CITY OF BONES

The greenhouse was just as she’d remembered it, though the sky above the glass roof was sapphire now. The clean, soapy smell of the flowers cleared her head. Breathing in deeply, she pushed her way through the tightly woven leaves and branches.

She found Jace sitting on the marble bench in the middle of the greenhouse. His head was bent, and he seemed to be turning an object over in his hands, idly. He looked up as she ducked under a branch, and quickly closed his hand around the object. “Clary.” He sounded surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” she said. “I wanted to know how you were.”

“I’m fine.” He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She could see his still-fading bruises, like the dark spots on the white flesh of an apple. Of course, she thought, the real injuries were internal, hidden from every eye but his own.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to his closed hand.

He opened his fingers. A jagged shard of silver lay in his palm, glimmering blue and green at the edges. “A piece of the Portal mirror.”

She sat down on the bench next to him. “Can you see anything in it?”

He turned it a little, letting the light run over it like water. “Bits of sky. Trees, a path … I keep angling it, trying to see the manor house. My father.”

“Valentine,” she corrected. “Why would you want to see him?”

“I thought maybe I could see what he was doing with the Mortal Cup,” he said reluctantly. “Where it was.”

“Jace, that’s not our responsibility anymore. Not our problem. Now that the Clave finally knows what happened, the Lightwoods are rushing back. Let them deal with it.”

Now he did look at her. She wondered how it was that they could be brother and sister and look so little alike. Couldn’t she at least have gotten the curling dark lashes or the angular cheekbones? It hardly seemed fair. He said, “When I looked through the Portal and saw Idris, I knew exactly what Valentine was trying to do, that he wanted to see if I’d break. And it didn’t matter—I still wanted to go home more badly than I could have imagined.”

She shook her head. “I don’t see what’s so great about Idris. It’s just a place. The way you and Hodge talk about it—” She broke off.

He closed his hand over the shard again. “I was happy there. It was the only place I was ever happy like that.”

Clary plucked a stem from a nearby bush and began to denude it of its leaves. “You felt sorry for Hodge. That’s why you didn’t tell Alec and Isabelle what he really did.”

He shrugged.

“They’ll find out eventually, you know.”

“I know. But I won’t be the one who told them.”

“Jace …” The surface of the pond was green with fallen leaves. “How could you have been happy there? I know what you thought, but Valentine was a terrible father. He killed your pets, lied to you, and I know he hit you—don’t even try to pretend he didn’t.”

A flicker of a smile ghosted across Jace’s face. “Only on alternate Thursdays.”

“Then how could—”

“It was the only time I ever felt sure about who I was. Where I belonged. It sounds stupid, but …” He shrugged. “I kill demons because it’s what I’m good at and what I was taught to do, but it isn’t who I am. And I’m partly good at it because after I thought my father had died, I was—cut free. No consequences. No one to grieve. No one who had a stake in my life because they’d been part of giving it to me.” His face looked as if it had been carved out of something hard. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

The stem was entirely denuded of leaves; Clary threw it aside. “Why not?”

“Because of you,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, I would have gone with my father through the Portal. If it weren’t for you, I would go after him right now.”

Clary stared down into the clogged pond. Her throat burned. “I thought I made you feel unsettled.”

“It’s been so long,” he said simply, “that I think I was unsettled by the idea of feeling like I belonged anywhere. But you made me feel like I belong.”

“I want you to go somewhere with me,” she said abruptly.

He looked at her sideways. Something about the way his light gold hair fell into his eyes made her feel unbearably sad. “Where?”

“I was hoping you’d come to the hospital with me.”

“I knew it.” His eyes narrowed until they looked like the edges of coins. “Clary, that woman—”

“She’s your mother too, Jace.”

“I know,” he said. “But she’s a stranger to me. I only ever had one parent, and he’s gone. Worse than dead.”

“I know. And I know there’s no point in telling you how great my mom is, what an amazing, terrific, wonderful person she is and that you’d be lucky to know her. I’m not asking this for you, I’m asking for me. I think if she heard your voice …”

“Then what?”

“She might wake up.” She looked at him steadily.

He held her gaze, then broke it with a smile—crooked and a little battered, but a real smile. “Fine. I’ll go with you.” He stood up. “You don’t have to tell me good things about your mother,” he added. “I already know them.”