CITY OF BONES

She didn’t reply. There was a hard knot at the center of her stomach. She found herself trying to breathe around it. The beginning of a thought tickled at the edge of her mind, wanting to resolve itself into a full-blown realization. But she pushed it firmly down and away. She couldn’t afford to give her resources, her energy, to anything but the issue immediately at hand.

Gretel returned with damp-looking yellow pages and thrust them at Luke. He read the book standing up while the wolf-woman attacked his injured side with bandages and sticky pots of ointment. “There are seven Renwicks in the phone book,” he said finally. “No restaurants, hotels, or other locations.” He pushed his spectacles up; they slid down again instantly. “They are not Shadowhunters,” he said, “and it seems unlikely to me that Valentine would set up headquarters in the home of a mundane or a Downworlder. Though, perhaps—”

“Do you have a phone?” Clary interrupted.

“Not on me.” Luke, still holding the phone book, peered under it at Gretel. “Could you get the telephone?”

With a disgusted snort she tossed the wad of bloody cloths she’d been holding onto the floor, and stalked out of the room a second time. Luke set the phone book down on the table, picked up the roll of bandaging, and began winding it around the diagonal cut across his ribs. “Sorry,” he said, as Clary stared. “I know it’s disgusting.”

“If we catch Valentine,” she asked abruptly, “can we kill him?”

Luke nearly dropped the bandages. “What?”

She fiddled with a stray thread poking out of the pocket of her jeans. “He killed my older brother. He killed my grandparents. Didn’t he?”

Luke set the bandages on the table and pulled his shirt down. “And you think killing him will what? Erase those things?”

Gretel returned before Clary could say anything to that. She wore a martyred expression and handed Luke a clunky-looking old-fashioned cell phone. Clary wondered who paid the phone bills.

Clary held her hand out. “Let me make a call.”

Luke seemed hesitant. “Clary …”

“It’s about Renwick’s. It’ll only take a second.”

He handed her the phone warily. She punched in the number, and half-turned away from him to give herself the illusion of privacy.

Simon picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

His voice climbed an octave. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why? Have you heard anything from Isabelle?”

“No. What would I have heard from Isabelle? Is there something wrong? Is it Alec?”

“No,” Clary said, not wanting to lie and say that Alec was fine. “It’s not Alec. Look, I just need you to Google something for me.”

Simon snorted. “You’re kidding. Don’t they have a computer there? You know what, don’t answer that.” She heard the sounds of a door opening and the thump-meow as Simon’s mother’s cat was banished from his perch on the keyboard of his computer. She could picture Simon quite clearly in her head as he sat down, his fingers moving quickly over the keyboard. “What do you want me to look up?”

She told him. She could feel Luke’s worried eyes on her as she talked. It was the same way he’d looked at her when she was eleven years old and had the flu with a spiking fever. He’d brought her ice cubes to suck on and had read to her out of her favorite books, doing all the voices.

“You’re right,” Simon said, snapping her out of her reverie. “It’s a place. Or at least, it was a place. It’s abandoned now.”

Her sweaty hand slipped on the phone, and she tightened her grip. “Tell me about it.”

“‘The most famous of the lunatic asylums, debtor’s prisons, and hospitals built on Roosevelt Island in the 1800s,’” Simon read dutifully. “‘Renwick Smallpox Hospital was designed by architect Jacob Renwick and intended to quarantine the poorest victims of Manhattan’s uncontrollable smallpox epidemic. During the next century the hospital was abandoned to disrepair. Public access to the ruin is forbidden.’”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Clary, her heart pounding. “That’s got to be it. Roosevelt Island? Don’t people live there?”

“Not everyone lives in the Slope, princess,” said Simon, with a fair degree of mock sarcasm. “Anyway, do you need me to give you a ride again or something?”

“No! I’m fine, I don’t need anything. I just wanted the information.”

“All right.” He sounded a little hurt, Clary thought, but told herself it didn’t matter. He was safe at home, and that was what was important.

She hung up, turning to Luke. “There’s an abandoned hospital at the south end of Roosevelt Island called Renwick’s. I think Valentine’s there.”

Luke shoved his glasses up again. “Blackwell’s Island. Of course.”

“What do you mean, Blackwell’s? I said—”