Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (192 page)

Simon felt sympathetic toward Jace despite himself. “Look, you thought he was your father for what, sixteen years? That doesn’t just go away in a day. And you never met the guy who was really your father. And he’s dead. So you can’t really betray him. Just think of yourself as someone who has two fathers for a while.”

“You can’t have two fathers.”

“Sure you can,” Simon said. “Who says you can’t? We can buy you one of those books they have for little kids.
Timmy Has Two Dads
. Except I don’t think they have one called
Timmy Has Two Dads and One of Them Was Evil
. That part you’re just going to have to work through on your own.”

Jace rolled his eyes. “It’s fascinating,” he said. “You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.” He tugged lightly on the window curtain. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“My father’s dead,” said Simon.

Jace turned to look at him. “What?”

“I figured you didn’t know,” said Simon. “I mean, it’s not
like you were going to
ask
, or are particularly interested in anything about me. So, yeah. My father’s dead. So we do have that in common.” Suddenly exhausted, he leaned back against the futon. He felt sick and dizzy and tired—a deep tiredness that seemed to have sunk into his bones. Jace, on the other hand, seemed possessed of a restless energy that Simon found a little disturbing. It hadn’t been easy watching him eat that tomato soup, either. It had looked too much like blood for his comfort.

Jace eyed him. “How long has it been since
you
 . . . ate? You look pretty bad.”

Simon sighed. He supposed he couldn’t say anything, after pestering Jace to eat something. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Peeling himself off the futon, he went into his bedroom and retrieved his last bottle of blood from under the bed. He tried not to look at it—separated blood was a sickening sight. He shook the bottle hard as he headed into the living room, where Jace was still staring out the window.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Simon unscrewed the bottle of blood and took a swig. Normally he didn’t like drinking the stuff in front of other people, but this was Jace, and he didn’t care what Jace thought. Besides, it wasn’t as if Jace hadn’t seen him drink blood before. At least Kyle wasn’t home. That would be a hard one to explain to his new roommate. Nobody liked a guy who kept blood in the fridge.

Two Jaces eyed him—one the real Jace, the other his reflection in the windowpane. “You can’t just skip feeding, you know.”

Simon shrugged. “I’m eating now.”

“Yeah,” Jace said, “but you’re a vampire. Blood isn’t like food for you. Blood is . . . blood.”

“That’s very illuminating.” Simon flung himself into the armchair across from the TV; it had probably once been a pale gold velvet but was now worn to the grayish pile. “Do you have a lot of other profound thoughts like that? Blood is blood? A toaster is a toaster? A Gelatinous Cube is a Gelatinous Cube?”

Jace shrugged. “Fine. Ignore my advice. You’ll be sorry later.”

Before Simon could answer, he heard the sound of the front door opening. He looked daggers at Jace. “That’s my roommate. Kyle. Be nice.”

Jace smiled charmingly. “I’m always nice.”

Simon had no chance to respond to this the way he would have liked, for a moment later Kyle bounded into the room, looking bright-eyed and energetic. “Man, I was all over town today,” he said. “I almost got lost, but you know what they say. Bronx up, Battery down—” He looked at Jace, registering belatedly that there was someone else in the room. “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you had a friend over.” He held out a hand. “I’m Kyle.”

Jace did not respond in kind. To Simon’s surprise, Jace had gone rigid all over, his pale yellow eyes narrowing, his whole body displaying that Shadowhunter watchfulness that seemed to transform him from an ordinary teenage boy into something very much other than that.

“Interesting,” he said. “You know, Simon never mentioned that his new roommate was a werewolf.”

Clary and Luke drove most of the way back to Brooklyn in silence. Clary stared out the window as they went, watching
Chinatown slide past, and then the Williamsburg Bridge, lit up like a chain of diamonds against the night sky. In the distance, out over the black water of the river, she could see Renwick’s, illuminated as it always was. It looked like a ruin again, empty black windows gaping like the eye holes in a skull. The voice of the dead Shadowhunter whispered in her mind:

The pain . . . Make the pain stop
.

She shuddered and drew her jacket more tightly around her shoulders. Luke glanced at her briefly but said nothing. It wasn’t until he had pulled up in front of his house and killed the engine of the truck that he turned to her and spoke.

“Clary,” he said. “What you just did—”

“It was wrong,” she said. “I know it was wrong. I was there too.” She swiped at her face with the edge of her sleeve. “Go ahead and yell at me.”

Luke stared through the windshield. “I’m not going to yell at you. You didn’t know what was going to happen. Hell, I thought it might work too. I wouldn’t have gone with you if I hadn’t.”

Clary knew this ought to have made her feel better, but it didn’t. “If you hadn’t thrown acid on the rune—”

“But I did.”

“I didn’t even know you could do that. Destroy a rune like that.”

“If you disfigure it enough, you can minimize or destroy its power. Sometimes in battle the enemy will try to burn or slice off a Shadowhunter’s skin, just to deprive them of the power of their runes.” Luke sounded distracted.

Clary felt her lips tremble, and pressed them together, hard, to stop the shaking. Sometimes she forgot the more nightmarish aspects of being a Shadowhunter—
This life of
scars and killing
, as Hodge had said to her once. “Well,” she said, “I won’t do it again.”

“Won’t do what again? Make that particular rune? I have no doubt you won’t, but I’m not sure that addresses the problem.” Luke drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You have an ability, Clary. A great ability. But you have absolutely no idea what it means. You’re totally untrained. You know almost nothing about the history of runes, or what they have meant to Nephilim through the centuries. You can’t tell a rune designed to do good from one designed to do harm.”

“You were happy enough to let me use my power when it was the binding rune,” she said angrily. “You didn’t tell me not to create runes then.”

“I’m not telling you not to use your power now. In fact, I think the problem is that you so rarely do use it. It’s not as if you’re using your power to change your nail polish color or make the subway come when you want it. You use it only in these occasional life-and-death moments.”

“The runes only come to me in those moments.”

“Maybe that’s because you haven’t yet been trained in how your power
works
. Think of Magnus; his power is a part of him. You seem to think of yours as separate from you. Something that happens to you. It’s not. It’s a tool you need to learn to use.”

“Jace said Maryse wants to hire a rune expert to work with me, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Yes,” said Luke, “I imagine Maryse has other things on her mind.” He took the key out of the ignition and sat for a moment in silence. “Losing a child the way she lost Max,” he said. “I can’t imagine it. I should be more forgiving of her behavior. If something happened to you, I . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“I wish Robert would come back from Idris,” said Clary. “I don’t see why she has to deal with all this alone. It must be horrible.”

“Many marriages break up when a child dies. The married couple can’t stop blaming themselves, or each other. I imagine Robert is gone precisely because he needs space, or Maryse does.”

“But they love each other,” Clary said, appalled. “Isn’t that what love means? That you’re supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?”

Luke looked toward the river, at the dark water moving slowly under the light of the autumn moon. “Sometimes, Clary,” he said, “love just isn’t enough.”

The bottle slid out of Simon’s hand and crashed to the
floor, where it shattered, sending shards flying in all directions. “Kyle’s a werewolf?”

“Of course he’s a werewolf, you moron,” said Jace. He looked at Kyle. “Aren’t you?”

Kyle said nothing. The relaxed good humor had gone out of his expression. His hazel eyes were as hard and flat as glass. “Who’s asking?”

Jace moved away from the window. There was nothing overtly hostile in his demeanor, and yet everything about him implied a clear threat. His hands were loose at his sides, but Simon remembered the way he had seen Jace, before, explode into action with almost nothing, it seemed, between thought
and response. “Jace Lightwood,” he said. “Of the Lightwood Institute. What pack are you sworn to?”

“Jesus,” said Kyle. “You’re a Shadowhunter?” He looked at Simon. “The cute redheaded girl who was with you in the garage—she’s a Shadowhunter too, isn’t she?”

Taken aback, Simon nodded.

“You know, some people think Shadowhunters are just myths. Like mummies and genies.” Kyle grinned at Jace. “Can you grant wishes?”

The fact that Kyle had just called Clary cute did not seem to have endeared him to Jace, whose face had tightened alarmingly. “That depends,” he said. “Do you wish to be punched in the face?”

