CITY OF ASHES

Maia blew out an exasperated breath. “We are, but—I guess I don’t have to hurry the process along.”


“Don’t explain it to me; explain it to Simon.”

Maia flushed again, her cheeks turning dark red. “I doubt he’ll want to talk to me.”

“He might. He’s pretty forgiving.”

Maia looked at her more closely. “Not that I want to pry, but are you two going out?”

Clary felt herself start to flush and thanked her freckles for providing at least some cover-up. “Why do you want to know?”

Maia shrugged. “The first time I met him he referred to you as his best friend, but the second time he called you his girlfriend. I wondered if it was an on-off thing.”

“Sort of. We were friends first. It’s a long story.”

“I see.” Maia’s blush had vanished and her tough-girl smirk was back on her face. “Well, you’re lucky, that’s all. Even if he is a vampire now. You must be pretty used to all sorts of weird stuff, being a Shadowhunter, so I bet it doesn’t faze you.”

“It fazes me,” Clary said, more sharply than she’d intended. “I’m not Jace.”

The smirk widened. “No one is. And I get the feeling he knows it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know. Jace reminds me of an old boyfriend. Some guys look at you like they want sex. Jace looks at you like you’ve already had sex, it was great, and now you’re just friends—even though you want more. Drives girls crazy. You know what I mean?”

Yes, Clary thought. “No,” she said.

“I guess you wouldn’t, being his sister. You’ll have to take my word on it.”

“I have to go.” Clary was almost out the kitchen door when something occurred to her and she turned around. “What happened to him?”

Maia blinked. “What happened to who?”

“The old boyfriend. The one Jace reminds you of.”

“Oh,” Maia said. “He’s the one who turned me into a werewolf.”

“All right, I got it,” Clary said, coming back into the living room with her sketchpad in one hand and a box of Prismacolor pencils in the other. She pulled a chair out from the little-used dining room table—Luke always ate in the kitchen or in his office, and the table was covered in paper and old bills—and sat down, sketchpad in front of her. She felt as if she were taking a test at art school. Draw this apple. “What do you want me to do?”

“What do you think?” Jace was still sitting on the piano bench, his shoulders slumped forward; he looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. Alec was leaning against the piano behind him, probably because it was as far away from Magnus as he could get.

“Jace, that’s enough.” Luke was sitting up straight but looked as if it were something of an effort. “You said you could draw new runes, Clary?”

“I said I thought so.”

“Well, I’d like you to try.”

“Now?”

Luke smiled faintly. “Unless you’ve got something else in mind?”

Clary flipped the sketchpad to a blank page and stared down at it. Never had a sheet of paper looked quite so empty to her before. She could sense the stillness in the room, everyone watching her: Magnus with his ancient, tempered curiosity; Alec too preoccupied with his own problems to care much for hers; Luke hopefully; and Jace with a cold, frightening blankness. She remembered him saying that he wished he could hate her and wondered if someday he might succeed.

She threw her pencil down. “I can’t just do it on command like that. Not without an idea.”

“What kind of idea?” said Luke.

“I mean, I don’t even know what runes already exist. I need to know a meaning, a word, before I can draw a rune for it.”

“It’s hard enough for us to remember every rune—” Alec began, but Jace, to Clary’s surprise, cut him off.

“How about,” he said quietly, “Fearless?”

“Fearless?” she echoed.

“There are runes for bravery,” said Jace. “But never anything to take away fear. But if you, as you say, can create new runes…” He glanced around, and saw Alec’s and Luke’s surprised expressions. “Look, I just remembered that there isn’t one, that’s all. And it seems harmless enough.”

Clary looked over at Luke, who shrugged. “Fine,” he said.