City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(42)

Clary frowned at him. “Why are you always such an asshat?”

“An asshat?” Jace looked as if he were about to laugh.

“What you said to Simon—”

“I was trying to save him some pain. Isabelle will cut out his heart and walk all over it in high-heeled boots. That’s what she does to boys like that.”

“Is that what she did to you?” Clary said, but Jace only shook his head before turning to Church.

“Hodge,” he said. “And really Hodge this time. Bring us anywhere else, and I’ll make you into a tennis racket.”

The Persian snorted and slunk down the hall ahead of them. Clary, trailing a little behind Jace, could see the stress and tiredness in the line of Jace’s shoulders. She wondered if the tension ever really left him. “Jace.”

He looked at her. “What?”

“I’m sorry. For snapping at you.”

He chuckled. “Which time?”

“You snap at me, too, you know.”

“I know,” he said, surprising her. “There’s something about you that’s so—”

“Irritating?”

“Unsettling.”

She wanted to ask if he meant that in a good or a bad way, but didn’t. She was too afraid he’d make a joke out of the answer. She cast about for something else to say. “Does Isabelle always make dinner for you?” she asked.

“No, thank God. Most of the time the Lightwoods are here and Maryse—that’s Isabelle’s mother—she cooks for us. She’s an amazing cook.” He looked dreamy, the way Simon had looked gazing at Isabelle over the soup.

“Then how come she never taught Isabelle?” They were passing through the music room now, where she’d found Jace playing the piano that morning. Shadows had gathered thickly in the corners.

“Because,” Jace said slowly, “it’s only been recently that women have been Shadowhunters along with men. I mean, there have always been women in the Clave—mastering the runes, creating weaponry, teaching the Killing Arts—but only a few were warriors, ones with exceptional abilities. They had to fight to be trained. Maryse was a part of the first generation of Clave women who were trained as a matter of course—and I think she never taught Isabelle how to cook because she was afraid that if she did, Isabelle would be relegated to the kitchen permanently.”

“Would she have been?” Clary asked curiously. She thought of Isabelle in Pandemonium, how confident she’d been and how assuredly she’d used her blood-spattering whip.

Jace laughed softly. “Not Isabelle. She’s one of the best Shadowhunters I’ve ever known.”

“Better than Alec?”

Church, streaking soundlessly ahead of them through the gloom, came to a sudden halt and meowed. He was crouched at the foot of a metal spiral staircase that spun up into a hazy half-light overhead. “So he’s in the greenhouse,” Jace said. It took Clary a moment before she realized he was speaking to the cat. “No surprise there.”

“The greenhouse?” Clary said.

Jace swung himself onto the first step. “Hodge likes it up there. He grows medicinal plants, things we can use. Most of them only grow in Idris. I think it reminds him of home.”

Clary followed him. Her shoes clattered on the metal steps; Jace’s didn’t. “Is he better than Isabelle?” she asked again. “Alec, I mean.”

He paused and looked down at her, leaning down from the steps as if he were poised to fall. She remembered her dream: angels, falling and burning. “Better?” he said. “At demon-slaying? No, not really. He’s never killed a demon.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know why not. Maybe because he’s always protecting Izzy and me.” They had reached the top of the stairs. A set of double doors greeted them, carved with patterns of leaves and vines. Jace shouldered them open.

The smell struck Clary the moment she passed through the doors: a green, sharp smell, the smell of living and growing things, of dirt and the roots that grew in dirt. She had been expecting something much smaller, something the size of the little greenhouse out behind St. Xavier’s, where the AP biology students cloned pea pods, or whatever it was they did. This was a huge glass-walled enclosure, lined with trees whose thickly leaved branches breathed out cool green-scented air. There were bushes hung with glossy berries, red and purple and black, and small trees hung with oddly shaped fruits she’d never seen before.

Clary exhaled. “It smells like …” Springtime, she thought, before the heat comes and crushes the leaves into pulp and withers the petals off the flowers.

“Home,” said Jace, “to me.” He pushed aside a hanging frond and ducked past it. Clary followed.

The greenhouse was laid out in what seemed to Clary’s untrained eye no particular pattern, but everywhere she looked was a riot of color: blue-purple blossoms spilling down the side of a shining green hedge, a trailing vine studded with jewel-toned orange buds. They emerged into a cleared space where a low granite bench rested against the bole of a drooping tree with silvery-green leaves. Water glimmered in a stone-bound rock pool. Hodge sat on the bench, his black bird perched on his shoulder. He had been staring thoughtfully down at the water, but looked skyward at their approach. Clary followed his gaze upward and saw the glass roof of the greenhouse shining above them like the surface of an inverted lake.