The City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments 4)(96)

“You look pretty old.”

She ignored the insult. “I sent my best people after you, and only one returned, with some babbled tale about holy fire and the wrath of God. He was quite useless to me after that. I had to have him put down. It was most annoying.

After that Idecided Iought to deal withyoumyself. Ifollowed youto your sillymusical show,and afterward,whenI came up to you, I saw it. Your Mark. As one who knew Cain personally, I am intimately familiar with its shape.”

“Knew Cain personally?” Simon shook his head. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”

“Believe it or do not believe it,” she said. “It makes no difference to me. I am older than the dreams of your kind, little boy. I walked the paths of the Garden of Eden. I knew Adam before Eve did. I was his first wife, but I would not be obedient to him, so God cast me out and made for Adam a new wife, one fashioned of his own body that she might ever be subservient.” She smiled faintly. “I have many names. But you may call me Lilith, first of all demons.”

At that, Simon, who had not felt cold in months, finally shivered. He had heard the name Lilith before. He couldn’t remember where exactly, but he knew it was a name associated with darkness, with evil and terrible things.

“Your Mark presented me with a conundrum,” said Lilith. “I need you, you see, Daylighter. Your life force—your blood. But I could not force you or harm you.”

She said this as if needing his blood were the most natural thing in the world.



“You—drink blood?” Simon asked. He felt dazed, as if he were trapped in a strange dream. Surely this couldn’t really be happening.

She laughed. “Blood is not the food of demons, silly child. What I want from you is not for myself.” She held out a slender hand. “Come closer.”

Simon shook his head. “I’m not stepping inside that circle.”

She shrugged. “Very well, then. I intended only to give you a better view.” She moved her fingers slightly, almost negligently, the gesture of someone twitching a curtain aside.

The black cloth covering the coffin-shaped object between them vanished.

Simon stared at what was revealed. He had not been wrong about the coffin shape. It was a big glass box, just long and wide enough for a person to lie down in. A glass coffin, he thought, like Snow White’s. But this was no fairy tale. Inside the coffin was a cloudy liquid, and floating in that liquid—naked from the waist up, his white-blond hair drifting around him like pale seaweed—was Sebastian.

There were no messages stuck to Jordan’s apartment door, nothing on or under the welcome mat, and nothing immediately obvious inside the apartment, either. While Alec stood guard downstairs and Maia and Jordan rummaged through Simon’s backpack in the living room, Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon’s bedroom, looked silently at the place he’d been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty—just four walls, naked of any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B.

She could hear the city—the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the quiet of Idris terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon’s small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone.

Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d ever seen his bedroom at home, which presumably was covered with band posters, sports trophies, boxes of those games he loved to play, musical instruments, books—all the flotsam and jetsam of a normal life. She’d never asked to come over, and he’d never suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his mother, of doing anything that might bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing to make. But now, looking at this empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of the city all around her, she felt a twinge of fear for Simon—mixed with an equal twinge of regret. jetsam of a normal life. She’d never asked to come over, and he’d never suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his mother, of doing anything that might bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing to make. But now, looking at this empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of the city all around her, she felt a twinge of fear for Simon—mixed with an equal twinge of regret.

She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia’s voice. She didn’t sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to hate Jordan.



“Nothing,” she was saying. “Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on them.” Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon’s backpack. Jordan, on the other side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was doing—that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by every move you made. “I’ll check his wallet.”

Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned.