City of Fallen Angels

Simon woke still feeling exhausted after a long night of bad dreams. He rolled onto his back and stared at the light coming in the single window in his bedroom.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d sleep better if he did what other vampires did, and slept during the day. Despite the fact that the sun didn’t harm him, he could feel the pull of the nights, the desire to be out under the dark sky and the glimmering stars. There was something in him that wanted to live in shadows, that felt the sunlight like a thin, knifelike pain—just like there was something in him that wanted blood. And look how fighting that had turned out for him.

He staggered upright and threw on some clothes, then made his way out into the living room. The place smelled like toast and coffee. Jordan was sitting on one of the counter stools, his hair sticking out every which way as usual, his shoulders hunched.

“Hey,” Simon said. “What’s up?”

Jordan looked over at him. He was pale under his tan. “We have a problem,” he said.

Simon blinked. He hadn’t seen his werewolf roommate since the day before. He’d come home from the Institute last night and collapsed in exhaustion. Jordan hadn’t been here, and Simon had figured he was out working. But maybe something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

“This was shoved under our door.” Jordan pushed a folded newspaper toward Simon. It was the New York Morning Chronicle, folded open to one of the pages. There was a grisly picture up toward the top, a grainy image of a body sprawled on some pavement, stick-skinny limbs bent at odd angles. It hardly looked human, the way dead bodies sometimes didn’t. Simon was about to ask Jordan why he had to look at this, when the text under the photo jumped out at him.





GIRL FOUND DEAD


Police say they are pursuing leads in the death of fourteen-year-old Maureen Brown, whose body was discovered Sunday night at eleven p.m. stuffed into a trash can outside the Big Apple Deli on Third Avenue. Though no official cause of death has been released by the coroner’s office, the deli owner who found the body, Michael Garza, says her throat was cut open. Police have not yet located a weapon…



Unable to read on, Simon sat down heavily in a chair. Now that he knew, the photo was unmistakably Maureen. He recognized her rainbow arm warmers, the stupid pink hat she’d been wearing when he’d seen her last. My God, he wanted to say. Oh, God. But no words came out.

“Didn’t that note say,” Jordan said in a bleak voice, “that if you didn’t go to that address, they’d cut your girlfriend’s throat?”

“No,” Simon whispered. “It’s not possible. No.”

But he remembered.

Eric’s little cousin’s friend. What’s her name? The one who has a crush on Simon. She comes to all our gigs and tells everyone she’s his girlfriend.

Simon remembered her phone, her little pink phone with the stickers on it, the way she’d held it up to take a photo of them. The feeling of her hand on his shoulder, as light as a butterfly. Fourteen years old. He curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, as if he could make himself small enough to vanish completely.





14

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME


Jace tossed uneasily on the narrow bed in the Silent City. He didn’t know where the Brothers slept, and they didn’t seem inclined to reveal it. The only place there seemed to be for him to lie down was in one of the cells below the City where they usually kept prisoners. They’d left the door open for him so he didn’t feel too much like he was in jail, but the place couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called pleasant.

The air was close and thick; he’d taken off his shirt and lay atop the covers in just his jeans, but he was still too hot. The walls were dull gray. Someone had carved the letters JG into the stone just above the bedstead, leaving him to wonder what that was about—and there was nothing else in the room but the bed, a cracked mirror that gave him back his own reflection in twisted pieces, and the sink. Not to mention the more than unpleasant memories the room stirred up.

The Brothers had been in and out of his mind all night, till he felt like a wrung-out rag. Since they were so secretive about everything, he had no idea if they were making any progress. They didn’t seem pleased, but then, they never did.

The real test, he knew, was sleeping. What would he dream? To sleep: perchance to dream. He flipped over, burying his face in his arms. He didn’t think he could stand even one more dream about hurting Clary. He thought he might actually lose his mind, and the idea frightened him. The prospect of dying had never frightened him much, but the thought of going insane was nearly the worst thing he could imagine. But going to sleep was the only way to know. He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.