CITY OF ASHES

“Isabelle, wait—”

“I don’t want her to be able to lie to us about what Valentine says,” Isabelle said. “Or what happens. Besides, I want to see him. Jace’s father. Don’t you?”

Alec moved back to the library door. “Yes, but this isn’t a good idea because—”

Isabelle pushed down on the handle of the library door. It swung wide open. With a half-amused glance over her shoulder at him, she ducked inside; swearing under his breath, Alec followed her.

His mother and the Inquisitor stood at opposite ends of the huge desk, like boxers facing each other across a ring. Maryse’s cheeks were bright red, her hair straggling around her face. Isabelle shot Alec a look, as if to say, Maybe we shouldn’t have come in here. Mom looks mad.

On the other hand, if Maryse looked angry, the Inquisitor looked positively demented. She whirled around as the library door opened, her mouth twisted into an ugly shape. “What are you two doing here?” she shouted.

“Imogen,” said Maryse.

“Maryse!” The Inquisitor’s voice rose. “I’ve had about enough of you and your delinquent children—”

“Imogen,” Maryse said again. There was something in her voice—an urgency—that made even the Inquisitor turn and look.

The air just by the freestanding brass globe was shimmering like water. A shape began to coalesce out of it, like black paint being stroked over white canvas, evolving into the figure of a man with broad, planklike shoulders. The image was wavering, too much for Alec to see more than that the man was tall, with a shock of close-cropped salt-white hair.

“Valentine.” The Inquisitor looked caught off guard, Alec thought, though surely she must have been expecting him.

The air by the globe was shimmering more violently now. Isabelle gasped as a man stepped out of the wavering air, as if he were coming up through layers of water. Jace’s father was a formidable man, over six feet tall with a wide chest and hard, thick arms corded with ropy muscles. His face was almost triangular, sharpening to a hard, pointed chin. He might have been considered handsome, Alec thought, but he was startlingly unlike Jace, lacking anything of his son’s pale-gold looks. The hilt of a sword was visible just over his left shoulder—the Mortal Sword. It wasn’t as if he needed to be armed, since he wasn’t corporeally present, so he must have worn it to annoy the Inquisitor. Not that she needed to be more annoyed than she was.

“Imogen,” Valentine said, his dark eyes grazing the Inquisitor with a look of satisfied amusement. That’s Jace all over, that look, Alec thought. “And Maryse, my Maryse—it has been a long time.”

Maryse, swallowing hard, said with some difficulty, “I’m not your Maryse, Valentine.”

“And these must be your children,” Valentine went on as if she hadn’t spoken. His eyes came to rest on Isabelle and Alec. A faint shiver went through Alec, as if something had plucked at his nerves. Jace’s father’s words were perfectly ordinary, even polite, but there was something in his blank and predatory gaze that made Alec want to step in front of his sister and block her from Valentine’s view. “They look just like you.”

“Leave my children out of this, Valentine,” Maryse said, clearly struggling to keep her voice steady.

“Well, that hardly seems fair,” Valentine said, “considering you haven’t left my child out of this.” He turned to the Inquisitor. “I got your message. Surely that’s not the best you can do?”

She hadn’t moved; now she blinked slowly, like a lizard. “I hope the terms of my offer were perfectly clear.”

“My son in return for the Mortal Instruments. That was it, correct? Otherwise you’ll kill him.”

“Kill him?” Isabelle echoed. “MOM!”

“Isabelle,” Maryse said tightly. “Shut up.”

The Inquisitor shot Isabelle and Alec a venomous glare between her slitted eyelids. “You have the terms correct, Morgenstern.”

“Then my answer is no.”

“No?” The Inquisitor looked as if she’d taken a step forward on solid ground and it had collapsed under her feet. “You can’t bluff me, Valentine. I will do exactly as I threatened.”

“Oh, I have no doubt in you, Imogen. You have always been a woman of single-minded and ruthless focus. I recognize these qualities in you because I possess them myself.”

“I am nothing like you. I follow the Law—”

“Even when it instructs you to kill a boy still in his teens just to punish his father? This is not about the Law, Imogen, it is that you hate and blame me for the death of your son and this is your manner of recompensing me. It will make no difference. I will not give up the Mortal Instruments, not even for Jonathan.”