always welcome." Luke glanced at his watch. "I'm going to get some sleep. Have to be up at five a.m. to get to the hospital by six."

"Why six?" Simon asked, after Luke had left the kitchen.

"That's when hospital visiting hours start," Clary said. "You don't have to sleep on the couch. Not if you don't want to."

"I don't mind staying to keep you company tomorrow," he said, shaking dark hair out of his eyes impatiently. "Not at all."

"I know. I meant you don't have to sleep on the couch if you don't want to."

"Then where…" His voice trailed off, eyes wide behind his glasses. "Oh."

"It's a double bed," she said. "In the guest room."

Simon took his hands out of his pockets. There was bright color in his cheeks. Jace would have tried to look cool; Simon didn't even try. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He came across the kitchen to her and, bending down, kissed her lightly and clumsily on the mouth. Smiling, she got to her feet. "Enough with the kitchens," she said. "No more kitchens." And taking him firmly by the wrists, she pulled him after her, out of the kitchen, toward the guest room where she slept.

5 Sins of the Fathers

The darkness of the prisons of the Silent City was more profound than any darkness Jace had ever known. He couldn't see the shape of his own hand in front of his eyes, couldn't see the floor or ceiling of his cell. What he knew of the cell, he knew from the torchlit first glimpse he'd had, guided down here by a contingent of Silent Brothers, who had opened the barred gate of the cell for him and ushered him inside as if he were a common criminal.

Then again, that's probably exactly what they thought he was.

He knew that the cell had a flagged stone floor, that three of the walls were hewn rock, and that the fourth was made of narrowly spaced electrum bars, each end sunk deeply into stone. He knew there was a door set into those bars. He also knew that a long metal bar ran along the east wall, because the Silent Brothers had attached one loop of a pair of silver cuffs to this bar, and the other cuff to his wrist. He could walk up and down the cell a few steps, rattling like Marley's ghost, but that was as far as he could go. He had already rubbed his right wrist raw yanking thoughtlessly at the cuff. At least he was left-handed—a small bright spot in the impenetrable blackness. Not that it mattered much, but it was reassuring to have his better fighting hand free.

He began another slow promenade along the length of his cell, trailing his fingers along the wall as he walked. It was unnerving not to know what time it was. In Idris his father had taught him to tell time by the angle of the sun, the length of afternoon shadows, the position of the stars in the night sky. But there were no stars here. In fact, he had begun to wonder if he would ever see the sky again.

Jace paused. Now, why had he wondered that? Of course he'd see the sky again. The Clave weren't going to kill him. The penalty of death was reserved for murderers. But the flutter of fear stayed with him, just under his rib cage, strange as an unexpected twinge of pain. Jace wasn't exactly prone to random fits of panic—Alec would have said he could have benefited from a bit more in the way of constructive cowardice. Fear wasn't something that had ever affected him much.

He thought of Maryse saying, You were never afraid of the dark.

It was true. This anxiety was unnatural, not like him at all. There had to be more to it than simple darkness. He took another shallow breath. He just had to get through the night. One night. That was it. He took another step forward, his manacle jingling drearily.

A sound split the air, freezing him in his tracks. It was a high, howling ululation, a sound of pure and mindless terror. It seemed to go on and on like a singing note plucked from a violin, growing higher and thinner and sharper until it was abruptly cut off.

Jace swore. His ears were ringing, and he could taste terror in his mouth, like bitter metal. Who would have thought that fear had a taste? He pressed his back against the wall of the cell, willing himself to calm down.

The sound came again, louder this time, and then there was another scream, and another. Something crashed overhead, and Jace ducked involuntarily before remembering that he was several levels below ground. He heard another crash, and a picture formed in his mind: mausoleum doors smashing open, the corpses of centuries-dead Shadowhunters staggering free, nothing more than skeletons held together by dried tendon, dragging themselves across the white floors of the Silent City with fleshless, bony fingers—

Enough! With a gasp of effort, Jace forced the vision away. The dead did not come back. And besides, they were the corpses of Nephilim like himself, his slain brothers and sisters. He had nothing to fear from them. So why was he so afraid? He clenched his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. This panic was unworthy of him. He would master it. He would crush it down. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, just as another scream sounded, this one very loud. The breath rasped out of his chest as something crashed loudly, very close to him, and he saw a sudden bloom of light, a hot fire-flower stabbing into his eyes.

Brother Jeremiah staggered into view, his right hand clutching a still-burning torch, his parchment hood fallen back to reveal a face torqued into a grotesque expression of terror. His previously sewn-shut mouth gaped open in a soundless scream, the gory threads of torn stitches dangling from his shredded lips. Blood, black in the torchlight, spattered his light robes. He took a few staggering steps forward, his hands outstretched—and then, as Jace watched in utter disbelief, Jeremiah pitched forward and fell headlong to the floor. Jace heard the shatter of bones as the archivist's body struck the ground and the torch sputtered, rolling out of Jeremiah's hand and toward the shallow stone gutter cut into the floor just outside the barred cell door.

Jace went to his knees instantly, stretching as far as the chain would let him, his fingers reaching for the torch. He couldn't quite touch it. The light was fading rapidly, but by its waning glow he could see Jeremiah's dead face turned toward him, blood still leaking from his open mouth. His teeth were gnarled black stubs.

Jace's chest felt as if something heavy were pressed against it. The Silent Brothers never opened their mouths, never spoke or laughed or screamed. But that had been the sound Jace had heard, he was sure of it now—the screams of men who hadn't cried out in half a century, the sound of a terror more profound and powerful than the ancient Rune of Silence. But how could that be? And where were the other Brothers?

Jace wanted to scream for help, but the weight was still on his chest, pressing down. He couldn't seem to get enough air. He lunged for the torch again and felt one of the small bones in his wrist shatter. Pain shot up his arm, but it gave him the extra inch he needed. He swept the torch into his hand and rose to his feet. As the flame leaped back into life, he heard another noise. A thick noise, a sort of ugly, dragging slither. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, sharp as needles. He thrust the torch forward, his shaking hand sending wild flicks of light dancing across the walls, brilliantly illuminating the shadows.

There was nothing there.

Instead of relief, though, he felt his terror intensify. He was now gasping in air in great sucking drafts, as if he'd been underwater. The fear was all the worse because it was so unfamiliar. What had happened to him? Had he suddenly become a coward?

He jerked hard against the manacle, hoping the pain would clear his head. It didn't. He heard the noise again, the thumping slither, and now it was close. There was another sound too, behind the slither, a soft, constant whispering. He had never heard any sound quite so evil. Half out of his mind with horror, he staggered back against the wall and raised the torch in his wildly jerking hand.

For a moment, bright as daylight, he saw the whole room: the cell, the barred door, the bare flagstones beyond, and the dead body of Jeremiah huddled against the floor. There was a door just behind Jeremiah. It was opening slowly. Something heaved its way through the door. Something huge and dark and formless. Eyes like burning ice, sunk deep into dark folds, regarded Jace with a snarling amusement. Then the thing lunged forward. A great cloud of roiling vapor rose up in front of Jace's eyes like a wave sweeping across the surface of the ocean. The last thing he saw was the flame of his torch guttering green and blue before it was swallowed up by the darkness.

Kissing Simon was pleasant. It was a gentle sort of pleasant, like lying in a hammock on a summer day with a book and a glass of lemonade. It was the sort of thing you could keep doing and not feel bored or apprehensive or disconcerted or bothered by much of anything except the fact that the metal bar on the sofa bed was digging into your back.

"Ouch," Clary said, trying to wriggle away from the bar and not succeeding.

"Did I hurt you?" Simon raised himself up on his side, looking concerned. Or maybe it was just that without his glasses his eyes seemed twice as large and dark.

"No, not you—the bed. It's like a torture instrument."

"I didn't notice," he said somberly, as she grabbed a pillow from the floor, where it had fallen, and wedged it underneath them.

"You wouldn't." She laughed. "Where were we?"

"Well, my face was approximately where it is now, but your face was a lot closer to mine. That's what I remember, anyway."

"How romantic." She pulled him down on top of her, where he balanced on his elbows. Their bodies lay neatly aligned and she could feel the beat of his heart through both their T-shirts. His lashes, normally hidden behind his glasses, brushed her cheek when he leaned to kiss her. She let out a shaky little laugh. "Is this weird for you?" she whispered.

"No. I think when you imagine something often enough, the reality of it seems—"

"Anticlimactic?"

"No. No!" Simon pulled back, looking at her with nearsighted conviction. "Don't ever think that. This is the opposite of anticlimactic. It's—"

Suppressed giggles bubbled up in her chest. "Okay, maybe you don't want to say that, either."

He half-closed his eyes, his mouth curving into a smile. "Okay, now I want to say something smart-ass back at you, but all I can think is…" She grinned up at him. "That you want sex?"

"Stop that." He caught her hands with his, pinned them to the bedspread, and looked down at her gravely. "That I love you."

"So you don't want sex?"

He let go of her hands. "I didn't say that."

She laughed and pushed at his chest with both hands. "Let me up."

He looked alarmed. "I didn't mean I only want sex…"

"It's not that. I want to change into my pajamas. I can't take making out seriously when I still have my socks on."

He watched her mournfully while she gathered up her pajamas from the dresser and headed into the bathroom. Pulling the door closed, she made a face at him. "I'll be right back."

Whatever he said in response was lost as she shut the door. She brushed her teeth and then ran the water in the sink for a long time, staring at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. Her hair was tousled and her cheeks were red. Did that count as glowing, she wondered? People in love were supposed to glow, weren't they? Or maybe that was just pregnant women, she couldn't remember exactly, but surely she was supposed to look a little different. After all, this was the first real long kissing session she'd ever had—and it was nice, she told herself, safe and pleasant and comfortable.

Of course, she'd kissed Jace, on the night of her birthday, and that hadn't been safe and comfortable and pleasant at all. It had been like opening up a vein of something unknown inside her body, something hotter and sweeter and bitterer than blood. Don't think about Jace, she told herself fiercely, but looking at herself in the mirror, she saw her eyes darken and knew her body remembered even if her mind didn't want to.

She ran the water cold and splashed it over her face before reaching for her pajamas. Great, she realized, she'd brought her pajama bottoms in with her but not the top. However much Simon might appreciate it, it seemed early to break out the topless sleeping arrangements. She went back into the bedroom, only to discover that Simon was asleep in the center of the bed, clutching the bolster pillow as if it were a human being. She stifled a laugh.

"Simon…," she whispered—then she heard the sharp two-tone beep that signaled that a text message had just arrived on her cell phone. The phone itself was lying folded on the bedside table; Clary picked it up and saw that the message was from Isabelle.

She flipped the phone open and scrolled hastily down to the text. She read it twice, just to make sure she wasn't imagining things. Then she ran to the closet to get her coat.

"Jonathan."

The voice spoke out of the blackness: slow, dark, familiar as pain. Jace blinked his eyes open and saw only darkness. He shivered. He was lying curled on the icy flagstone floor. He must have fainted. He felt a stab of fury at his own weakness, his own frailty.

He rolled onto his side, his torn wrist throbbing in its manacle. "Is anyone there?"

"Surely you recognize your own father, Jonathan." The voice came again, and Jace did know it: its sound of old iron, its smooth near-tonelessness. He tried to scramble to his feet but his boots slipped on a puddle of something and he skidded backward, his shoulders hitting the stone wall hard. His chain rattled like a chorus of steel wind chimes.

"Are you hurt?" A light blazed upward, searing Jace's eyes. He blinked away burning tears and saw Valentine standing on the other side of the bars, beside the corpse of Brother Jeremiah. A glowing witchlight stone in one hand cast a sharp whitish glow over the room. Jace could see the stains of old blood on the walls—and newer blood, a small lake of it, which had spilled from Jeremiah's open mouth. He felt his stomach roil and clench, and thought of the black formless shape he'd seen before with eyes like burning jewels. "That thing," he choked out. "Where is it? What was it?"

"You are hurt." Valentine moved closer to the bars. "Who ordered you locked up here? Was it the Clave? The Lightwoods?"

"It was the Inquisitor." Jace looked down at himself. There was more blood on his pants legs and on his shirt. He couldn't tell if any of it was his. Blood was seeping slowly from beneath his manacle.

Valentine regarded him thoughtfully through the bars. It was the first time in years Jace had seen his father in real battle dress—the thick leather Shadowhunter clothes that allowed freedom of movement while protecting the skin from most kinds of demon venom; the electrum-plated braces on his arms and legs, each marked with a series of glyphs and runes. There was a wide strap across his chest and the hilt of a sword gleamed above his shoulder. He squatted down then, putting his cool black eyes on a level with Jace's. Jace was surprised to see no anger in them. "The Inquisitor and the Clave are one and the same. And the Lightwoods should never have allowed this to happen. I would never have let anyone do this to you."

Jace pressed his shoulders back against the wall; it was as far as his chain would let him get from his father. "Did you come down here to kill me?"

"Kill you? Why would I want to kill you?"

"Well, why did you kill Jeremiah? And don't bother feeding me some story about how you just happened to wander along after he spontaneously died. I know you did this."

For the first time Valentine glanced down at the body of Brother Jeremiah. "I did kill him, and the rest of the Silent Brothers as well. I had to. They had something I needed."

"What? A sense of decency?"

"This," said Valentine, and drew the Sword from his shoulder sheath in one swift movement. "Maellartach."

Jace choked back the gasp of surprise that rose in his throat. He recognized it well enough: The huge, heavy-bladed silver Sword with the hilt in the shape of outspread wings was the one that hung above the Speaking Stars in the Silent Brothers' council room. "You took the Silent Brothers' sword?"

"It was never theirs," Valentine said. "It belongs to all Nephilim. This is the blade with which the Angel drove Adam and Eve out of the garden. And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way," he quoted, gazing down at the blade.

Jace licked his dry lips. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I'll tell you that," said Valentine, "when I think I can trust you, and I know that you trust me."

"Trust you? After the way you sneaked through the Portal at Renwick's and smashed it so I couldn't come after you? And the way you tried to kill Clary?"

"I would never have hurt your sister," said Valentine, with a flash of anger. "Any more than I would hurt you."

"All you've ever done is hurt me! It was the Lightwoods who protected me!"

"I'm not the one who locked you up here. I'm not the one who threatens and distrusts you. That's the Lightwoods and their friends in the Clave." Valentine paused. "Seeing you like this—how they've treated you, and yet you remain stoic—I'm proud of you."

At that, Jace looked up in surprise, so quickly that he felt a wave of dizziness. His hand gave an insistent throb. He pushed the pain down and back until his breathing eased. "What?"

"I realize now what I did wrong at Renwick's," Valentine went on. "I was picturing you as the little boy I left behind in Idris, obedient to my every wish. Instead I found a headstrong young man, independent and courageous, yet I treated you as if you were still a child. No wonder you rebelled against me."

"Rebelled? I—" Jace's throat tightened, cutting off the words he wanted to say. His heart had begun pounding in rhythm with the throbbing in his hand.

Valentine pressed on. "I never had a chance to explain my past to you, to tell you why I've done the things I've done."

"There's nothing to explain. You killed my grandparents. You held my mother prisoner. You slew other Shadowhunters to further your own ends." Every word in Jace's mouth tasted like poison.

"You only know half the facts, Jonathan. I lied to you when you were a child because you were too young to understand. Now you are old enough to be told the truth."

"So tell me the truth."

Valentine reached through the bars of the cell and laid his hand on top of Jace's. The rough, callused texture of his fingers felt exactly the way it had when Jace had been ten years old.

"I want to trust you, Jonathan," he said. "Can I?"

Jace wanted to reply, but the words wouldn't come. His chest felt as if an iron band was being slowly tightened around it, cutting off his breath by inches. "I wish…," he whispered.

A noise sounded above them. A noise like the clang of a metal door; then Jace heard footsteps, whispers echoing off the City's stone walls. Valentine started to his feet, closing his hand over the witchlight until it was only a dim glow and he himself was a faintly outlined shadow. "Quicker than I thought," he murmured, and looked down at Jace through the bars.

Jace looked past him, but he could see nothing but blackness beyond the faint illumination of the witchlight. He thought of the roiling dark form he had seen before, crushing out all light before it. "What's coming? What is it?" he demanded, scrabbling forward on his knees.

"I must go," said Valentine. "But we're not done, you and I."

Jace put his hand to the bars. "Unchain me. Whatever it is, I want to be able to fight it."

"Unchaining you would hardly be a kindness now." Valentine closed his hand around the witchlight stone completely. It winked out, plunging the room into darkness. Jace flung himself against the bars of the cell, his broken hand screaming its protest and pain.

"No!" he shouted. "Father, please."

"When you want to find me," Valentine said, "you will find me." And then there was only the sound of his footsteps rapidly receding and Jace's own ragged breathing as he slumped against the bars.

On the subway ride uptown Clary found herself unable to sit down. She paced up and down the near-empty train car, her iPod headphones dangling around her neck. Isabelle hadn't picked up the phone when Clary had called her, and an irrational sense of worry gnawed at Clary's insides.

She thought of Jace at the Hunter's Moon, covered in blood. With his teeth bared in snarling anger, he'd looked more like a werewolf himself than a Shadowhunter charged with protecting humans and keeping Downworlders in line.

She charged up the stairs at the Ninety-sixth Street subway stop, only slowing to a walk as she approached the corner where the Institute hulked like a huge gray shadow. It had been hot down in the tunnels, and the sweat on the back of her neck was prickling coldly as she made her way up the cracked concrete walk to the Institute's front door.

She reached for the enormous iron bellpull that hung from the architrave, then hesitated. She was a Shadowhunter, wasn't she? She had a right to be in the Institute, just as much as the Lightwoods did. With a surge of resolve, she seized the door handle, trying to remember the words Jace had spoken. "In the name of the Angel, I—"

The door swung open onto a darkness starred by the flames of dozens of tiny candles. As she hurried between the pews, the candles flickered as if they were laughing at her. She reached the elevator and clanged the metal door shut behind her, stabbing at the buttons with a shaking finger. She willed her nervousness to subside—was she worried about Jace, she wondered, or just worried about seeing Jace? Her face, framed by the upturned collar of her coat, looked very white and small, her eyes big and dark green, her lips pale and bitten. Not pretty at all, she thought in dismay, and forced the thought back. What did it matter how she looked? Jace didn't care. Jace couldn't care.

The elevator came to a clanging stop and Clary pushed the door open. Church was waiting for her in the foyer. He greeted her with a disgruntled meow.

"What's wrong, Church?" Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet room. She wondered if anyone were here in the Institute. Maybe it was just her. The thought gave her the creeps. "Is anyone home?"

The blue Persian turned his back and headed down the corridor. They passed the music room and the library, both empty, before Church turned another corner and sat down in front of a closed door. Right, then. Here we are, his expression seemed to say.

Before she could knock, the door opened, revealing Isabelle standing on the threshold, barefoot in a pair of jeans and a soft violet sweater. She started when she saw Clary. "I thought I heard someone coming down the hall, but I didn't think it would be you," she said. "What are you doing here?"

Clary stared at her. "You sent me that text message. You said the Inquisitor threw Jace in jail."

"Clary!" Isabelle glanced up and down the corridor, then bit her lip. "I didn't mean you should race down here right now."

Clary was horrified. "Isabelle! Jail!"

"Yes, but—" With a defeated sigh, Isabelle stood aside, gesturing for Clary to enter her room. "Look, you might as well come in. And shoo, you," she said, waving a hand at Church. "Go guard the elevator."

Church gave her a horrified look, lay down on his stomach, and went to sleep.

"Cats," Isabelle muttered, and slammed the door.

"Hey, Clary." Alec was sitting on Isabelle's unmade bed, his booted feet dangling over the side. "What are you doing here?"

Clary sat down on the padded stool in front of Isabelle's gloriously messy vanity table. "Isabelle texted me. She told me what happened to Jace."

Isabelle and Alec exchanged a meaningful look. "Oh, come on, Alec," Isabelle said. "I thought she should know. I didn't know she'd come racing up here!"

Clary's stomach lurched. "Of course I came! Is he all right? Why on earth did the Inquisitor throw him in prison?"

"It's not prison exactly. He's in the Silent City," said Alec, sitting up straight and pulling one of Isabelle's pillows across his lap. He picked idly at the beaded fringe sewed to its edges.

"In the Silent City? Why?"

Alec hesitated. "There are cells under the Silent City. They keep criminals there sometimes before deporting them to Idris to stand trial before the Council. People who've done really bad things. Murderers, renegade vampires, Shadowhunters who break the Accords. That's where Jace is now."

"Locked up with a bunch of murderers?" Clary was on her feet, outraged. "What's wrong with you people? Why aren't you more upset?"

Alec and Isabelle exchanged another look. "It's just for a night," Isabelle said. "And there isn't anyone else down there with him. We asked."

"But why? What did Jace do?"

"He mouthed off to the Inquisitor. That was it, as far as I know," said Alec.

Isabelle perched herself on the edge of the vanity table. "It's unbelievable."

"Then the Inquisitor must be insane," said Clary.

"She's not, actually," said Alec. "If Jace were in your mundane army, do you think he'd be allowed to mouth off to his superiors? Absolutely not."

"Well, not during a war. But Jace isn't a soldier."

"But we're all soldiers. Jace as much as the rest of us. There's a hierarchy of command and the Inquisitor is near the top. Jace is near the bottom. He should have treated her with more respect."

