The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (243 page)

Isabelle didn’t deny it. “You’re just as brave as Jace.”

“Maybe,” said Simon. “But I’m not Nephilim. I can’t do what he can do. And I don’t mean as much to as many people.”

“Special destinies and special torments,” Isabelle whispered. “Simon—you mean a lot to me.”

He reached out, and lightly cupped her cheek. “You’re a warrior, Iz. It’s what you do. It’s what you are. But if you can’t fight Sebastian because hurting him would hurt Jace, you can’t fight the war. And if you have to kill Jace to win the war, I think it’ll kill part of your soul. And I don’t want to see that, not if I could do something to change it.”

She swallowed. “It’s not fair,” she said. “That it has to be you—”

“This is my choice, to do this. Jace doesn’t have a choice. If he dies, it’s for something he didn’t have anything to do with, not really.”

Isabelle expelled a breath. She uncrossed her arms and took him by the elbow. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She steered him back toward the group, who broke off their argument and stared when she cleared her throat, as if they hadn’t quite realized the two of them had been missing until this moment.

“That’s enough,” she said. “Simon has made his decision, and it’s his decision to make. He’s going to summon Raziel. And we’re going to help him in any way we can.”

They danced. Clary tried to lose herself in the pounding beat of the music, the rush of blood in her veins, the way she
had once been able to do at Pandemonium with Simon. Of course Simon had been a fairly terrible dancer, and Jace was an excellent dancer. She supposed it made sense. With all that trained fighting control and careful grace, there wasn’t much he couldn’t make his body do. When he flung his head back, his hair was dark with sweat, pasted to his temples, and the curve of his throat gleamed in the light of the bone chandelier.

She saw the way the other dancers looked at him—appreciation, speculation, predatory hunger. A possessiveness she couldn’t name or control rose up inside her. She moved closer, sliding up his body the way she’d seen girls do on the dance floor before but had never had the nerve to try herself. She’d always been convinced she’d get her hair caught on someone’s belt buckle, but things were different now. Her months of training didn’t pay off just in a fight, but any time she had to use her body. She felt fluid, in control, in a way she never had before. She pressed her body against Jace’s.

His eyes had been closed; he opened them just as an explosion of colored light lit up the darkness above them. Metallic drops rained down on them; droplets were caught in Jace’s hair and shimmering on his skin like mercury. He touched his fingers to a drop of silver liquid on his collarbone and showed it to her, his lips curving. “Do you remember what I told you that first time at Taki’s? About faerie food?”

“I remember you said you ran down Madison Avenue naked with antlers on your head,” said Clary, blinking silver drops off her lashes.

“I don’t think that was ever proved to have actually been me.” Only Jace could talk while he danced and not make it look
awkward. “Well, this stuff”—and he flicked at the silvery liquid that mixed with his hair and skin, painting him in metal—“is like that. It’ll get you…”

“High?”

He watched her with darkened eyes. “It can be fun.” Another of the drifting flower-things burst above their head; this spatter was silver-blue, like water. Jace licked a drop off the side of his hand, studying her.

High.
Clary had never done drugs, didn’t even drink. Maybe if you counted the bottle of Kahlúa she and Simon had smuggled out of his mom’s liquor cabinet and drunk when they’d been thirteen. They’d been heartily sick afterward; Simon had, in fact, thrown up in a hedge. It hadn’t been worth it, but she did remember the sensation of being dizzy and giggly and happy for no reason.

When Jace lowered his hand, his mouth was stained with silver. He was still watching her, gold eyes dark under his long lashes.

Happy for no reason.

She thought of the way they had been together in the time after the Mortal War before Lilith had begun to possess him. He had been the Jace in the photograph on his wall then: so happy. They both had been happy. There had been no nagging doubt when she looked at him, none of this feeling of tiny knives under her skin, eroding the closeness between them.

She leaned up then, and kissed him, slowly and definitively, on the lips.

Her mouth exploded with a sweet-sour taste, a mixture of wine and candy. More of the silvery liquid rained down on them as she pulled away from him, licking her mouth deliberately.
Jace was breathing hard; he reached for her, but she spun away, laughing.

She felt wild and free suddenly, and incredibly light. She knew there was something terribly important she was supposed to be doing, but she couldn’t remember what it was, or why she had cared. The faces of the dancers around her no longer looked vulpine and faintly frightening, but darkly beautiful. She was in a great echoing cavern, and the shadows around her were painted with colors lovelier and brighter than any sunset. The angel statue that loomed above her seemed benevolent, a thousand times more so than Raziel and his cold white light, and a high singing note sounded from it, pure and clear and perfect. She spun, faster and faster, leaving behind grief, memories, loss, until she spun into a pair of arms that snaked around her from behind and held her tight. She looked down and saw scarred hands locked around her waist, slim beautiful fingers, the Voyance rune. Jace. She melted back against him, closing her eyes, letting her head fall into the curve of his shoulder. She could feel his heart beating against her spine.

No one else’s heart beat like Jace’s did, or ever could.

Her eyes flew open, and she spun around, her hands out to push him away. “Sebastian,” she whispered. Her brother grinned down at her, silver and black like the Morgenstern ring.

“Clarissa,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

No.
The word came and went, dissolving like sugar into liquid. She couldn’t remember why she was supposed to say no to him. He was her brother; she should love him. He had brought her to this beautiful place. Perhaps he had done bad things, but that was a long time ago and she could no longer remember what they were.

“I can hear angels singing,” she said to him.

He chuckled. “I see you found out that silvery stuff isn’t just glitter.” He reached forward and stroked his forefinger across her cheekbone; it was silver when it came away, as if he had caught a painted tear. “Come along, angel girl.” He held out his hand.

“But Jace,” she said. “I lost him in the crowd—”

“He’ll find us.” Sebastian’s hand clamped around hers, surprisingly warm and comforting. She let him draw her toward one of the fountains in the middle of the room, and set her down on the wide marble edge. He sat down beside her, her hand still in his. “Look in the water,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

She leaned over and looked into the smooth dark surface of the pool. She could see her own face reflected back at her, her eyes wide and wild, her eye makeup smudged like bruises, her hair tangled. And then Sebastian leaned over too, and she saw his face beside hers. The silver of his hair reflected in the water made her think of the moon on the river. She reached to touch its brilliance, and the water shivered apart, their reflections distorting, unrecognizable.

“What is it?” Sebastian said, and there was a low urgency in his voice.

Clary shook her head; he was being very silly. “I saw you and me,” she said in a chiding tone. “What else?”

He put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward him. His eyes were black, night-black, with only a ring of silver separating the pupil from the iris. “Don’t you see it? We’re the same, you and me.”

“The same?” She blinked at him. There was something very wrong with what he was saying, though she couldn’t say quite what. “No…”

“You’re my sister,” he said. “We have the same blood.”

“You have demon blood,” she said. “Lilith’s blood.” For some reason this struck her as funny, and she giggled. “You’re all dark, dark, dark. And Jace and I are light.”

“You have a dark heart in you, Valentine’s daughter,” he said. “You just won’t admit it. And if you want Jace, you had better accept it. Because he belongs to me now.”

“Then, who do you belong to?”

Sebastian’s lips parted; he said nothing. For the first time, Clary thought, he looked as if he had nothing to say. She was surprised; his words hadn’t meant much to her, and she’d merely been idly curious. Before she could say anything else, a voice above them said:

“What’s going on?” It was Jace. He looked from one of them to the other, his face unreadable. More of the shimmering stuff had gotten on him, silver drops clinging to the gold of his hair. “Clary.” He sounded annoyed. She pulled away from Sebastian and hopped to her feet.

“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I got lost in the crowd.”

“I noticed,” he said. “One second I was dancing with you, and the next you were gone and a very persistent werewolf was trying to get the buttons on my jeans undone.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Girl or boy werewolf?”

“Not sure. Either way, they could have used a shave.” He took Clary’s hand, lightly ringing her wrist with his fingers. “Do you want to go home? Or dance some more?”

“Dance some more. Is that all right?”

“Go ahead.” Sebastian leaned back, his hands braced behind him on the fountain’s edge, his smile like the edge of a straight razor. “I don’t mind watching.”

Something flashed across Clary’s vision: the memory of a bloody handprint. It was gone as soon as it had come, and she frowned. The night was too beautiful to think of ugly things. She looked back at her brother only for a moment before she let Jace lead her back through the crowd to its edge, near the shadows, where the press of bodies was lighter. Another ball of colored light burst above their heads as they went, scattering silver, and she tipped her head up, catching the salt-sweet drops on her tongue.

In the center of the room, beneath the bone chandelier, Jace stopped and she swung toward him. Her arms were around him, and she felt the silver liquid trickling down her face like tears. The fabric of his T-shirt was thin and she could feel the burn of his skin underneath. Her hands slid up under the hem, her nails scratching lightly over his ribs. Silver drops of liquid spangled his eyelashes as he lowered his glance to hers, leaned to whisper in her ear. His hands moved over her shoulders, down her arms. Neither of them were really dancing anymore: the hypnotic music went on around them, and the whirl of other dancers, but Clary barely noticed. A couple moving past laughed and made a derisive comment in Czech; Clary couldn’t understand it, but suspected the gist was
Get a room
.

Jace made an impatient noise, and then he was moving through the crowd again, drawing her after him and into one of the shadowy alcoves that lined the walls.

There were dozens of these circular alcoves, each lined with a stone bench and provided with a velvet curtain that could be pulled closed to provide a modicum of privacy. Jace yanked the curtain shut and they crashed against each other like the sea against the shore. Their mouths collided and slid together; Jace lifted her up so she was pressed against him, his
fingers twisting in the slippery material of her dress.

Clary was conscious of heat and softness, hands seeking and finding, yielding and pressure. Her hands under Jace’s T-shirt, her fingernails clawing at his back, savagely pleased when he gasped. He bit down on her bottom lip and she tasted blood in her mouth, salt and hot. It was as if they wanted to cut each other apart, she thought, to climb inside each other’s bodies and share their heartbeats, even if it killed them both.

It was dark in the alcove, so dark that Jace was only an outline of shadows and gold. His body pinned Clary’s to the wall. His hands slid down along her body and reached the end of her dress, drawing it up along her legs.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “Jace?”

He looked at her. The peculiar light in the club turned his eyes an array of fractured colors. His smile was wicked. “You can tell me to stop whenever you want,” he said. “But you won’t.”

Sebastian drew aside the dusty velvet curtain that closed off the alcove, and smiled.

A bench ran around the inside of the small circular room, and a man sat there, leaning his elbows on a stone table. He had long black hair tied back, a scar or mark in the shape of a leaf on one cheek, and his eyes were as green as grass. He wore a white suit, and a handkerchief with green leaf embroidery peeked from one pocket.

“Jonathan Morgenstern,” Meliorn said.

Sebastian did not correct him. Faeries took great stock in names, and would never call him by anything but the name his father had chosen for him. “I wasn’t sure you would be here at the appointed time, Meliorn.”

“May I remind you that the Fair Folk do not lie,” said the knight. He reached up and twitched the curtain shut behind Sebastian. The pounding music outside was discreetly muffled, though by no means inaudible. “Come in, then, and seat yourself. Wine?”

Sebastian settled himself on the bench. “No, nothing.” Wine, like the faerie liquor, would only cloud his thoughts, and faeries seemed to have a higher tolerance. “I admit I was surprised when I received the message that you wished to meet here.”

“You above all should know that the Lady has a special interest in you. She knows of all your movements.” Meliorn took a sip of wine. “There was a great demonic disturbance here in Prague tonight. The Queen was concerned.”

Sebastian spread his arms out. “As you can see, I am unharmed.”

“A disturbance so great will surely win the attention of the Nephilim. In fact, if I am not mistaken, several of them already disport themselves without.”

“Without what?” Sebastian asked innocently.

Meliorn took another sip of wine and glared.

“Oh, right. I always forget the amusing way faeries talk. You mean there are Shadowhunters in the crowd outside, looking for me. I know that. I noticed them earlier. The Queen does not think much of me if she does not think I can handle a few Nephilim on my own.” Sebastian drew a dagger from his belt and twirled it, the very little light in the alcove sparking off the blade.