CITY OF ASHES

“I should tell you,” said the vampire boy, “that there is not much time. The longer we wait before putting him into the ground, the less likely he’ll be able to dig his own way back out of it.”


Clary looked down at Simon. He really would look as if he were sleeping, if it weren’t for the long gashes along his bare skin. “We can bury him,” she said. “But I want it to be in a Jewish cemetery. And I want to be there when he wakes up.”

Raphael’s eyes glittered. “It will not be pleasant.”

“Nothing ever is.” She set her jaw. “Let’s get going. We only have a few hours until dawn.”





10

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE


THE CEMETERY WAS IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF QUEENS, WHERE apartment buildings gave way to rows of orderly-looking Victorian houses painted gingerbread colors: pink, white, and blue. The streets were wide and mostly deserted, the avenue leading up to the cemetery unlit except by a single streetlight. It took them a short while with their steles to break in through the locked gates, and another while to find a spot hidden enough for Raphael to begin digging. It was at the top of a low hill, sheltered from the road below by a thick line of trees. Clary, Jace, and Isabelle were protected with glamour, but there was no way to hide Raphael, or to hide Simon’s body, so the trees provided a welcome cover.

The sides of the hill not facing the road were thickly layered with headstones, many of them bearing a pointed Star of David at the top. They gleamed white and smooth as milk in the moonlight. In the distance was a lake, its surface pleated with glittering ripples. A nice place, Clary thought. A good place to come and lay flowers on someone’s grave, to sit awhile and think about their life, what they meant to you. Not a good place to come at night, under cover of darkness, to bury your friend in a shallow dirt grave without the benefit of a coffin or a service.

“Did he suffer?” she asked Raphael.

He looked up from his digging, leaning on the handle of the shovel like the grave digger in Hamlet. “What?”

“Simon. Did he suffer? Did the vampires hurt him?”

“No. The blood death is not such a bad way to die,” said Raphael, his musical voice soft. “The bite drugs you. It is pleasant, like going to sleep.”

A wave of dizziness passed over her, and for a moment she thought she might faint.

“Clary.” Jace’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “Come on. You don’t have to watch this.”

He held out his hand to her. Looking past him, she could see Isabelle standing with her whip in her hand. They had wrapped Simon’s body in a blanket and it lay on the ground at her feet, as if she were guarding it. Not it, Clary reminded herself fiercely. Him. Simon.

“I want to be here when he wakes up.”

“I know. We’ll come right back.” When she didn’t move, Jace took her unresisting arm and drew her away from the clearing and down the side of the hill. There were boulders here, just above the first line of graves; he sat down on one, zipping up his jacket. It was surprisingly chilly out. For the first time this season Clary could see her breath when she exhaled.

She sat down on the boulder beside Jace and stared down at the lake. She could hear the rhythmic thump-thump of Raphael’s spade hitting the dirt and the shoveled dirt hitting the ground. Raphael wasn’t human; he worked fast. It wouldn’t take that long for him to dig a grave. And Simon wasn’t all that big a person; the grave wouldn’t have to be that deep.

A stab of pain twisted through her abdomen. She bent forward, hands splayed across her stomach. “I feel sick.”

“I know. That’s why I brought you out here. You looked like you were going to throw up on Raphael’s feet.”

She made a soft groaning noise.

“Might have wiped the smirk off his face,” Jace observed reflectively. “There’s that to consider.”

“Shut up.” The pain had eased. She tipped her head back, looking up at the moon, a circle of chipped silver polish floating in a sea of stars. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You’re right. It’s our fault.”

Jace turned toward her, exasperation clear in the lines of his shoulders. “How do you figure that?”

She looked at him silently for a moment. He needed a haircut. His hair curled the way vines did when they got too long, in looping tendrils, the color of white gold in the moonlight. The scars on his face and throat looked like they had been etched there with metallic ink. He was beautiful, she thought miserably, beautiful and there was nothing there in him, not an expression, not a slant of cheekbone or shape of jaw or curve of lips that bespoke any family resemblance to herself or her mother at all. He didn’t even really look like Valentine.

“What?” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”