City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(64)

Eventually the sky in the east began to lighten. Clary, stumbling along half-asleep, raised her head in surprise. “It’s early for dawn.”

Jace looked at her with bland contempt. “That’s Alicante. The sun doesn’t come up for another three hours at least. Those are the city lights.”

Too relieved that they were nearly home to mind his attitude, Clary picked up her pace. They rounded a corner and found themselves walking along a wide dirt path cut into a hillside. It snaked along the curve of the slope, disappearing around a bend in the distance. Though the city was not yet visible, the air had grown brighter, the sky shot through with a peculiar reddish glow.

“We must be nearly there,” Clary said. “Is there a shortcut down the hill?”

Jace was frowning. “Something’s wrong,” he said abruptly. He took off, half-running down the road, his boots sending up puffs of dust that gleamed ochre in the strange light. Clary ran to keep pace, ignoring the protests of her blistered feet. They rounded the next curve and Jace skidded to a sudden halt, sending Clary crashing into him. In another circumstance it might have been comic. It wasn’t now.

The reddish light was stronger now, throwing a scarlet glow up into the night sky, lighting the hill they stood on as if it were daylight. Plumes of smoke curled up from the valley below like the unfurling feathers of a black peacock. Rising from the black vapor were the demon towers of Alicante, their crystalline shells like arrows of fire piercing the smoky air. Through the thick smoke, Clary could glimpse the leaping scarlet of flames, scattered across the city like a handful of glittering jewels across a dark cloth.

It seemed incredible, but there it was: They were standing on a hillside high over Alicante, and below them the city was burning.





II

STARS SHINE DARKLY


ANTONIO: Will you stay no longer? Nor will you not that I go with you?

SEBASTIAN: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.





—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night





10

FIRE AND SWORD


“IT’S LATE,” ISABELLE SAID, FRETFULLY TWITCHING THE LACE curtain across the high living room window back into place. “He ought to be back by now.”

“Be reasonable, Isabelle,” Alec pointed out, in that superior big-brother tone that seemed to imply that while she, Isabelle, might be prone to hysteria, he, Alec, was always perfectly calm. Even his posture—he was lounging in one of the overstuffed armchairs next to the Penhallows’ fireplace as if he didn’t have a care in the world—seemed designed to show off how unworried he was. “Jace does this when he’s upset, goes off and wanders around. He said he was going for a walk. He’ll be back.”

Isabelle sighed. She almost wished her parents were there, but they were still up at the Gard. Whatever the Clave was discussing, the Council meeting was dragging on brutally late. “But he knows New York. He doesn’t know Alicante—”

“He probably knows it better than you do.” Aline was sitting on the couch reading a book, its pages bound in dark red leather. Her black hair was pulled behind her head in a French braid, her eyes fastened on the volume spread across her lap. Isabelle, who had never been much of a reader, always envied other people their ability to get lost in a book. There were a lot of things she once would have envied Aline for—being small and delicately pretty, for one thing, not Amazonian and so tall in heels she towered over almost every boy she met. But then again, it was only recently that Isabelle had realized other girls weren’t just for envying, avoiding, or disliking. “He lived here until he was ten. You guys have only visited a few times.”

Isabelle raised her hand to her throat with a frown. The pendant slung on the chain around her neck had given a sudden, sharp pulse—but it normally only pulsed in the presence of demons, and they were in Alicante. There was no way there were demons nearby. Maybe the pendant was malfunctioning. “I don’t think he’s wandering around, anyway. I think it’s pretty obvious where he went,” Isabelle responded.

Alec raised his eyes. “You think he went to see Clary?”

“Is she still here? I thought she was supposed to be going back to New York.” Aline let her book fall closed. “Where is Jace’s sister staying, anyway?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Ask him,” she said, cutting her eyes toward Sebastian.

Sebastian was sprawled on the couch opposite Aline’s. He had a book in his hand too, and his dark head was bent over it. He raised his eyes as if he could feel Isabelle’s gaze on him.

“Were you talking about me?” he asked mildly. Everything about Sebastian was mild, Isabelle thought with a twinge of annoyance. She’d been impressed by his looks at first—those sharply planed cheekbones and those black, fathomless eyes—but his affable, sympathetic personality grated on her now. She didn’t like boys who looked as if they never got mad about anything. In Isabelle’s world, rage equaled passion equaled a good time.

“What are you reading?” she asked, more sharply than she’d meant to. “Is that one of Max’s comic books?”