CITY OF GLASS

CLARY WOKE GASPING OUT OF A DREAM OF BLEEDING ANGELS, her sheets twisted around her in a tight spiral. It was pitch-black and close in Amatis’s spare bedroom, like being locked in a coffin. She reached out and twitched the curtains open. Daylight poured in. She frowned and pulled them shut again.

Shadowhunters burned their dead, and ever since the demon attack, the sky to the west of the city had been stained with smoke. Looking at it out the window made Clary feel sick, so she kept the curtains closed. In the darkness of the room she closed her eyes, trying to remember her dream. There had been angels in it, and the image of the rune Ithuriel had showed her, flashing over and over against the inside of her eyelids like a blinking WALK sign. It was a simple rune, as simple as a tied knot, but no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t read it, couldn’t figure out what it meant. All she knew was that it seemed somehow incomplete to her, as if whoever had created the pattern hadn’t quite finished it.

These are not the first dreams I have ever showed you, Ithuriel had said. She thought of her other dreams: of Simon with crosses burned into his hands, Jace with wings, lakes of cracking ice that shone like mirror glass. Had the angel sent her those, too?

With a sigh she sat up. The dreams might be bad, but the waking images that marched across her brain weren’t much better. Isabelle, weeping on the floor of the Hall of Accords, tugging with such force on the black hair threaded through her fingers that Clary worried she would rip it out. Maryse shrieking at Jia Penhallow that the boy they’d brought into their house had done this, their cousin, and if he was so closely allied with Valentine, what did that say about them? Alec trying to calm his mother down, asking Jace to help him, but Jace just standing there as the sun rose over Alicante and blazed down through the ceiling of the Hall. “It’s dawn,” Luke had said, looking more tired than Clary had ever seen him. “Time to bring the bodies inside.” And he’d sent out patrols to gather up the dead Shadowhunters and lycanthropes lying in the streets and bring them to the plaza outside the Hall, the plaza Clary had crossed with Sebastian when she’d commented that the Hall looked like a church. It had seemed like a pretty place to her then, lined with flower boxes and brightly painted shops. And now it was full of corpses.

Including Max. Thinking of the little boy who’d so gravely talked about manga with her made her stomach knot. She’d promised once that she’d take him to Forbidden Planet, but that would never happen now. I would have bought him books, she thought. Whatever books he wanted. Not that it mattered.

Don’t think about it. Clary kicked her sheets back and got up. After a quick shower she changed into the jeans and sweater she’d worn the day she’d come from New York. She pressed her face to the material before she put the sweater on, hoping to catch a whiff of Brooklyn, or the smell of laundry detergent—something to remind her of home—but it had been washed and smelled like lemon soap. With another sigh she headed downstairs.

The house was empty except for Simon, sitting on the couch in the living room. The open windows behind him streamed daylight. He’d become like a cat, Clary thought, always seeking out available patches of sunlight to curl up in. No matter how much sun he got, though, his skin stayed the same ivory white.

She picked an apple out of the bowl on the table and sank down next to him, curling her legs up under her. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.” He looked at her. “I ought to ask you that. You’re the one with the shadows under your eyes. More nightmares?”

She shrugged. “Same stuff. Death, destruction, bad angels.”

“So a lot like real life, then.”

“Yeah, but at least when I wake up, it’s over.” She took a bite out of her apple. “Let me guess. Luke and Amatis are at the Accords Hall, having another meeting.”

“Yeah. I think they’re having the meeting where they get together and decide what other meetings they need to have.” Simon picked idly at the fringe edging a throw pillow. “Have you heard anything from Magnus?”

“No.” Clary was trying not to think about the fact that it had been three days since she’d seen Magnus, and he’d sent no word at all. Or the fact that there was really nothing stopping him from taking the Book of the White and disappearing into the ether, never to be heard from again. She wondered why she’d ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea.