Chapter 42
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ry watched him as he limped across the foyer
toward his unconscious friend. Then she zipped the
Mortal Cup into the pocket of her hoodie and got to
her feet. Isabelle had crawled to her brother’s side
and was cradling his head in herp, stroking his hair.
His chest rose and fell—slowly, but he was breathing.
Simon, leaning against the wall watching them, looked
utterly drained. ry squeezed his hand as she
passed him. “Thank you,” she whispered. “That was
amazing.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said, “thank the archery program
at B’nai B’rith summer camp.”
“Simon, I don’t—”
“ry!” It was Jace, calling her. “Bring my stele.”
Simon let her go reluctantly. She knelt down next to
the Shadowhunters, the Mortal Cup thumping heavily
against her side. Alec’s face was white, freckled with
drops of blood, his eyes unnaturally blue. His grip on
Jace’s wrist left bloody smears. “Did I …” he started,
then seemed to see ry, as if for the first time.
There was something in his look she hadn’t expected.
Triumph. “Did I kill it?”
Jace’s face twisted painfully. “You—”
“Yes,” ry said. “It’s dead.”
Alec looked at her andughed. Blood bubbled up in
his mouth. Jace pulled his wrist free, touched his
fingers to either side of Alec’s face. “Don’t,” he said.
“Hold still, just hold still.”
Alec closed his eyes. “Do what you have to,” he
whispered.
Isabelle held her stele out to Jace. “Take it.”
He nodded, and drew the tip of the stele down the
front of Alec’s shirt. The material parted as if he’d
sliced it with a knife. Isabelle watched him through
frantic eyes as he yanked the shirt open, leaving
Alec’s chest bare. His skin was very white, marked
here and there with old translucent scars. There were
other injuries there too: a darkeningttice of w
marks, each hole red and oozing. Jaw set, Jace set
the stele to Alec’s skin, moving it back and forth with
the ease of long practice. But there was something
wrong. Even as he drew the healing marks, they
seemed to vanish as if he were writing on water.
Jace threw the stele aside. “Damn it.”
Isabelle’s voice was shrill. “What’s going on?”
“It cut him with its talons,” Jace said. “There’s demon
poison in him. The Marks can’t work.” He touched
Alec’s face again, gently. “Alec,” he said. “Can you
hear me?”
Alec didn’t move. The shadows under his eyes looked
blue and as dark as bruises. If it weren’t for his
breathing, ry would have thought he was already
dead.
Isabelle bent her head, her hair covering Alec’s face.
Her arms were around him. “Maybe,” she whispered,
“we could—”
“Take him to the hospital.” It was Simon, standing over
them, the bow dangling in his hand. “I’ll help you carry
him to the van. There’s Methodist down on Seventh
Avenue—”
“No hospitals,” said Isabelle. “We need to get him to
the Institute.”
“But—”
“They won’t know how to treat him in a hospital,” said
Jace. “He’s been cut by a Greater Demon. No
mundane doctor would know how to heal those
wounds.”
Simon nodded. “All right. Let’s get him to the car.”
In a stroke of good luck, the van hadn’t been towed.
Isabelle draped a dirty nket across the backseat
and theyid Alec down across it, his head on
Isabelle’sp. Jace crouched down on the floor beside
his friend. His shirt was stained dark across the
sleeves and chest with blood, demon and human.
When he looked at Simon, ry saw that all the gold
seemed washed out of his eyes by something she
had never seen in them before. Panic.
“Drive fast, mundane,” he said. “Drive like hell was
following you.”
Simon drove.
They careened down tbush and rocketed onto the
bridge, keeping pace with the Q train as it roared over
the blue water. The sun was painfully bright in ry’s
eyes, striking hot sparks off the river. She clutched at
her seat as Simon took the curving ramp off the
bridge at fifty miles an hour.