"If you agree that he ought to be in jail, why did you ask me to come here? Just to get me to agree with you? I don't see the point. What do you want me to do?"

"We didn't say he should be in jail," Isabelle snapped. "Just that he shouldn't have talked back to one of the highest-ranked members of the Clave. Besides," she added in a smaller voice, "I thought that maybe you could help."

"Help? How?"

"I told you before," Alec said, "half the time it seems like Jace is trying to get himself killed. He has to learn to look out for himself, and that includes cooperating with the Inquisitor."

"And you think I can help you make him do that?" Clary said, disbelief coloring her voice.

"I'm not sure anyone can make Jace do anything," said Isabelle. "But I think you can remind him that he has something to live for."

Alec looked down at the pillow in his hand and gave a sudden savage yank to the fringe. Beads rattled down onto Isabelle's blanket like a shower of localized rain.

Isabelle frowned. "Alec, don't."

Clary wanted to tell Isabelle that they were Jace's family, that she wasn't, that their voices carried more weight with him than hers ever would. But she kept hearing Jace's voice in her head, saying, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. But you make me feel like I belong. "Can we go to the Silent City and see him?"

"Will you tell him to cooperate with the Inquisitor?" Alec demanded.

Clary considered. "I want to hear what he has to say first."

Alec dropped the denuded pillow onto the bed and stood up, frowning. Before he could say anything, there was a knock at the door. Isabelle unhitched herself from the vanity table and went to answer it.

It was a small, dark-haired boy, his eyes half-hidden by glasses. He wore jeans and an oversize sweatshirt and carried a book in one hand. "Max," Isabelle said, with some surprise, "I thought you were asleep."

"I was in the weapons room," said the boy—who had to be the Lightwoods' youngest son. "But there were noises coming from the library. I think someone might be trying to contact the Institute." He peered around Isabelle at Clary. "Who's that?"

"That's Clary," said Alec. "She's Jace's sister."

Max's eyes rounded. "I thought Jace didn't have any brothers or sisters."

"That's what we all thought," said Alec, picking up the sweater he'd left draped over one of Isabelle's chairs and yanking it on. His hair rayed out around his head like a soft dark halo, crackling with static electricity. He pushed it back impatiently. "I'd better get to the library."

"We'll both go," Isabelle said, taking her gold whip, which was twisted into a shimmering rope, out of a drawer and sliding the handle through her belt. "Maybe something's happened."

"Where are your parents?" Clary asked.

"They got called out a few hours ago. A fey was murdered in Central Park. The Inquisitor went with them," Alec explained.

"You didn't want to go?"

"We weren't invited." Isabelle looped her two dark braids up on top of her head and stuck the coil of hair through with a small glass dagger. "Look after Max, will you? We'll be right back."

"But—," Clary protested.

"We'll be right back." Isabelle darted out into the corridor, Alec on her heels. The moment the door shut behind them, Clary sat down on the bed and regarded Max with apprehension. She'd never spent much time around children—her mother had never let her babysit—and she wasn't really sure how to talk to them or what might amuse them. It helped a little that this particular little boy reminded her of Simon at that age, with his skinny arms and legs and glasses that seemed too big for his face.

Max returned her stare with a considering glance of his own, not shy, but thoughtful and contained. "How old are you?" he said finally.

Clary was taken aback. "How old do I look?"

"Fourteen."

"I'm sixteen, but people always think I'm younger than I am because I'm so short."

Max nodded. "Me too," he said. "I'm nine but people always think I'm seven."

"You look nine to me," said Clary. "What's that you're holding? Is it a book?"

Max brought his hand out from behind his back. He was holding a wide, flat paperback, about the size of one of those small magazines they sold at grocery store counters. This one had a brightly colored cover with Japanese kanji script on it under the English words. Clary laughed. "Naruto," she said. "I didn't know you liked manga. Where did you get that?"

"In the airport. I like the pictures but I can't figure out how to read it."

"Here, give it to me." She flipped it open, showing him the pages. "You read it backward, right to left instead of left to right. And you read each page clockwise. Do you know what that means?"

"Of course," said Max. For a moment Clary was worried she'd annoyed him. He seemed pleased enough, though, when he took the book back and flipped to the last page. "This one is number nine," he said. "I think I should get the other eight before I read it."

"That's a good idea. Maybe you can get someone to take you to Midtown Comics or Forbidden Planet."

"Forbidden Planet?" Max looked bemused, but before Clary could explain, Isabelle burst through the door, clearly out of breath.

"It was someone trying to contact the Institute," she said, before Clary could ask. "One of the Silent Brothers. Something's happened in the Bone City."

"What kind of something?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of the Silent Brothers asking for help before." Isabelle was clearly distressed. She turned to her brother. "Max, go to your room and stay there, okay?"

Max set his jaw. "Are you and Alec going out?"

"Yes."

"To the Silent City?"

"Max—"

"I want to come."

Isabelle shook her head; the hilt of the dagger at the back of her head glittered like a point of fire. "Absolutely not. You're too young."

"You're not eighteen either!"

Isabelle turned to Clary with a look half of anxiety and half of desperation. "Clary, come here for a second, please."

Clary got up, wonderingly—and Isabelle grabbed her by the arm and yanked her out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. There was a thump as Max threw himself against it. "Damn it," said Isabelle, holding the knob, "can you grab my stele for me, please? It's in my pocket—"

Hastily, Clary held out the stele Luke had given her earlier that night. "Use mine."

With a few swift strokes, Isabelle had carved a Locking rune onto the door. Clary could still hear Max's protests from the other side as Isabelle stepped away from the door, grimacing, and handed Clary back her stele. "I didn't know you had one of these."

"It was my mother's," said Clary, then she mentally chided herself. Is my mother's. It is my mother's.

"Huh." Isabelle thumped on the door with a closed fist. "Max, there's some PowerBars in the nightstand drawer if you get hungry. We'll be back as soon as we can."

There was another outraged yell from behind the door; with a shrug, Isabelle turned and hurried back down the hallway, Clary at her side. "What did the message say?" Clary demanded. "Just that there was trouble?"

"That there was an attack. That's it."

Alec was waiting for them outside the library. He was wearing black leather Shadowhunter armor over his clothes. Gauntlets protected his arms and Marks circled his throat and wrists. Seraph blades, each one named for an angel, gleamed at the belt around his waist. "Are you ready?" he said to his sister. "Is Max taken care of?"

"He's fine." She held out her arms. "Mark me."

As Alec traced the patterns of runes along the backs of Isabelle's hands and the insides of her wrists, he glanced over at Clary. "You should probably head home," he said. "You don't want to be here by yourself when the Inquisitor gets back."

"I want to go with you," Clary said, the words spilling out before she could stop them.

Isabelle took one of her hands back from Alec and blew on the Marked skin as if she were cooling a too-hot cup of coffee. "You sound like Max."

"Max is nine. I'm the same age as you."

"But you haven't got any training," Alec argued. "You'll just be a liability."

"No, I won't. Has either of you ever been inside the Silent City?" Clary demanded. "I have. I know how to get in. I know how to find my way around."

Alec straightened up, putting his stele away. "I don't think—"

Isabelle cut in. "She has a point, actually. I think she should come if she wants."

