Chapter 20
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ry interrupted Hodge before he could reply. “It’s all
right. I’ll do it.”
Brother Jeremiah nodded curtly, and moved toward her
with the soundlessness that sent chills up her spine.
“Will it hurt?” she whispered.
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He didn’t reply, but his narrow white hands came up to
touch her face. The skin of his fingers was thin as
parchment paper, inked all over with runes. She could
feel the power in them, jumping like static electricity to
sting her skin. She closed her eyes, but not before she
saw the anxious expression that crossed Hodge’s face.
Colors swirled up against the darkness behind her
eyelids. She felt a pressure, a drawing pull in her head
and hands and feet. She clenched her hands, straining
against the weight, the ckness. She felt as if she
were pressed up against something hard and
unyielding, being slowly crushed. She heard herself
gasp and went suddenly cold all over, cold as winter. In
a sh she saw an icy street, gray buildings looming
overhead, an explosion of whiteness stinging her face in
freezing particles—
“That’s enough.” Jace’s voice cut through the winter
chill, and the falling snow vanished, a shower of white
sparks. ry’s eyes sprang open.
Slowly the library came back into focus—the book-lined
walls, the anxious faces of Hodge and Jace. Brother
Jeremiah stood unmoving, a carved idol of ivory and red
ink. ry became aware of the sharp pains in her
hands, and nced down to see red lines scored across
her skin where her nails had dug in.
“Jace,” Hodge said reprovingly.
“Look at her hands.” Jace gestured toward ry, who
curled her fingers in to cover her injured palms.
Hodge put a broad hand on her shoulder. “Are you all
right?”
Slowly she moved her head in a nod. The crushing
weight had gone, but she could feel the sweat that
drenched her hair, pasted her shirt to her back like
sticky tape.
There is a block in your mind, said Brother Jeremiah.
Your memories cannot be reached.
“A block?” asked Jace. “You mean she’s repressed her
memories?”
No. I mean they have been blocked from her conscious
mind by a spell. I cannot break it here. She will have to
come to the Bone City and stand before the
Brotherhood.
“A spell?” said ry incredulously. “Who would have put
a spell on me?”
Nobody answered her. Jace looked at his tutor. He was
surprisingly pale, ry thought, considering that this
had been his idea. “Hodge, she shouldn’t have to go if
she doesn’t—”
“It’s all right.” ry took a deep breath. Her palms
ached where her nails had cut them, and she wanted
badly to lie down somewhere dark and rest. “I’ll go. I
want to know the truth. I want to know what’s in my
head.”
Jace nodded once. “Fine. Then I’ll go with you.”
Leaving the Institute was like climbing into a wet, hot
canvas bag. Humid air pressed down on the city, turning
the air to grimy soup. “I don’t see why we have to leave
separately from Brother Jeremiah,” ry grumbled.
They were standing on the corner outside the Institute.
The streets were deserted except for a garbage truck
trundling slowly down the block. “What, is he
embarrassed to be seen with Shadowhunters or
something?”
“The Brotherhood are Shadowhunters,” Jace pointed
out. Somehow he managed to look cool despite the
heat. It made ry want to smack him.
“I suppose he went to get his car?” she inquired
sarcastically.
Jace grinned. “Something like that.”
She shook her head. “You know, I’d feel a lot better
about this if Hodge hade with us.”
“What, I’m not protection enough for you?”
“It’s not protection I need right now—it’s someone who
can help me think.” Suddenly reminded, she pped a
hand over her mouth. “Oh—simon!”
“No, I’m Jace,” said Jace patiently. “Simon is the
weaselly little one with the bad haircut and dismal
fashion sense.”
“Oh, shut up,” she replied, but it was more automatic
than heartfelt. “I meant to call before I went to sleep.
See if he got home okay.”
Shaking his head, Jace regarded the heavens as if they
were about to open up and reveal the secrets of the
universe. “With everything that’s going on, you’re
worried about Weasel Face?”
“Don’t call him that. He doesn’t look like a weasel.”
“You may be right,” said Jace. “I’ve met an attractive
weasel or two in my time. He looks more like a rat.”
