CITY OF BONES

“Drive fast, mundane,” he said. “Drive like hell was following you.”


Simon drove.


They careened down Flatbush and rocketed onto the bridge, keeping pace with the Q train as it roared over the blue water. The sun was painfully bright in Clary’s eyes, striking hot sparks off the river. She clutched at her seat as Simon took the curving ramp off the bridge at fifty miles an hour.

She thought about the awful things she’d said to Alec, the way he’d thrown himself at Abbadon, the look of triumph on his face. When she turned her head now, she saw Jace kneeling next to his friend as blood seeped through the blanket. She thought of the little boy with the dead falcon. To love is to destroy.

Clary turned back around, a hard lump lodged in the back of her throat. Isabelle was visible in the badly angled rearview mirror, wrapping the blanket around Alec’s throat. She looked up and met Clary’s eyes. “How much farther?”

“Maybe ten minutes. Simon’s driving as fast as he can.”

“I know,” Isabelle said. “Simon—what you did, that was incredible. You moved so fast. I wouldn’t have thought a mundane could have thought of something like that.”

Simon didn’t seem fazed by praise from such an unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. “You mean shooting out the skylight? It hit me after you guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and how you’d said demons couldn’t stand direct sun. So, actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don’t feel bad,” he added, “you can’t even see that skylight unless you know it’s there.”

I knew it was there, Clary thought. I should have acted on it. Even if I didn’t have a bow and arrow like Simon, I could have thrown something at it or told Jace about it. She felt stupid and useless and thick, as though her head were full of cotton. The truth was that she’d been frightened. Too frightened to think straight. She felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind her eyelids like a small sun.

Jace spoke then. “It was well done,” he said.

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “So, if you don’t mind telling me—that thing, the demon—where did it come from?”

“It was Madame Dorothea,” said Clary. “I mean, it was sort of her.”

“She was never exactly a pinup, but I don’t remember her looking that bad.”

“I think she was possessed,” said Clary slowly, trying to piece it together in her own mind. “She wanted me to give her the Cup. Then she opened the Portal …”

“It was clever,” said Jace. “The demon possessed her, then hid the majority of its ethereal form just outside the Portal, where the Sensor wouldn’t register it. So we went in expecting to fight a few Forsaken. Instead we found ourselves facing a Greater Demon. Abbadon—one of the Ancients. The Lord of the Fallen.”

“Well, it looks like the Fallen will just have to learn to get along without him from now on,” said Simon, turning onto the street.

“He’s not dead,” Isabelle said. “Hardly anyone’s ever killed a Greater Demon. You have to kill them in their physical and ethereal forms before they’ll die. We just scared him off.”

“Oh.” Simon looked disappointed. “What about Madame Dorothea? Will she be all right now that—”

He broke off, because Alec had begun to choke, his breath rattling in his chest. Jace swore under his breath with vicious precision. “Why aren’t we there yet?”

“We are here. I just don’t want to crash into a wall.” As Simon pulled up carefully at the corner, Clary saw that the door of the Institute was open, Hodge standing framed in the arch. The van jerked to a halt and Jace leaped out, reaching back to lift Alec as if he weighed no more than a child. Isabelle followed him up the walk, holding her brother’s bloody featherstaff. The Institute door slammed shut behind them.

Tiredness washing over her, Clary looked at Simon. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how you’re going to explain all the blood to Eric.”

“Screw Eric,” he said with conviction. “Are you all right?”

“Not a scratch. Everyone else got hurt, but not me.”

“It’s their job, Clary,” he said gently. “Fighting demons—it’s what they do. Not what you do.”

“What do I do, Simon?” she asked, searching his face for an answer. “What do I do?”

“Well—you got the Cup,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

She nodded, and tapped her pocket. “Yes.”

He looked relieved. “I almost didn’t want to ask,” he said. “That’s good, right?”

“It is,” she said. She thought of her mother, and her hand tightened on the Cup. “I know it is.”

*