City of Fallen Angels

But Camille shook her head. “Immunity, Magnus.”


“Camille—”

“They will stake me out in the sun and leave me to die,” she said. “That is what they do to those who slay Nephilim.”

Magnus got to his feet. His scarf was dusty from lying on the ground. He looked at the stains mournfully. “I’ll do what I can, Camille. But I make no promises.”

“You never would,” she murmured, her eyes half-lidded. “Come here, Magnus. Come close to me.”

He did not love her, but she was a dream out of the past, so he moved toward her, until he was standing close enough to touch her. “Remember,” she said softly. “Remember London? The parties at de Quincey’s? Remember Will Herondale? I know you do. That boy of yours, that Lightwood. They even look alike.”

“Do they?” Magnus said, as if he had never thought about it.

“Pretty boys have always been your undoing,” she said. “But what can some mortal child give you? Ten years, twenty, before dissolution begins to claim him. Forty years, fifty, before death takes him. I can give you all of eternity.”

He touched her cheek. It was colder than the floor had been. “You could give me the past,” he said a little sadly. “But Alec is my future.”

“Magnus—,” she began.

The Institute door opened, and Maryse stood in the doorway, outlined by the witchlight behind her. Beside her was Alec, his arms crossed over his chest. Magnus wondered if Alec had heard any of the conversation between him and Camille through the door—surely not?

“Magnus,” said Maryse Lightwood. “Have you come to some agreement?”

Magnus dropped his hand. “I’m not sure I’d call it an agreement,” he said, turning to Maryse. “But I do think we have some things to talk about.”


Dressed, Clary went with Jace to his room, where he packed a small canvas bag with things to bring with him to the Silent City, as if, she thought, he were going to some grim sleepover party. Weapons mostly—a few seraph blades; his stele; and almost as an afterthought, the silver-handled knife, its blade now cleaned of blood. He slid on a black leather jacket, and she watched as he zipped it, pulling loose strands of blond hair free of his collar. When he turned to look at her, slinging his bag across his shoulder, he smiled faintly, and she saw the slight chip in his front left incisor that she had always thought was endearing, a little flaw in looks that would otherwise be too perfect. Her heart contracted, and for a moment she looked away from him, hardly able to breathe.

He held out his hand to her. “Let’s go.”

There was no way to summon the Silent Brothers to come and get them, so Jace and Clary took a taxi heading downtown toward Houston and the Marble Cemetery. Clary supposed they could just have Portaled into the Bone City—she’d been there before; she knew what it looked like—but Jace said there were rules about that sort of thing, and Clary couldn’t shake the feeling that the Silent Brothers might find it rather rude.

Jace sat beside her in the back of the taxi, holding one of her hands and tracing patterns on the back of it with his fingers. This was distracting, but not so distracting that she couldn’t concentrate while he filled her in on what had been going on with Simon, the story of Jordan, their capture of Camille, and her demand to speak to Magnus.

“Simon’s all right?” she said worriedly. “I didn’t realize. He was in the Institute, and I didn’t even see him—”

“He wasn’t in the Institute; he was in the Sanctuary. And he seems to be holding his own. Better than I would have thought for someone who was so recently a mundane.”

“But the plan sounds dangerous. I mean Camille, she’s absolutely crazy, isn’t she?”

Jace traced his fingers over her knuckles. “You have to stop thinking of Simon as the mundane boy you used to know. The one who required so much saving. He’s almost beyond being harmed now. You haven’t seen that Mark you gave him in action. I have. Like the wrath of God being visited upon the world. I suppose you should be proud.”

She shivered. “I don’t know. I did it because I had to do it, but it’s still a curse. And I didn’t know he was going through all this. He didn’t say. I knew Isabelle and Maia had found out about each other, but I didn’t know about Jordan. That he was really Maia’s ex, or—any of it.” Because you haven’t asked. You were too busy worrying about Jace. Not good.

“Well,” Jace said, “have you been telling him what you’re up to? Because it has to go both ways.”

“No. I haven’t really told anyone,” Clary said, and filled Jace in on her trip to the Silent City with Luke and Maryse, what she had found at the morgue at Beth Israel, and her subsequent discovery of the Church of Talto.