Alec looked taken aback. "Last time we faced a demon, she just cowered and screamed." Seeing Clary's acid glare, he shot her an apologetic glance. "I'm sorry, but it's true."

"I think she needs a chance to learn," Isabelle said. "You know what Jace always says. Sometimes you don't have to search out danger, sometimes danger finds you."

"You can't lock me up like you did Max," Clary added, seeing Alec's weakening resolution. "I'm not a child. And I know where the Bone City is. I can find my way there without you."

Alec turned away, shaking his head and muttering something about girls. Isabelle held out a hand to Clary. "Give me your stele," she said. "It's time you got some Marks."

6 City of Ashes

In the end Isabelle gave Clary only two Marks, one on the back of each hand. One was the open eye that decorated the hand of every Shadowhunter. The other was like two crossed sickles; Isabelle said it was a Rune of Protection. Both runes burned when the stele first touched skin, but the pain faded as Clary, Isabelle, and Alec headed downtown in a black gypsy cab. By the time they reached Second Avenue and stepped out onto the pavement, Clary's hands and arms felt as light as if she were wearing water wings in a swimming pool.

The three of them were silent as they passed under the wrought iron arch and into the Marble Cemetery. The last time Clary had been in this small courtyard she had been hurrying along after Brother Jeremiah. Now, for the first time, she noticed the names carved into the walls: Youngblood, Fairchild, Thrushcross, Nightwine, Ravenscar. There were runes beside them. In Shadowhunter culture each family had their own symbol: The Waylands' was a blacksmith's hammer, the Lightwoods' a torch, and Valentine's a star.

The grass grew tangled over the feet of the Angel statue in the courtyard's center. The Angel's eyes were closed, his slim hands closed over the stem of a stone goblet, a reproduction of the Mortal Cup. His stone face was impassive, streaked with dirt and grime.

Clary said, "Last time I was here, Brother Jeremiah used a rune on the statue to open the door to the City."

"I wouldn't want to use one of the Silent Brothers' runes," Alec said. His face was grim. "They should have sensed our presence before we got this far. Now I'm starting to worry." He took a dagger from his belt and drew the blade of it across his bare palm. Blood welled from the shallow gash. Making a fist over the stone Cup, he let the blood drip into it. "Blood of the Nephilim," he said. "It should work as a key."

The stone Angel's eyelids flew open. For a moment Clary almost expected to see eyes glaring at her from between the folds of stone, but there was only more granite. A second later, the grass at the Angel's feet began to split. A crooked black line, rippling like the back of a snake, curved away from the statue, and Clary jumped back hastily as a dark hole opened at her feet.

She peered down into it. Stairs led away into shadow. Last time she had been here, the darkness had been lit at intervals by torches, illuminating the steps. Now there was only blackness.

"Something's wrong," Clary said. Neither Isabelle nor Alec seemed inclined to argue. Clary took the witchlight stone Jace had given her out of her pocket and raised it overhead. Light burst from it, raying out through her spread fingers. "Let's go."

Alec stepped in front of her. "I'll go first, then you follow me. Isabelle, bring up the rear."

They clambered down slowly, Clary's damp boots slipping on the age-rounded steps. At the foot of the stairs was a short tunnel that opened out into an enormous hall, a stone orchard of white arches inset with semiprecious stones. Rows of mausoleums huddled in the shadows like toadstool houses in a fairy story. The more distant of them disappeared into shadow; the witchlight was not strong enough to light the whole hall.

Alec looked somberly down the rows. "I never thought I would enter the Silent City," he said. "Not even in death."

"I wouldn't sound so sad about it," Clary said. "Brother Jeremiah told me what they do to your dead. They burn them up and use most of the ashes to make the City's marble." The blood and bone of demon slayers is itself a powerful protection against evil. Even in death, the Clave serves the Cause.

"Hmph," said Isabelle. "It's considered an honor. Besides, it's not like you mundies don't burn your dead."

That doesn't make it not creepy, Clary thought. The smell of ashes and smoke hung heavy on the air, familiar to her from the last time she was here—but there was something else underlying those smells, a heavier, thicker stench, like rotting fruit.

Frowning as if he smelled it too, Alec took one of his angel blades out of his weapons belt. "Arathiel," he whispered, and its glow joined the illumination of Clary's witchlight as they found the second staircase and descended into even denser gloom. The witchlight pulsed in Clary's hand like a dying star—she wondered if they ever ran out of power, witchlight stones, like flashlights ran out of batteries. She hoped not. The idea of being plunged into sightless darkness in this creepy place filled her with a visceral terror.

The smell of rotting fruit grew stronger as they reached the end of the stairs and found themselves in another long tunnel. This one opened out into a pavilion surrounded by spires of carved bone—a pavilion Clary remembered very well. Inlaid silver stars sprinkled the floor like precious confetti. In the center of the pavilion was a black table. Dark fluid had pooled on its slick surface and trickled across the floor in rivulets.

When Clary had stood before the Council of Brothers, there had been a heavy silver sword hanging on the wall behind the table. The Sword was gone now, and in its place, smeared across the wall, was a great fan of scarlet.

"Is that blood?" Isabelle whispered. She didn't sound afraid, just stunned.

"Looks like it." Alec's eyes scanned the room. The shadows were as thick as paint, and seemed full of movement. His grip was tight on his seraph blade.

"What could have happened?" Isabelle said. "The Silent Brothers—I thought they were indestructible…"

Her voice trailed off as Clary turned, the witchlight in her hand catching strange shadows among the spires. One was more strangely shaped than the others. She willed the witchlight to burn brighter and it did, sending a lancing bolt of brightness into the distance.

Impaled on one of the spires, like a worm on a hook, was the dead body of a Silent Brother. Hands, ribboned in blood, dangled just above the marble floor. His neck looked broken. Blood had pooled beneath him, clotted and black in the witchlight.

Isabelle gasped. "Alec. Do you see—"

"I see." Alec's voice was grim. "And I've seen worse. It's Jace I'm worried about."

Isabelle went forward and touched the black basalt table, her fingers skimming the surface. "This blood is almost fresh. Whatever happened, it happened not long ago."

Alec moved toward the Brother's impaled corpse. Smeared marks led away from the blood pool on the floor. "Footprints," he said. "Someone running." Alec indicated with a curled hand that the girls should follow him. They did, Isabelle pausing only to wipe her bloody hands off on her soft leather leg guards.

The path of footprints led from the pavilion and down a narrow tunnel, disappearing into darkness. When Alec stopped, looking around him, Clary pushed past him impatiently, letting the witchlight blaze a silvery-white path of light ahead of them. She could see a set of double doors at the end of the tunnel; they were ajar.

Jace. Somehow she sensed him, that he was close. She took off at a half run, her boots clacking loudly against the hard floor. She heard Isabelle call after her, and then Alec and Isabelle were also running, hard on her heels. She burst through the doors at the end of the hall and found herself in a large stone-bound room bisected by a row of metal bars sunk deep into the ground. Clary could just make out a slumped shape on the other side of the bars. Just outside the cell sprawled the limp form of a Silent Brother.

Clary knew immediately that he was dead. It was the way he was lying, like a doll whose joints had been twisted the wrong way until they broke. His parchment-colored robes were half-torn off. His scarred face, contorted into a look of utter terror, was still recognizable. It was Brother Jeremiah.

