CITY OF ASHES

Night air swept in, guttering the candles in their brackets. The air smelled of city: of salt and fumes, cooling concrete and garbage, and underneath those familiar smells, the scent of copper, like the tang of a new penny.

At first Clary thought the steps were empty. Then she blinked and saw Raphael standing there, his head of black curls tousled by the night breeze, his white shirt open at the neck to show the scar in the hollow of his throat. In his arms he held a body. That was all Clary saw as she stared at him in bewilderment, a body. Someone very dead, arms and legs dangling like limp ropes, head fallen back to expose the mangled throat. She felt Jace’s hand tighten around her arm like a vise, and only then did she look more closely and see the familiar corduroy jacket with its torn sleeve, the blue T-shirt underneath now stained and spotted with blood, and she screamed.

The scream made no sound. Clary felt her knees give and would have slid to the ground if Jace hadn’t been holding her up. “Don’t look,” he said in her ear. “For God’s sake, don’t look.” But she couldn’t not look at the blood matting Simon’s brown hair, his torn throat, the gashes along his dangling wrists. Black spots dotted her vision as she fought for breath.

It was Isabelle who snatched one of the empty candelabras from the side of the door and aimed it at Raphael as if it were an enormous three-pointed spear.

“What have you done to Simon?” For that moment, her voice clear and commanding, she sounded exactly like her mother.

“El no es muerto,” Raphael said, in a flat and emotionless voice, and laid Simon down on the ground almost at Clary’s feet, with a surprising gentleness. She had forgotten how strong he must be—he had a vampire’s unnatural strength despite his slightness.

In the light of the candles that spilled through the doorway, Clary could see that Simon’s shirt was soaked through at the front with blood.

“Did you say—” she began.

“He isn’t dead,” Jace said, holding her tighter. “He’s not dead.”

She pulled away from him with a hard jerk and went to her knees on the concrete. She felt no disgust at touching Simon’s bloodied skin as she slid her hands under his head, pulling him up into her lap. She felt only the terrified childish horror she remembered from being five years old and having broken her mother’s priceless Liberty lamp. Nothing, said a voice in the back of her head, will put these pieces back together again.

“Simon,” she whispered, touching his face. His glasses were gone. “Simon, it’s me.”

“He can’t hear you,” said Raphael. “He’s dying.”

Her head jerked up. “But you said—”

“I said he was not dead yet,” said Raphael. “But in a few minutes—ten, perhaps—his heart will slow and stop. Already he is beyond seeing or hearing anything.”

Her arms tightened around him involuntarily. “We have to get him to a hospital—or call Magnus.”

“They can’t do him any good,” said Raphael. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” said Jace, his voice as soft as silk tipped with needle-sharp points. “We don’t. And perhaps you should explain yourself. Because otherwise I’m going to assume you’re a rogue bloodsucker, and cut your heart out. Like I should have done last time we met.”

Raphael smiled at him without amusement. “You swore not to harm me, Shadowhunter. Have you forgotten?”

“I never actually finished the oath,” Jace reminded him.

“And I never started,” said Isabelle, brandishing the candelabra.

Raphael ignored her. He was still looking at Jace. “I remembered that night you broke into the Dumort looking for your friend. It is why I brought him here”—and he gestured at Simon—“when I found him in the hotel, instead of letting the others drink him to death. You see, he broke in, without permission, and therefore was fair game for us. But I kept him alive, knowing he was yours. I have no wish for a war with the Nephilim.”

“He broke in?” Clary said in disbelief. “Simon would never do anything that stupid and crazy.”

“But he did,” said Raphael, with the faintest trace of a smile, “because he was afraid he was becoming one of us, and he wanted to know if the process could be reversed. You might remember that when he was in the form of a rat, and you came to fetch him from us, he bit me.”

“Very enterprising of him,” said Jace. “I approved.”

“Perhaps,” said Raphael. “In any case, he took some of my blood into his mouth when he did it. You know that is how we pass our powers to each other. Through the blood.”

Through the blood. Clary remembered Simon jerking away from the vampire film on TV, wincing at the sunlight in McCarren Park. “He thought he was turning into one of you,” she said. “He went to the hotel to see if it was true.”

“Yes,” said Raphael. “The pity of it is that the effects of my blood would probably have faded over time had he done nothing. But now—” He gestured at Simon’s limp body expressively.

“Now what?” said Isabelle, with a hard edge to her voice. “Now he’ll die?”