The City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments 4)(5)

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Second favor?”

Simon leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Try the borscht before you leave. It’s fantastic.”

Mr. Walker and Mr. Archer were not the most talkative of companions. They led Simon silently through the streets of the Lower East Side, keeping several steps ahead of him with their odd gliding pace. It was getting late, but the city sidewalks were full of people—getting off a late shift, hurrying home from dinner, heads down, collars turned up against the stiff cold wind. At St. Mark’s Place there were card tables set up along the curb, selling everything from cheap socks to pencil sketches of New York to smoky sandalwood incense. Leaves rattled across the pavement like dried bones. The air smelled like car exhaust mixed with sandalwood, and underneath that, the smell of human beings—skin and blood.

Simon’s stomach tightened. He tried to keep enough bottles of animal blood in his room—he had a small refrigerator at the back of his closet now, where his mother wouldn’t see it—to keep himself from ever getting hungry. The blood was disgusting.

He’d thought he’d get used to it, even start wanting it, but though it killed his hunger pangs, there was nothing about it that he enjoyed the way he’d once enjoyed chocolate or vegetarian burritos or coffee ice cream. It remained blood.

But being hungry was worse. Being hungry meant that he could smell things he didn’t want to smell—salt on skin; the overripe, sweet smell of blood exuding from the pores of strangers. It made him feel hungry and twisted up and utterly wrong. Hunching over, he jammed his fists into the pockets of his jacket and tried to breathe through his mouth.

They turned right onto Third Avenue, and paused in front of a restaurant whose sign said CLOISTER CAFé.

GARDEN OPENALLYEAR.Simonblinked up at the sign. “What are we doing here?”

“This is the meeting place our master has chosen.” Mr. Walker’s tone was bland.

“Huh.” Simon was puzzled. “I would have thought Raphael’s style was more, you know, arranging meetings on top of an unconsecrated cathedral, or down in some crypt full of bones. He never struck me as the trendy restaurant type.”

Both subjugates stared at him. “Is there a problem,Daylighter?” asked Mr.Archer finally.

Simon felt obscurely scolded. “No. No problem.”

The interior of the restaurant was dark, with a marble-topped bar running along one wall.

No servers or waitstaff approached them as they made their way through the room to a door in the back, and through the door into the garden.

Many New York restaurants had garden terraces; few were open this late into the year.

This one was in a courtyard between several buildings. The walls had been painted with trompe l’oeil murals showing Italian gardens full of flowers. The trees, their leaves turned gold and russet with the fall, were strung with chains of white lights, and heat lamps scattered between the tables gave off a reddish glow. A small fountain plashed musically in the center of the yard.

Only one table was occupied, and not by Raphael. A slim woman in a wide-brimmed hat sat at a table close to the wall. As Simon watched in puzzlement, she raised a hand and waved at him. He turned and looked behind him; there was, of course, no one there.

Walker and Archer had started moving again; bemused, Simon followed them as they crossed the courtyard and stopped a few feet from where the woman sat.

Walker bowed deeply. “Master,” he said.



The woman smiled. “Walker,” she said. “And Archer. Very good. Thank you for bringing Simon to me.”

“Wait a second.” Simon looked from the woman to the two subjugates and back again.

“You’re not Raphael.”

“Dear me, no.” The woman removed her hat. An enormous quantity of silvery blond hair, brilliant in the Christmas lights, spilled down over her shoulders. Her face was smooth and white and oval, very beautiful, dominated by enormous pale green eyes. She wore long black gloves, a black silk blouse and pencil skirt, and a black scarf tied around her throat. It was impossible to tell her age—or at least what age she might have been when she’d been Turned into a vampire. “I am Camille Belcourt. Enchanted to meet you.”

She held out a black-gloved hand.

“I was told I was meeting Raphael Santiago here,” said Simon, not reaching to take it.

“Do you work for him?”

Camille Belcourt laughed like a rippling fountain. “Most certainly not! Though once upon a time he worked for me.”

And Simon remembered. I thought the head vampire was someone else, he had said to Raphael once, in Idris, it felt like forever ago.

Camille has not yet returned to us, Raphael had replied. I lead in her stead.

“You’re the head vampire,” Simon said. “Of the Manhattan clan.” He turned back to the subjugates. “You tricked me. You told me I was meeting Raphael.”

“I said you were meeting our master,” said Mr. Walker. His eyes were vast and empty, so empty that Simon wondered if they had even meant to mislead him, or if they were simply programmed like robots to say whatever their master had told them to say, and were unaware of deviations from the script. “And here she is.”

“Indeed.” Camille flashed a brilliant smile toward her subjugates. “Please leave us, Walker, Archer. I need to speak to Simon alone.” There was something about the way she said it—both his name, and the word “alone”— that was like a secret caress.