The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (311 page)

“I—” Clary said, and broke off, feeling a little dizzy. “I just don’t remember him proposing.”

Jonathan knelt down and tugged on Val’s hair. She was humming to herself, bundling daisies together in a pile. Clary blinked—she’d been so sure they were dandelions. “Oh, I don’t know if he ever did,” he said casually. “We all just knew you’d end up together. It was inevitable.”

“But I should have gotten to choose,” she said, in a near whisper. “I should have gotten to say yes.”

“Well, you would have, wouldn’t you?” he said, watching
the daisies blow across the grass. “Speaking of, do you think Isabelle would go out with me if I asked her?”

Clary’s breath caught. “But what about Simon?”

He looked up at her, the sun bright in his eyes. “Who’s Simon?”

Clary felt the ground give way under her. She reached out, as if to catch at her brother, but her hand went through him. He was as insubstantial as air. The green lawn and the golden mansion and the boy and the girl on the grass flew away from her, and she stumbled, hitting the ground hard, jarring her elbows with a pain she felt flare up her arms.

She rolled to her side, choking. She was lying on a patch of bleak ground. Broken cobblestones jutted up through the earth, and the burned-out shells of stone houses loomed over her. The sky was white-gray steel, shot through with black clouds like vampire veins. It was a dead world, a world with all the color leached out of it, and all the life. Clary curled up on the ground, seeing in front of her not the shell of a destroyed town but the eyes of the brother and the sister that she would never have.

Simon stood at the window, taking in the view of the city of Manhattan.

It was an impressive sight. From the penthouse floor of the Carolina, you could see across Central Park, to the Met museum, to the high-rises of downtown. Night was falling, and the city lights were beginning to shine out one by one, a bed of electric flowers.

Electric flowers.
He looked around, frowning thoughtfully. It was a nice turn of phrase; perhaps he should write it down. He never seemed to have time these days to really work on lyrics;
time was swallowed up by other things: promotion, touring, signings, appearances. It was hard to remember sometimes that his main job was making music.

Still. A good problem to have. The darkening sky turned the window to a mirror. Simon smiled at his reflection in the glass. Tousled hair, jeans, vintage T-shirt; he could see the room behind him, vast acres of hardwood floor, gleaming steel, and leather furniture, a single elegant gold-framed painting on the wall. A Chagall—Clary’s favorite, all soft roses and blues and greens, incongruous against the apartment’s modernity.

There was a vase of hydrangeas on the kitchen island, a gift from his mother, congratulating him on playing a gig with Stepping Razor the week before.
I love you,
said the note attached.
I’m proud of you.

He blinked at it. Hydrangeas; that was odd. If he had a favorite flower, it was roses, and his mother knew that. He turned away from the window and looked more closely at the vase. They
were
roses. He shook his head to clear it. White roses. They always had been. Right.

He heard the rattle of keys, and the door swung open, admitting a petite girl with long red hair and a brilliant smile. “Oh, my God,” said Clary, half-laughing, half out of breath. She pushed the door shut behind her and leaned against it. “The lobby is a
zoo
. Press, photographers; it’s going to be crazy going out tonight.”

She came across the room, dropping her keys on the table. She was wearing a long dress, yellow silk printed with colorful butterflies, and a butterfly clip in her long red hair. She looked warm and open and loving, and as she neared him, she put her arms up, and he went to kiss her.

Just like he did every day when she came home.

She smelled like Clary, perfume and chalk, and her fingers were smudged with color. She wound her fingers in his hair as they kissed, tugging him down, laughing against his mouth as he nearly overbalanced.

“You’re going to have to start wearing heels, Fray,” he said, lips against her cheek.

“I hate heels. You’ll either have to deal or buy me a portable ladder,” she said, letting him go. “Unless you want to leave me for a really tall groupie.”

“Never,” he said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Would a really tall groupie know all my favorite foods? Remember when I had a bed shaped like a race car? Know how to beat me mercilessly at Scrabble? Be willing to put up with Matt and Kirk and Eric?”

“A groupie would more than put up with Matt and Kirk and Eric.”

“Be nice,” he said, and grinned down at her. “You’re stuck with me.”

“I’ll survive,” she said, plucking his glasses off and setting them on the table. The eyes she turned up to him were dark and wide. This time the kiss was more heated. He wound his arms around her, pulling her against him as she whispered, “I love you; I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you too,” he said. “God, I love you, Isabelle.”

He felt her stiffen in his arms, and then the world around him seemed to sprout black lines like shattered glass. He heard a high-pitched whine in his ears and staggered back, tripping, falling, not hitting the ground but spinning forever through the dark.

“Don’t look,
don’t
look . . .”

Isabelle laughed. “I’m
not
looking.”

There were hands over her eyes: Simon’s hands, slim and flexible. His arms were around her, and they were shuffling forward together, laughing. He’d grabbed her the moment she’d walked in the front door, wrapping his arms around her as her shopping bags dropped from her hands.

