Chapter 7
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The police. She tried to sit up, and gagged again,
fingers spasming into the damp earth.
“I told you not to move,” Jace hissed. “That Ravener
demon got you in the back of the neck. It was half-dead
so it wasn’t much of a sting, but we have to get you to
the Institute. Hold still.”
“That thing—the monster—it talked.” ry was
shuddering uncontrobly.
“You’ve heard a demon talk before.” Jace’s hands were
gentle as he slipped the strip of knotted cloth under her
neck, and tied it. It was smeared with something waxy,
like the gardener’s salve her mother used to keep her
paint- and turpentine-abused hands soft.
“The demon in Pandemonium—it looked like a person.”
“It was an Eidolon demon. A shape-changer. Raveners
look like they look. Not very attractive, but they’re too
stupid to care.”
“It said it was going to eat me.”
“But it didn’t. You killed it.” Jace finished the knot and sat
back.
To ry’s relief the pain in the back of her neck had
faded. She hauled herself into a sitting position. “The
police are here.” Her voice came out like a frog’s croak.
“We should—”
“There’s nothing they can do. Somebody probably heard
you screaming and reported it. Ten to one those aren’t
real police officers. Demons have a way of hiding their
tracks.”
“My mom,” ry said, forcing the words through her
swollen throat.
“There’s Ravener poison coursing through your veins
right now. You’ll be dead in an hour if you don’te
with me.” He got to his feet and held out a hand to her.
She took it and he pulled her upright. “Come on.”
The world tilted. Jace slid a hand across her back,
holding her steady. He smelled of dirt, blood, and metal.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.” She nced through the densely blooming
bushes. She could see the policeing up the path.
One of them, a slim blond woman, held a shlight in
one hand. As she raised it, ry saw the hand was
fleshless, a skeleton hand sharpened to bone points at
the fingertips. “Her hand—”
“I told you they might be demons.” Jace nced at the
back of the house. “We have to get out of here. Can we
go through the alley?”
ry shook her head. “It’s bricked up. There’s no way
—” Her words dissolved into a fit of coughing. She
raised her hand to cover her mouth. It came away red.
She whimpered.
He grabbed her wrist, turned it over so the white,
vulnerable flesh of her inner army bare under the
moonlight. Traceries of blue vein mapped the inside of
her skin, carrying poisoned blood to her heart, her brain.
ry felt her knees buckle. There was something in
Jace’s hand, something sharp and silver. She tried to
pull her hand back, but his grip was too hard: She felt a
stinging kiss against her skin. When he let go, she saw
an inked ck symbol like the ones that covered his
skin, just below the fold of her wrist. This one looked like
a set of ovepping circles.
“What’s that supposed to do?”
“It’ll hide you,” he said. “Temporarily.” He slid the thing
ry had thought was a knife back into his belt. It was a
long, luminous cylinder, as thick around as an index
finger and tapering to a point. “My stele,” he said.
ry didn’t ask what that was. She was busy trying not
to fall over. The ground was heaving up and down under
her feet. “Jace,” she said, and she crumpled into him.
He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting
girls, as if he did it every day. Maybe he did. He swung
her up into his arms, saying something in her ear that
sounded like Covenant. ry tipped her head back to
look at him but saw only the stars cartwheeling across
the dark sky overhead. Then the bottom dropped out of
everything, and even Jace’s arms around her were not
enough to keep her from falling.
5
CLAVE AND COVENANT
“DO YOU THINK SHE’LL EVER WAKE UP? IT’S BEEN
THREE days already.”
“You have to give her time. Demon poison is strong
stuff, and she’s a mundane. She hasn’t got runes to
keep her strong like we do.”
“Mundies die awfully easily, don’t they?”
“Isabelle, you know it’s bad luck to talk about death in a
sickroom.”
Three days, ry thought slowly. All her thoughts ran as
thickly and slowly as blood or honey. I have to wake up.