“He does not—”
“He’s probably at home lying in a puddle of his own
drool. Just wait till Isabelle gets bored with him and you
have to pick up the pieces.”
“Is Isabelle likely to get bored with him?” ry asked.
Jace thought about this. “Yes,” he said.
ry wondered if perhaps Isabelle was smarter than
Jace gave her credit for. Maybe she would realize what
an amazing guy Simon was: how funny, how smart, how
cool. Maybe they’d start dating. The idea filled her with a
nameless horror.
Lost in thought, it took her several moments to realize
that Jace had been saying something to her. When she
blinked at him, she saw a wry grin spread across his
face. “What?” she asked, ungraciously.
“I wish you’d stop desperately trying to get my attention
like this,” he said. “It’s be embarrassing.”
“Sarcasm is thest refuge of the imaginatively
bankrupt,” she told him.
“I can’t help it. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain.”
“Your pain will be outer soon if you don’t get out of
traffic. Are you trying to get run over by a cab?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “We could never get a cab
that easily in this neighborhood.”
As if on cue, a narrow ck car with tinted windows
rumbled up to the curb and paused in front of Jace,
engine purring. It was long and sleek and low to the
ground like a limousine, the windows curved outward.
Jace looked at her sideways; there was amusement in
his nce, but also a certain urgency. She nced at
the car again, letting her gaze rx, letting the strength
of what was real pierce the veil of mour.
Now the car looked like Cindere’s carriage, except
instead of being pink and gold and blue like an Easter
egg, it was ck as velvet, its windows darkly tinted.
The wheels were ck, the leather trimmings all ck.
On the ck metal driver’s bench sat Brother Jeremiah,
holding a set of reins in his gloved hands. His face was
hidden beneath the cowl of his parchment-colored robe.
On the other end of the reins were two horses, ck as
smoke, snarling and pawing at the sky.
“Get in,” said Jace. When she continued to stand there
gaping, he took her arm and half-pushed her in through
the open door of the carriage, swinging himself up after
her. The carriage began to move before he had closed
the door behind them. He fell back in his seat—plush
and glossily upholstered—and looked over at her. “A
personal escort to the Bone City is nothing to turn your
nose up at.”
“I wasn’t turning my nose up. I was just surprised. I
wasn’t expecting … I mean, I thought it was a car.”
“Just rx,” said Jace. “Enjoy that new-carriage smell.”
ry rolled her eyes and turned to look out the
windows. She would have thought that a horse and
carriage wouldn’t have stood a chance in Manhattan
traffic, but they were moving downtown easily, their
soundless progression unnoticed by the snarl of taxis,
buses, and SUVs that choked the avenue. In front of
them a yellow cab switchednes, cutting off their
forward progress. ry tensed, worried about the
horses—then the carriage lurched upward as the horses
sprang lightly to the top of the cab. She choked off a
gasp. The carriage, rather than dragging along the
ground, sailed up behind the horses, rolling lightly and
soundlessly up and over the cab’s roof and down the
other side. ry nced backward as the carriage hit
the pavement again with a jolt—the cab driver was
smoking and staring ahead, utterly oblivious. “I always
thought cab drivers didn’t pay attention to traffic, but this
is ridiculous,” she said weakly.
“Just because you can see through mour now …”
Jace let the end of the sentence hang delicately in the
air between them.
“I can only see through it when I concentrate,” she said.
“It hurts my head a little.”
“I bet that’s because of the block in your mind. The
Brothers will take care of that.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’ll see the world as it is—infinite,” said Jace
with a dry smile.
“Don’t quote ke at me.”
The smile turned less dry. “I didn’t think you’d recognize
it. You don’t strike me as someone who reads a lot of
poetry.”
“Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors.”
Jace looked at her nkly.
“The Doors. They were a band.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“I suppose you don’t have much time for enjoying
music,” ry said, thinking of Simon, for whom music
was his entire life, “in your line of work.”
He shrugged. “Maybe the asional wailing chorus of
the damned.”
ry looked at him quickly, to see if he was joking, but
he was expressionless.
“But you were ying the piano yesterday,” she began,
“at the Institute. So you must—”
The carriage lurched upward again. ry grabbed at
the edge of her seat and stared—they were rolling along
the top of a downtown M1 bus. From this vantage point
she could see the upper floors of the old apartment
buildings that lined the avenue, borately carved with
gargoyles and ornamental cornices.
