Chapter 14
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“Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn’t be bothered to call
me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-
blond wannabe goth you probably met at
Pandemonium,” Simon pointed out sourly. “After I spent
the past three days wondering if you were dead.”
“I was not shacking up,” ry said, d of the darkness
as the blood rushed to her face.
“And my hair is naturally blond,” said Jace. “Just for the
record.”
“So what have you been doing these past three days,
then?” Simon said, his eyes dark with suspicion. “Do
you really have a great-aunt Matilda who contracted
avian flu and needed to be nursed back to health?”
“Did Luke actually say that?”
“No. He just said you had gone to visit a sick rtive,
and that your phone probably just didn’t work out in the
country. Not that I believed him. After he shooed me off
his front porch, I went around the side of the house and
looked in the back window. Watched him packing up a
green duffel bag like he was going away for the
weekend. That was when I decided to stick around and
keep an eye on things.”
“Why? Because he was packing a bag?”
“He was packing it full of weapons,” Simon said,
scrubbing at the blood on his cheek with the sleeve of
his T-shirt. “Knives, a couple daggers, even a sword.
Funny thing is, some of the weapons looked like they
were glowing.” He looked from ry to Jace, and back
again. His tone was edged as sharply as one of Luke’s
knives. “Now, are you going to say I was imagining it?”
“No,” ry said. “I’m not going to say that.” She nced
at Jace. Thest light of sunset struck gold sparks from
his eyes. She said, “I’m going to tell him the truth.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to try to stop me?”
He looked down at the stele in his hand. “My oath to the
Covenant binds me,” he said. “No such oath binds you.”
She turned back to Simon, taking a deep breath. “All
right,” she said. “Here’s what you have to know.”
The sun had slipped entirely past the horizon, and the
porch was in darkness by the time ry stopped
speaking. Simon had listened to her lengthy exnation
with a nearly impassive expression, only wincing a little
when she got to the part about the Ravener demon.
When she was done speaking, she cleared her dry
throat, suddenly dying for a ss of water. “So,” she
said, “any questions?”
Simon held up his hand. “Oh, I’ve got questions.
Several.”
ry exhaled warily. “Okay, shoot.”
He pointed at Jace. “Now, he’s a—what do you call
people like him again?”
“He’s a Shadowhunter,” ry said.
“A demon hunter,” Jace rified. “I kill demons. It’s not
thatplicated, really.”
Simon looked at ry again. “For real?” His eyes were
narrowed, as if he half-expected her to tell him that none
of it was true and Jace was actually a dangerous
escaped lunatic she’d decided to befriend on
humanitarian grounds.
“For real.”
There was an intent look on Simon’s face. “And there
are vampires, too? Werewolves, warlocks, all that stuff?”
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ry gnawed her lower lip. “So I hear.”
“And you kill them, too?” Simon asked, directing the
question to Jace, who had put the stele back in his
pocket and was examining his wless nails for defects.
“Only when they’ve been naughty.”
For a moment Simon merely sat and stared down at his
feet. ry wondered if burdening him with this kind of
information had been the wrong thing to do. He had a
stronger practical streak than almost anyone else she
knew; he might hate knowing something like this,
something for which there was no logical exnation.
She leaned forward anxiously, just as Simon lifted his
head. “That is so awesome,” he said.
Jace looked as startled as ry felt. “Awesome?”
Simon nodded enthusiastically enough to make the dark
curls bounce on his forehead. “Totally. It’s like Dungeons
and Dragons, but real.”
Jace was looking at Simon as if he were some bizarre
species of insect. “It’s like what?”
“It’s a game,” ry exined. She felt vaguely
embarrassed. “People pretend to be wizards and elves,
and they kill monsters and stuff.”
Jace looked stupefied.
Simon grinned. “You’ve never heard of Dungeons and
Dragons?”
“I’ve heard of dungeons,” Jace said. “Also dragons.
Although they’re mostly extinct.”
Simon looked disappointed. “You’ve never killed a
dragon?”
“He’s probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in
a fur bikini, either,” ry said irritably. “Lay off, Simon.”
“Real elves are about eight inches tall,” Jace pointed
out. “Also, they bite.”
“But vampires are hot, right?” Simon said. “I mean,
some of the vampires are babes, aren’t they?”
ry worried for a moment that Jace might lunge
across the porch and throttle Simon senseless. Instead,
he considered the question. “Some of them, maybe.”
“Awesome,” Simon repeated. ry decided she had
preferred it when they were fighting.
Jace slid off the porch railing. “So are we going to
search the house, or not?”
Simon scrambled to his feet. “I’m game. What are we
looking for?”
“We?” said Jace, with a sinister delicacy. “I don’t
remember inviting you along.”
“Jace,” ry said angrily.
The left corner of his mouth curled up. “Just joking.” He
stepped aside to leave her a clear path to the door.
“Shall we?”
ry fumbled for the doorknob in the dark. It opened,
triggering the porch light, which illuminated the
entryway. The door that led into the bookstore was
closed; ry jiggled the knob. “It’s locked.”
“Allow me, mundanes,” said Jace, setting her gently
aside. He took his stele out of his pocket and put it to
the door. Simon watched him with some resentment. No
amount of vampire babes, ry suspected, was ever
going to make him like Jace.
“He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” Simon muttered. “How
do you stand him?”
“He saved my life.”
Simon nced at her quickly. “How—”
With a click the door swung open. “Here we go,” said
Jace, sliding his stele back into his pocket. ry saw
the Mark on the door—just over his head—fade as they
passed through it. The back door opened onto a small
storage room, the bare walls peeling paint. Cardboard
boxes were stacked everywhere, their contents
identified with marker scrawls: FICTION, POETRY,
COOKING, LOCAL INTEREST, ROMANCE.
“The apartment’s through there.” ry headed toward
the door she’d indicated, at the far end of the room.
Jace caught her arm. “Wait.”
She looked at him nervously. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He edged between two narrow stacks of
boxes, and whistled. “ry, you might want toe
over here and see this.”
She nced around. It was dim in the storage room, the
only illumination the porch light shining through the
window. “It’s so dark—”
Light red up, bathing the room in a brilliant glow.
Simon turned his head aside, blinking. “Ouch.”
Jace chuckled. He was standing on top of a sealed box,
his hand raised. Something glowed in his palm, the light
escaping through his cupped fingers. “Witchlight,” he
said.
Simon muttered something under his breath. ry was
already mbering through the boxes, pushing a way to
Jace. He was standing behind a teetering pile of
mysteries, the witchlight casting an eerie glow over his
face. “Look at that,” he said, indicating a space higher
up on the wall.
At first she thought he was pointing at what looked like a
pair of ornamental sconces. As her eyes adjusted, she
realized they were actually loops of metal attached to
short chains, the ends of which were sunk into the wall.
“Are those—”
“Manacles,” said Simon, picking his way through the
boxes. “That’s, ah …”
“Don’t say ‘kinky.’” ry shot him a warning look. “This
is Luke we’re talking about.”
Jace reached up to run his hand along the inside of one
of the metal loops. When he lowered it, his fingers were
dusted with red-brown powder. “Blood. And look.” He
pointed to the wall right around where the chains were
sunk in; the ster seemed to bulge outward.
“Someone tried to yank these things out of the wall.
Tried pretty hard, from the looks of it.”
ry’s heart had begun to beat hard inside her chest.
“Do you think Luke is all right?”
Jace lowered the witchlight. “I think we’d better find out.”
The door to the apartment was unlocked. It led into
Luke’s living room. Despite the hundreds of books in the
store itself, there were hundreds more in the apartment.
Bookshelves rose to the ceiling, the volumes on them
“double-parked,” one row blocking another. Most were
poetry and fiction, with plenty of fantasy and mystery
thrown in. ry remembered plowing through the
entirety of The Chronicles of Prydain here, curled up in
Luke’s window seat as the sun went down over the East
River.
