CITY OF ASHES

“He’ll be fine. Raum poison is a little more complex than a Drevak sting, but nothing I can’t handle.” Magnus motioned her away. “At least not if you get back and let me work.”


Reluctantly, she sank down into an armchair. Jace and Alec were over by the window, heads close together. Jace was gesturing with his hands. She guessed he was explaining to Alec what had happened with the demons. Simon, looking uncomfortable, was leaning against the wall beside the kitchen door. He seemed lost in thought. Not wanting to look at Luke’s slack gray face and sunken eyes, Clary let her gaze rest on Simon, gauging the ways in which he looked both familiar and very alien. Without the glasses, his eyes seemed twice their size, and very dark, more black than brown. His skin was pale and smooth as white marble, traced with darker veins at the temples and the sharply angled cheekbones. Even his hair seemed darker, in stark contrast to the white of his skin. She remembered looking at the crowd in Raphael’s hotel, wondering why there didn’t seem to be any ugly or unattractive vampires. Maybe there was some rule about not making vampires out of the physically unappealing, she’d thought then, but now she wondered if the vampirism itself wasn’t transformative, smoothing out blotched skin, adding color and luster to eyes and hair. Perhaps it was an evolutionary advantage to the species. Good looks could only help vampires lure their prey.

She realized then that Simon was staring back at her, his dark eyes wide. Snapping out of her reverie, she turned back to see Magnus getting to his feet. The blue light was gone. Luke’s eyes were still closed but the ugly grayish tint had gone from his skin, and his breathing was deep and regular.

“He’s all right!” Clary exclaimed, and Alec, Jace, and Simon came hurrying over to have a look. Simon slid his hand into Clary’s, and she wrapped her fingers around his, glad for the reassurance.

“So he’ll live?” Simon said, as Magnus sank down onto the armrest of the nearest chair. He looked exhausted, drawn and bluish. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Magnus said. “I’m the High Warlock of Brooklyn; I know what I’m doing.” His eyes moved to Jace, who had just said something to Alec in a voice too low for any of the rest of them to hear. “Which reminds me,” Magnus went on, sounding stiff—and Clary had never heard him sound stiff before—“that I’m not exactly sure what it is you think you’re doing, calling on me every time one of you has so much as an ingrown toenail that needs clipping. As High Warlock, my time is valuable. There are plenty of lesser warlocks who’d be happy to do a job for you at a greatly reduced rate.”

Clary blinked at him in surprise. “You’re charging us? But Luke is a friend!”

Magnus took a thin blue cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “Not a friend of mine,” he said. “I met him only on the few occasions when your mother brought him along when your memory spells were being refreshed.” He passed his hand across the cigarette’s tip and it lit with a multicolored flame. “Did you think I was helping you out of the goodness of my heart? Or am I just the only warlock you happen to know?”

Jace had listened to this short speech with a smolder of fury sparking his amber eyes to gold. “No,” he said now, “but you are the only warlock we know who happens to be dating a friend of ours.”

For a moment everyone stared at him—Alec in sheer horror, Magnus in astonished anger, and Clary and Simon in surprise. It was Alec who spoke first, his voice shaking. “Why would you say something like that?”

Jace looked baffled. “Something like what?”

“That I’m dating—that we’re—it’s not true,” Alec said, his voice rising and dropping several octaves as he fought to control it.

Jace looked at him steadily. “I didn’t say he was dating you,” he said, “but funny that you knew just what I meant, isn’t it?”

“We’re not dating,” Alec said again.

“Oh?” Magnus said. “So you’re just that friendly with everybody, is that it?”

“Magnus.” Alec stared imploringly at the warlock. Magnus, however, it seemed, had had enough. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in silence, regarding the scene before him with slitted eyes.

Alec turned to Jace. “You don’t—” he began. “I mean, you couldn’t possibly think—”

Jace was shaking his head in puzzlement. “What I don’t get is you going to all these lengths to hide your relationship with Magnus from me when it’s not as if I would mind if you did tell me about it.”

If he meant his words to be reassuring, it was clear that they weren’t. Alec went a pale gray color, and said nothing. Jace turned to Magnus. “Help me convince him,” he said, “that I really don’t care.”

“Oh,” Magnus said quietly, “I think he believes you about that.”