City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(79)

“Jace.” Alec looked alarmed. “Jace, wait.”

There was a sudden roar as part of the Gard roof went up in orange tongues of flame. Heat shimmered in the air and lit the night. Clary could see every blade of grass on the ground, every line on Hodge’s thin and dirty face.

“No,” Jace said. His blank expression as he gazed down at Hodge reminded Clary of another masklike face. Valentine’s. “You knew what my father did to me, didn’t you? You knew all his dirty secrets.”

Alec was looking uncomprehendingly from Jace to his old tutor. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

Hodge’s face creased. “Jonathan …”

“You’ve always known, and you never said anything. All those years in the Institute, and you never said anything.”

Hodge’s mouth sagged. “I—I wasn’t sure,” he whispered. “When you haven’t seen a child since he was a baby—I wasn’t sure who you were, much less what you were.”

“Jace?” Alec was looking from his best friend to his tutor, his blue eyes dismayed, but neither of the two was paying attention to anything but the other. Hodge looked like a man trapped in a tightening vise, his hands jerking at his sides as if with pain, his eyes darting. Clary thought of the neatly dressed man in his book-lined library who had offered her tea and kindly advice. It seemed like a thousand years ago.

“I don’t believe you,” Jace said. “You knew Valentine wasn’t dead. He must have told you—”

“He told me nothing,” Hodge gasped. “When the Lightwoods informed me they were taking in Michael Wayland’s son, I hadn’t heard a word from Valentine since the Uprising. I had thought he had forgotten me. I’d even prayed he was dead, but I never knew. And then, the night before you arrived, Hugo came with a message for me from Valentine. ‘The boy is my son.’ That’s all it said.” He took a ragged breath. “I had no idea whether to believe him. I thought I’d know—I thought I’d know, just looking at you, but there was nothing, nothing, to make me sure. And I thought that this was a trick of Valentine’s, but what trick? What was he trying to do? You had no idea, that was clear enough to me, but as for Valentine’s purpose—”

“You should have told me what I was,” Jace said, all in one breath, as if the words were being punched out of him. “I could have done something about it, then. Killed myself, maybe.”

Hodge raised his head, looking up at Jace through his matted, filthy hair. “I wasn’t sure,” he said again, half to himself, “and in the times that I wondered—I thought, perhaps, that upbringing might matter more than blood; that you could be taught—”

“Taught what? Not to be a monster?” Jace’s voice shook, but the knife in his hand was steady. “You should know better. He made a crawling coward out of you, didn’t he? And you weren’t a helpless little kid when he did it. You could have fought back.”

Hodge’s eyes fell. “I tried to do my best by you,” he said, but even to Clary’s ears his words sounded weak.

“Until Valentine came back,” Jace said, “and then you did everything he asked of you—you gave me to him like I was a dog that had belonged to him once, that he’d asked you to look after for a few years—”

“And then you left,” said Alec. “You left us all. Did you really think you could hide here, in Alicante?”

“I didn’t come here to hide,” said Hodge, his voice lifeless. “I came here to stop Valentine.”

“You can’t expect us to believe that.” Alec sounded angry again now. “You’ve always been on Valentine’s side. You could have chosen to turn your back on him—”

“I could never have chosen that!” Hodge’s voice rose. “Your parents were given their chance for a new life—I was never given that! I was trapped in the Institute for fifteen years—”

“The Institute was our home!” Alec said. “Was it really so bad living with us—being part of our family?”

“Not because of you.” Hodge’s voice was ragged. “I loved you children. But you were children. And no place that you are never allowed to leave can be a home. I went weeks sometimes without speaking to another adult. No other Shadowhunter would trust me. Not even your parents truly liked me; they tolerated me because they had no choice. I could never marry. Never have children of my own. Never have a life. And eventually you children would have been grown and gone, and then I wouldn’t even have had that. I lived in fear, as much as I lived at all.”

“You can’t make us feel sorry for you,” Jace said. “Not after what you did. And what the hell were you afraid of, spending all your time in the library? Dust mites? We were the ones who went out and fought demons!”

“He was afraid of Valentine,” Simon said. “Don’t you get it—”

Jace shot him a venomous look. “Shut up, vampire. This isn’t in any way about you.”

“Not Valentine exactly,” Hodge said, looking at Simon for almost the first time since he’d been dragged from the cell. There was something in that look that surprised Clary—a tired almost-affection. “My own weakness where Valentine was concerned. I knew he would return someday. I knew he would make a bid for power again, a bid to rule the Clave. And I knew what he could offer me. Freedom from my curse. A life. A place in the world. I could have been a Shadowhunter again, in his world. I could never be one again in this one.” There was a naked longing in his voice that was painful to hear. “And I knew I would be too weak to refuse him if he offered it.”