Chapter 25
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“Your hair,” Isabelle said. “It needs fixing. Desperately.
Sit.” She pointed imperiously toward the vanity table.
ry sat, and squinched her eyes shut as Isabelle
yanked her hair out of its braids—none too kindly—
brushed it out, and shoved what felt like bobby pins
into it. She opened her eyes just as a powder puff
smacked her in the face, releasing a dense cloud of
glitter. ry coughed and red at Isabelle
usingly.
The other girlughed. “Don’t look at me. Look at
yourself.”
ncing in the mirror, ry saw that Isabelle had
pulled her hair up into an elegant swirl on the top of
her head, held in ce with sparkling pins. ry was
reminded suddenly of her dream, the heavy hair
weighing her head down, dancing with Simon … She
stirred restlessly.
“Don’t get up yet,” Isabelle said. “We’re not done.”
She seized an eyeliner pen. “Open your eyes.”
ry widened her eyes, which was good for keeping
herself from crying. “Isabelle, can I ask you
something?”
“Sure,” said Isabelle, wielding the eyeliner expertly.
“Is Alec gay?”
Isabelle’s wrist jerked. The eyeliner skidded, inking a
long line of ck from the corner of ry’s eye to her
hairline. “Oh, hell,” Isabelle said, putting the pen
down.
“It’s all right,” ry began, putting her hand up to her
eye.
“No, it isn’t.” Isabelle sounded near tears as she
scrabbled around among the piles of junk on top of
the vanity. Eventually she came up with a cotton ball,
which she handed to ry. “Here. Use this.” She sat
down on the edge of the bed, ankle bracelets jingling,
and looked at ry through her hair. “How did you
guess?” she said finally.
“I—”
“You absolutely can’t tell anyone,” said Isabelle.
“Not even Jace?”
“Especially not Jace!”
“All right.” ry heard the stiffness in her own voice. “I
guess I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
“It would be to my parents,” said Isabelle quietly.
“They would disown him and throw him out of the
ve—”
“What, you can’t be gay and a Shadowhunter?”
“There’s no official rule about it. But people don’t like
it. I mean, less with people our age—I think,” she
added, uncertainly, and ry remembered how few
other people her age Isabelle had ever really met.
“But the older generation, no. If it happens, you don’t
talk about it.”
“Oh,” said ry, wishing she’d never mentioned it.
“I love my brother,” said Isabelle. “I’d do anything for
him. But there’s nothing I can do.”
“At least he has you,” said ry awkwardly, and she
thought for a moment of Jace, who thought of love as
something that broke you into pieces. “Do you really
think that Jace would … mind?”
“I don’t know,” said Isabelle, in a tone that indicated
she’d had enough of the topic. “But it’s not my choice
to make.”
“I guess not,” ry said. She leaned in to the mirror,
using the cotton Isabelle had given her to dab away
the excess eye makeup. When she sat back, she
nearly dropped the cotton ball in surprise: What had
Isabelle done to her? Her cheekbones looked sharp
and angr, her eyes deep-set, mysterious, and a
luminous green.
“I look like my mom,” she said in surprise.
Isabelle raised her eyebrows. “What? Too middle-
aged? Maybe some more glitter—”
“No more glitter,” ry said hastily. “No, it’s good. I
like it.”
“Great.” Isabelle bounced up off the bed, her anklets
chiming. “Let’s go.”
“I need to stop by my room and grab something,”
ry said, standing up. “Also—do I need any
weapons? Do you?”
“I’ve got plenty.” Isabelle smiled, kicking her feet up so
that her anklets jingled like Christmas bells. “These,
for instance. The left one is electrum, which is
poisonous to demons, and the right one is blessed
iron, in case I run across any unfriendly vampires or
even faeries—faeries hate iron. They both have
strength runes carved into them, so I can pack a hell
of a kick.”
“Demon-hunting and fashion,” ry said. “I never
would have thought they went together.”
Isabelleughed out loud. “You’d be surprised.”
