CITY OF BONES

“Nice place,” said Jace, drawing aside a heavy swag of curtain. “Guess it pays well, being the High Warlock of Brooklyn?”


“It pays,” Magnus said. “Not much of a benefit package, though. No dental.” He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. When he crossed his arms, his T-shirt rode up, showing a strip of flat golden stomach unmarked by a navel. “So,” he said. “What’s on your devious little minds?”

“It’s not them, actually,” Clary said, finding her voice before Jace could reply. “I’m the one who wanted to talk to you.”

Magnus turned his inhuman eyes on her. “You are not one of them,” he said. “Not of the Clave. But you can see the Invisible World.”

“My mother was one of the Clave,” Clary said. It was the first time she had said it out loud and known it to be true. “But she never told me. She kept it a secret. I don’t know why.”

“So ask her.”

“I can’t. She’s …” Clary hesitated. “She’s gone.”

“And your father?”

“He died before I was born.”

Magnus exhaled irritably. “As Oscar Wilde once said, ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both seems like carelessness.’”

Clary heard Jace make a small hissing sound, like air being sucked through his teeth. She said, “I didn’t lose my mother. She was taken from me. By Valentine.”

“I don’t know any Valentine,” said Magnus, but his eyes flickered like wavering candle flames, and Clary knew he was lying. “I’m sorry for your tragic circumstances, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. If you could tell me—”

“She can’t tell you, because she doesn’t remember,” Jace said sharply. “Someone erased her memories. So we went to the Silent City to see what the Brothers could pull out of her head. They got two words. I think you can guess what they were.”

There was a short silence. Finally, Magnus let his mouth turn up at the corner. His smile was bitter. “My signature,” he said. “I knew it was folly when I did it. An act of hubris …”

“You signed my mind?” Clary said in disbelief.

Magnus raised his hand, tracing the fiery outlines of letters against the air. When he dropped his hand, they hung there, hot and golden, making the painted lines of his eyes and mouth burn with reflected light. MAGNUS BANE.

“I was proud of my work on you,” he said slowly, looking at Clary. “So clean. So perfect. What you saw you would forget, even as you saw it. No image of pixie or goblin or long-legged beastie would remain to trouble your blameless mortal sleep. It was the way she wanted it.”

Clary’s voice was thin with tension. “The way who wanted it?”

Magnus sighed, and at the touch of his breath, the fire letters sifted away to glowing ash. Finally he spoke—and though she was not surprised, though she had known exactly what he was going to say, still she felt the words like a blow against her heart.

“Your mother,” he said.





13

THE MEMORY OF WHITENESS


“MY MOTHER DID THIS TO ME?” CLARY DEMANDED, BUT her surprised outrage didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears. Looking around, she saw pity in Jace’s eyes, in Alec’s—even Alec had guessed and felt sorry for her. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Magnus spread his long white hands. “It’s not my job to ask questions. I do what I get paid to do.”

“Within the bounds of the Covenant,” Jace reminded him, his voice soft as cat’s fur.

Magnus inclined his head. “Within the bounds of the Covenant, of course.”

“So the Covenant’s all right with this—this mind-rape?” Clary asked bitterly. When no one answered, she sank down on the edge of Magnus’s bed. “Was it only once? Was there something specific she wanted me to forget? Do you know what it was?”