“I think he’s still around,” called Simon, standing in the
doorway of Luke’s small kitchte. “The perctor’s
on and there’s coffee here. Still hot.”
ry peered around the kitchen door. Dishes were
stacked in the sink. Luke’s jackets were hung neatly on
hooks inside the coat closet. She walked down the
hallway and opened the door of his small bedroom. It
looked the same as ever, the bed with its gray coverlet
and t pillows unmade, the top of the bureau covered
in loose change. She turned away. Some part of her had
been absolutely certain that when they walked in they’d
find the ce torn to pieces, and Luke tied up, injured or
worse. Now she didn’t know what to think.
Numbly she crossed the hall to the little guest bedroom
where she’d so often stayed when her mother was out
of town on business. They’d stay upte watching old
horror movies on the flickering ck-and-white TV. She
even kept a backpack full of extra things here so she
didn’t have to lug her stuff back and forth from home.
Kneeling down, she tugged it out from under the bed by
its olive-green strap. It was covered with buttons, most
of which Simon had given her. GAMERS DO IT
BETTER. OTAKU WENCH. STILL NOT KING. Inside
were some folded clothes, a few spare pairs of
underwear, a hairbrush, even shampoo. Thank God,
she thought, and kicked the bedroom door closed.
Quickly she changed, stripping off Isabelle’s too-big—
and now grass-stained and sweaty—clothes, and pulling
on a pair of her own sandsted cords, soft as worn
paper, and a blue tank top with a design of Chinese
characters across the front. She tossed Isabelle’s
clothes into her backpack, yanked the cord shut, and left
the bedroom, the pack bouncing familiarly between her
shoulder des. It was nice to have something of her
own again.
She found Jace in Luke’s book-lined office, examining a
green duffel bag thaty unzipped across the desk. It
was, as Simon had said, full of weapons—sheathed
knives, a coiled whip, and something that looked like a
razor-edged metal disk.
“It’s a chakram,” said Jace, looking up as ry came
into the room. “A Sikh weapon. You whirl it around your
index finger before releasing it. They’re rare and hard to
use. Strange that Luke would have one. They used to
be Hodge’s weapon of choice, back in the day. Or so he
tells me.”
“Luke collects stuff. Art objects. You know,” ry said,
indicating the shelf behind the desk, which was lined
with bronze Indian and Russian idols. Her favorite was a
statuette of the Indian goddess of destruction, Kali,
brandishing a sword and a severed head as she danced
with her head thrown back and her eyes slitted closed.
To the side of the desk was an antique Chinese screen,
carved out of glowing rosewood. “Pretty things.”
Jace moved the chakram aside gingerly. A handful of
clothes spilled out of the untied end of Luke’s duffel bag,
as if they had been an afterthought. “I think this is yours,
by the way.”
He drew out a rectangr object hidden among the
clothes: a wooden-framed photograph with a long
vertical crack along the ss. The crack threw a
network of spidery lines across the smiling faces of
ry, Luke, and her mother. “That is mine,” ry said,
taking it out of his hand.
“It’s cracked,” Jace observed.
“I know. I did that—I smashed it. When I threw it at the
Ravener demon.” She looked at him, seeing the
dawning realization on his face. “That means Luke’s
been back to the apartment since the attack. Maybe
even today—”
“He must have been thest person toe through
the Portal,” said Jace. “That’s why it took us here. You
weren’t thinking of anything, so it sent us to thest
ce it had been.”
“Nice of Dorothea to tell us he was there,” said ry.
“He probably paid her off to be quiet. Either that or she
trusts him more than she trusts us. Which means he
might not be—”
“Guys!” It was Simon, dashing into the office in a panic.
“Someone’sing.”
ry dropped the photo. “Is it Luke?”
Simon peered back down the hall, then nodded. “It is.
But he’s not by himself—there are two men with him.”
“Men?” Jace crossed the room in a few strides, peered
through the door, and spat a curse under his breath.
“Warlocks.”
ry stared. “Warlocks? But—”
Shaking his head, Jace backed away from the door. “Is
there some other way out of here? A back door?”
ry shook her head. The sound of footsteps in the
hallway was audible now, striking pangs of fear into her
chest.
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