She pushed past his body to the door of the cell. It was made of bars spaced close together and hinged on one side. There seemed to be no lock or knob that she could pull. She heard Alec, behind her, say her name, but her attention wasn't on him: It was on the door. Of course there was no visible way to open it, she realized; the Brothers didn't deal in what was visible, but rather what wasn't. Holding the witchlight in one hand, she scrabbled for her mother's stele with the other.

From the other side of the bars came a noise. A sort of muffled gasp or whisper; she wasn't sure which, but she recognized the source. Jace. She slashed at the cell door with the tip of her stele, trying to hold the rune for Open in her mind even as it appeared, black and jagged against the hard metal. The electrum sizzled where the stele touched it. Open, she willed the door, open, open, OPEN!

A noise like ripping cloth tore through the room. Clary heard Isabelle cry out as the door blew off its hinges entirely, crashing into the cell like a drawbridge falling. Clary could hear other noises, metal coming uncoupled from metal, a loud rattle like a handful of tossed pebbles. She ducked into the cell, the fallen door wobbling under her feet.

Witchlight filled the small room, lighting it as bright as day. She barely noticed the rows of manacles—all of different metals: gold, silver, steel, and iron—as they came undone from the bolts in the walls and clattered to the stone floor. Her eyes were on the slumped figure in the corner; she could see the bright hair, the hand outstretched, the loose manacle lying a little distance away. His wrist was bare and bloody, the skin braceleted with ugly bruises.

She went down on her knees, setting her stele aside, and gently turned him over. It was Jace. There was another bruise on his cheek, and his face was very white, but she could see the darting movement under his eyelids. A vein pulsed at his throat. He was alive.

Relief went through her like a hot wave, undoing the tight cords of tension that had held her together this long. The witchlight fell to the floor beside her, where it continued to blaze. She stroked Jace's hair back from his forehead with a tenderness that felt foreign to her—she'd never had any brothers or sisters, not even a cousin. She'd never had occasion to bind up wounds or kiss scraped knees or take care of anyone, really.

But it was all right to feel tenderness toward Jace like this, she thought, unwilling to draw her hand back even as Jace's eyelids twitched and he groaned. He was her brother; why shouldn't she care what happened to him?

His eyes opened. The pupils were huge, dilated. Maybe he'd banged his head? His eyes fixed on her with a look of dazed bemusement. "Clary," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to find you," she said, because it was the truth.

A spasm went across his face. "You're really here? I'm not—I'm not dead, am I?"

"No," she said, gliding her hand down the side of his face. "You passed out, is all. Probably hit your head too."

His hand came up to cover hers where it lay on his cheek. "Worth it," he said in such a low voice that she wasn't sure it was what he'd said, after all.

"What's going on?" It was Alec, ducking through the low doorway, Isabelle just behind him. Clary jerked her hand back, then cursed herself silently. She hadn't been doing anything wrong.

Jace struggled into a sitting position. His face was gray, his shirt spotted with blood. Alec's look turned to one of concern. "And are you all right?" he demanded, kneeling down. "What happened? Can you remember?"

Jace held up his uninjured hand. "One question at a time, Alec. My head already feels like it's going to split open."

"Who did this to you?" Isabelle sounded both bewildered and furious.

"No one did anything to me. I did it to myself trying to get the manacles off." Jace looked down at his wrist—it looked as if he'd nearly scraped all the skin off it—and winced.

"Here," said both Clary and Alec at the same time, reaching out for his hand. Their eyes met, and Clary dropped her hand first. Alec took hold of Jace's wrist and drew out his stele; with a few quick flicks of his wrist, he drew an iratze—a healing rune—just below the bracelet of bleeding skin.

"Thanks," said Jace, drawing his hand back. The injured part of his wrist was already beginning to knit back together. "Brother Jeremiah—"

"Is dead," said Clary.

"I know." Disdaining Alec's offered assistance, Jace pulled himself up to a standing position, using the wall to hold him up. "He was murdered."

"Did the Silent Brothers kill each other?" Isabelle asked. "I don't understand—I don't understand why they'd do that—"

"They didn't," said Jace. "Something killed them. I don't know what." A spasm of pain twisted his face. "My head—"

"Maybe we should go," said Clary nervously. "Before whatever killed them…"

"Comes back for us?" said Jace. He looked down at his bloody shirt and bruised hand. "I think it's gone. But I suppose he could still bring it back."

"Who could bring what back?" Alec demanded, but Jace said nothing. His face had gone from gray to paper white. Alec caught him as he began to slide down the wall. "Jace—"

"I'm all right," Jace protested, but his hand gripped Alec's sleeve tightly. "I can stand."

"It looks to me like you're using a wall to prop you up. That's not my definition of 'standing.' "

"It's leaning," Jace told him. "Leaning comes right before standing."

"Stop bickering," said Isabelle, kicking a doused torch out of her way. "We need to get out of here. If there's something out there nasty enough to kill the Silent Brothers, it'll make short work of us."

"Izzy's right. We should go." Clary retrieved the witchlight and stood up. "Jace—are you okay to walk?"

"He can lean on me." Alec drew Jace's arm across his shoulders. Jace leaned heavily against him. "Come on," Alec said gently. "We'll fix you up when we get outside."

Slowly they moved toward the cell door, where Jace paused, staring down at the figure of Brother Jeremiah lying twisted on the paving stones. Isabelle knelt down and drew the Silent Brother's brown wool hood down to cover his contorted face. When she straightened up, all their faces were grave.

"I've never seen a Silent Brother afraid," Alec said. "I didn't think it was possible for them to feel fear."

"Everyone feels fear." Jace was still very pale, and though he was cradling his injured hand against his chest, Clary didn't think it was because of physical pain. He looked distant, as if he had withdrawn into himself, hiding from something.

They retraced their steps through the dark corridors and up the narrow steps that led to the pavilion of the Speaking Stars. When they reached it, Clary noticed the thick scent of blood and burning as she hadn't when she'd passed through it before. Jace, leaning on Alec, looked around with a sort of mingled horror and confusion on his face. Clary saw that he was staring at the far wall where it was splattered thickly with blood, and she said, "Jace. Don't look." Then she felt stupid; he was a demon hunter, after all, he'd seen worse.

He shook his head. "Something feels wrong—"

"Everything feels wrong here." Alec tilted his head toward the forest of arches that led away from the pavilion. "That's the fastest way out of here. Let's go."

They didn't talk much as they made their way back through the Bone City. Every shadow seemed to surge with movement, as if the darkness concealed creatures waiting to jump out at them. Isabelle was whispering something under her breath. Though Clary couldn't hear the words themselves, it sounded like another language, something old—Latin, maybe.

When they reached the stairs that led up out of the City, Clary breathed a silent sigh of relief. The Bone City might have been beautiful once, but it was terrifying now. As they reached the last flight of steps, light stabbed into her eyes, making her cry out in surprise. She could faintly see the Angel statue that stood at the head of the stairs, backlit with brilliant golden light, bright as day. She glanced around at the others; they looked as confused as she felt.

"The sun couldn't have risen yet—could it?" Isabelle murmured. "How long were we down here?"

Alec checked his watch. "Not that long."

