City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(89)

He looked as if she’d slapped him. “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say that.”

“He did.” She could see how she was hurting him, and it made her glad. Someone else ought to be in pain for a change. “You can rant all you want about honor and honesty and how mundanes don’t have any of either, but if you were honest, you’d admit this tantrum is just because you’re in love with him. It doesn’t have anything to do with—”

Alec moved, blindingly fast. A sharp crack resounded through her head. He had shoved her against the wall so hard that the back of her skull had struck the wood paneling. His face was inches from hers, eyes huge and black. “Don’t you ever,” he whispered, mouth a blanched line, “ever, say anything like that to him or I’ll kill you. I swear on the Angel, I’ll kill you.”

The pain in her arms where he gripped her was intense. Against her will she gasped. He blinked—as if he were waking up out of a dream—and let her go, jerking his hands away like her skin had burned him. Without a word he spun and hurried back toward the infirmary. He was lurching as he walked, like someone drunk or dizzy.

Clary rubbed her sore arms, staring after him, appalled at what she’d done. Good job, Clary. Now you’ve really made him hate you.


She should have fallen instantly into bed, but despite her exhaustion, sleep remained out of reach. Eventually she pulled her sketchpad out of her backpack and started drawing, propping the tablet against her knees. Idle scribbles at first—a detail from the crumbling facade of the vampire hotel: a fanged gargoyle with bulging eyes. An empty street, a single lamppost casting a yellow pool of illumination, a shadowy figure poised at the edge of the light. She drew Raphael in his bloody white shirt with the scar of the cross on his throat. And then she drew Jace standing on the roof, looking down at the ten-story drop below. Not afraid, but as if the fall challenged him—as if there were no empty space he could not fill with his belief in his own invincibility. As in her dream, she drew him with wings that curved out behind his shoulders in an arc like the wings of the angel statue in the Bone City.

She tried to draw her mother, last. She had told Jace she didn’t feel any different after reading the Gray Book, and it was mostly true. Now, though, as she tried to visualize her mother’s face, she realized there was one thing that was different in her memories of Jocelyn: She could see her mother’s scars, the tiny white marks that covered her back and shoulders as if she had been standing in a snowfall.

It hurt, knowing that the way she’d always seen her mother, all her life, had been a lie. She slid the sketchpad under her pillow, eyes burning.

There was a tap on the door—soft, hesitant. She scrubbed hastily at her eyes. “Come in.”

It was Simon. She hadn’t really focused on what a mess he was. He hadn’t showered, and his clothes were torn and stained, his hair tangled. He hesitated in the doorway, oddly formal.

She scooted sideways, making room for him on the bed. There was nothing strange about sitting in bed with Simon; they’d slept over at each other’s houses for years, made tents and forts with the blankets when they were small, stayed up reading comics when they were older.

“You found your glasses,” she said. One lens was cracked.

“They were in my pocket. They came through better than I would have expected. I’ll have to write a nice note to LensCrafters.” He settled beside her gingerly.

“Did Hodge fix you up?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I still feel like I’ve been worked over with a tire iron, but nothing’s broken—not anymore.” He turned to look at her. His eyes behind the ruined glasses were the eyes she remembered: dark and serious, ringed by the kind of lashes boys didn’t care about and girls would kill for. “Clary, that you came for me—that you would risk all that—”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand awkwardly. “You would have done it for me.”

“Of course,” he said, without arrogance or pretension, “but I always thought that was the way things were, with us. You know.”

She scrambled around to face him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Simon, as if he were surprised to find himself explaining something that should have been obvious, “I’ve always been the one who needed you more than you needed me.”

“That’s not true.” Clary was appalled.

“It is,” Simon said with the same unnerving calm. “You’ve never seemed to really need anyone, Clary. You’ve always been so … contained. All you’ve ever needed is your pencils and your imaginary worlds. So many times I’ve had to say things six, seven times before you’d even respond, you were so far away. And then you’d turn to me and smile that funny smile, and I’d know you’d forgotten all about me and just remembered—but I was never mad at you. Half of your attention is better than all of anyone else’s.”

She tried to catch at his hand, but got his wrist. She could feel the pulse under his skin. “I only ever loved three people in my life,” she said. “My mom and Luke, and you. And I’ve lost all of them except you. Don’t ever imagine you aren’t important to me—don’t even think it.”

“My mom says you only need three people you can rely on in order to achieve self-actualization,” said Simon. His tone was light but his voice cracked halfway through “actualization.” “She says you seem pretty self-actualized.”