CITY OF BONES

They splashed through the filthy puddles that had collected on the pavement, Isabelle’s enormous boots making a satisfying noise every time she put her feet down. Simon, leaving the motor idling, crawled into the back to pull the door aside, revealing seats whose upholstery had half-rotted through. Dangerous-looking springs poked through the gaps. Isabelle wrinkled her nose. “Is it safe to sit?”


“Safer than being strapped to the roof,” said Simon pleasantly, “which is your other option.” He nodded a greeting to Jace and Alec, ignoring Clary completely. “Hey.”

“Hey indeed,” said Jace, and lifted the rattling canvas duffel bag that held their weapons. “Where can we put these?”

Simon directed him to the back, where the boys usually kept their musical instruments, while Alec and Isabelle crawled into the van’s interior and perched on the seats. “Shotgun!” announced Clary as Jace came back around the side of the van.

Alec grabbed for his bow, strapped across his back. “Where?”

“She means she wants the front seat,” said Jace, pushing wet hair out of his eyes.

“That’s a nice bow,” said Simon, with a nod toward Alec.

Alec blinked, rain running off his eyelashes. “Do you know much about archery?” he asked, in a tone that suggested that he doubted it.

“I did archery at camp,” said Simon. “Six years running.”

The response to this was three blank stares and a supportive smile from Clary, which Simon ignored. He glanced up at the lowering sky. “We should go before it starts pouring again.”

The front seat of the car was covered in Doritos wrappers and Pop-Tart crumbs. Clary brushed away what she could. Simon started the car before she’d finished, flinging her back against the seat. “Ouch,” she said reprovingly.

“Sorry.” He didn’t look at her.

Clary could hear the others talking softly in the back among themselves—probably discussing battle strategies and the best way to behead a demon without getting ichor on your new leather boots. Though there was nothing separating the front seat from the rest of the van, Clary felt the awkward silence between her and Simon as if they were alone.

“So what’s with that ‘hey’ thing?” she asked as Simon maneuvered the car onto the FDR parkway, the highway that ran alongside the East River.

“What ‘hey’ thing?” he replied, cutting off a black SUV whose occupant, a suited man with a cell phone in his hand, made an obscene gesture at them through the tinted windows.

“The ‘hey’ thing that guys always do. Like when you saw Jace and Alec, you said ‘hey,’ and they said ‘hey’ back. What’s wrong with ‘hello’?”

She thought she saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. “‘Hello’ is girly,” he informed her. “Real men are terse. Laconic.”

“So the more manly you are, the less you say?”

“Right.” Simon nodded. Past him she could see the humid fog lowering over the East River, shrouding the waterfront in feathery gray mist. The water itself was the color of lead, churned to a whipped cream consistency by the steady wind. “That’s why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don’t say anything, they just nod. The nod means, ‘I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,’ but they don’t say anything because they’re Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jace, from the backseat.

“Good,” Clary said, and was rewarded by the smallest of smiles from Simon as he turned the van onto the Manhattan Bridge, heading toward Brooklyn and home.


By the time they reached Clary’s house, it had finally stopped raining. Threaded beams of sunlight were burning away the remnants of mist, and the puddles on the sidewalk were drying. Jace, Alec, and Isabelle made Simon and Clary wait by the van while they went to check, as Jace said, the “demonic activity levels.”

Simon watched as the three Shadowhunters headed up the rose-lined walkway to the house. “Demonic activity levels? Do they have a device that measures whether the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?”

“No,” Clary said, pushing her damp hood back so she could enjoy the feel of the sunlight on her draggled hair. “The Sensor tells them how powerful the demons are—if there are any demons.”

Simon looked impressed. “That is useful.”

She turned to him. “Simon, about last night—”

He held up a hand. “We don’t have to talk about it. In fact, I’d rather not.”

“Just let me say one thing.” She spoke quickly. “I know that when you said you loved me, what I said back wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

“True. I’d always hoped that when I finally said ‘I love you’ to a girl, she’d say ‘I know’ back, like Leia did to Han in Return of the Jedi.”

“That is so geeky,” Clary said, unable to help herself.

He glared at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Look, Simon, I—”