“I have a surprise for you,” he’d said, grinning. “Close your eyes. No looking. No, really. I’m not kidding.”

“I hate surprises,” Isabelle protested now. “You know that.” She could just see the edge of the rug under Simon’s hands. She’d picked it out herself, and it was thick, bright pink, and fuzzy. Their apartment was small and cozy, a hodgepodge of Isabelle and Simon: guitars and katanas, vintage posters and hot-pink bedspreads. Simon had brought his cat, Yossarian, when they’d moved in together, which Isabelle had protested but secretly liked: She’d missed Church after she’d left the Institute.

The pink rug vanished, and now Isabelle’s heels clicked onto the tile floor of the kitchen. “Okay,” Simon said, and withdrew his hands. “Surprise!”

“Surprise!” The kitchen was full of people: her mother and father, Jace and Alec and Max, Clary and Jordan and Maia, Kirk and Matt and Eric. Magnus was holding a silver sparkler and winking, waving it back and forth as the sparkles flew everywhere, landing on the stone counters and Jace’s T-shirt, making him yelp. Clary was holding a clumsily lettered sign:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ISABELLE
. She held it up and waved.

Isabelle whirled on Simon accusingly. “You
planned
this!”

“Of course I did,” he said, pulling her toward him. “Shadowhunters might not care about birthdays, but I do.” He kissed her ear, murmuring, “You should have everything, Izzy,” before he let her go, and her family descended.

There was a whirl of hugs, of presents and cake—baked by Eric, who actually had something of a flair for pastry creation, and decorated by Magnus with luminous frosting that tasted better than it looked. Robert had his arms around Maryse, who was leaning back against him, looking on proudly and contentedly as Magnus, one hand ruffling Alec’s hair, tried to convince Max to put on a party hat. Max, with all the self-possession of a nine-year-old, was having none of it. He waved away Magnus’s hand impatiently and said, “Izzy, I made the sign. Did you see the sign?”

Izzy glanced over at the hand-lettered sign, now liberally smeared with frosting, on the table. Clary winked at her. “It’s awesome, Max; thank you.”

“I was going to put what birthday it was on the sign,” he said, “but Jace said that after twenty, you’re just old, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Jace stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “I said that?”

“Way to make us all feel ancient,” said Simon, pushing his hair back to smile at Isabelle. She felt a little twist of pain inside her chest—she loved him that much, for doing this for her, for always thinking of her. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him or trusted him, and he’d never given her a reason not to do either.

Isabelle slid off the stool she’d been sitting on, and knelt
down in front of her little brother. She could see their reflection in the steel of the refrigerator: her own dark hair, cut to her shoulders now—she remembered vaguely years ago, when her hair had reached her waist—and Max’s brown curls and glasses. “Do you know how old I am?” she said.

“Twenty-two,” Max said, in the tone of voice that indicated he wasn’t sure why she was asking him such a stupid question.

Twenty-two,
she thought. She’d always been seven years older than Max, Max the surprise, Max the little brother she hadn’t expected.

Max, who should be fifteen now.

She swallowed, suddenly cold all over. Everyone was still talking and laughing all around her, but the laughing sounded distant and echoing, as if it came from very far away. She could see Simon, leaning against the counter, his arms folded over his chest, his dark eyes unreadable as he watched her.

“And how old are you?” Isabelle said.

“Nine,” said Max. “I’ve always been nine.”

Isabelle stared. The kitchen around her was wavering. She could see through it, as if she were staring through printed fabric: everything going transparent, as mutable as water.

“Baby,” she whispered. “My Max, my baby brother, please, please stay.”

“I’ll always be nine,” he said, and touched her face. His fingers passed through her, as if he were passing his hand through smoke. “Isabelle?” he said in a fading voice, and disappeared.

Isabelle felt her knees give. She sank to the ground. There was no laughter around her, no pretty tiled kitchen, only gray, powdery ash and blackened rock. She put up her hands to stop her tears.

The Hall of Accords was hung with blue banners, each gilded with the flame blazon of the Lightwood family. Four long tables had been arranged facing one another. In the center was a raised speaker’s lectern, decked with swords and flowers.

Alec sat at the longest table, in the highest of the chairs. On his left was Magnus, and on his right his family stretched out beside him: Isabelle and Max; Robert and Maryse; Jace; and beside Jace, Clary. There were Lightwood cousins there too, some of whom he hadn’t seen since he’d been a child; all of them were beaming with pride, but no face glowed as brightly as his father’s.

“My son,” he kept saying, to anyone who would listen—he had buttonholed the Consul now, who’d been passing by their table with a glass of wine in hand. “My son won the battle; that’s my son up there. Lightwood blood will tell; our family have always been fighters.”

The Consul laughed. “Save it for the speech, Robert,” she said, winking at Alec over the rim of her glass.

“Oh, God, the speech,” Alec said, in horror, hiding his face in his hands.