City of Lost Souls

They danced. Clary tried to lose herself in the pounding beat of the music, the rush of blood in her veins, the way she had once been able to do at Pandemonium with Simon. Of course Simon had been a fairly terrible dancer, and Jace was an excellent dancer. She supposed it made sense. With all that trained fighting control and careful grace, there wasn’t much he couldn’t make his body do. When he flung his head back, his hair was dark with sweat, pasted to his temples, and the curve of his throat gleamed in the light of the bone chandelier.

She saw the way the other dancers looked at him—appreciation, speculation, predatory hunger. A possessiveness she couldn’t name or control rose up inside her. She moved closer, sliding up his body the way she’d seen girls do on the dance floor before but had never had the nerve to try herself. She’d always been convinced she’d get her hair caught on someone’s belt buckle, but things were different now. Her months of training didn’t pay off just in a fight, but any time she had to use her body. She felt fluid, in control, in a way she never had before. She pressed her body against Jace’s.

His eyes had been closed; he opened them just as an explosion of colored light lit up the darkness above them. Metallic drops rained down on them; droplets were caught in Jace’s hair and shimmering on his skin like mercury. He touched his fingers to a drop of silver liquid on his collarbone and showed it to her, his lips curving. “Do you remember what I told you that first time at Taki’s? About faerie food?”

“I remember you said you ran down Madison Avenue naked with antlers on your head,” said Clary, blinking silver drops off her lashes.

“I don’t think that was ever proved to have actually been me.” Only Jace could talk while he danced and not make it look awkward. “Well, this stuff”—and he flicked at the silvery liquid that mixed with his hair and skin, painting him in metal—“is like that. It’ll get you…”

“High?”

He watched her with darkened eyes. “It can be fun.” Another of the drifting flower-things burst above their head; this spatter was silver-blue, like water. Jace licked a drop off the side of his hand, studying her.

High. Clary had never done drugs, didn’t even drink. Maybe if you counted the bottle of Kahlúa she and Simon had smuggled out of his mom’s liquor cabinet and drunk when they’d been thirteen. They’d been heartily sick afterward; Simon had, in fact, thrown up in a hedge. It hadn’t been worth it, but she did remember the sensation of being dizzy and giggly and happy for no reason.

When Jace lowered his hand, his mouth was stained with silver. He was still watching her, gold eyes dark under his long lashes.

Happy for no reason.

She thought of the way they had been together in the time after the Mortal War before Lilith had begun to possess him. He had been the Jace in the photograph on his wall then: so happy. They both had been happy. There had been no nagging doubt when she looked at him, none of this feeling of tiny knives under her skin, eroding the closeness between them.

She leaned up then, and kissed him, slowly and definitively, on the lips.

Her mouth exploded with a sweet-sour taste, a mixture of wine and candy. More of the silvery liquid rained down on them as she pulled away from him, licking her mouth deliberately. Jace was breathing hard; he reached for her, but she spun away, laughing.

She felt wild and free suddenly, and incredibly light. She knew there was something terribly important she was supposed to be doing, but she couldn’t remember what it was, or why she had cared. The faces of the dancers around her no longer looked vulpine and faintly frightening, but darkly beautiful. She was in a great echoing cavern, and the shadows around her were painted with colors lovelier and brighter than any sunset. The angel statue that loomed above her seemed benevolent, a thousand times more so than Raziel and his cold white light, and a high singing note sounded from it, pure and clear and perfect. She spun, faster and faster, leaving behind grief, memories, loss, until she spun into a pair of arms that snaked around her from behind and held her tight. She looked down and saw scarred hands locked around her waist, slim beautiful fingers, the Voyance rune. Jace. She melted back against him, closing her eyes, letting her head fall into the curve of his shoulder. She could feel his heart beating against her spine.

No one else’s heart beat like Jace’s did, or ever could.

Her eyes flew open, and she spun around, her hands out to push him away. “Sebastian,” she whispered. Her brother grinned down at her, silver and black like the Morgenstern ring.