City of Lost Souls

“Because Sebastian is. You heard I destroyed that apartment. I know he has other ways of getting around, but…”

“That’s my girl. But he has backups. Other hiding places. I don’t know what they are. He never told me.” He leaned forward, close enough that she could see the changing colors in his eyes. “Since I woke up, the Silent Brothers have been with me practically every minute. They had to perform the ceremony on me again, the one that gets performed on Shadowhunters when they’re born to keep them safe. And then they went into my mind. Searching, trying to pull out any snippet of information about Sebastian, anything I might know and not remember I knew. But—” Jace shook his head in frustration. “There just isn’t anything. I knew his plans through the ceremony at the Burren. Beyond that, I have no idea what he’s going to do next. Where he might strike. They do know he’s been working with demons, so they’re shoring up the wards, especially around Idris. But I feel like there’s one useful thing we might have gotten out of all this—some secret knowledge on my part—and we don’t even have that.”

“But if you did know anything, Jace, he would just change his plans,” Clary objected. “He knows he lost you. You two were tied together. I heard him scream when I stabbed you.” She shivered. “It was this horrible lost sound. He really did care about you in some strange way, I think. And even though the whole thing was awful, both of us got something out of it that might turn out to be useful.”

“Which is… ?”

“We understand him. I mean, as much as anyone can ever understand him. And that’s not something he can erase with a change of plans.”

Jace nodded slowly. “You know who else I feel like I understand now? My father.”

“Valen—no,” Clary said, watching his expression. “You mean Stephen.”

“I’ve been looking at his letters. The things in the box Amatis gave me. He wrote a letter to me, you know, that he meant me to read after he died. He told me to be a better man than he was.”

“You are,” Clary said. “In those moments in the apartment when you were you, you cared about doing the right thing more than you cared about your own life.”

“I know,” Jace said, glancing down at his scarred knuckles. “That’s the strange thing. I know. I had so much doubt about myself, always, but now I know the difference. Between myself and Sebastian. Between myself and Valentine. Even the difference between the two of them. Valentine honestly believed he was doing the right thing. He hated demons. But to Sebastian, the creature he thinks of as his mother is one. He would happily rule a race of dark Shadowhunters who did the bidding of demons, while the ordinary humans of this world were slaughtered for the demons’ pleasure. Valentine still believed it was the mandate of Shadowhunters to protect human beings; Sebastian thinks they’re cockroaches. And he doesn’t want to protect anyone. He only wants what he wants at the moment he wants it. And the only real thing he ever feels is annoyance when he’s thwarted.”

Clary wondered. She had seen Sebastian looking at Jace, even at herself, and knew there was some part of him as echoingly lonely as the blackest void of space. Loneliness drove him as much as a desire for power—loneliness and a need to be loved without any corresponding understanding that love was something you earned. But all she said was, “Well, let’s get with the thwarting, then.”

A smile ghosted across his face. “You know I want to beg you to stay out of this, right? It’s going to be a vicious battle. More vicious than I think the Clave even begins to understand.”

“But you’re not going to do that,” Clary said. “Because that would make you an idiot.”

“You mean because we need your rune powers?”

“Well, that, and—Did you not listen to anything you just said? That whole business about protecting each other?”

“I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here.”

“So what do you think it meant?”

“I’m not sure,” Jace admitted, “but I know I look damn good delivering it.”

“God, I forgot how annoying the un-possessed you is,” Clary muttered. “Need I remind you that you said that you have to accept you can’t protect me from everything? The only way that we can protect each other is if we are together. If we face things together. If we trust each other.” She looked him directly in the eye. “I shouldn’t have stopped you from going to the Clave by calling for Sebastian. I should respect the decisions you make. And you should respect mine. Because we’re going to be together a long time, and that’s the only way it’s going to work.”

His hand inched toward her on the blanket. “Being under Sebastian’s influence,” he said, hoarsely. “It seems like a bad dream to me, now. That insane place—those closets of clothes for your mother—”