CITY OF ASHES

“The blood of Downworlder children. But Maia and Simon aren’t children. They’re teenagers.”


“When that spell was created, the spell to turn the Soul-Sword to darkness, the word ‘teenager’ hadn’t even been invented. In Shadowhunter society, you’re an adult when you’re eighteen. Before that, you’re a child. For Valentine’s purposes, Maia and Simon are children. He has the blood of a faerie child already, and the blood of a warlock child. All he needed was a werewolf and a vampire.”

Clary felt as if the air had been punched out of her. “Then why didn’t we do something? Why didn’t we think of protecting them somehow?”

“So far Valentine has done what’s convenient. None of his victims were chosen for any other reason than that they were there and available. The warlock was easy to find; all Valentine had to do was hire him under the pretense of wanting a demon raised. It’s simple enough to spot faeries in the park if you know where to look. And the Hunter’s Moon is exactly where you’d go if you wanted to find a werewolf. Putting himself to this extra danger and trouble just to strike out at us when nothing’s changed—”

“Jace,” said Clary.

“What do you mean, Jace? What about him?”

“I think it’s Jace he’s trying to get back at. Jace must have done something last night on the boat, something that really pissed Valentine off. Pissed him off enough to abandon whatever plan he had before and make a new one.”

Luke looked baffled. “What makes you think that Valentine’s change of plans had anything to do with your brother?”

“Because,” Clary said with grim certainty, “only Jace can piss someone off that much.”

“Isabelle!” Alec pounded on his sister’s door. “Isabelle, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

The door opened a crack. Alec tried to peer through it, but no one appeared to be on the other side. “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” said a well-known voice.

Alec glanced down and saw gray eyes glaring at him from behind a bent pair of spectacles. “Max,” he said. “Come on, little brother, let me in.”

“I don’t want to talk to you either.” Max started to push the door shut, but Alec, quick as a flick of Isabelle’s whip, wedged his foot into the gap.

“Don’t make me knock you over, Max.”

“You wouldn’t.” Max pushed back with all his might.

“No, but I might go get our parents, and I have a feeling Isabelle doesn’t want that. Do you, Izzy?” he demanded, pitching his voice loud enough for his sister, inside the room, to hear.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Isabelle sounded furious. “All right, Max. Let him in.”

Max stepped away and Alec pushed his way in, letting the door swing half-shut behind him. Isabelle was kneeling in the embrasure of the window beside her bed, her gold whip coiled around her left arm. She was wearing her hunting gear, the tough black trousers and skintight shirt with their silvery, near-invisible design of runes. Her boots were buckled up to her knees and her black hair whipped in the breeze from the open window. She glared at him, reminding him for a moment of nothing more than Hugo, Hodge’s black raven.

“What the hell are you doing? Trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded, striding furiously across the room toward his sister.

Her whip snaked out, coiling around his ankles. Alec stopped dead, knowing that with a single flick of her wrist Isabelle could jerk him off his feet and land him in a trussed bundle on the hardwood floor. “Don’t come any closer to me, Alexander Lightwood,” she said in her angriest voice. “I’m not feeling very charitable toward you at the moment.”

“Isabelle—”

“How could you just turn on Jace like that? After all he’s been through? And you swore that oath to watch out for each other too—”

“Not,” he reminded her, “if it meant breaking the Law.”

“The Law”!” Isabelle snapped in disgust. “There’s a higher law than the Clave, Alec. The law of family. Jace is your family.”

“The law of family? I’ve never heard of that before,” Alec said, nettled. He knew he ought to be defending himself, but it was hard not to be distracted by the lifelong habit of correcting one’s younger siblings when they were wrong. “Could that be because you just made it up?”

Isabelle flicked her wrist. Alec felt his feet go out from under him and twisted to absorb the impact of falling with his hands and wrists. He landed, rolled onto his back, and looked up to see Isabelle looming over him. Max was beside her. “What should we do with him, Maxwell?” Isabelle asked. “Leave him tied up here for the parents to find?”

Alec had had enough. He whipped a blade from the sheath at his wrist, twisted, and slashed it through the whip around his ankles. The electrum wire parted with a snap and he sprang to his feet as Isabelle drew her arm back, the wire hissing around her.

A low chuckle broke the tension. “All right, all right, you’ve tortured him enough. I’m here.”