City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(51)

“I wasn’t turning my nose up. I was just surprised. I wasn’t expecting … I mean, I thought it was a car.”

“Just relax,” said Jace. “Enjoy that new-carriage smell.”

Clary rolled her eyes and turned to look out the windows. She would have thought that a horse and carriage wouldn’t have stood a chance in Manhattan traffic, but they were moving downtown easily, their soundless progression unnoticed by the snarl of taxis, buses, and SUVs that choked the avenue. In front of them a yellow cab switched lanes, cutting off their forward progress. Clary tensed, worried about the horses—then the carriage lurched upward as the horses sprang lightly to the top of the cab. She choked off a gasp. The carriage, rather than dragging along the ground, sailed up behind the horses, rolling lightly and soundlessly up and over the cab’s roof and down the other side. Clary glanced backward as the carriage hit the pavement again with a jolt—the cab driver was smoking and staring ahead, utterly oblivious. “I always thought cab drivers didn’t pay attention to traffic, but this is ridiculous,” she said weakly.

“Just because you can see through glamour now …” Jace let the end of the sentence hang delicately in the air between them.

“I can only see through it when I concentrate,” she said. “It hurts my head a little.”

“I bet that’s because of the block in your mind. The Brothers will take care of that.”

“Then what?”

“Then you’ll see the world as it is—infinite,” said Jace with a dry smile.

“Don’t quote Blake at me.”

The smile turned less dry. “I didn’t think you’d recognize it. You don’t strike me as someone who reads a lot of poetry.”

“Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors.”

Jace looked at her blankly.

“The Doors. They were a band.”

“If you say so,” he said.

“I suppose you don’t have much time for enjoying music,” Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, “in your line of work.”

He shrugged. “Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned.”

Clary looked at him quickly, to see if he was joking, but he was expressionless.

“But you were playing the piano yesterday,” she began, “at the Institute. So you must—”

The carriage lurched upward again. Clary grabbed at the edge of her seat and stared—they were rolling along the top of a downtown M1 bus. From this vantage point she could see the upper floors of the old apartment buildings that lined the avenue, elaborately carved with gargoyles and ornamental cornices.

“I was just messing around,” said Jace, without looking at her. “My father insisted I learn to play an instrument.”

“He sounds strict, your father.”

Jace’s tone was sharp. “Not at all. He indulged me. He taught me everything—weapons training, demonology, arcane lore, ancient languages. He gave me anything I wanted. Horses, weapons, books, even a hunting falcon.”

But weapons and books aren’t exactly what most kids want for Christmas, Clary thought as the carriage thunked back down to the pavement. “Why didn’t you mention to Hodge that you knew the men that Luke was talking to? That they were the ones who killed your dad?”

Jace looked down at his hands. They were slim and careful hands, the hands of an artist, not a warrior. The ring she had noticed earlier flashed on his finger. She would have thought there would have been something feminine about a boy wearing a ring, but there wasn’t. The ring itself was solid and heavy-looking, made of a dark burned-looking silver with a pattern of stars around the band. The letter W was carved into it. “Because if I did,” he said, “he’d know I wanted to kill Valentine myself. And he’d never let me try.”

“You mean you want to kill him for revenge?”

“For justice,” said Jace. “I never knew who killed my father. Now I do. This is my chance to make it right.”

Clary didn’t see how killing one person could make right the death of another, but she sensed there was no point saying that. “But you knew who killed him,” she said. “It was those men. You said …”

Jace wasn’t looking at her, so Clary let her voice trail off. They were rolling through Astor Place now, narrowly dodging a purple New York University tram as it cut through traffic. Passing pedestrians looked crushed by the heavy air, like insects pinned under glass. Some groups of homeless kids were crowded around the base of a big brass statue, folded cardboard signs asking for money propped up in front of them. Clary saw a girl about her own age with a smoothly shaved bald head leaning against a brown-skinned boy with dreadlocks, his face adorned with a dozen piercings. He turned his head as the carriage rolled by as if he could see it, and she caught the gleam of his eyes. One of them was clouded, as though it had no pupil.

“I was ten,” Jace said. She turned to look at him. He was without expression. It always seemed like some color drained out of him when he talked about his father. “We lived in a manor house, out in the country. My father always said it was safer away from people. I heard them coming up the drive and went to tell him. He told me to hide, so I hid. Under the stairs. I saw those men come in. They had others with them. Not men. Forsaken. They overpowered my father and cut his throat. The blood ran across the floor. It soaked my shoes. I didn’t move.”