The City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments 4)(95)

Maybe we should all go. Should we tell Clary?”

Isabelle shook her head. “It’s her mom’s party. It wouldn’t be fair. Let’s see what we can do just the three of us.”

“Three of you?” Maia asked, a tone of delicate annoyance shading her voice.

“Do you want to come with us, Maia?” It was Jordan. Isabelle froze; she wasn’t sure how Maia would respond to having her ex-boyfriend speak to her directly. The other girl’s mouth tightened a little, and for just a moment she looked at Jordan—not as if she hated him, but thoughtfully.

“It’s Simon,” she said finally, as if that decided everything. “I’ll go get my coat.”

The elevator doors opened onto a swirl of dark air and shadows. Maureen gave another high-pitched giggle and danced out into the darkness, leaving Simon to follow her with a sigh.



They stood in a large marble windowless room. There were no lights, but the wall to the left of the elevator was fitted with a towering set of double glass doors. Through them Simon could see the flat surface of the roof, and above it the black night sky overhead pinpointed with faintly glowing stars.

The wind was blowing hard again. He followed Maureen through the doors and out into the cold, gusting air, her dress fluttering around her like a moth beating its wings against a gale. The roof garden was as elegant as the signs had promised. Smooth hexagonal stone tiles made up the flooring; there were banks of flowers blooming under glass, and carefully clipped topiary hedges in the shapes of monsters and animals. The walkway they followed was lined with tiny gleaming lights. All around them rose high glass-and-steel apartment buildings, their windows aglow with electricity.

The path dead-ended at a row of raised, tiled steps, atop which was a wide square bordered on three sides by the high wall that encircled the garden. It was clearly intended to be an area where the building’s eventual residents would socialize. There was a big concrete block in the center of the square, which would probably someday hold a grill, Simon guessed, and the area was encircled by neatly clipped rosebushes that in June would bloom, just as the bare trellises adorning the walls would one day vanish under a covering of leaves. It would be an attractive space eventually, a luxury Upper East Side penthouse garden where you could relax on a lounge chair, with the East River glittering under the sunset, and the city stretched out before you, a mosaic of shimmering light.

Except. The tile floor had been defaced, splattered with some sort of black, sticky fluid that had been used to draw a rough circle, inside a larger circle. The space between the two circles was filled with scrawled runes. Though Simon wasn’t a Shadowhunter, he’d seen enough Nephilim runes to recognize what came from the Gray Book.

These didn’t. They looked menacing and wrong, like a curse scrawled in an unfamiliar language.

In the very center of the circle was the concrete block. On top of it a bulky rectangular object sat, draped with a dark cloth. The shape of it was not unlike that of a coffin. More runes were scribbled around the base of the block.

If Simon’s blood had run, it would have run cold.

Maureen clapped her hands together. “Oh,” she said in her elfin little voice. “It’s pretty.”

“Pretty?” Simon looked quickly at the hunched shape on top of the concrete block.

“Maureen, what the hell—”

“So you brought him.” It was a woman’s voice that spoke, cultured, strong, and—

familiar. Simon turned. Standing on the pathway behind him was a tall woman with short dark hair. She was very slender, wearing a long dark coat, belted around the middle like a femme fatale from a forties spy movie. “Maureen, thank you,” she went on. She had a hard, beautiful face, sharply planed, with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes. “You’ve done very well. You may go now.” She turned her gaze on Simon. “Simon Lewis,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

The moment she said his name he recognized her. The last time he’d seen her she’d been standing in pouring rain outside the Alto Bar. “You. I remember you. You gave me your card. The music promoter. Wow, you must really want to promote my band. I didn’t even think we were that good.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” the woman said. “There’s no point in it.” She glanced sideways.

“Maureen. You may go.” Her voice was firm this time, and Maureen, who had been hovering like a little ghost, gave a tiny squeak and darted back the way they’d come. He watched as she vanished through the doors that led to the elevators, feeling almost sorry to see her go. Maureen wasn’t much company, but without her he felt very alone.

Whoever this strange woman was, she gave off a clear aura of dark power he’d been too blood-drugged to notice before.

“You led me a dance, Simon,” she said, and now her voice was coming from another direction, several feet away.

Simon spun, and saw that she was standing beside the concrete block, in the center of the circle. The clouds were blowing swiftly across the moon, casting a moving pattern of shadows across her face. Because he was at the foot of the steps, he had to crane his head back to look up at her. “I thought getting hold of you would be easy.

Dealing with a simple vampire. A newly made one, at that. Even a Daylighter is nothing I haven’t encountered before, though there has not been one for a hundred years. Yes,” she added, with a smile at his glance, “I am older than I look.”