CITY OF BONES

THE NIGHT HAD GOTTEN EVEN HOTTER, AND RUNNING HOME felt like swimming as fast as she could through boiling soup. At the corner of her block Clary got trapped at a DON’T WALK sign. She jittered up and down impatiently on the balls of her feet while traffic whizzed by in a blur of headlights. She tried to call home again, but Jace hadn’t been lying; his phone wasn’t a phone. At least, it didn’t look like any phone Clary had ever seen before. The Sensor’s buttons didn’t have numbers on them, just more of those bizarre symbols, and there was no screen.

Jogging up the street toward her house, she saw that the second-floor windows were lit, the usual sign that her mother was home. Okay, she told herself. Everything’s fine. But her stomach tightened the moment she stepped into the entryway. The overhead light had burned out, and the foyer was in darkness. The shadows seemed full of secret movement. Shivering, she started upstairs.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” said a voice.

Clary whirled. “What—”

She broke off. Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and she could see the shape of a large armchair, drawn up in front of Madame Dorothea’s closed door. The old woman was wedged into it like an overstuffed cushion. In the dimness Clary could see only the round shape of her powdered face, the white lace fan in her hand, the dark, yawning gap of her mouth when she spoke. “Your mother,” Dorothea said, “has been making a god-awful racket up there. What’s she doing? Moving furniture?”

“I don’t think—”

“And the stairwell light’s burned out, did you notice?” Dorothea rapped her fan against the arm of the chair. “Can’t your mother get her boyfriend in to change it?”

“Luke isn’t—”

“The skylight needs washing too. It’s filthy. No wonder it’s nearly pitch-black in here.”

Luke is NOT the landlord, Clary wanted to say, but didn’t. This was typical of her elderly neighbor. Once she got Luke to come around and change the lightbulb, she’d ask him to do a hundred other things—pick up her groceries, grout her shower. Once she’d made him chop up an old sofa with an ax so she could get it out of the apartment without taking the door off the hinges.

Clary sighed. “I’ll ask.”

“You’d better.” Dorothea snapped her fan shut with a flick of her wrist.

Clary’s sense that something was wrong only increased when she reached the apartment door. It was unlocked, hanging slightly open, spilling a wedge-shaped shaft of light onto the landing. With a feeling of increasing panic she pushed the door open.

Inside the apartment the lights were on, all the lamps, everything turned up to full brightness. The glow stabbed into her eyes.

Her mother’s keys and pink handbag were on the small wrought-iron shelf by the door, where she always left them. “Mom?” Clary called out. “Mom, I’m home.”

There was no reply. She went into the living room. Both windows were open, yards of gauzy white curtains blowing in the breeze like restless ghosts. Only when the wind dropped and the curtains settled did Clary see that the cushions had been ripped from the sofa and scattered around the room. Some were torn lengthwise, cotton innards spilling onto the floor. The bookshelves had been tipped over, their contents scattered. The piano bench lay on its side, gaping open like a wound, Jocelyn’s beloved music books spewing out.

Most terrifying were the paintings. Every single one had been cut from its frame and ripped into strips, which were scattered across the floor. It must have been done with a knife—canvas was almost impossible to tear with your bare hands. The empty frames looked like bones picked clean. Clary felt a scream rising up in her chest. “Mom!” she shrieked. “Where are you? Mommy!”

She hadn’t called Jocelyn “Mommy” since she was eight.

Heart pumping, she raced into the kitchen. It was empty, the cabinet doors open, a smashed bottle of Tabasco sauce spilling peppery red liquid onto the linoleum. Her knees felt like bags of water. She knew she should race out of the apartment, get to a phone, call the police. But all those things seemed distant—she needed to find her mother first, needed to see that she was all right. What if robbers had come, what if her mother had put up a fight—?

What kind of robbers didn’t take a wallet with them, or the TV, the DVD player, or the expensive laptops?