City of Fallen Angels (30 page)

He raised his blond head then, blinking, and Clary knew that the Silent Brothers were speaking inside his mind, saying words she couldn’t hear. She saw him shake his head and heard him say, “I don’t know. I thought they weren’t anything but ordinary dreams.” His mouth tightened then, and she couldn’t help wondering what they were asking him. “Visions? I don’t think so. Yes, I did encounter the Angel, but it’s Clary who had the prophetic dreams. Not me.”

Clary tensed. They were getting awfully close to asking about what had happened with Jace and the Angel that night by Lake Lyn. She hadn’t thought about that. When the Silent Brothers pried into your mind, just what did they see? Only what they were looking for? Or everything?

Jace nodded then. “Fine. I’m ready if you are.”

He closed his eyes, and Clary, watching, relaxed slightly. This must have been what it had been like for Jace to watch her, she thought, the first time the Silent Brothers had delved into her mind. She saw details she hadn’t noticed then, for she had been caught inside the nets of their minds and her own, reeling back into her memories, lost to the world.

She saw Jace stiffen all over as if they had touched him with their hands. His head went back. His hands, at his sides, opened and closed, as the stars on the floor at his feet flared up with a blinding silver light. She blinked away tears from the brightness; he was a graceful dark outline against a sheet of blinding silver, as if he stood in the heart of a waterfall. All around them was noise, a soft, incomprehensible whispering.

As she watched, he went to his knees, his hands braced against the ground. Her heart tightened. Having the Silent Brothers in her head had nearly made her faint, but Jace was stronger than that, wasn’t he? Slowly he doubled in on himself, hands gripped against his stomach, agony in every line of him, though he never cried out. Clary could take it no longer—she darted toward him, through the sheets of light, and went on her knees next to him, throwing her arms around his body. The whispering voices around her rose to a storm of protest as he turned his head and looked at her. The silver light had washed out his eyes, and they looked flat and as white as marble tiles. His lips shaped her name.

And then it was gone—the light, the sound, all of it, and they knelt together on the bare floor of the pavilion, silence and shadow all around them. Jace was shaking, and when his hands released each other, she saw that they were bloody where his nails had torn the skin. Still holding him by the arm, she looked up at the Silent Brothers, fighting back her anger. She knew it was like being furious at a doctor who had to administer a painful but lifesaving treatment, but it was hard—so hard—to be reasonable when it was someone that you loved.

There is something you have not told us, Clarissa Morgenstern
, said Brother Zachariah.
A secret you both have been keeping
.

An icy hand closed around Clary’s heart. “What do you mean?”

The mark of death is on this boy
. It was another of the Brothers speaking—Enoch, she thought.

“Death?” said Jace. “Do you mean I’m going to die?” He didn’t sound surprised.

We mean that you were dead. You had passed beyond the portal into the shadow realms, your soul untethered from your body
.

Clary and Jace exchanged a look. She swallowed. “The Angel Raziel—,” she began.

Yes,
his mark is all over the boy as well
. Enoch’s voice was without emotion.
There are only two ways to bring back the dead. The way of necromancy, the black sorcery of bell, book, and candle. That will return a semblance of life. But only an Angel of God’s own right hand could place a human’s soul back into their body as easily as life was breathed into the first of men
. He shook his head.
The balance of life and death, of good and evil, is a delicate one, young Shadowhunters. You have upset it
.

“But Raziel’s the Angel,” said Clary. “He can do whatever he wants. You worship him, don’t you? If he chose to do this—”

Did he?
asked another of the Brothers.
Did he choose?

“I …” Clary looked at Jace. She thought,
I could have asked for anything else in the universe. World peace, a cure to disease, to live forever. But all I wanted was you
.

We know the ritual of the Instruments
, said Zachariah.
We know that he who possesses them all, who is their Lord, may request of the Angel one thing. I do not think he could have refused you.

Clary set her chin. “Well,” she said, “it’s done now.”

Jace gave the ghost of a laugh. “They could always kill me, you know,” he said. “Bring things back into balance.”

Her hands tightened on his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was thin. She tensed further as Brother Zachariah broke away from the tight group of Silent Brothers and approached them, his feet gliding silently over the Speaking Stars. He reached Jace, and Clary had to fight the urge to push him away as he bent down and placed his long fingers under Jace’s chin, raising the boy’s face to his. Zachariah’s fingers were slim, unlined—a young man’s fingers. She had never given much thought to the ages of the Silent Brothers before, assuming them to be all some species of wizened and old.

Jace, kneeling, gazed up at Zachariah, who looked down at him with his blind, impassive expression. Clary could not help but think of medieval paintings of saints on their knees, gazing upward, their faces suffused with shining golden light.
Would that I had been here
, he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle,
when you were growing up. I would have seen the truth in your face, Jace Lightwood, and known who you were
.

Jace looked puzzled but didn’t move to pull away.

Zachariah turned to the others.
We cannot and should not harm the boy. Old ties exist between the Herondales and the Brothers. We owe him help
.

“Help with what?” Clary demanded. “Can you see something wrong with him—something inside his head?”

When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters.

The Iron Sisters, Clary knew from her studies, were the sister sect of the Silent Brothers; even more retiring than their brethren, they were in charge of crafting Shadowhunter weapons.

Brother Zachariah went on.
When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as an unlocked door—open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence
.

Clary licked her dry lips. “Possession, you mean?”

Not possession. Influence. I suspect that a powerful demonic power whispers into your ears, Jonathan Herondale. You are strong, you fight it, but it wears you down as the sea wears down the sand.