“I was just messing around,” said Jace, without looking
at her. “My father insisted I learn to y an instrument.”
“He sounds strict, your father.”
Jace’s tone was sharp. “Not at all. He indulged me. He
taught me everything—weapons training, demonology,
arcane lore, ancientnguages. He gave me anything I
wanted. Horses, weapons, books, even a hunting
falcon.”
But weapons and books aren’t exactly what most kids
want for Christmas, ry thought as the carriage
thunked back down to the pavement. “Why didn’t you
mention to Hodge that you knew the men that Luke was
talking to? That they were the ones who killed your
dad?”
Jace looked down at his hands. They were slim and
careful hands, the hands of an artist, not a warrior. The
ring she had noticed earlier shed on his finger. She
would have thought there would have been something
feminine about a boy wearing a ring, but there wasn’t.
The ring itself was solid and heavy-looking, made of a
dark burned-looking silver with a pattern of stars around
the band. The letter W was carved into it. “Because if I
did,” he said, “he’d know I wanted to kill Valentine
myself. And he’d never let me try.”
“You mean you want to kill him for revenge?”
“For justice,” said Jace. “I never knew who killed my
father. Now I do. This is my chance to make it right.”
ry didn’t see how killing one person could make right
the death of another, but she sensed there was no point
saying that. “But you knew who killed him,” she said. “It
was those men. You said …”
Jace wasn’t looking at her, so ry let her voice trail off.
They were rolling through Astor ce now, narrowly
dodging a purple New York University tram as it cut
through traffic. Passing pedestrians looked crushed by
the heavy air, like insects pinned under ss. Some
groups of homeless kids were crowded around the base
of a big brass statue, folded cardboard signs asking for
money propped up in front of them. ry saw a girl
about her own age with a smoothly shaved bald head
leaning against a brown-skinned boy with dreadlocks,
his face adorned with a dozen piercings. He turned his
head as the carriage rolled by as if he could see it, and
she caught the gleam of his eyes. One of them was
clouded, as though it had no pupil.
“I was ten,” Jace said. She turned to look at him. He
was without expression. It always seemed like some
color drained out of him when he talked about his father.
“We lived in a manor house, out in the country. My
father always said it was safer away from people. I
heard theming up the drive and went to tell him. He
told me to hide, so I hid. Under the stairs. I saw those
mene in. They had others with them. Not men.
Forsaken. They overpowered my father and cut his
throat. The blood ran across the floor. It soaked my
shoes. I didn’t move.”
It took a moment for ry to realize he was done
speaking, and another to find her voice. “I’m so sorry,
Jace.”
His eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I don’t understand
why mundanes always apologize for things that aren’t
their fault.”
“I’m not apologizing. It’s a way of—empathizing. Of
saying that I’m sorry you’re unhappy.”
“I’m not unhappy,” he said. “Only people with no
purpose are unhappy. I’ve got a purpose.”
“Do you mean killing demons, or getting revenge for
your father’s death?”
“Both.”
“Would your father really want you to kill those men?
Just for revenge?”
“A Shadowhunter who kills another of his brothers is
worse than a demon and should be put down like one,”
Jace said, sounding as if he were reciting the words
from a textbook.
“But are all demons evil?” she said. “I mean, if all
vampires aren’t evil, and all werewolves aren’t evil,
maybe—”
Jace turned on her, looking exasperated. “It’s not the
same thing at all. Vampires, werewolves, even warlocks,
they’re part human. Part of this world, born in it. They
belong here. But demonse from other worlds.
They’re interdimensional parasites. Theye to a
world and use it up. They can’t build, just destroy—they
can’t make, only use. They drain a ce to ashes and
when it’s dead, they move on to the next one. It’s life
they want—not just your life or mine, but all the life of
this world, its rivers and cities, its oceans, its everything.
And the only thing that stands between them and the
destruction of all this”—he pointed outside the window
of the carriage, waving his hand as if he meant to
indicate everything in the city from the skyscrapers
uptown to the clog of traffic on Houston Street—“is the
Nephilim.”
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