Jace muttered something, too low for anyone else to hear him. Alec craned his ear down. "What did you say?"

"Witchlight," Jace said, more loudly this time.

Isabelle hurried up the stairs, Clary behind her, Alec just behind them, struggling to half-carry Jace up the steps. At the head of the stairs Isabelle stopped suddenly as if frozen. Clary called out to her, but she didn't move. A moment later Clary was standing beside her and it was her turn to stare around in amazement.

The garden was full of Shadowhunters—twenty, maybe thirty, of them in dark hunting regalia, inked with Marks, each holding a blazing witchlight stone.

At the front of the group stood Maryse, in black Shadowhunter armor and a cloak, her hood thrown back. Behind her ranged dozens of strangers, men and women Clary had never seen, but who bore the Marks of the Nephilim on their arms and faces. One of them, a handsome ebony-skinned man, turned to stare at Clary and Isabelle—and beside her, at Jace and Alec, who had come up from the steps and stood blinking in the unexpected light.

"By the Angel," the man said. "Maryse—there was already someone down there."

Maryse's mouth opened in a silent gasp when she saw Isabelle. Then she closed it, her lips tightening into a thin white line, like a slash drawn in chalk across her face.

"I know, Malik," she said. "These are my children."

7 The Mortal Sword

A muttering gasp went through the crowd. The ones who were hooded threw their hoods back, and Clary could see from the looks on the faces of Jace, Alec, and Isabelle that many of the Shadowhunters in the courtyard were familiar to them.

"By the Angel." Maryse's incredulous gaze swept from Alec to Jace, passed over Clary, and returned to her daughter. Jace had moved away from Alec the moment Maryse spoke, and he stood a little way away from the other three, his hands in his pockets as Isabelle nervously twisted her golden-white whip in her hands. Alec, meanwhile, seemed to be fidgeting with his cell phone, though Clary couldn't imagine who he might be calling. "What are you doing here, Alec? Isabelle? There was a distress call from the Silent City—"

"We answered it," Alec said. His gaze moved anxiously over the gathered crowd. Clary could hardly blame him for his nerves. This was the largest crowd of adult Shadowhunters—of Shadowhunters in general—that she herself had ever seen. She kept looking from face to face, marking the differences between them—they varied widely in age and race and overall appearance, and yet they all gave the same impression of immense, contained power. She could sense their subtle gazes on her, examining her, evaluating. One of them, a woman with rippling silver hair, was staring at her so fiercely that there was nothing subtle about it. Clary blinked and looked away as Alec continued, "You weren't at the Institute—and we couldn't raise anyone—so we came ourselves."

"Alec—"

"It doesn't matter, anyway," Alec said. "They're dead. The Silent Brothers. They're all dead. They've been murdered."

This time there was no sound from the assembled crowd. Instead they seemed to go still, the way a pride of lions might go still when it spotted a gazelle.

"Dead?" Maryse repeated. "What do you mean, they're dead?"

"I think it's quite clear what he means." A woman in a long gray coat had appeared suddenly at Maryse's side. In the flickering light she looked to Clary like a sort of Edward Gorey caricature, all sharp angles and pulled-back hair and eyes like black pits scraped out of her face. She held a glimmering chunk of witchlight on a long silver chain, looped through the skinniest fingers Clary had ever seen. "They are all dead?" she asked, addressing herself to Alec. "You found no one alive in the City?"

Alec shook his head. "Not that we saw, Inquisitor."

So that was the Inquisitor, Clary realized. She certainly looked like someone capable of tossing teenage boys into dungeon cells for no reason other than that she didn't like their attitude.

"That you saw," repeated the Inquisitor, her eyes like hard, glittering beads. She turned to Maryse. "There may yet be survivors. I would send your people into the City for a thorough check."

Maryse's lips tightened. From what very little Clary had learned about Maryse, she knew that Jace's adoptive mother didn't like being told what to do. "Very well."

She turned to the rest of the Shadowhunters—there were not as many, Clary was coming to realize, as she had initially thought, closer to twenty than thirty, though the shock of their appearance had made them seem like a teeming crowd.

Maryse spoke to Malik in a low voice. He nodded. Taking the arm of the silver-haired woman, he led the Shadowhunters toward the entrance to the Bone City. As one after another descended the stairs, taking their witchlight with them, the glow in the courtyard began to fade. The last one in line was the woman with the silver hair. Halfway down the stairs she paused, turned, and looked back—directly at Clary. Her eyes were full of a terrible yearning, as if she longed desperately to tell Clary something. After a moment she drew her hood back up over her face and vanished into the shadows.

Maryse broke the silence. "Why would anyone murder the Silent Brothers? They're not warriors, they don't carry battle Marks—"

"Don't be naïve, Maryse," said the Inquisitor. "This was no random attack. The Silent Brothers may not be warriors, but they are primarily guardians, and very good at their jobs. Not to mention hard to kill. Someone wanted something from the Bone City and was willing to kill the Silent Brothers to get it. This was premeditated."

"What makes you so sure?"

"That wild goose chase that called us all out to Central Park? The dead fey child?"

"I wouldn't call that a wild goose chase. The fey child was drained of blood, like the others. These killings could cause serious trouble between the Night Children and other Downworlders—"

"Distractions," said the Inquisitor dismissively. "He wanted us gone from the Institute so that no one would respond to the Brothers when they called for aid. Ingenious, really. But then he always was ingenious."

"He?" It was Isabelle who spoke, her face very pale between the black wings of her hair. "You mean—"

Jace's next words sent a shock through Clary, as if she'd touched a live current. "Valentine," he said. "Valentine took the Mortal Sword. That's why he killed the Silent Brothers."

A thin, sudden smile curved on the Inquisitor's face, as if Jace had said something that pleased her very much.

Alec started and turned to stare at Jace. "Valentine? But you didn't say he was here."

"Nobody asked."

"He couldn't have killed the Brothers. They were torn apart. No one person could have done all that."

"He probably had demonic help," said the Inquisitor. "He's used demons to aid him before. And with the protection of the Cup on him, he could summon some very dangerous creatures. More dangerous than Raveners," she added with a curl of her lip, and though she didn't look at Clary when she said it, the words felt somehow like a verbal slap. Clary's faint hope that the Inquisitor hadn't noticed or recognized her vanished. "Or the pathetic Forsaken."

"I don't know about that." Jace was very pale, with hectic spots like fever on his cheekbones. "But it was Valentine. I saw him. In fact, he had the Sword with him when he came down to the cells and taunted me through the bars. It was like a bad movie, except he didn't actually twirl his mustache."

Clary looked at him worriedly. He was talking too fast, she thought, and looked unsteady on his feet.

The Inquisitor didn't seem to notice. "So you're saying that Valentine told you all this? He told you he killed the Silent Brothers because he wanted the Angel's Sword?"

"What else did he tell you? Did he tell you where he was going? What he plans to do with the two Mortal Instruments?" Maryse asked quickly.

Jace shook his head.

The Inquisitor moved toward him, her coat swirling around her like drifting smoke. Her gray eyes and gray mouth were drawn into tight horizontal lines. "I don't believe you."

Jace just looked at her. "I didn't think you would."

"I doubt the Clave will believe you either."

