City of Lost Souls

And Sebastian, who had so far shown no real emotion beyond mockery and disgust, snarled—snarled and drew from his belt a long, thin dagger. Luke’s eyes widened, and he began to twist away, but Sebastian was faster than him—faster than anyone else Clary had ever seen. Faster than Jace. He drove the dagger into Luke’s chest, twisting it hard before jerking it back out, red to the hilt. Luke fell back against the wall—then slid down it, leaving a smear of blood behind as Clary stared in horror.

Jocelyn screamed. The sound was worse than the sound of the bullet shattering the window, though Clary heard it as if it came from a distance away, or underwater. She was staring at Luke, who had collapsed to the floor, the carpet around him rapidly turning red.

Sebastian raised the dagger again—and Clary flung herself at him, slamming as hard as she could into his shoulder, trying to knock him off balance. She barely moved him, but he did drop the dagger. He turned on her. He was bleeding from a split lip. Clary didn’t know why, not until Jace swung into her field of vision and she saw the blood on his mouth where Luke had hit him.

“Enough!” Jace grabbed Sebastian by the back of the jacket. He was pale, not looking at Luke, or at Clary, either. “Stop it. This isn’t why we came here.”

“Let me go—”

“No.” Jace reached around Sebastian and grabbed his hand. His eyes met Clary’s. His lips shaped words—there was a flash of silver, the ring on Sebastian’s finger—and then both of them were gone, winking out of existence between one breath and another. Just as they vanished, a streak of something metallic shot through the air where they had been standing, and buried itself in the wall.

Luke’s kindjal.

Clary turned to look at her mother, who had thrown the knife. But Jocelyn wasn’t looking at Clary. She was darting to Luke’s side, dropping to her knees on the bloody carpet, and pulling him up into her lap. His eyes were closed. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. Sebastian’s silver dagger, smeared with more blood, lay a few feet away.

“Mom,” Clary whispered. “Is he—”

“The dagger was silver.” Jocelyn’s voice shook. “He won’t heal fast like he should, not without special treatment.” She touched Luke’s face with her fingertips. His chest was rising and falling, Clary saw with relief, if shallowly. She could taste tears burning in the back of her throat and for a moment was amazed at her mother’s calm. But then this was the woman who had once stood in the ashes of her home, surrounded by the blackened bodies of her family, including her parents and son, and had gone on from that. “Get some towels from the bathroom,” her mother said. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Clary staggered to her feet and went almost blindly into Luke’s small, tiled bathroom. There was a gray towel hanging from the back of the door. She yanked it down, went back into the living room. Jocelyn was holding Luke in her lap with one hand; the other hand held a cell phone. She dropped it and reached for the towel as Clary came in. Folding it in half, she laid it over the wound in Luke’s chest and pressed down. Clary watched as the edges of the gray towel began to turn scarlet with blood.

“Luke,” Clary whispered. He didn’t move. His face was an awful gray color.

“I just called his pack,” Jocelyn said. She didn’t look at her daughter; Clary realized Jocelyn had not asked her a single question about Jace and Sebastian, or why she and Jace had emerged from her bedroom, or what they had been doing there. She was entirely focused on Luke. “They have some members patrolling the area. As soon as they get here, we have to leave. Jace will come back for you.”

“You don’t know that—,” Clary began, whispering past her dry throat.

“I do,” said Jocelyn. “Valentine came back for me after fifteen years. That’s what the Morgenstern men are like. They don’t ever give up. He’ll come for you again.”

Jace isn’t Valentine. But the words died on Clary’s lips. She wanted to drop to her knees and take Luke’s hand, hold it tightly, tell him she loved him. But she remembered Jace’s hands on her in the bedroom and didn’t. This was her fault. She didn’t deserve to get to comfort Luke, or herself. She deserved the pain, the guilt.

The scrape of footsteps sounded on the porch, the low murmur of voices. Jocelyn’s head jerked up. The pack.

“Clary, go and get your things,” she said. “Take what you think you’ll need but not more than you can carry. We’re not coming back to this house.”





6

NO WEAPON IN THIS WORLD



Little flakes of early snow had begun to fall from the steel-gray sky like feathers as Clary and her mother hurried along Greenpoint Avenue, their heads bent against the chill wind coming off the East River.