“My, my,” said Kyle. “And I thought you all were so gung ho for the Accords these days—”

“The Accords apply to vamps and lycanthropes with clear alliances,” interrupted Jace. “Tell me what pack you’re sworn to, or I’ll have to assume you’re rogue.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Simon said. “Both of you, stop acting like you’re about to hit each other.” He looked at Kyle. “You should have told me you were a werewolf.”

“I didn’t notice you telling me you’re a vampire. Maybe I thought it was none of your business.”

Simon’s whole body jerked with surprise. “What?” He glanced down at the shattered glass and blood on the floor. “I didn’t—I don’t—”

“Don’t bother,” Jace said quietly. “He can sense you’re a vampire. Just like you’ll be able to sense werewolves and other Downworlders when you’ve had a bit more practice. He’s known what you are since he met you. Isn’t that true?” He met
Kyle’s icy hazel eyes with his own. Kyle said nothing. “And that stuff he’s growing on the balcony, by the by? That’s wolfsbane. Now you know.”

Simon crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Kyle. “So what the hell is this? Some sort of setup? Why did you ask me to live with you? Werewolves hate vampires.”

“I don’t,” said Kyle. “I’m not too fond of their kind, though.” He jabbed a finger at Jace. “They think they’re better than everyone else.”

“No,” said Jace. “
I
think
I’m
better than everyone else. An opinion that has been backed up with ample evidence.”

Kyle looked at Simon. “Does he always talk like this?”

“Yes.”

“Does anything shut him up? Other than getting the crap beaten out of him, of course.”

Jace moved away from the window. “I would
love
for you to try.”

Simon stepped between them. “I’m not going to let you fight with each other.”

“And what are you going to do about it if . . . Oh.” Jace’s gaze trailed up to Simon’s forehead, and he grinned reluctantly. “So basically you’re threatening to turn me into something you can sprinkle on popcorn if I don’t do what you say?”

Kyle looked baffled. “What are you—”

“I just think you two should talk,” Simon interrupted. “So Kyle’s a werewolf. I’m a vampire. And you’re not exactly the boy next door either,” he added to Jace. “I say we figure out what’s going on and proceed from there.”

“Your trusting idiocy knows no bounds,” Jace said, but he sat down on the windowsill, crossing his arms. After a moment
Kyle sat down too, on the futon couch. They both glared at each other.
Still
, Simon thought.
Progress
.

“Fine,” Kyle said. “I’m a werewolf. I’m not part of a pack, but I
do
have an alliance. Have you heard of the Praetor Lupus?”

“I’ve heard of lupus,” said Simon. “Isn’t it a kind of disease?”

Jace gave him a withering look. “‘
Lupus
’ means ‘wolf,’” he explained. “And the praetorians were an elite Roman military force. So I guess the translation is ‘Wolf Guardians.’” He shrugged. “I’ve run across mentions of them, but they’re a pretty secretive organization.”

“And the Shadowhunters aren’t?” said Kyle.

“We have good reasons.”

“So do we.” Kyle leaned forward. The muscles in his arms flexed as he propped his elbows on his knees. “There are two kinds of werewolves,” he explained. “The kind that are born werewolves, with werewolf parents, and the kind that get infected with lycanthropy through a bite.” Simon looked at him in surprise. He wouldn’t have thought Kyle, slacker-stoner bike messenger, would have known the word “lycanthropy,” much less how to pronounce it. But this was a very different Kyle—focused, intent, and direct. “For those of us who are turned by a bite, those first few years are key. The demon strain that causes lycanthropy causes a whole raft of other changes—waves of uncontrollable aggression, inability to control rage, suicidal anger and despair. The pack can help with that, but a lot of the newly infected aren’t lucky enough to fall in with a pack. They’re on their own, trying to deal with all this overwhelming stuff, and a lot of them turn violent—against others or against themselves. There’s a high suicide rate and a high rate
of domestic violence.” He looked at Simon. “The same goes for vampires, except it can be even worse. An orphaned fledgling has literally no idea what’s happened to it. With no guidance, it doesn’t know how to feed safely, or even to stay out of sunlight. That’s where we come in.”