* * *
The boys were waiting for them in the entryway. They
were wearing ck, even Simon, in a slightly too-big
pair of ck pants and his own shirt turned inside out
to hide the band logo. He was standing ufortably
to the side while Jace and Alec slouched together
against the wall, looking bored. Simon nced up as
Isabelle strode into the entryway, her gold whip coiled
around her wrist, her metal ankle chains chiming like
bells. ry expected him to look stunned—Isabelle
did look amazing—but his eyes slid past her to ry,
where they rested with a look of astonishment.
“What is that?” he demanded, straightening up. “That
you’re wearing, I mean.”
ry looked down at herself. She’d thrown a light
jacket on to make her feel less naked and grabbed
her backpack from her room. It was slung over her
shoulder, bumping familiarly between her shoulder
des. But Simon wasn’t looking at her backpack; he
was looking at her legs as if he’d never seen them
before.
“It’s a dress, Simon,” ry said dryly. “I know I don’t
wear them that much, but really.”
“It’s so short,” he said in confusion. Even half in
demon hunter clothes, ry thought, he looked like
the sort of boy who’de over to your house to pick
you up for a date and be polite to your parents and
nice to your pets.
Jace, on the other hand, looked like the sort of boy
who’de over to your house and burn it down for
kicks. “I like the dress,” he said, unhitching himself
from the wall. His eyes ran up and down herzily, like
the stroking paws of a cat. “It needs a little something
extra, though.”
“So now you’re a fashion expert?” Her voice came out
unevenly—he was standing very close to her, close
enough that she could feel the warmth of him, smell
the faint burned scent of newly applied Marks.
He took something out of his jacket and handed it to
her. It was a long thin dagger in a leather sheath. The
hilt of the dagger was set with a single red stone
carved in the shape of a rose.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t even know how to
use that—”
He pressed it into her hand, curling her fingers around
it. “You’d learn.” He dropped his voice. “It’s in your
blood.”
She drew her hand back slowly. “All right.”
“I could give you a thigh sheath to put that in,” Isabelle
offered. “I’ve got tons.”
“CERTAINLY NOT,” said Simon.
ry shot him an irritated look. “Thanks, but I’m not
really a thigh sheath kind of girl.” She slid the dagger
into the outside pocket on her backpack.
She looked up from closing it to find Jace watching
her through hooded eyes. “And onest thing,” he
said. He reached over and pulled the sparkling pins
out of her hair, so that it fell in warm and heavy curls
down her neck. The sensation of hair tickling her bare
skin was unfamiliar and oddly pleasant.
“Much better,” he said, and she thought this time that
maybe his voice was slightly uneven too.
12
DEAD MAN’S PARTY
THE DIRECTIONS ON THE INVITATION TOOK
THEM TO A LARGELY industrial neighborhood in
Brooklyn whose streets were lined with factories and
warehouses. Some, ry could see, had been
converted into lofts and galleries, but there was still
something forbidding about their looming square
shapes, boasting only a few windows covered in iron
grilles.
They made their way from the subway station,
Isabelle navigating with the Sensor, which seemed to
have a sort of mapping system built in. Simon, who
loved gadgets, was fascinated—or at least he was
pretending it was the Sensor he was fascinated with.
Hoping to avoid them, rygged behind as they
crossed through a scrubby park, its badly kept grass
burned brown by the summer heat. To her right the
spires of a church gleamed gray and ck against the
starless night sky.
“Keep up,” said an irritable voice in her ear. It was
Jace, who had dropped back to walk beside her. “I
don’t want to have to keep looking behind me to make
sure nothing’s happened to you.”
“So don’t bother.”
“Last time I left you alone, a demon attacked you,” he
pointed out.
“Well, I’d certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night
stroll with my sudden death.”
He blinked. “There is a fine line between sarcasm and
outright hostility, and you seem to have crossed it.
What’s up?”
She bit her lip. “This morning, weird creepy guys dug
around in my brain. Now I’m going to meet the weird
creepy guy who originally dug around in my brain.