Alec said hotly, "Jace isn't a liar—"

"Use your brain, Alexander," said the Inquisitor, not taking her eyes off Jace. "Leave aside your loyalty to your friend for a moment. What's the likelihood that Valentine stopped by his son's cell for a paternal chat about the Soul-Sword, and didn't mention what he planned to do with it, or even where he was going?"

"S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse," Jace said in a language Clary didn't know, "a persona che mai tornasse al mondo…"

"Dante." The Inquisitor looked dryly amused. "The Inferno. You're not in hell yet, Jonathan Morgenstern, though if you insist on lying to the Clave, you'll wish you were." She turned back to the others. "And doesn't it seem odd to anyone that the Soul-Sword should disappear the night before Jonathan Morgenstern is supposed to stand trial by its blade—and that his father is the one who took it?"

Jace looked shocked at that, his lips parting slightly in surprise, as if this had never occurred to him. "My father didn't take the Sword for me. He took it for him. I doubt he even knew about the trial."

"How awfully convenient for you, regardless. And for him. He won't have to worry about you spilling his secrets."

"Yeah," Jace said, "he's terrified I'll tell everyone that he's always really wanted to be a ballerina." The Inquisitor simply stared at him. "I don't know any of my father's secrets," he said, less sharply. "He never told me anything."

The Inquisitor regarded him with something close to boredom. "If your father didn't take the Sword to protect you, then why did he take it?"

"It's a Mortal Instrument," said Clary. "It's powerful. Like the Cup. Valentine likes power."

"The Cup has an immediate use," said the Inquisitor. "He can use it to make an army. The Sword is used in trials. I can't see how that would interest him."

"He might have done it to destabilize the Clave," suggested Maryse. "To sap our morale. To say that there is nothing we can protect from him if he wants it badly enough." It was a surprisingly good argument, Clary thought, but Maryse didn't sound very convinced. "The fact is—"

But they never got to hear what the fact was, because at that moment Jace raised his hand as if he meant to ask a question, looked startled, and sat down on the grass suddenly, as if his legs had given out. Alec knelt down next to him, but Jace waved away his concern. "Leave me alone. I'm fine."

"You're not fine." Clary joined Alec on the grass, Jace watching her with eyes whose pupils were huge and dark, despite the witchlight illuminating the night. She glanced down at his wrist, where Alec had drawn the iratze. The Mark was gone, not even a faint white scar left behind to show that it had worked. Her eyes met Alec's and she saw her own anxiety reflected there. "Something's wrong with him," she said. "Something serious."

"He probably needs a healing rune." The Inquisitor looked as if she were exquisitely annoyed at Jace for being injured during events of such importance. "An iratze, or—"

"We tried that," said Alec. "It isn't working. I think there's something of demonic origin going on here."

"Like demon poison?" Maryse moved as if she meant to go to Jace, but the Inquisitor held her back.

"He's shamming," she said. "He ought to be in the Silent City's cells right now."

Alec rose to his feet at that. "You can't say that—look at him!" He gestured at Jace, who had slumped back on the grass, his eyes closed. "He can't even stand up. He needs doctors, he needs—"

"The Silent Brothers are dead," said the Inquisitor. "Are you suggesting a mundane hospital?"

"No." Alec's voice was tight. "I thought he could go to Magnus."

Isabelle made a sound somewhere between a sneeze and a cough. She turned away as the Inquisitor looked at Alec blankly. "Magnus?"

"He's a warlock," said Alec. "Actually, he's the High Warlock of Brooklyn."

"You mean Magnus Bane," said Maryse. "He has a reputation—"

"He healed me after I fought a Greater Demon," said Alec. "The Silent Brothers couldn't do anything, but Magnus…"

"It's ridiculous," said the Inquisitor. "What you want is to help Jonathan escape."

"He's not well enough to escape," Isabelle said. "Can't you see that?"

"Magnus would never let that happen," Alec said, with a quelling glance at his sister. "He's not interested in crossing the Clave."

"And how would he propose preventing it?" The Inquisitor's voice dripped acid sarcasm. "Jonathan is a Shadowhunter; we're not so easy to keep under lock and key."

"Maybe you should ask him," Alec suggested.

The Inquisitor smiled her razor smile. "By all means. Where is he?"

Alec glanced down at the phone in his hand and then back at the thin gray figure in front of him. "He's here," he said. He raised his voice. "Magnus! Magnus, come on out."

Even the Inquisitor's eyebrows shot up when Magnus strode through the gate. The High Warlock was wearing black leather pants, a belt with a buckle in the shape of a jeweled M, and a cobalt-blue Prussian military jacket open over a white lace shirt. He shimmered with layers of glitter. His gaze rested for a moment on Alec's face with amusement and a hint of something else before moving on to Jace, prone on the grass. "Is he dead?" he inquired. "He looks dead."

"No," snapped Maryse. "He's not dead."

"Have you checked? I could kick him if you want." Magnus moved toward Jace.

"Stop that!" the Inquisitor snapped, sounding like Clary's third-grade teacher demanding that she stop doodling on her desk with a marker. "He's not dead, but he's injured," she added, almost grudgingly. "Your medical skills are required. Jonathan needs to be well enough for the interrogation."

"Fine, but it'll cost you."

"I'll pay it," said Maryse.

The Inquisitor didn't even blink. "Very well. But he can't remain at the Institute. Just because the Sword is gone doesn't mean the interrogation won't proceed as planned. And in the meantime, the boy must be held under observation. He's clearly a flight risk."

"A flight risk?" Isabelle demanded. "You act as if he tried to escape from the Silent City—"

"Well," the Inquisitor said. "He's no longer in his cell now, is he?"

"That's not fair! You couldn't have expected him to stay down there surrounded by dead people!"

"Not fair? Not fair? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you and your brother were motivated to come to the Bone City because of a distress call, and not because you wanted to free Jonathan from what you clearly consider unnecessary confinement? And do you expect me to believe you won't try to free him again if he's allowed to remain at the Institute? Do you think you can fool me as easily as you fool your parents, Isabelle Lightwood?"

Isabelle turned scarlet. Magnus cut in before she could reply:

"Look, it's not a problem," he said. "I can keep Jace at my place easily enough."

The Inquisitor turned to Alec. "Your warlock does realize," she said, "that Jonathan is a witness of utmost importance to the Clave?"

"He's not my warlock." The tops of Alec's angular cheekbones flared a dark red.

"I've held prisoners for the Clave before," Magnus said. The joking edge had left his voice. "I think you'll find I have an excellent record in that department. My contract is one of the best."

Was it Clary's imagination, or did his eyes seem to linger on Maryse when he said that? She didn't have time to wonder; the Inquisitor made a sharp noise that might have been amusement or disgust, and said, "It's settled, then. Let me know when he's well enough to talk, warlock. I've still got plenty of questions for him."

"Of course," Magnus said, but Clary got the sense that he wasn't really listening to her. He crossed the lawn gracefully and came to stand over Jace; he was as tall as he was thin, and when Clary glanced up to look at him, she was surprised how many stars he blotted out. "Can he talk?" Magnus asked Clary, indicating Jace.

Before Clary could respond, Jace's eyes slid open. He looked up at the warlock, dazed and dizzy. "What are you doing here?"

Magnus grinned down at Jace, and his teeth sparkled like sharpened diamonds.

"Hey, roommate," he said.