She thought about the awful things she’d said to Alec,
the way he’d thrown himself at Abbadon, the look of
triumph on his face. When she turned her head now,
she saw Jace kneeling next to his friend as blood
seeped through the nket. She thought of the little
boy with the dead falcon. To love is to destroy.
ry turned back around, a hard lump lodged in the
back of her throat. Isabelle was visible in the badly
angled rearview mirror, wrapping the nket around
Alec’s throat. She looked up and met ry’s eyes.
“How much farther?”
“Maybe ten minutes. Simon’s driving as fast as he
can.”
“I know,” Isabelle said. “Simon—what you did, that
was incredible. You moved so fast. I wouldn’t have
thought a mundane could have thought of something
like that.”
Simon didn’t seem fazed by praise from such an
unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. “You
mean shooting out the skylight? It hit me after you
guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and
how you’d said demons couldn’t stand direct sun. So,
actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don’t feel bad,”
he added, “you can’t even see that skylight unless you
know it’s there.”
I knew it was there, ry thought. I should have acted
on it. Even if I didn’t have a bow and arrow like Simon,
I could have thrown something at it or told Jace about
it. She felt stupid and useless and thick, as though her
head were full of cotton. The truth was that she’d
been frightened. Too frightened to think straight. She
felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind her
eyelids like a small sun.
Jace spoke then. “It was well done,” he said.
Simon’s eyes narrowed. “So, if you don’t mind telling
me—that thing, the demon—where did ite from?”
“It was Madame Dorothea,” said ry. “I mean, it was
sort of her.”
“She was never exactly a pinup, but I don’t remember
her looking that bad.”
“I think she was possessed,” said ry slowly, trying
to piece it together in her own mind. “She wanted me
to give her the Cup. Then she opened the Portal …”
“It was clever,” said Jace. “The demon possessed her,
then hid the majority of its ethereal form just outside
the Portal, where the Sensor wouldn’t register it. So
we went in expecting to fight a few Forsaken. Instead
we found ourselves facing a Greater Demon.
Abbadon—one of the Ancients. The Lord of the
Fallen.”
“Well, it looks like the Fallen will just have to learn to
get along without him from now on,” said Simon,
turning onto the street.
“He’s not dead,” Isabelle said. “Hardly anyone’s ever
killed a Greater Demon. You have to kill them in their
physical and ethereal forms before they’ll die. We just
scared him off.”
“Oh.” Simon looked disappointed. “What about
Madame Dorothea? Will she be all right now that—”
He broke off, because Alec had begun to choke, his
breath rattling in his chest. Jace swore under his
breath with vicious precision. “Why aren’t we there
yet?”
“We are here. I just don’t want to crash into a wall.” As
Simon pulled up carefully at the corner, ry saw that
the door of the Institute was open, Hodge standing
framed in the arch. The van jerked to a halt and Jace
leaped out, reaching back to lift Alec as if he weighed
no more than a child. Isabelle followed him up the
walk, holding her brother’s bloody featherstaff. The
Institute door mmed shut behind them.
Tiredness washing over her, ry looked at Simon.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how you’re going to exin all
the blood to Eric.”
“Screw Eric,” he said with conviction. “Are you all
right?”
“Not a scratch. Everyone else got hurt, but not me.”
“It’s their job, ry,” he said gently. “Fighting demons
—it’s what they do. Not what you do.”
“What do I do, Simon?” she asked, searching his face
for an answer. “What do I do?”
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“Well—you got the Cup,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded, and tapped her pocket. “Yes.”
He looked relieved. “I almost didn’t want to ask,” he
said. “That’s good, right?”
“It is,” she said. She thought of her mother, and her
hand tightened on the Cup. “I know it is.”
* * *
Church met her at the top of the stairs, yowling like a
foghorn, and led her to the infirmary. The double
doors were open, and through them she could see
Alec’s still figure, motionless on one of the white beds.
Hodge was bent over him; Isabelle, beside the older
man, held a silver tray in her hands.
Jace was not with them. He was not with them
because he was standing outside the infirmary,
leaning against the wall, his bare, bloody hands curled
at his sides. When ry stopped in front of him, his
lids flew open, and she saw that the pupils of his eyes
were dted, all the gold swallowed up in ck.
