CITY OF BONES

Jace moved the chakram aside gingerly. A handful of clothes spilled out of the untied end of Luke’s duffel bag, as if they had been an afterthought. “I think this is yours, by the way.”


He drew out a rectangular object hidden among the clothes: a wooden-framed photograph with a long vertical crack along the glass. The crack threw a network of spidery lines across the smiling faces of Clary, Luke, and her mother. “That is mine,” Clary said, taking it out of his hand.

“It’s cracked,” Jace observed.

“I know. I did that—I smashed it. When I threw it at the Ravener demon.” She looked at him, seeing the dawning realization on his face. “That means Luke’s been back to the apartment since the attack. Maybe even today—”

“He must have been the last person to come through the Portal,” said Jace. “That’s why it took us here. You weren’t thinking of anything, so it sent us to the last place it had been.”

“Nice of Dorothea to tell us he was there,” said Clary.

“He probably paid her off to be quiet. Either that or she trusts him more than she trusts us. Which means he might not be—”

“Guys!” It was Simon, dashing into the office in a panic. “Someone’s coming.”

Clary dropped the photo. “Is it Luke?”

Simon peered back down the hall, then nodded. “It is. But he’s not by himself—there are two men with him.”

“Men?” Jace crossed the room in a few strides, peered through the door, and spat a curse under his breath. “Warlocks.”

Clary stared. “Warlocks? But—”

Shaking his head, Jace backed away from the door. “Is there some other way out of here? A back door?”

Clary shook her head. The sound of footsteps in the hallway was audible now, striking pangs of fear into her chest.

Jace looked around desperately. His eyes came to rest on the rosewood screen. “Get behind that,” he said, pointing. “Now.”

Clary dropped the fractured photo on the desk and slipped behind the screen, pulling Simon after her. Jace was right behind them, his stele in his hand. He had barely concealed himself when Clary heard the door swing wide open, the sound of people walking into Luke’s office—then voices. Three men speaking. She looked nervously at Simon, who was very pale, and then at Jace, who had raised the stele in his hand and was moving the tip lightly, in a sort of square shape, across the back of the screen. As Clary stared, the square went clear, like a pane of glass. She heard Simon suck in his breath—a tiny sound, barely audible—and Jace shook his head at them both, mouthing words: They can’t see us through it, but we can see them.

Biting her lip, Clary moved to the edge of the square and peered through it, conscious of Simon breathing down her neck. She could see the room beyond perfectly: the bookshelves, the desk with the duffel bag thrown across it—and Luke, ragged-looking and slightly stooped, his glasses pushed up to the top of his head, standing near the door. It was frightening even though she knew he couldn’t see her, that the window Jace had made was like the glass in a police station interrogation room: strictly one-way.

Luke turned, looking back through the doorway. “Yes, feel free to look around,” he said, his tone heavily weighted with sarcasm. “Nice of you to show such an interest.”

A low chuckle sounded from the corner of the office. With an impatient flick of the wrist, Jace tapped the frame of his “window,” and it opened out wider, showing more of the room. There were two men there with Luke, both in long reddish robes, their hoods pushed back. One was thin, with an elegant gray mustache and pointed beard. When he smiled, he showed blindingly white teeth. The other was burly, thickset as a wrestler, with close-cropped reddish hair. His skin was dark purple and looked shiny over the cheekbones, as if it had been stretched too tight.

“Those are warlocks?” Clary whispered softly.

Jace didn’t answer. He had gone rigid all over, stiff as a bar of iron. He’s afraid I’ll make a run for it, try to get to Luke, Clary thought. She wished she could reassure him that she wouldn’t. There was something about those two men, in their thick cloaks the color of arterial blood, that was terrifying.

“Consider this a friendly follow-up, Graymark,” said the man with the gray mustache. His smile showed teeth so sharp they looked as if they’d been filed to cannibal points.

“There’s nothing friendly about you, Pangborn.” Luke sat down on the edge of his desk, angling his body so it blocked the men’s view of his duffel bag and its contents. Now that he was closer, Clary could see that his face and hands were badly bruised, his fingers scraped and bloody. A long cut along his neck disappeared down into his collar. What on earth happened to him?

“Blackwell, don’t touch that—it’s valuable,” Luke said sternly.