Chapter 40
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“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jace,
from the backseat.
“Good,” ry said, and was rewarded by the smallest of
smiles from Simon as he turned the van onto the
Manhattan Bridge, heading toward Brooklyn and home.
By the time they reached ry’s house, it had finally
stopped raining. Threaded beams of sunlight were
burning away the remnants of mist, and the puddles on
the sidewalk were drying. Jace, Alec, and Isabelle made
Simon and ry wait by the van while they went to
check, as Jace said, the “demonic activity levels.”
Simon watched as the three Shadowhunters headed up
the rose-lined walkway to the house. “Demonic activity
levels? Do they have a device that measures whether
the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?”
“No,” ry said, pushing her damp hood back so she
could enjoy the feel of the sunlight on her draggled hair.
“The Sensor tells them how powerful the demons are—if
there are any demons.”
Simon looked impressed. “That is useful.”
She turned to him. “Simon, aboutst night—”
He held up a hand. “We don’t have to talk about it. In
fact, I’d rather not.”
“Just let me say one thing.” She spoke quickly. “I know
that when you said you loved me, what I said back
wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
“True. I’d always hoped that when I finally said ‘I love
you’ to a girl, she’d say ‘I know’ back, like Leia did to
Han in Return of the Jedi.”
“That is so geeky,” ry said, unable to help herself.
He red at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Look, Simon, I—”
“No,” he said. “You look, ry. Look at me, and really
see me. Can you do that?”
She looked at him. Looked at the dark eyes, flecked
with lighter color toward the outside edge of the iris, at
the familiar, slightly uneven eyebrows, the longshes,
the dark hair and hesitating smile and graceful musical
hands that were all part of Simon, who was part of her. If
she had to tell the truth, would she really say that she’d
never known that he loved her? Or just that she’d never
known what she would do about it if he did?
She sighed. “Seeing through mour is easy. It’s people
that are hard.”
“We all see what we want to see,” he said quietly.
“Not Jace,” she said, unable to help herself, thinking of
those clear, impassive eyes.
“Him more than anyone.”
She frowned. “What do you—”
“All right,” came Jace’s voice, interrupting them. ry
turned hastily. “We’ve checked all four corners of the
house—nothing. Low activity. Probably just the
Forsaken, and they might not even bother us unless we
try getting into the upstairs apartment.”
“And if they do,” said Isabelle, her grin as glittering as
her whip, “we’ll be ready for them.”
Alec dragged the heavy canvas bag out of the back of
the van, dropping it on the sidewalk. “Ready to go,” he
announced. “Let’s kick some demon butt!”
Jace looked at him a little oddly. “You all right?”
“Fine.” Not looking at him, Alec discarded his bow and
arrow in favor of a polished wooden featherstaff, with
two glittering des that appeared at a light touch from
his fingers. “This is better.”
Isabelle looked at her brother with concern. “But the
bow …”
Alec cut her off. “I know what I’m doing, Isabelle.”
The bowy across the backseat, gleaming in the
sunlight. Simon reached for it, then drew his hand back
as aughing group of young women pushing strollers
headed up the street in the direction of the park. They
took no notice of the three heavily armed teenagers
crouched by the yellow van. “Howe I can see you
guys?” Simon asked. “What happened to that invisibility
magic of yours?”
“You can see us,” said Jace, “because now you know
the truth of what you’re looking at.”
“Yeah,” said Simon. “I guess I do.”
He protested a little when they asked him to stay by the
van, but Jace impressed upon him the importance of
having a getaway vehicle idling by the curb. “Sunlight’s
fatal to demons, but it won’t hurt the Forsaken. What if
they chase us? What if the car gets towed?”
Thest ry saw of Simon as she turned to wave from
the front porch was his long legs propped up on the
dashboard as he sorted through Eric’s CD collection.
She breathed a sigh of relief. At least Simon was safe.
The smell hit her the moment they walked through the
front door. It was almost indescribable, like spoiled eggs
and maggoty meat and seaweed rotting on a hot beach.
Isabelle wrinkled her nose and Alec turned greenish, but
Jace looked as if he were inhaling rare perfume.
