CITY OF GLASS

“What’s wrong? Does he not speak Romanian after all?” Simon asked.

“No,” said Jace. A small frown line had appeared between his eyes. “No, he speaks it all right.”

Before Simon could ask him what he meant by that, Alec entered the room. He was frowning, just as he had been when he’d left. His gaze lingered momentarily on Simon, a look almost of confusion in his blue eyes.

Jace glanced up. “Back so soon?”

“Not for long.” Alec reached down to pluck an apple off the table with a gloved hand. “I just came back to get—him,” he said, gesturing toward Simon with the apple. “He’s wanted at the Gard.”

Aline looked surprised. “Really?” she said, but Jace was already rising from the couch, disentangling his hand from hers.

“Wanted for what?” he said, with a dangerous calm. “I hope you found that out before you promised to deliver him, at least.”

“Of course I asked,” Alec snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, come on,” said Isabelle. She had reappeared in the doorway with Sebastian, who was holding a bottle. “Sometimes you are a bit stupid, you know. Just a bit,” she repeated as Alec shot her a murderous glare.

“They’re sending Simon back to New York,” he said. “Through the Portal.”

“But he just got here!” Isabelle protested with a pout. “That’s no fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun, Izzy. Simon coming here was an accident, so the Clave thinks the best thing is for him to go home.”

“Great,” Simon said. “Maybe I’ll even make it back before my mother notices I’m gone. What’s the time difference between here and Manhattan?”

“You have a mother?” Aline looked amazed.

Simon chose to ignore this. “Seriously,” he said, as Alec and Jace exchanged glances. “It’s fine. All I want is to get out of this place.”

“You’ll go with him?” Jace said to Alec. “And make sure everything’s all right?”

They were looking at each other in a way that was familiar to Simon. It was the way he and Clary sometimes looked at each other, exchanging coded glances when they didn’t want their parents to know what they were planning.

“What?” he said, looking from one to the other. “What’s wrong?”

They broke their stare; Alec glanced away, and Jace turned a bland and smiling look on Simon. “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Congratulations, vampire—you get to go home.”





4

DAYLIGHTER


NIGHT HAD FALLEN OVER ALICANTE WHEN SIMON AND ALEC left the Penhallows’ house and headed uphill toward the Gard. The streets of the city were narrow and twisting, wending upward like pale stone ribbons in the moonlight. The air was cold, though Simon felt it only distantly.

Alec walked along in silence, striding ahead of Simon as if pretending that he were alone. In his previous life Simon would have had to hurry, panting, to keep up; now he discovered he could pace Alec just by speeding up his stride. “Must suck,” Simon said finally, as Alec stared morosely ahead. “Getting stuck with escorting me, I mean.”

Alec shrugged. “I’m eighteen. I’m an adult, so I have to be the responsible one. I’m the only one who can go in and out of the Gard when the Clave’s in session; and besides, the Consul knows me.”

“What’s a Consul?”

“He’s like a very high officer of the Clave. He counts the votes of the Council, interprets the Law for the Clave, and advises them and the Inquisitor. If you head up an Institute and you run into a problem you don’t know how to deal with, you call the Consul.”

“He advises the Inquisitor? I thought—isn’t the Inquisitor dead?”

Alec snorted. “That’s like saying, ‘Isn’t the president dead?’ Yeah, the Inquisitor died; now there’s a new one. Inquisitor Aldertree.”

Simon glanced down the hill toward the dark water of the canals far below. They’d left the city behind them and were treading a narrow road between shadowy trees. “I’ll tell you, inquisitions haven’t worked out well for my people in the past.” Alec looked blank. “Never mind. Just a mundane history joke. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“You’re not a mundane,” Alec pointed out. “That’s why Aline and Sebastian were so excited to get a look at you. Not that you can tell with Sebastian; he always acts like he’s seen everything already.”

Simon spoke without thinking. “Are he and Isabelle … Is there something going on there?”

That startled a laugh out of Alec. “Isabelle and Sebastian? Hardly. Sebastian’s a nice guy—Isabelle only likes dating thoroughly inappropriate boys our parents will hate. Mundanes, Downworlders, petty crooks …”

“Thanks,” Simon said. “I’m glad to be classed with the criminal element.”