City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(39)

“No.” She shook her head. “Never.”

“Lucian seemed to know them. To be friendly with them.”

“I wouldn’t say friendly,” said Simon. “I’d say they were suppressing their hostility.”

“They didn’t kill him outright,” said Jace. “They think he knows more than he’s telling.”

“Maybe,” said Clary, “or maybe they’re just reluctant to kill another Shadowhunter.”

Jace laughed, a harsh, almost vicious noise that raised the hairs up on Clary’s arms. “I doubt that.”

She looked at him hard. “What makes you so sure? Do you know them?”

The laughter had gone from his voice entirely when he replied. “Do I know them?” he echoed. “You might say that. Those are the men who murdered my father.”





9

THE CIRCLE AND THE BROTHERHOOD


CLARY STEPPED FORWARD TO TOUCH JACE’S ARM, SAY something, anything—what did you say to someone who’d just seen his father’s killers? Her hesitation turned out not to matter; Jace shrugged her touch off as if it stung. “We should go,” he said, stalking out of the office and into the living room. Clary and Simon hurried after him. “We don’t know when Luke might come back.”

They left through the back entrance, Jace using his stele to lock up behind them, and made their way out onto the silent street. The moon hung like a locket over the city, casting pearly reflections on the water of the East River. The distant hum of cars going by over the Williamsburg Bridge filled the humid air with a sound like beating wings. Simon said, “Does anyone want to tell me where we’re going?”

“To the L train,” said Jace calmly.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Simon said, blinking. “Demon slayers take the subway?”

“It’s faster than driving.”

“I thought it’d be something cooler, like a van with DEATH TO DEMONS painted on the outside, or …”

Jace didn’t even bother to interrupt. Clary shot Jace a sideways look. Sometimes, when Jocelyn was really angry about something or was in one of her upset moods, she would get what Clary called “scary-calm.” It was a calm that made Clary think of the deceptive hard sheen of ice just before it cracked under your weight. Jace was scary-calm. His face was expressionless, but something burned at the backs of his tawny eyes.

“Simon,” she said. “Enough.”

Simon shot her a look as if to say, Whose side are you on? but Clary ignored him. She was still watching Jace as they turned onto Kent Avenue. The lights of the bridge behind them lit his hair to an unlikely halo. She wondered if it was wrong that she was glad in some way that the men who’d taken her mother were the same men who’d killed Jace’s father all those years ago. For now, at least, he’d have to help her find Jocelyn, whether he wanted to or not. For now, at least, he couldn’t leave her alone.


“You live here?” Simon stood staring up at the old cathedral, with its broken-in windows and doors sealed with yellow police tape. “But it’s a church.”

Jace reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a brass key on the end of a chain. It looked like the sort of key one might use to open an old chest in an attic. Clary watched him curiously—he hadn’t locked the door behind him when they’d left the Institute before, just let it slam shut. “We find it useful to inhabit hallowed ground.”

“I get that but, no offense, this place is a dump,” Simon said, looking dubiously at the bent iron fence that surrounded the ancient building, the trash piled up beside the steps.

Clary let her mind relax. She imagined herself taking one of her mother’s turpentine rags and dabbing at the view in front of her, cleaning away the glamour as if it were old paint.

There it was: the true vision, glowing through the false one like light through dark glass. She saw the soaring spires of the cathedral, the dull gleam of the leaded windows, the brass plate fixed to the stone wall beside the door, the Institute’s name etched into it. She held the vision for a moment before letting it go almost with a sigh.

“It’s a glamour, Simon,” she said. “It doesn’t really look like this.”

“If this is your idea of glamour, I’m having second thoughts about letting you make me over.”

Jace fitted the key into the lock, glancing over his shoulder at Simon. “I’m not sure you’re quite sensible of the honor I’m doing you,” he said. “You’ll be the first mundane who has ever been inside the Institute.”

“Probably the smell keeps the rest of them away.”

“Ignore him,” Clary said to Jace, and elbowed Simon in the side. “He always says exactly what comes into his head. No filters.”

“Filters are for cigarettes and coffee,” Simon muttered under his breath as they went inside. “Two things I could use right now, incidentally.”

Clary thought longingly of coffee as they made their way up a winding set of stone stairs, each one carved with a glyph. She was beginning to recognize some of them—they tantalized her sight the way half-heard words in a foreign language sometimes tantalized her hearing, as if by just concentrating harder she could force some meaning out of them.