CITY OF BONES

Dorothea’s mouth snapped shut. “That’s not funny,” she said, so sharply that Clary became worried that this was all going terribly wrong. Why did Jace always have to antagonize everyone?

“You do have it,” Clary interrupted hurriedly, “but not—”

Dorothea rose from the armchair to her full, magnificent height, and glowered down at them. “You are mistaken,” she said coldly. “Both in imagining that I have the Cup, and in daring to come here and call me a liar.”

Alec’s hand went to his featherstaff. “Oh, boy,” he said under his breath.

Baffled, Clary shook her head. “No,” she said quickly, “I’m not calling you a liar, I promise. I’m saying the Cup is here, but you never knew it.”

Madame Dorothea stared at her. Her eyes, nearly hidden in the folds of her face, were hard as marbles. “Explain yourself,” she said.

“I’m saying my mother hid it here,” said Clary. “Years ago. She never told you because she didn’t want to involve you.”

“So she gave it to you disguised,” Jace explained, “in the form of a gift.”

Dorothea looked at him blankly.

Doesn’t she remember? Clary thought, puzzled. “The tarot deck,” she said. “The cards she painted for you.”

The witch’s gaze went to the cards, lying in their silk wrappings on the table. “The cards?” As her gaze widened, Clary stepped to the table and picked up the deck. They were warm to the touch, almost slippery. Now, as she had not been able to before, she felt the power from the runes painted on their backs pulsing through the tips of her fingers. She found the Ace of Cups by touch and pulled it out, setting the rest of the cards back down on the table.

“Here it is,” she said.

They were all looking at her, expectant, perfectly still. Slowly she turned the card over and looked again at her mother’s artwork: the slim painted hand, its fingers wrapped around the gold stem of the Mortal Cup.

“Jace,” she said. “Give me your stele.”

He pressed it, warm and alive-feeling, into her palm. She turned the card over and traced over the runes painted on its back—a twist here and a line there and they meant something entirely different. When she turned the card back over, the picture had subtly changed: The fingers had released their grip on the Cup’s stem, and the hand seemed almost to be offering the Cup to her as if to say, Here, take it.

She slid the stele into her pocket. Then, though the painted square was no bigger than her hand, she reached into it as if through a wide gap. Her hand wrapped around the base of the Cup—her fingers closed on it—and as she drew her hand back, the Cup gripped firmly in it, she thought she heard the smallest of sighs before the card, now blank and empty, turned to ash that sifted away between her fingers to the carpeted floor.





19

ABBADON


CLARY WASN’T SURE WHAT SHE’D EXPECTED—EXCLAMATIONS of delight, perhaps a smattering of applause. Instead there was silence, broken only when Jace said, “Somehow, I thought it would be bigger.”

Clary looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size, perhaps, of an ordinary wineglass, only much heavier. Power thrummed through it, like blood through living veins. “It’s a perfectly nice size,” she said indignantly.

“Oh, it’s big enough,” he said patronizingly, “but somehow I was expecting something … you know.” He gestured with his hands, indicating something roughly the size of a house cat.

“It’s the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl,” said Isabelle. “Are we done now? Can we go?”

Dorothea had her head cocked to one side, her beady eyes bright and interested. “But it’s damaged!” she exclaimed. “How did that happen?”

“Damaged?” Clary looked at the Cup in bewilderment. It looked fine to her.

“Here,” said the witch, “let me show you,” and she took a step toward Clary, holding her long red-nailed hands out for the Cup. Clary, without knowing why, shrank back. Suddenly Jace was between them, his hand hovering near the sword at his waist.

“No offense,” he said calmly, “but nobody touches the Mortal Cup except us.”

Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and that same strange blankness returned to her eyes. “Now,” she said, “let’s not be hasty. Valentine would be displeased if anything were to happen to the Cup.”

With a soft snick, the sword at Jace’s waist came free. The point hovered just below Dorothea’s chin. Jace’s look was steady. “I don’t know what this is about,” he said. “But we’re leaving.”

The old woman’s eyes gleamed. “Of course, Shadowhunter,” she said, backing up to the curtained wall. “Would you like to use the Portal?”

The point of Jace’s sword wavered as he stared in momentary confusion. Then Clary saw his jaw tighten. “Don’t touch that—”