Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (111 page)
Read Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series Online
Authors: Cassandra Clare
As she neared the top of the stairs, she realized
there was a woman standing there. She was wearing a long dark cloak over a dress, not
the sort of thing you usually saw on a Manhattan street. The cloak was made of a dark
velvety material and had a wide hood, which was up, hiding her face. Glancing around,
Clary saw that no one else on the hospital steps or standing by its doors seemed to
notice the apparition. A glamour, then.
She reached the top step and paused, looking up at the woman. She still
couldn’t see her face. She said, “Look, if you’re here to see me, just
tell me what you want. I’m not really in the mood for all this glamour and secrecy
stuff right now.”
She noticed people around her stopping to stare at the crazy girl who was
talking to no one. She fought the urge to stick out her tongue at them.
“All right.” The voice was gentle, oddly familiar. The woman
reached up and pushed back her hood. Silver hair spilled out over her shoulders in a
flood. It was the woman Clary had seen staring at her in the courtyard of the Marble
Cemetery, the same woman who’d saved them from Malik’s knife at the
Institute. Up close, Clary could see that she had the sort of face that was all angles,
too sharp to be pretty, though her eyes were an intense and lovely hazel. “My name
is Madeleine. Madeleine Bellefleur.”
“And . . . ?” Clary said. “What do you want from
me?”
The woman—Madeleine—hesitated. “I knew your mother,
Jocelyn,” she said. “We were friends in Idris.”
“You can’t see her,” Clary said. “No visitors but
family until she gets better.”
“But she won’t get better.”
Clary felt as if she’d been slapped in the face.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” Madeleine said.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that I know what’s wrong
with Jocelyn, and there’s nothing a mundane hospital can do for her now. What
happened to her—she did it to herself, Clarissa.”
“No. You don’t understand. Valentine—”
“She did it before Valentine got to her. So he couldn’t get
any information out of her. She planned it that way. It was a secret, a secret she
shared with only one other person, and she told only one other person how the spell
could be reversed. That person was me.”
“You mean—”
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “I mean I can show you how to
wake your mother up.”
Chapter 2: The Demon Towers of Alicante
Chapter 5: A Problem of Memory
Chapter 7: Where Angels Fear to Tread
Chapter 11: All the Host of Hell
Chapter 13: Where there is Sorrow
Chapter 14: In the Dark Forest
Chapter 17: The Shadowhunter’s Tale
Chapter 20: Weighed in the Balance
Epilogue Across the Sky in Stars
For my mother.
“I only count the hours that shine.”
When you look back on writing a book, you can’t help but realize what a group effort it all is, and how quickly the whole thing would sink like the
Titanic
if you didn’t have the help of your friends. With that in mind: Thanks to the NB Team and the Massachusetts All-Stars; thanks to Elka, Emily, and Clio for hours of plotting help, and to Holly Black for hours of patiently reading the same scenes over and over. To Libba Bray for providing bagels and a couch to write on, Robin Wasserman for distracting me with clips from
Gossip Girl
, Maureen Johnson for staring at me in a frightening way while I was trying to work, and Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld for forcing me to get off the couch and go somewhere to write. Thanks also to Ioana for helping me with my (nonexistent) Romanian. Thanks as always to my agent, Barry Goldblatt; my editor, Karen Wojtyla; the teams at Simon & Schuster and Walker Books for getting behind this series; and Sarah Payne for making changes long past deadline. And of course to my family—my mother, my father, Jim and Kate, the Esons clan, and of course Josh, who still thinks Simon is based on him (and he may be right).
Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.
—John Milton,
Paradise Lost
Sparks Fly Upward
Man is born to trouble
as the sparks fly upward.
—Job 5:7
T
HE
P
ORTAL
The cold snap of the previous week was over; the sun was
shining brightly as Clary hurried across Luke’s dusty front yard, the hood of her jacket up to keep her hair from blowing across her face. The weather might have warmed up, but the wind off the East River could still be brutal. It carried with it a faint chemical smell, mixed with the Brooklyn smell of asphalt, gasoline, and burned sugar from the abandoned factory down the street.
Simon was waiting for her on the front porch, sprawled in a broken-springed armchair. He had his DS balanced on his blue-jeaned knees and was poking away at it industriously with the stylus. “Score,” he said as she came up the steps. “I’m kicking butt at Mario Kart.”
Clary pushed her hood back, shaking hair out of her eyes, and rummaged in her pocket for her keys. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all morning.”
Simon got to his feet, shoving the blinking rectangle into his messenger bag. “I was at Eric’s. Band practice.”
Clary stopped jiggling the key in the lock—it always stuck—long enough to frown at him. “
Band
practice? You mean you’re still—”
“In the band? Why wouldn’t I be?” He reached around her. “Here, let me do it.”
Clary stood still while Simon expertly twisted the key with just the right amount of pressure, making the stubborn old lock spring open. His hand brushed hers; his skin was cool, the temperature of the air outside. She shivered a little. They’d only called off their attempt at a romantic relationship last week, and she still felt confused whenever she saw him.
“Thanks.” She took the key back without looking at him.
It was hot in the living room. Clary hung her jacket up on the peg inside the front hall and headed to the spare bedroom, Simon trailing in her wake. She frowned. Her suitcase was open like a clamshell on the bed, her clothes and sketchbooks strewn everywhere.
“I thought you were just going to be in Idris a couple of days,” Simon said, taking in the mess with a look of faint dismay.
“I am, but I can’t figure out what to pack. I hardly own any dresses or skirts, but what if I can’t wear pants there?”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to wear pants there? It’s another country, not another century.”
“But the Shadowhunters are so old-fashioned, and Isabelle
always wears dresses—” Clary broke off and sighed. “It’s nothing. I’m just projecting all my anxiety about my mom onto my wardrobe. Let’s talk about something else. How was practice? Still no band name?”
“It was fine.” Simon hopped onto the desk, legs dangling over the side. “We’re considering a new motto. Something ironic, like ‘We’ve seen a million faces and rocked about eighty percent of them.’”
“Have you told Eric and the rest of them that—”
“That I’m a vampire? No. It isn’t the sort of thing you just drop into casual conversation.”
“Maybe not, but they’re your
friends
. They should know. And besides, they’ll just think it makes you more of a rock god, like that vampire Lester.”
“Lestat,” Simon said. “That would be the vampire Lestat. And he’s fictional. Anyway, I don’t see you running to tell all your friends that you’re a Shadowhunter.”