But she couldn’t.
The dreams held her, one after the other, a river of
images that bore her along like a leaf tossed in a
current. She saw her mother lying in a hospital bed,
eyes like bruises in her white face. She saw Luke,
standing atop a pile of bones. Jace with white feathered
wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked
with her whip curled around her like a of gold rings,
Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands.
Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky.
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“I told you it was the same girl.”
“I know. Little thing, isn’t she? Jace said she killed a
Ravener.”
“Yeah. I thought she was a pixie the first time we saw
her. She’s not pretty enough to be a pixie, though.”
“Well, nobody looks their best with demon poison in their
veins. Is Hodge going to call on the Brothers?”
“I hope not. They give me the creeps. Anyone who
muttes themselves like that—”
“We mutte ourselves.”
“I know, Alec, but when we do it, it isn’t permanent. And
it doesn’t always hurt ….”
“If you’re old enough. Speaking of which, where is
Jace? He saved her, didn’t he? I would have thought
he’d take some interest in her recovery.”
“Hodge said he hasn’t been to see her since he brought
her here. I guess he doesn’t care.”
“Sometimes I wonder if he—Look! She moved!”
“I guess she’s alive after all.” A sigh. “I’ll tell Hodge.”
ry’s eyelids felt as if they had been sewed shut. She
imagined she could feel tearing skin as she peeled them
slowly open and blinked for the first time in three days.
She saw clear blue sky above her, white puffy clouds
and chubby angels with gilded ribbons trailing from their
wrists. Am I dead? she wondered. Could heaven
actually look like this? She squeezed her eyes shut and
opened them again: This time she realized that what
she was staring at was an arched wooden ceiling,
painted with a rococo motif of clouds and cherubs.
Painfully she hauled herself into a sitting position. Every
part of her ached, especially the back of her neck. She
nced around. She was tucked into a linen-sheeted
bed, one of a long row of simr beds with metal
headboards. Her bed had a small nightstand beside it
with a white pitcher and cup on it. Lace curtains were
pulled across the windows, blocking the light, although
she could hear the faint, ever-present New York sounds
of trafficing from outside.
“So, you’re finally awake,” said a dry voice. “Hodge will
be pleased. We all thought you’d probably die in your
sleep.”
ry turned. Isabelle was perched on the next bed, her
long jet-ck hair wound into two thick braids that fell
past her waist. Her white dress had been reced by
jeans and a tight blue tank top, though the red pendant
still winked at her throat. Her dark spiraling tattoos were
gone; her skin was as unblemished as the surface of a
bowl of cream.
“Sorry to disappoint you.” ry’s voice rasped like
sandpaper. “Is this the Institute?”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Is there anything Jace didn’t
tell you?”
ry coughed. “This is the Institute, right?”
“Yes. You’re in the infirmary, not that you haven’t figured
that out already.”
A sudden, stabbing pain made ry clutch at her
stomach. She gasped.
Isabelle looked at her in rm. “Are you okay?”
The pain was fading, but ry was aware of an acid
feeling in the back of her throat and a strange light-
headedness. “My stomach.”
“Oh, right. I almost forgot. Hodge said to give you this
when you woke up.” Isabelle grabbed for the ceramic
pitcher and poured some of the contents into the
matching cup, which she handed to ry. It was full of a
cloudy liquid that steamed slightly. It smelled like herbs
and something else, something rich and dark. “You
haven’t eaten anything in three days,” Isabelle pointed
out. “That’s probably why you feel sick.”
ry gingerly took a sip. It was delicious, rich and
satisfying with a buttery aftertaste. “What is this?”
Isabelle shrugged. “One of Hodge’s tisanes. They
always work.” She slid off the bed,nding on the floor
with a catlike arch of her back. “I’m Isabelle Lightwood,
by the way. I live here.”
“I know your name. I’m ry. ry Fray. Did Jace bring
me here?”
