CITY OF ASHES

He was lying on a hard, bumpy metal floor painted an ugly gray-green. The walls were the same green metal. There was a single high round window in one wall, letting in only a little sunlight, but it was enough. He’d been lying with his hand in a patch of it and his fingers were red and blistered. With another groan, he rolled away from the light and sat up.

And realized he wasn’t alone in the room. Though the shadows were thick, he could see in the dark just fine. Across from him, her hands bound together and chained to a large steam pipe, was Maia. Her clothes were torn and there was a massive bruise across her left cheek. He could see where her braids had been torn away from her scalp on one side, her hair matted with blood. The moment he sat up, she stared at him and burst immediately into tears. “I thought,” she hiccupped between sobs, “that you—were dead.”

“I am dead,” Simon said. He was staring at his hand. As he watched, the blisters fading, the pain lessening, the skin resuming its normal pallor.

“I know, but I meant—really dead.” She swiped at her face with her bound hands. Simon tried to move toward her, but something brought him up short. A metal cuff around his ankle was attached to a thick metal chain sunk into the floor. Valentine was taking no chances.

“Don’t cry,” he said, and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t as if the situation didn’t warrant tears. “I’m fine.”

“For now,” said Maia, rubbing her wet face against her sleeve. “That man—the one with the white hair—his name is Valentine?”

“You saw him?” Simon said. “I didn’t see anything. Just my front door blowing in and then a massive shape that came at me like a freight train.”

“He’s the Valentine, right? The one everyone talks about. The one who started the Uprising.”

“He’s Jace and Clary’s father,” Simon said. “That’s what I know about him.”

“I thought his voice sounded familiar. He sounds just like Jace.” She looked momentarily rueful. “No wonder Jace is such an ass.”

Simon could only agree.

“So you didn’t…” Maia’s voice trailed off. She tried again. “Look, I know this sounds weird, but when Valentine came for you, did you see someone you recognized with him, someone who’s dead? Like a ghost?”

Simon shook his head, bewildered. “No. Why?”

Maia hesitated. “I saw my brother. The ghost of my brother. I think Valentine was making me hallucinate.”

“Well, he didn’t try anything like that on me. I was on the phone with Clary. I remember dropping it when the shape came at me—” He shrugged. “That’s it.”

“With Clary?” Maia looked almost hopeful. “Then maybe they’ll figure out where we are. Maybe they’ll come after us.”

“Maybe,” Simon said. “Where are we, anyway?”

“On a boat. I was still conscious when he brought me onto it. It’s a big black hulking metal thing. There are no lights and there are—things everywhere. One of them jumped out at me and I started screaming. That was when he grabbed my head and banged it into the wall. I passed out for a while after that.”

“Things? What do you mean things?”

“Demons,” she said, and shuddered. “He has all sorts of demons here. Big ones and little ones and flying ones. They do whatever he tells them.”

“But Valentine’s a Shadowhunter. And from all I’ve heard, he hates demons.”

“Well, they don’t appear to know that,” said Maia. “What I don’t get is what he wants with us. I know he hates Downworlders, but this seems like a lot of effort just to kill two of them.” She had started to shiver, her jaws clicking together like the chattery-teeth toys you could buy in novelty stores. “He must want something from the Shadowhunters. Or Luke.”

I know what he wants, Simon thought, but there was no point in telling Maia; she was upset enough already. He shrugged his jacket off. “Here,” he said, and tossed it across the room to her.

Twisting around her manacles, she managed to drape it awkwardly around her shoulders. She offered him a wan but grateful smile. “Thanks. But aren’t you cold?”

Simon shook his head. The burn on his hand was entirely gone now. “I don’t feel the cold. Not anymore.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. A struggle was taking place behind her eyes. “I’m sorry. About the way I reacted to you yesterday.” She paused, almost holding her breath. “Vampires scare me to death,” she whispered at last. “When I first came to the city, I had a pack I used to hang out with—Bat, and two other boys, Steve and Gregg. We were in the park once and we ran into some vamps sucking on blood bags under a bridge—there was a fight and I mostly remember one of the vamps just picking Gregg up, just picking him up, and ripping him in half—” Her voice rose, and she clamped a hand over her mouth. She was shaking. “In half,” she whispered. “All his insides fell out. And then they started eating.”

Simon felt a dull pang of nausea roll over him. He was almost glad that the story made him sick to his stomach, rather than something else. Like hungry. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I like werewolves. I like Luke—”