City of Fallen Angels

Simon, his jacket wadded up under his head, was lying on his back, staring up at the hole-filled ceiling of Eric’s garage with a sense of grim fatality. His duffel bag was at his feet, his phone pressed against his ear. Right now the familiarity of Clary’s voice on the other end of it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely.

“Simon, I’m so sorry.” He could tell she was somewhere in the city. The loud blare of traffic sounded behind her, muffling her voice. “Are you seriously in Eric’s garage? Does he know you’re there?”

“No,” Simon said. “No one’s home at the moment, and I’ve got the garage key. It seemed like a place to go. Where are you, anyway?”

“In the city.” To Brooklynites, Manhattan was always “the city.” No other metropolis existed. “I was training with Jace, but then he had to go back to the Institute for some kind of Clave business. I’m headed back to Luke’s now.” A car honked loudly in the background. “Look, do you want to stay with us? You could sleep on Luke’s couch.”

Simon hesitated. He had good memories of Luke’s. In all the years he’d known Clary, Luke had lived in the same ratty but pleasant old row house over the bookstore. Clary had a key, and she and Simon had whiled away a lot of pleasant hours there, reading books they’d “borrowed” from the store downstairs, or watching old movies on the TV.

Things were different now, though.

“Maybe my mom could talk to your mom,” Clary said, sounding worried by his silence. “Make her understand.”

“Make her understand that I’m a vampire? Clary, I think she does understand that, in a weird kind of way. That doesn’t mean she’s going to accept it or ever be okay with it.”

“Well, you can’t just keep making her forget it, either, Simon,” Clary said. “It’s not going to work forever.”

“Why not?” He knew he was being unreasonable, but lying on the hard floor, surrounded by the smell of gasoline and the whisper of spiders spinning their webs in the corners of the garage, feeling lonelier than he ever had, reasonable seemed very far away.

“Because then your whole relationship with her is a lie. You can’t never go home—”

“So what?” Simon interrupted harshly. “That’s part of the curse, isn’t it? ‘A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be.’”

Despite the traffic noises and the sound of chatter in the background, he could hear Clary’s sudden indrawn breath.

“You think I should tell her about that, too?” he said. “How you put the Mark of Cain on me? How I’m basically a walking curse? You think she’s going to want that in her house?”

The background sounds quieted; Clary must have ducked into a doorway. He could hear her struggling to hold back tears as she said, “Simon, I’m so sorry. You know I’m sorry—”

“It’s not your fault.” He suddenly felt bone-tired. That’s right, terrify your mother and then make your best friend cry. A banner day for you, Simon. “Look, obviously I shouldn’t be around people right now. I’m just going to stay here, and I’ll crash with Eric when he gets home.”

She made a snuffling laughing-through-tears sound. “What, doesn’t Eric count as people?”

“I’ll get back to you on that later,” he said, and hesitated. “I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”

“You’ll see me tomorrow. You promised to come to that dress fitting with me, remember?”

“Wow,” he said. “I must really love you.”

“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”

Simon clicked off the phone and lay back, holding it against his chest. It was funny, he thought. Now he could say “I love you” to Clary, when for years he’d struggled to say those words and had not been able to get them out of his mouth. Now that he no longer meant them the same way, it was easy.

Sometimes he did wonder what would have happened if there had never been a Jace Wayland. If Clary had never found out she was a Shadowhunter. But he pushed the thought away—pointless, don’t go down that road. You couldn’t change the past. You could only go forward. Not that he had any idea what forward entailed. He couldn’t stay in Eric’s garage forever. Even in his current mood, he had to admit it was a miserable place to stay. He wasn’t cold—he no longer felt either cold or heat in any real way—but the floor was hard, and he was having trouble sleeping. He wished he could dull his senses. The loud noise of traffic outside was keeping him from resting, as was the unpleasant stench of gasoline. But it was the gnawing worry about what to do next that was the worst.

He’d thrown away most of his blood supply and stashed the rest in his knapsack; he had about enough for a few more days, and then he’d be in trouble. Eric, wherever he was, would certainly let Simon stay in the house if he wanted, but that might result in Eric’s parents calling Simon’s mom. And since she thought he was on a school field trip, that would do him no good at all.