Chapter 9
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“Absolutely,” Alec agreed. “I could get a message to my
father—”
“She’s not a mundane,” Jace said quietly.
Hodge’s eyebrows shot back up to his hairline and
stayed there. Alec, caught in the middle of a sentence,
choked with surprise. In the sudden silence ry could
hear the sound of Hugo’s wings rustling. “But I am,” she
said.
“No,” said Jace. “You aren’t.” He turned to Hodge, and
ry saw the slight movement of his throat as he
swallowed. She found this glimpse of his nervousness
oddly reassuring. “That night—there were Du’sien
demons, dressed like police officers. We had to get past
them. ry was too weak to run, and there wasn’t time
to hide—she would have died. So I used my stele—put
a mendelin rune on the inside of her arm. I thought—”
“Are you out of your mind?” Hodge mmed his hand
down on top of the desk so hard that ry thought the
wood might crack. “You know what the Law says about
cing Marks on mundanes! You—you of all people
ought to know better!”
“But it worked,” said Jace. “ry, show them your arm.”
With a baffled nce in Jace’s direction, she held out
her bare arm. She remembered looking down at it that
night in the alley, thinking how vulnerable it seemed.
Now, just below the crease of her wrist, she could see
three faint ovepping circles, the lines as faint as the
memory of a scar that had faded with the passage of
years. “See, it’s almost gone,” Jace said. “It didn’t hurt
her at all.”
“That’s not the point.” Hodge could barely control his
anger. “You could have turned her into a Forsaken.”
Two bright spots of color burned high up on Alec’s
cheekbones. “I can’t believe you, Jace. Only
Shadowhunters can receive Covenant Marks—they kill
mundanes—”
“She’s not a mundane. Haven’t you been listening? It
exins why she could see us. She must have ve
blood.”
ry lowered her arm, feeling suddenly cold. “But I
don’t. I couldn’t.”
“You must,” Jace said, without looking at her. “If you
didn’t, that Mark I made on your arm …”
“That’s enough, Jace,” said Hodge, the displeasure
clear in his voice. “There’s no need to frighten her
further.”
“But I was right, wasn’t I? It exins what happened to
her mother, too. If she was a Shadowhunter in exile, she
might well have Downworld enemies.”
“My mother wasn’t a Shadowhunter!”
“Your father, then,” Jace said. “What about him?”
ry returned his gaze with a t stare. “He died.
Before I was born.”
Jace flinched, almost imperceptibly. It was Alec who
spoke. “It’s possible,” he said uncertainly. “If her father
were a Shadowhunter, and her mother a mundane—
well, we all know it’s against the Law to marry a mundie.
Maybe they were in hiding.”
“My mother would have told me,” ry said, although
she thought of theck of more than one photo of her
father, the way her mother never spoke of him, and
knew that it wasn’t true.
“Not necessarily,” said Jace. “We all have secrets.”
“Luke,” ry said. “Our friend. He would know.” With
the thought of Luke came a sh of guilt and horror. “It’s
been three days—he must be frantic. Can I call him? Is
there a phone?” She turned to Jace. “Please.”
Jace hesitated, looking at Hodge, who nodded and
moved aside from the desk. Behind him was a globe,
made of beaten brass, that didn’t look quite like other
globes she had seen; there was something subtly
strange about the shape of the countries and continents.
Next to the globe was an old-fashioned ck telephone
with a silver rotary dial. ry lifted it to her ear, the
familiar dial tone washing over her like soothing water.
Luke picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Luke!” She sagged against the desk. “It’s me. It’s
ry.”
“ry.” She could hear the relief in his voice, along with
something else she couldn’t quite identify. “You’re all
right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you before.
Luke, my mom—”
“I know. The police were here.”
“Then you haven’t heard from her.” Any vestigial hope
that her mother had fled the house and hidden
somewhere disappeared. There was no way she
wouldn’t have contacted Luke. “What did the police
say?”