“Jace,” he whispered through white lips. “Jace Lightwood, not Herondale.”

Clary, clinging to practicalities, said, “How can you be sure it’s a demon? And what can we do to get it to leave him alone?”

Enoch, sounding thoughtful, said,
The ritual must be performed again, the protections laid upon him a second time, as if he had just been born
.

“Can you do it?” Clary asked.

Zachariah inclined his head.
It can be done. The preparations must be made, one of the Iron Sisters called on, an amulet crafted
… He trailed off.
Jonathan must remain with us until the ritual is finished. This is the safest place for him
.

Clary looked at Jace again, searching for an expression—any expression—of hope, relief, delight, anything. But his face was impassive. “For how long?” he said.

Zachariah spread his thin hands wide.
A day, perhaps two. The ritual is meant for infants; we will have to change it, alter it to fit an adult. If he were older than eighteen, it would be impossible. As it is, it will be difficult. But he is not beyond saving
.

Not beyond saving
. It was not what Clary had hoped for; she had wanted to be told that the problem was simple, easily solved. She looked at Jace. His head was bowed, his hair falling forward; the back of his neck looked so vulnerable to her, it made her heart ache.

“It’s fine,” she said softly. “I’ll stay here with you—”

No
. The Brothers spoke as a group, their voices inexorable.
He must remain here alone. For what we must do, he cannot afford to be distracted
.

She felt Jace’s body tighten. The last time he had been alone in the Silent City, he had been unfairly imprisoned, present for the horrible deaths of most of the Silent Brothers, and tormented by Valentine. She could not imagine that the idea of another night alone in the City would be anything but awful for him.

“Jace,” she whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. If you want to go…”

“I’ll stay,” he said. He had raised his head, and his voice was strong and clear. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever I have to do to fix this. I just need you to call Izzy and Alec. Tell them—tell them I’m staying at Simon’s to keep an eye on him. Tell them I’ll see them tomorrow or the next day.”

“But…”

“Clary.” Gently he took both her hands and held them between his. “You were right. This isn’t coming from inside me. Something is
doing
this to me. To us. You know what that means? If I can be … cured … then I don’t have to be afraid of myself when I’m around you anymore. I’d spend a thousand nights in the Silent City for that.”

She leaned forward, heedless of the presence of the Silent Brothers, and kissed him, a quick press of her lips against his. “I’ll be back,” she whispered. “Tomorrow night, after the Ironworks party, I’ll come back and see you.”

The hopefulness in his eyes was enough to break her heart. “Maybe I’ll be cured by then.”

She touched his face with her fingertips. “Maybe you will be.”

Simon woke still feeling exhausted after a long night of bad dreams. He rolled onto his back and stared at the light coming in the single window in his bedroom.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d sleep better if he did what other vampires did, and slept during the day. Despite the fact that the sun didn’t harm him, he could feel the pull of the nights, the desire to be out under the dark sky and the glimmering stars. There was something in him that wanted to live in shadows, that felt the sunlight like a thin, knifelike pain—just like there was something in him that wanted blood. And look how fighting
that
had turned out for him.

He staggered upright and threw on some clothes, then made his way out into the living room. The place smelled like toast and coffee. Jordan was sitting on one of the counter stools, his hair sticking out every which way as usual, his shoulders hunched.

“Hey,” Simon said. “What’s up?”

Jordan looked over at him. He was pale under his tan. “We have a problem,” he said.

Simon blinked. He hadn’t seen his werewolf roommate since the day before. He’d come home from the Institute last night and collapsed in exhaustion. Jordan hadn’t been here, and Simon had figured he was out working. But maybe something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

“This was shoved under our door.” Jordan pushed a folded newspaper toward Simon. It was the
New York Morning Chronicle
, folded open to one of the pages. There was a grisly picture up toward the top, a grainy image of a body sprawled on some pavement, stick-skinny limbs bent at odd angles. It hardly looked human, the way dead bodies sometimes didn’t. Simon was about to ask Jordan why he had to look at this, when the text under the photo jumped out at him.

Unable to read on, Simon sat down heavily in a chair. Now that he knew, the photo was unmistakably Maureen. He recognized her rainbow arm warmers, the stupid pink hat she’d been wearing when he’d seen her last.
My God
, he wanted to say.
Oh, God
. But no words came out.

“Didn’t that note say,” Jordan said in a bleak voice, “that if you didn’t go to that address, they’d cut your girlfriend’s throat?”

“No,” Simon whispered. “It’s not possible. No.”

But he remembered.

Eric’s little cousin’s friend. What’s her name? The one who has a crush on Simon. She comes to all our gigs and tells everyone she’s his girlfriend
.

Simon remembered her phone, her little pink phone with the stickers on it, the way she’d held it up to take a photo of them. The feeling of her hand on his shoulder, as light as a butterfly. Fourteen years old. He curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, as if he could make himself small enough to vanish completely.

Jace tossed uneasily on the narrow bed in the Silent City.
He didn’t know where the Brothers slept, and they didn’t seem inclined to reveal it. The only place there seemed to be for him to lie down was in one of the cells below the City where they usually kept prisoners. They’d left the door open for him so he didn’t feel too much like he was in jail, but the place couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called pleasant.

The air was close and thick; he’d taken off his shirt and lay atop the covers in just his jeans, but he was still too hot. The walls were dull gray. Someone had carved the letters
JG
into the stone just above the bedstead, leaving him to wonder what that was about—and there was nothing else in the room but the bed, a cracked mirror that gave him back his own reflection in twisted pieces, and the sink. Not to mention the more than unpleasant memories the room stirred up.