“Demons have been here,” he announced, with cold
delight. “Recently, too.”
ry looked at him anxiously. “But they’re not still—”
“No.” He shook his head. “We would have sensed it.
Still.” He jerked his chin at Dorothea’s door, tightly shut
without a wisp of light peeking from underneath. “She
might have some questions to answer if the ve hears
she’s been entertaining demons.”
“I doubt the ve will be too pleased about any of this,”
said Isabelle. “On bnce, she’ll probablye out of it
better than we do.”
“They won’t care as long as we get the Cup in the end.”
Alec was ncing around, blue eyes taking in the
sizeable foyer, the curved staircase leading upstairs, the
stains on the walls. “Especially if we ughter a few
Forsaken while we do it.”
Jace shook his head. “They’re in the upstairs apartment.
My guess is that they won’t bother us unless we try to
get in.”
Isabelle blew a sticky strand of hair out of her face and
frowned at ry. “What are you waiting for?”
ry nced involuntarily at Jace, who gave her a
sideways smile. Go ahead, said his eyes.
She moved across the foyer toward Dorothea’s door,
stepping carefully. With the skylight ckened with dirt
and the entryway lightbulb still out, the only illumination
came from Jace’s witchlight. The air was hot and close,
and the shadows seemed to rise up before her like
magically fast-growing nts in a nightmare forest. She
reached up to knock on Dorothea’s door, once lightly
and then again with more force.
It swung open, spilling a great wash of golden light into
the foyer. Dorothea stood there, massive and imposing
in swaths of green and orange. Today her turban was
neon yellow, adorned with a stuffed canary and rickrack
trim. Chandelier earrings bobbed against her hair, and
her big feet were bare. ry was surprised—she’d
never seen Dorothea barefoot before, or wearing
anything other than her faded carpet slippers.
Her toenails were a pale, and very tasteful, shell pink.
“ry!” she eximed, and swept ry into an
overwhelming embrace. For a moment ry struggled,
embroiled in a sea of perfumed flesh, swaths of velvet,
and the tasseled ends of Dorothea’s shawl. “Good Lord,
girl,” said the witch, shaking her head until her earrings
swung like wind chimes in a storm. “Thest time I saw
you, you were disappearing through my Portal. Where’d
you end up?”
“Williamsburg,” said ry, catching her breath.
Dorothea’s eyebrows shot skyward. “And they say
there’s no convenient public transportation in Brooklyn.”
She swung the door open and gestured for them to
come in.
The ce looked unchanged from thest time ry
had seen it: There were the same tarot cards and
crystal ball scattered on the table. Her fingers itched for
the cards, itched to snatch them up and see what might
lie hidden inside their slickly painted surfaces.
Dorothea sank gratefully into an armchair and regarded
the Shadowhunters with a stare as beady as the eyes of
the stuffed canary on her hat. Scented candles burned
in dishes on either side of the table, which did little to
dispel the thick stench pervading every inch of the
house. “I take it you haven’t located your mother?” she
asked ry.
ry shook her head. “No. But I know who took her.”
Dorothea’s eyes darted past ry to Alec and Isabelle,
who were examining the Hand of Fate on the wall. Jace,
looking supremely unconcerned in his role of
bodyguard, lounged against a chair arm. Satisfied that
none of her belongings were being destroyed, Dorothea
returned her gaze to ry. “Was it—”
“Valentine,” ry confirmed. “Yes.”
Dorothea sighed. “I feared as much.” She settled back
against the cushions. “Do you know what he wants with
her?”
“I know she was married to him—”
The witch grunted. “Love gone wrong. The worst.”
Jace made a soft, almost inaudible noise at that—a
chuckle. Dorothea’s ears pricked like a cat’s. “What’s so
funny, boy?”
“What would you know about it?” he said. “Love, I
mean.”
Dorothea folded her soft white hands in herp. “More
than you might think,” she said. “Didn’t I read your tea
leaves, Shadowhunter? Have you fallen in love with the
wrong person yet?”
Jace said, “Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one
true love remains myself.”
