CITY OF BONES

The corner of Jace’s mouth twitched. “This is hardly the time for idle banter. We have garbage to haul.” He stalked over to the Dumpster and took hold of one side of it. “You get the other. We’ll tip it.”


“Tipping it will make too much noise,” Clary argued, taking up her station on the other side of the huge container. It was a standard city trash bin, painted dark green, splotched with strange stains. It stank, even more than most Dumpsters, of garbage and something else, something thick and sweet that filled her throat and made her want to gag. “We should push it.”

“Now, look—” Jace began, when a voice spoke, suddenly, out of the shadows behind them.

“Do you really think you should be doing that?” it asked.

Clary froze, staring into the shadows at the mouth of the alley. For a panicked moment she wondered if she’d imagined the voice, but Jace was frozen too, astonishment on his face. It was rare that anything surprised him, rarer that anyone snuck up on him. He stepped away from the Dumpster, his hand sliding toward his belt, his voice flat. “Is there someone there?”

“Dios mío.” The voice was male, amused, speaking a liquid Spanish. “You’re not from this neighborhood, are you?”

He stepped forward, out of the thickest of the shadows. The shape of him evolved slowly: a boy, not much older than Jace and probably six inches shorter. He was thin-boned, with the big dark eyes and honey-colored skin of a Diego Rivera painting. He wore black slacks and an open-necked white shirt, and a gold chain around his neck that sparked faintly as he moved closer to the light.

“You could say that,” Jace said carefully, not moving his hand away from his belt.

“You shouldn’t be here.” The boy raked a hand through the thick black curls that spilled over his forehead. “This place is dangerous.”

He means it’s a bad neighborhood. Clary almost wanted to laugh, even though it wasn’t at all funny. “We know,” she said. “We just got a little lost, that’s all.”

The boy gestured to the Dumpster. “What were you doing with that?”

I’m no good at lying on the spot, Clary thought, and looked at Jace, who, she hoped, would be excellent at it.

He disappointed her immediately. “We were trying to get into the hotel. We thought there might be a cellar door behind the trash bin.”

The boy’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Puta madre—why would you want to do something like that?”

Jace shrugged. “For a prank, you know. Just a little fun.”

“You don’t understand. This place is haunted, cursed. Bad luck.” He shook his head vigorously and said several things in Spanish that Clary suspected had to do with the stupidity of spoiled white kids in general and their stupidity in particular. “Walk with me; I’ll take you to the subway.”

“We know where the subway is,” said Jace.

The boy laughed a soft, vibrant laugh. “Claro. Of course you do, but if you go with me, no one will bother you. You do not want trouble, do you?”

“That depends,” Jace said, and moved so that his jacket opened slightly, showing the glint of the weapons thrust through his belt. “How much are they paying you to keep people away from the hotel?”

The boy glanced behind him, and Clary’s nerves twanged as she imagined the narrow alley mouth filling up with other shadowy figures, white-faced, red-mouthed, the glint of fangs as sudden as metal striking sparks from pavement. When he looked back at Jace, his mouth was a thin line. “How much are who paying me, chico?”

“The vampires. How much are they paying you? Or is it something else—did they tell you they’d make you one of them, offer you eternal life, no pain, no sickness, you get to live forever? Because it’s not worth it. Life stretches out very long when you never see the sunlight, chico,” said Jace.

The boy was expressionless. “My name is Raphael. Not chico.”

“But you know what we’re talking about. You know about the vampires?” Clary said.

Raphael turned his face to the side and spit. When he looked back at them, his eyes were full of a glittering hate. “Los vampiros, sí, the blood-drinking animals. Even before the hotel was boarded up, there were stories, the laughter late at night, the small animals disappearing, the sounds—” He stopped, shaking his head. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows to stay away, but what can you do? You cannot call the police and tell them your problem is vampires.”

“Have you ever seen them?” Jace asked. “Or known anyone who has?”

Raphael spoke slowly. “There were some boys, once, a group of friends. They thought they had a good idea, to go into the hotel and kill the monsters inside. They took guns with them, knives too, all blessed by a priest. They never came out. My aunt, she found their clothes later, in front of the house.”

“Your aunt’s house?” said Jace.

“Sí. One of the boys was my brother,” said Raphael flatly. “So now you know why I walk by here in the middle of the night sometimes, on the way home from my aunt’s house, and why I warned you away. If you go in there, you will not come out again.”