“Just that she was missing.” ry thought of the
policewoman with her skeletal hand, and shivered.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the city,” ry said. “I don’t know where exactly.
With some friends. My wallet’s gone, though. If you’ve
got some cash, I could take a cab to your ce—”
“No,” he said shortly.
The phone slipped in her sweaty hand. She caught it.
“What?”
“No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. You can’te here.”
“We could call—”
“Look.” His voice was hard. “Whatever your mother’s
gotten herself mixed up in, it’s nothing to do with me.
You’re better off where you are.”
“But I don’t want to stay here.” She heard the whine in
her voice, like a child’s. “I don’t know these people. You
—”
“I’m not your father, ry. I’ve told you that before.”
Tears burned the backs of her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just
—”
“Don’t call me for favors again,” he said. “I’ve got my
own problems; I don’t need to be bothered with yours,”
he added, and hung up the phone.
She stood and stared at the receiver, the dial tone
buzzing in her ear like a big ugly wasp. She dialed
Luke’s number again, waited. This time it went to voice
mail. She banged the phone down, her hands trembling.
Jace was leaning against the armrest of Alec’s chair,
watching her. “I take it he wasn’t happy to hear from
you?”
ry’s heart felt as if it had shrunk down to the size of a
walnut: a tiny, hard stone in her chest. I will not cry, she
thought. Not in front of these people.
“I think I’d like to have a talk with ry,” said Hodge.
“Alone,” he added firmly, seeing Jace’s expression.
Alec stood up. “Fine. We’ll leave you to it.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Jace objected. “I’m the one who
found her. I’m the one who saved her life! You want me
here, don’t you?” he appealed, turning to ry.
ry looked away, knowing that if she opened her
mouth, she’d start to cry. As if from a distance, she
heard Alecugh.
“Not everyone wants you all the time, Jace,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she heard Jace say, but he
sounded disappointed. “Fine, then. We’ll be in the
weapons room.”
The door closed behind them with a definitive click.
ry’s eyes were stinging the way they did when she
tried to hold tears back for too long. Hodge loomed up in
front of her, a fussing gray blur. “Sit down,” he said.
“Here, on the couch.”
She sank gratefully onto the soft cushions. Her cheeks
were wet. She reached up to brush the tears away,
blinking. “I don’t cry much usually,” she found herself
saying. “It doesn’t mean anything. I’ll be all right in a
minute.”
“Most people don’t cry when they’re upset or frightened,
but rather when they’re frustrated. Your frustration is
understandable. You’ve been through a most trying
time.”
“Trying?” ry wiped her eyes on the hem of Isabelle’s
shirt. “You could say that.”
Hodge pulled the chair out from behind the desk,
dragging it over so that he could sit facing her. His eyes,
she saw, were gray, like his hair and tweed coat, but
there was kindness in them. “Is there anything I could
get for you?” he asked. “Something to drink? Some
tea?”
“I don’t want tea,” said ry, with muffled force. “I want
to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took
her in the first ce, and I want to kill them.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hodge, “we’re all out of bitter
revenge at the moment, so it’s either tea or nothing.”
ry dropped the hem of the shirt—now spotted all
over with wet blotches—and said, “What am I supposed
to do, then?”
“You could start by telling me a little about what
happened,” Hodge said, rummaging in his pocket. He
produced a handkerchief—crisply folded—and handed it
to her. She took it with silent astonishment. She’d never
before known anyone who carried a handkerchief. “The
demon you saw in your apartment—was that the first
such creature you’d ever seen? You had no inkling such
creatures existed before?”
ry shook her head, then paused. “One before, but I
didn’t realize what it was. The first time I saw Jace—”
“Right, of course, how foolish of me to forget.” Hodge
nodded. “In Pandemonium. That was the first time?”
“Yes.”
“And your mother never mentioned them to you—
nothing about another world, perhaps, that most people
cannot see? Did she seem particrly interested in
myths, fairy tales, legends of the fantastic—”
“No. She hated all that stuff. She even hated Disney
movies. She didn’t like me reading manga. She said it
was childish.”
