CITY OF BONES

They were driving over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Clary glanced down and saw the river turned all to gold and blood by the setting sun. She could glimpse the south end of Roosevelt Island from here, though it was just a smudge to the north. “He’s not so bad,” she said. “The Lightwoods have taken good care of him.”


“I can imagine. They were always close with Michael,” observed Luke, swerving into the left lane. In the side mirror Clary could see the caravan of following vehicles alter its course to mimic his. “They would want to look after his son.”

“So what happens when the moon comes up?” she asked. “Are you all going to suddenly wolf out, or what?”

Luke’s mouth twitched. “Not exactly. Only the young ones, the ones who’ve just Changed, can’t control their transformations. Most of the rest of us have learned how to, over the years. Only the moon at its fullest can force a Change on me now.”

“So when the moon’s only partly full, you only feel a little wolfy?” Clary asked.

“You could say that.”

“Well, you can go ahead and hang your head out the car window if you feel like it.”

Luke laughed. “I’m a werewolf, not a golden retriever.”

“How long have you been the clan leader?” she asked abruptly.

Luke hesitated. “About a week.”

Clary swung around to stare at him. “A week?”

He sighed. “I knew Valentine had taken your mother,” he said without much inflection. “I knew I had little chance against him by myself and that I could expect no assistance from the Clave. It took me a day to track down the location of the nearest lycanthrope pack.”

“You killed the clan leader so you could take his place?”

“It was the fastest way I could think of to acquire a sizeable number of allies in a short period of time,” said Luke, without any regret in his tone, though without any pride either. She remembered spying on him in his house, how she’d noticed the deep scratches on his hands and face and the way he’d winced when he moved his arm. “I had done it before. I was fairly sure I could do it again.” He shrugged. “Your mother was gone. I knew I’d made you hate me. I had nothing to lose.”

Clary braced her green sneakers against the dashboard. Through the cracked windshield, above the tips of her toes, the moon was rising over the bridge. “Well,” she said. “You do now.”


The hospital at the southern end of Roosevelt Island was floodlit at night, its ghostly outlines curiously visible against the darkness of the river and the greater illumination of Manhattan. Luke and Clary fell silent as the pickup skirted the tiny island, as the paved road they were on turned to gravel and finally to packed dirt. The road followed the curve of a high chain-link fence, the top of which was strung with curlicues of razor wire like festive loops of ribbon.

When the road grew too bumpy for them to drive any farther, Luke pulled the truck to a stop and killed the lights. He looked at Clary. “Any chance if I asked you to wait here for me, you would?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t necessarily be any safer in the car. Who knows what Valentine’s got patrolling his perimeter?”

Luke laughed softly. “Perimeter. Listen to you.” He swung himself out of the truck and came around to her side to help her down. She could have jumped down from the truck herself, but it was nice to have him help, the way he’d done when she was too small to climb down on her own.

Her feet hit the dry-packed dirt, sending up puffs of dust. The cars that had been following them were pulling up, one by one, forming a sort of circle around Luke’s truck. Their headlights swept across her view, lighting the chain-link fence to white-silver. Beyond the fence, the hospital itself was a ruin bathed in harsh light that pointed out its dilapidated state: the roofless walls jutting up from the uneven ground like broken teeth, the crenellated stone parapets overgrown with a green carpet of ivy. “It’s a wreck,” she heard herself say softly, a flicker of apprehension in her voice. “I don’t see how Valentine could possibly be hiding here.”