Dorothea roared at that. “At least,” she said, “you don’t
have to worry about rejection, Jace Wand.”
“Not necessarily. I turn myself down asionally, just to
keep it interesting.”
Dorothea roared again. ry interrupted her. “You must
be wondering why we’re here, Madame Dorothea.”
Dorothea subsided, wiping at her eyes. “Please,” she
said, “feel free to give me my proper title, as the boy did.
You may call me Lady. And I assumed,” she added,
“that you came for the pleasure of mypany. Was I
wrong?”
“I don’t have time for the pleasure of anyone’spany.
I have to help my mother, and to do that there’s
something I need.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s something called the Mortal Cup,” ry said, “and
Valentine thought my mother had it. That’s why he took
her.”
Dorothea looked well and truly astonished. “The Cup of
the Angel?” she said, disbelief coloring her voice.
“Raziel’s Cup, in which he mixed the blood of angels
and the blood of men and gave of this mixture to a man
to drink, and created the first Shadowhunter?”
“That would be the one,” said Jace, a little dryness in his
tone.
“Why on earth would he think she had it?” Dorothea
demanded. “Jocelyn, of all people?” Realization dawned
on her face before ry could speak. “Because she
wasn’t Jocelyn Fray at all, of course,” she said. “She
was Jocelyn Fairchild, his wife. The one everyone
thought had died. She took the Cup and fled, didn’t
she?”
Something flickered in the back of the witch’s eyes then,
but she lowered her lids so quickly that ry thought
she might have imagined it. “So,” Dorothea said, “do
you know what you’re going to do now? Wherever she’s
hidden it, it can’t be easy to find—if you even want it
found. Valentine could do terrible things with his hands
on that Cup.”
“I want it found,” said ry. “We want to—”
Jace cut her off smoothly. “We know where it is,” he
said. “It’s only a matter of retrieving it.”
Dorothea’s eyes widened. “Well, where is it?”
“Here,” said Jace, in a tone so smug that Isabelle and
Alec wandered over from their perusal of the bookcaseContent ? provided by N?velDrama.Org.
to see what was going on.
“Here? You mean you have it with you?”
“Not exactly, dear Lady,” said Jace, who was, ry felt,
enjoying himself in a truly appalling manner. “I meant
that you have it.”
Dorothea’s mouth snapped shut. “That’s not funny,” she
said, so sharply that ry became worried that this was
all going terribly wrong. Why did Jace always have to
antagonize everyone?
“You do have it,” ry interrupted hurriedly, “but not—”
Dorothea rose from the armchair to her full, magnificent
height, and glowered down at them. “You are mistaken,”
she said coldly. “Both in imagining that I have the Cup,
and in daring toe here and call me a liar.”
Alec’s hand went to his featherstaff. “Oh, boy,” he said
under his breath.
Baffled, ry shook her head. “No,” she said quickly,
“I’m not calling you a liar, I promise. I’m saying the Cup
is here, but you never knew it.”
Madame Dorothea stared at her. Her eyes, nearly
hidden in the folds of her face, were hard as marbles.
“Exin yourself,” she said.
“I’m saying my mother hid it here,” said ry. “Years
ago. She never told you because she didn’t want to
involve you.”
“So she gave it to you disguised,” Jace exined, “in
the form of a gift.”
Dorothea looked at him nkly.
Doesn’t she remember? ry thought, puzzled. “The
tarot deck,” she said. “The cards she painted for you.”
The witch’s gaze went to the cards, lying in their silk
wrappings on the table. “The cards?” As her gaze
widened, ry stepped to the table and picked up the
deck. They were warm to the touch, almost slippery.
Now, as she had not been able to before, she felt the
power from the runes painted on their backs pulsing
through the tips of her fingers. She found the Ace of
Cups by touch and pulled it out, setting the rest of the
cards back down on the table.
“Here it is,” she said.
They were all looking at her, expectant, perfectly still.
Slowly she turned the card over and looked again at her
mother’s artwork: the slim painted hand, its fingers
wrapped around the gold stem of the Mortal Cup.
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