What if I don’t like what he finds?”
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“What makes you think you won’t?”
ry pulled her hair away from her sticky skin. “I hate
it when you answer a question with a question.”
“No you don’t, you think it’s charming. Anyway,
wouldn’t you rather know the truth?”
“No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know.” She sighed.
“Would you?”
“This is the right street!” called Isabelle, a quarter of a
block ahead. They were on a narrow avenue lined
with old warehouses, though most now bore the signs
of human residence: window boxes filled with flowers,
lace curtains blowing in the mmy night breeze,
numbered stic trash cans stacked on the sidewalk.
ry squinted hard, but there was no way to tell if this
was the street she’d seen at the Bone City—in her
vision it had been nearly obliterated with snow.
She felt Jace’s fingers brush her shoulder. “Absolutely.
Always,” he murmured.
She looked sideways at him, not understanding.
“What?”
“The truth,” he said. “I would—”
“Jace!” It was Alec. He was standing on the
pavement, not far away; ry wondered why his
voice had sounded so loud.
Jace turned, his hand falling away from her shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Think we’re in the right ce?” Alec was pointing at
something ry couldn’t see; it was hidden behind
the bulk of arge ck car.
“What’s that?” Jace joined Alec; ry heard him
laugh. Coming around the car, she saw what they
were looking at: several motorcycles, sleek and
silvery, with low-slung ck chassis. Oily-looking
tubes and pipes slithered up and around them, ropy
as veins. There was a queasy sense of something
organic about the bikes, like the bio-creatures in a
Giger painting.
“Vampires,” Jace said.
“They look like motorcycles to me,” said Simon,
joining them with Isabelle at his side. She frowned at
the bikes.
“They are, but they’ve been altered to run on demon
energies,” she exined. “Vampires use them—it lets
them get around fast at night. It’s not strictly
Covenant, but …”
“I’ve heard some of the bikes can fly,” said Alec
eagerly. He sounded like Simon with a new video
game. “Or go invisible at the flick of a switch. Or
operate underwater.”
Jace had jumped down off the curb and was circling
the bikes, examining them. He reached out a hand
and stroked one of the bikes along the sleek chassis.
It had words painted along the side, in silver: NOX
INVICTUS. “‘Victorious night,’” he tranted.
Alec was looking at him strangely. “What are you
doing?”
ry thought she saw Jace slide his hand back inside
his jacket. “Nothing.”
“Well, hurry up,” said Isabelle. “I didn’t get this
dressed up to watch you mess around in the gutter
with a bunch of motorcycles.”
“They are pretty to look at,” said Jace, hopping back
up on the pavement. “You have to admit that.”
“So am I,” said Isabelle, who didn’t look inclined to
admit anything. “Now hurry up.”
Jace was looking at ry. “This building,” he said,
pointing at the red brick warehouse. “Is this the one?”
ry exhaled. “I think so,” she said uncertainly. “They
all look the same.”
“One way to find out,” said Isabelle, mounting the
steps with a determined stride. The rest of them
followed, crowding close to one another in the foul-
smelling entryway. A naked bulb hung from a cord
overhead, illuminating arge metal-bound door and a
row of apartment buzzers along the left wall. Only one
had a name written over it: BANE.
Isabelle pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. She
pressed it again. She was about to press it a third
time when Alec caught her wrist. “Don’t be rude,” he
said.
She red at him. “Alec—”
The door flew open.
A slender man standing in the doorway regarded
them curiously. It was Isabelle who recovered herself
first, shing a brilliant smile. “Magnus? Magnus
Bane?”
“That would be me.” The man blocking the doorway
was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense
ck spikes. ry guessed from the curve of his
sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned
skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a
ck shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His
eyes were crusted with a roon mask of charcoal
glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked
a ringden hand through his spiked hair and
regarded them thoughtfully. “Children of the Nephilim,”
he said. “Well, well. I don’t recall inviting you.”
Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a
white g. “I have an invitation. These”—she indicated
the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm
—“are my friends.”
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