“How is he?” she asked, as gently as she could.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. Demon poisonings are
common, but since it was a Greater Demon, Hodge
isn’t sure if the antidotes he usually employs will be
viable.”
She reached to touch his arm. “Jace—”
He flinched away. “Don’t.”
She sucked in her breath. “I never would have wanted
anything to happen to Alec. I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her as if seeing her there for the first
time. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s mine.”
“Yours? Jace, no it isn’t—”
“Oh, but it is,” he said, his voice as fragile as a sliver
of ice. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
“What does that mean?”
“‘My fault,’” he said. “‘My own fault, my most grievous
fault.’ It’s Latin.” He brushed a lock of her hair back
from her forehead absently, as if unaware he was
doing it. “Part of the Mass.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in religion.”
“I may not believe in sin,” he said, “but I do feel guilt.
We Shadowhunters live by a code, and that code isn’t
flexible. Honor, fault, penance, those are real to us,
and they have nothing to do with religion and
everything to do with who we are. This is who I am,
ry,” he said desperately. “I am one of the ve. It’s
in my blood and bones. So tell me, if you’re so sure
this wasn’t my fault, why is it that the first thought in
my mind when I saw Abbadon wasn’t for my fellow
warriors but for you?” His other hand came up; he
was holding her face, prisoned between his palms. “I
know—I knew—Alec wasn’t acting like himself. I knew
something was wrong. But all I could think about was
you …”
He bent his head forward, so their foreheads touched.
She could feel his breath stir her eyshes. She
closed her eyes, letting the nearness of him wash
over her like a tide. “If he dies, it will be like I killed
him,” he said. “I let my father die, and now I’ve killed
the only brother I ever had.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered.
“Yes, it is.” They were close enough to kiss. And still
he held her tightly, as if nothing could reassure him
that she was real. “ry,” he said. “What’s happening
to me?”
She searched her mind for an answer—and heard
someone clear his throat. She opened her eyes.
Hodge stood by the infirmary door, his neat suit
stained with patches of rust. “I have done what I can.
He is sedated, not in pain, but …” He shook his head.
“I must contact the Silent Brothers. This is beyond my
abilities.”
Jace drew slowly away from ry. “How long will it
take them to get here?”
“I don’t know.” Hodge started down the corridor,
shaking his head. “I’ll send Hugo immediately, but the
Brotherse at their own discretion.”
“But for this—” Even Jace was scrambling to keep up
with Hodge’s long strides; ry had fallen hopelessly
behind the two of them and had to strain her ears to
hear what he was saying. “He might die otherwise.”
“He might,” was all Hodge said in response.
The library was dark and smelled like rain: One of the
windows had been left open, and a puddle of water
had collected under the curtains. Hugo chirruped and
bounced on his perch as Hodge strode over to him,
pausing only to light themp on his desk. “It is a pity,”
Hodge said, reaching for paper and a fountain pen,
“that you did not retrieve the Cup. It would, I think,
bring somefort to Alec and certainly to his—”
“But I did retrieve the Cup,” said ry, amazed.
“Didn’t you tell him, Jace?”
Jace was blinking, though whether it was because of
surprise or the sudden light, ry couldn’t tell. “There
wasn’t time—I was bringing Alec upstairs …”
Hodge had gone very still, the pen motionless
between his fingers. “You have the Cup?”
“Yes.” ry drew the Cup out of her pocket: It was still
cold, as if contact with her body could not warm the
metal. The rubies winked like red eyes. “I have it
here.”
The pen slipped from Hodge’s hand entirely and
struck the floor at his feet. Themplight, thrown
upward, was not kind to his ravaged face: It showed
every etched line of harshness and worry and despair.
“That is the Angel’s Cup?”
“The one,” said Jace. “It was—”
“Never mind that now,” said Hodge. He set the paper
down on the desk and moved toward Jace, catching
his student by the shoulders. “Jace Wand, do you
know what you’ve done?”
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