CITY OF BONES

She flinched away, throwing up her hands to ward him off. “Don’t touch me.”


An expression of profound hurt crossed his face. Wearily he drew a hand across his forehead. “I guess I deserve that.”

“Yeah. You do.”

The look on his face was troubled. “I don’t expect you to trust me—”

“That’s good. Because I don’t.”

“Clary …” He began to pace the length of the cell. “What I did … I don’t expect you to understand. I know you feel that I abandoned you—”

“You did abandon me,” she said. “You told me never to call you again. You never cared about me. You never cared about my mother. You lied about everything.”

“Not,” he said, “about everything.”

“So your name really is Luke Garroway?”

His shoulders drooped perceptibly. “No,” he said, then glanced down. A dark red patch was spreading across the front of his blue denim shirt.

Clary sat up straight. “Is that blood?” she demanded. She forgot for a moment to be furious.

“Yes,” said Luke, his hand against his side. “The wound must have torn open when I lifted you.”

“What wound?” Clary couldn’t help asking.

He said with deliberation: “Hodge’s disks are still sharp, though his throwing arm is not what it once was. I think he may have nicked a rib.”

“Hodge?” Clary said. “When did you …?”

He looked at her, not saying anything, and she remembered suddenly the wolf in the alley, all black except for that one gray streak down its side, and she remembered the disk hitting it, and she realized.

“You’re a werewolf.”

He took his hand away from his shirt; his fingers were stained red. “Yep,” he said laconically. He moved to the wall and rapped sharply on it: once, twice, three times. Then he turned back to her. “I am.”

“You killed Hodge,” she said, remembering.

“No.” He shook his head. “I hurt him pretty badly, I think, but when I went back for the body, it was gone. He must have dragged himself away.”

“You tore at his shoulder,” she said. “I saw you.”

“Yes. Though it’s worth noting that he was trying to kill you at the time. Did he hurt anyone else?”

Clary sank her teeth into her lip. She tasted blood, but it was old blood from where Hugo had attacked her. “Jace,” she said in a whisper. “Hodge knocked him out and handed him over to … to Valentine.”

“To Valentine?” Luke said, looking astonished. “I knew Hodge had given Valentine the Mortal Cup, but I hadn’t realized—”

“How did you know that?” Clary began, before remembering. “You heard me talking to Hodge in the alley,” she said. “Before you jumped him.”

“I jumped him, as you put it, because he was about to slice your head off,” Luke said, then looked up as the cell door opened again and a tall man came in, followed by a tiny woman, so short she looked like a child. Both of them wore plain, casual clothes: jeans and cotton shirts, and both had the same untidy, flyaway hair, though the woman’s was fair and the man’s was a badgery gray and black. Both had the same young-old faces, unlined but with tired eyes. “Clary,” said Luke, “meet my second and third, Gretel and Alaric.”

Alaric inclined his massive head to her. “We have met.”

Clary stared, alarmed. “Have we?”

“At the Hotel Dumort,” he said. “You put your knife in my ribs.”

She shrank against the wall. “I, ah … I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It was an excellent throw.” He slid a hand into his breast pocket and removed Jace’s dagger, with its winking red eye. He held it out to her. “I think this is yours?”

Clary stared. “But—”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I cleaned the blade.”

Wordlessly, she took it. Luke was chuckling under his breath. “In retrospect,” he said, “perhaps the raid on the Dumort was not as well planned as it might have been. I had set a group of my wolves to watch you, and go after you if you seemed to be in any danger. When you went into the Dumort …”

“Jace and I could have handled it.” Clary slid the dagger into her belt.

Gretel aimed a tolerant smile at her. “Is that what you summoned us for, sir?”

“No,” said Luke. He touched his side. “My wound’s opened up, and Clary here has some injuries of her own that could use a bit of tending. If you wouldn’t mind getting the supplies …”

Gretel inclined her head. “I will return with the healing kit,” she said, and left, Alaric trailing her like an outsize shadow.

“She called you ‘sir,’” said Clary, the moment the cell door closed behind them. “And what do you mean by your second and your third? Second and third what?”

“In command,” said Luke slowly. “I am the leader of this particular wolf pack. That’s why Gretel called me ‘sir.’ Believe me, it took a fair bit of work to break her of the habit of calling me ‘master.’”

“Did my mother know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re a werewolf.”