City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(28)

“Thanks,” Clary said.

Robert Lightwood shrugged and disappeared into the shadows without another word. Clary took the stairs two at a time, passing several landings before she reached the top floor, which was up a flight of steep attic stairs that led to a corridor. A door down the hall was half-open; she could hear voices from the other side.

With a perfunctory knock she stepped inside. The walls of the attic room were painted white, and there was a massive armoire in the corner, both doors flung open—Alec’s clothes, practical and a little shabby, hanging on one side, and Jace’s, crisp in blacks and grays, on the other. Their gear was neatly folded along the bottom.

Clary almost smiled; she wasn’t entirely sure why. There was something about Alec and Jace’s sharing a room that she found endearing. She wondered if they kept each other up at night talking, the way she and Simon always had.

Alec and Isabelle were perched on the sill of the window. Behind them Clary could see the colors of sunset sparking off the water of the canal below. Jace was sprawled on one of the single beds, his boots rather defiantly planted on the velvet coverlet.

“I think they mean they can’t just wait around for Sebastian to attack more Institutes,” Alec was saying. “That would be hiding. Shadowhunters don’t hide.”

Jace rubbed his cheek against his shoulder; he looked tired, his pale hair rumpled. “Feels like hiding,” he said. “Sebastian’s out there; we’re in here. Double-warded. All the Institutes emptied out. No one to protect the world from demons. Who will watch the watchers?”

Alec sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Hopefully it won’t be for long.”

“Hard to imagine what would happen,” Isabelle said. “A world with no Shadowhunters. Demons everywhere, Downworlders attacking one another.”

“If I were Sebastian—” Jace started.

“But you’re not. You’re not Sebastian,” Clary said.

They all looked over at her. Alec and Jace looked absolutely nothing alike, Clary thought, but every once in a while there was a similarity in the way they glanced or gestured that reminded her that they’d been raised together. They both looked curious, a little concerned. Isabelle seemed more tired, and upset.

“You all right?” Jace said by way of greeting, giving her a lopsided smile. “How’s Emma?”

“Wrecked,” Clary said. “What happened after I left the meeting?”

“The interrogation was mostly over,” said Jace. “Sebastian’s obviously behind the attacks, and he has a sizeable force of Endarkened warriors backing him up. Nobody knows exactly how many, but we have to assume all of the missing have been Turned.”

“Still, we have greater numbers by far,” said Alec. “He has his original forces, and the six Conclaves he Turned; we have everyone else.”

There was something in Jace’s eyes that turned them darker than gold. “Sebastian knows that,” he murmured. “He’ll know his forces, down to the last warrior. He’ll know exactly what he can match and what he can’t.”

“We have the Downworlders on our side,” said Alec. “That’s the whole point of tomorrow’s meeting, isn’t it? Talk to the representatives, strengthen our alliances. Now that we know what Sebastian’s doing, we can strategize around it, hit him with the Night’s Children, the Courts, the warlocks. . . .”

Clary’s eyes met Jace’s in silent communication. Now that we know what Sebastian’s doing, he’ll do something else. Something we don’t expect yet.

“And then everyone talked about Jace,” said Isabelle. “So, you know, the usual.”

“About Jace?” Clary leaned against the footboard of Jace’s bed. “What about him?”

“There was a lot of back-and-forth about whether Sebastian’s basically invulnerable now, and if there are ways to wound and kill him. Glorious could have done it because of the heavenly fire, but currently the only source of heavenly fire is . . .”

“Jace,” Clary said grimly. “But the Silent Brothers have tried everything to separate Jace from the heavenly fire, and they can’t do it. It’s in his soul. So what’s their plan, hitting Sebastian over the head with Jace until he passes out?”

“Brother Zachariah said pretty much the same thing,” Jace said. “Maybe with less sarcasm.”

“Anyway, they wound up talking about ways to capture Sebastian without killing him—if they can destroy all the Endarkened, if he can be trapped somewhere or somehow, it might not matter as much if he can’t be killed,” Alec said.

“Put him in an adamas coffin and drop it into the sea,” Isabelle said. “That’s my suggestion.”

“Anyway, when they were done talking about me, which was of course the best part,” Jace said, “they went back pretty quickly to talking about ways to cure the Endarkened. They’re paying the Spiral Labyrinth a fortune to try to unravel the spell Sebastian used to create the Infernal Cup and enact the ritual.”

“They need to stop obsessing about curing the Endarkened and start thinking about how to defeat them,” Isabelle said in a hard voice.

“A lot of them know people who were Turned, Isabelle,” said Alec. “Of course they want them back.”