Isabelle nodded. “Hodge was furious. You got ichor and
blood all over the carpet in the entryway. If he’d done it
while my parents were here, he’d have gotten grounded
for sure.” She looked at ry more narrowly. “Jace said
you killed that Ravener demon all by yourself.”
A quick image of the scorpion thing with its crabbed, evil
face shed through ry’s mind; she shuddered and
clutched the cup more tightly. “I guess I did.”
“But you’re a mundie.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” ry said, savoring the look of thinly
disguised amazement on Isabelle’s face. “Where is
Jace? Is he around?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Somewhere,” she said. “I should go
tell everyone you’re up. Hodge’ll want to talk to you.”
“Hodge is Jace’s tutor, right?”
“Hodge tutors us all.” She pointed. “The bathroom’s
through there, and I hung some of my old clothes on the
towel rack in case you want to change.”
ry went to take another sip from the cup and found
that it was empty. She no longer felt hungry or light-
headed either, which was a relief. She set the cup down
and hugged the sheet around herself. “What happened
to my clothes?”
“They were covered in blood and poison. Jace burned
them.”
“Did he?” asked ry. “Tell me, is he always really rude,
or does he save that for mundanes?”
“Oh, he’s rude to everyone,” said Isabelle airily. “It’s
what makes him so damn sexy. That, and he’s killed
more demons than anyone else his age.”
ry looked at her, perplexed. “Isn’t he your brother?”
That got Isabelle’s attention. Sheughed out loud.
“Jace? My brother? No. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Well, he lives here with you,” ry pointed out.
“Doesn’t he?”
Isabelle nodded. “Well, yes, but …”
“Why doesn’t he live with his own parents?”
For a fleeting moment Isabelle looked ufortable.
“Because they’re dead.”
ry’s mouth opened in surprise. “Did they die in an
ident?”
“No.” Isabelle fidgeted, pushing a dark lock of hair
behind her left ear. “His mother died when he was born.
His father was murdered when he was ten. Jace saw
the whole thing.”
“Oh,” ry said, her voice small. “Was it …demons?”
Isabelle got to her feet. “Look, I’d better let everyone
know you’ve woken up. They’ve been waiting for you to
open your eyes for three days. Oh, and there’s soap in
the bathroom,” she added. “You might want to clean up
a little. You smell.”
ry red at her. “Thanks a lot.”
“Any time.”
Isabelle’s clothes looked ridiculous. ry had to roll the
legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped
tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red
tank top only emphasized herck of what Eric would
have called a “rack.”
She cleaned up in the small bathroom, using a bar of
hardvender soap. Drying herself with a white hand
towel left damp hair straggling around her face in
fragrant tangles. She squinted at her reflection in the
mirror. There was a purpling bruise high up on her left
cheek, and her lips were dry and swollen.
I have to call Luke, she thought. Surely there was a
phone around here somewhere. Maybe they’d let her
use it after she talked to Hodge.
She found her Skechers ced neatly at the foot of her
infirmary bed, her keys tied into theces. Sliding her
feet into them, she took a deep breath and left to find
Isabelle.
The corridor outside the infirmary was empty. ry
nced down it, perplexed. It looked like the sort of
hallway she sometimes found herself racing down in
nightmares, shadowy and infinite. ssmps blown
into the shapes of roses hung at intervals on the walls,
and the air smelled like dust and candle wax.
In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise,
like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down
the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The
Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age,
burgundy and pale gray. Each side of the corridor was
lined with closed doors.
The sound she was following grew louder. Now she
could identify it as the sound of a piano being yed
with desultory but undeniable skill, though she couldn’t
identify the tune.
Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door
propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly
a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and
rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A
covered harp upied the center of the room.
Jace was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands
moving rapidly over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed
in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his tawny hair ruffled up
around his head as if he’d just woken up. Watching the
quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys,
ry remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by
those hands, his arms holding her up and the stars
hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel.
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