City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(141)

Isabelle’s red lips curved into a smile. “I wonder how Magnus knew to come? I asked him, but he wouldn’t say.”

Clary thought of the folded paper Hodge had thrown into the fire after Valentine had gone. He was a strange man, she thought, who’d taken the time to do what he could to save Alec even while betraying everyone—and everything—he’d ever cared about. “I don’t know,” she said.

Isabelle shrugged. “I guess he heard about it somewhere. He does seem to be hooked into an enormous gossip network. He’s such a girl.”

“He’s the High Warlock of Brooklyn, Isabelle,” Alec reminded her, but not without some amusement. He turned to Clary. “Jace is up in the greenhouse if you want to see him,” he said. “I’ll walk you.”

“You will?”

“Sure.” Alec looked only slightly uncomfortable. “Why not?”

Clary glanced at Isabelle, who shrugged. Whatever Alec was up to, he hadn’t shared it with his sister. “Go on,” said Isabelle. “I’ve got stuff to do anyway.” She waved a hand at them. “Shoo.”

They set off down the hallway together. Alec’s pace was fast, even on crutches. Clary had to jog to keep up. “I have short legs,” she reminded him.

“Sorry.” He slowed down, contrite. “Look,” he began. “Those things you said to me, when I yelled at you about Jace …”

“I remember,” she said in a small voice.

“When you told me that you, you know, that I was just—that it was because—” He seemed to be having trouble forming a complete sentence. He tried again. “When you said I was …”

“Alec, don’t.”

“Sure. Never mind.” He clamped his lips together. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s not that. It’s that I feel awful about what I said. It was horrible. It wasn’t true at all—”

“But it was true,” said Alec. “Every word.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” she said. “Not everything that’s true needs to be said. It was mean. And when I said Jace had told me you’d never killed a demon, he said it was because you were always protecting him and Isabelle. It was a good thing he was saying about you. Jace can be a jerk, but he—” Loves you, she was about to say, and stopped. “Never said a bad word about you to me, ever. I swear.”

“You don’t have to swear,” he said. “I know already.” He sounded calm, even confident in a way she’d never heard him sound before. She looked at him, surprised. “I know I didn’t kill Abbadon either. But I appreciate you telling me I had.”

She laughed shakily. “You appreciate me lying to you?”

“You did it out of kindness,” he said. “That means a lot, that you would be kind to me, even after how I treated you.”

“I think Jace would have been pretty pissed at me for lying if he hadn’t been so upset at the time,” said Clary. “Not as mad as he would be if he knew what I’d said to you before, though.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Alec, his mouth turning up at the corners. “Let’s not tell him. I mean, maybe Jace can behead a Du’sien demon from a distance of fifty feet with just a corkscrew and a rubber band, but sometimes I think he doesn’t know much about people.”

“I guess so.” Clary grinned.

They’d reached the bottom of the spiral staircase that led to the roof. “I can’t go up.” Alec tapped his crutch against a metal step. It rang tinnily.

“It’s okay. I can find my way.”

He made as if to turn away, then glanced back at her. “I should have guessed you were Jace’s sister,” he said. “You both have the same artistic talent.”

Clary paused, her foot on the lowest stair. She was taken aback. “Jace can draw?”

“Nah.” When Alec smiled, his eyes lit like blue lamps, and Clary could see what Magnus had found so captivating about him. “I was just kidding. He can’t draw a straight line.” Chuckling, he swung away on his crutches. Clary watched him go, bemused. An Alec who cracked jokes and poked fun at Jace was something she could get used to, even if his sense of humor was somewhat inexplicable.

The greenhouse was just as she’d remembered it, though the sky above the glass roof was sapphire now. The clean, soapy smell of the flowers cleared her head. Breathing in deeply, she pushed her way through the tightly woven leaves and branches.

She found Jace sitting on the marble bench in the middle of the greenhouse. His head was bent, and he seemed to be turning an object over in his hands, idly. He looked up as she ducked under a branch, and quickly closed his hand around the object. “Clary.” He sounded surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” she said. “I wanted to know how you were.”

“I’m fine.” He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She could see his still-fading bruises, like the dark spots on the white flesh of an apple. Of course, she thought, the real injuries were internal, hidden from every eye but his own.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to his closed hand.

He opened his fingers. A jagged shard of silver lay in his palm, glimmering blue and green at the edges. “A piece of the Portal mirror.”