Hodge scratched his head. His hair didn’t move. “Most
peculiar,” he murmured.
“Not really,” said ry. “My mother wasn’t peculiar. She
was the most normal person in the world.”
“Normal people don’t generally find their homes
ransacked by demons,” Hodge said, not unkindly.
“Couldn’t it have been a mistake?”
“If it had been a mistake,” Hodge said, “and you were an
ordinary girl, you would not have seen the demon that
attacked you—or if you had, your mind would have
processed it as something else entirely: a vicious dog,
even another human being. That you could see it, that it
spoke to you—”
“How did you know it spoke to me?”
“Jace reported that you said ‘it talked.’”
“It hissed.” ry shivered, remembering. “It talked about
wanting to eat me, but I think it wasn’t supposed to.”
“Raveners are generally under the control of a stronger
demon. They’re not very bright or capable on their own,”
exined Hodge. “Did it say what its master was
looking for?”
ry thought. “It said something about a Valentine, but
—”
Hodge jerked upright, so abruptly that Hugo, who had
been restingfortably on his shoulder,unched
himself into the air with an irritable caw. “Valentine?”
“Yes,” ry said. “I heard the same name in
Pandemonium from the boy—I mean, the demon—”
“It’s a name we all know,” Hodge said shortly. His voice
was steady, but she could see a slight tremble in his
hands. Hugo, back on his shoulder, ruffed his feathers
uneasily.
“A demon?”
“No. Valentine is—was—a Shadowhunter.”
“A Shadowhunter? Why do you say was?”
“Because he’s dead,” said Hodge tly. “He’s been dead
for fifteen years.”
ry sank back against the couch cushions. Her head
was throbbing. Maybe she should have gone for that tea
after all. “Could it be someone else? Someone with the
same name?”
Hodge’sugh was a humorless bark. “No. But it could
have been someone using his name to send a
message.” He stood up and paced to his desk, hands
locked behind his back. “And this would be the time to
do it.”
“Why now?”
“Because of the ords.”
“The peace negotiations? Jace mentioned those. Peace
with who?”
“Downworlders,” Hodge murmured. He looked down at
ry. His mouth was a tight line. “Forgive me,” he said.
“This must be confusing for you.”
“You think?”
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He leaned against the desk, stroking Hugo’s feathers
absently. “Downworlders are those who share the
Shadow World with us. We have always lived in an
uneasy peace with them.”
“Like vampires, werewolves, and …”
“The Fair Folk,” Hodge said. “Faeries. And Lilith’s
children, being half-demon, are warlocks.”
“So what are you Shadowhunters?”
“We are sometimes called the Nephilim,” said Hodge.
“In the Bible they were the offspring of humans and
angels. The legend of the origin of Shadowhunters is
that they were created more than a thousand years ago,
when humans were being overrun by demon invasions
from other worlds. A warlock summoned the Angel
Raziel, who mixed some of his own blood with the blood
of men in a cup, and gave it to those men to drink.
Those who drank the Angel’s blood became
Shadowhunters, as did their children and their children’s
children. The cup thereafter was known as the Mortal
Cup. Though the legend may not be fact, what is true is
that through the years, when Shadowhunter ranks were
depleted, it was always possible to create more
Shadowhunters using the Cup.”
“Was always possible?”
“The Cup is gone,” said Hodge. “Destroyed by
Valentine, just before he died. He set a great fire and
burned himself to death along with his family, his wife,
and his child. Scorched thend ck. No one will build
there still. They say thend is cursed.”
“Is it?”
“Possibly. The ve hands down curses on asion as
punishment for breaking the Law. Valentine broke the
greatest Law of all—he took up arms against his fellow
Shadowhunters and slew them. He and his group, the
Circle, killed dozens of their brethren along with
hundreds of Downworlders during thest ords.
They were only barely defeated.”
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