City of Lost Souls

“Is the Clave employing him?” Jocelyn wanted to know.

“No,” Alec said slowly. “He’s doing it for me. Because of what Jace means to me.” He raised his sleeve, showing Jocelyn the parabatai rune on his inner forearm.

“You knew Jace wasn’t dead,” Clary said, her mind beginning to tick over thoughts. “Because you’re parabatai, because of that tie between you. But you said you felt something wrong.”

“Because he’s possessed,” Jocelyn said. “It’s changed him. Valentine said that when Luke became a Downworlder, he felt it. That sense of wrongness.”

Alec shook his head. “But when Jace was possessed by Lilith, I didn’t feel it,” he said. “Now I can feel something… wrong. Something off.” He looked down at his shoes. “You can feel it when your parabatai dies—like there was a cord tying you to something and it has snapped, and now you’re falling.” He looked at Clary. “I felt it, once, in Idris, during the battle. But it was so brief—and when I returned to Alicante, Jace was alive. I convinced myself I had imagined it.”

Clary shook her head, thinking of Jace and the blood-soaked sand by Lake Lyn. You didn’t.

“What I feel now is different,” he went on. “I feel like he’s absent from the world but not dead. Not imprisoned… Just not here.”

“That’s just it,” Clary said. “Both times I’ve seen him and Sebastian, they’ve vanished into thin air. No Portal, just one minute they were here and the next they were gone.”

“When you talk about there or here,” said Magnus, coming back into the room with a yawn, “and this world and that world, what you’re talking about are dimensions. There are only a few warlocks who can do dimensional magic. My old friend Ragnor could. Dimensions don’t lie side by side—they’re folded together, like paper. Where they intersect, dimensional pockets can be created that prevent magic from being able to find you. After all, you’re not here—you’re there.”

“Maybe that’s why we can’t track him? Why Alec can’t feel him?” said Clary.

“Could be.” Magnus sounded almost impressed. “It would mean there’s literally no way to find them if they don’t want to be found. And no way to get a message back to us if you did find them. That’s complicated, expensive magic. Sebastian must have some connections—” The door buzzer sounded, and they all jumped. Magnus rolled his eyes. “Everyone calm down,” he said, and vanished into the entryway. He was back a moment later with a man wrapped in a long parchment-colored robe, the back and sides inked with patterns of runes in dark red-brown. Though his hood was up, shadowing his face, he looked completely dry, as if not a flake of snow had fallen on him. When he pushed the hood back, Clary was not at all surprised to see the face of Brother Zachariah.

Jocelyn set her mug down suddenly on the coffee table. She was looking at the Silent Brother. With his hood pushed back, you could see his dark hair, but his face was shadowed so that Clary could not see his eyes, only his high, rune-scarred cheekbones. “You,” Jocelyn said, her voice trailing off. “But Magnus told me that you would never—”

Unexpected events call for unexpected measures. Brother Zachariah’s voice floated out, touching the inside of Clary’s head; she knew from the expressions on the faces of the others that they could hear him too. I will say nothing to the Clave or Council of anything that transpires tonight. If the chance comes before me to save the last of the Herondale bloodline, I consider that of higher importance than the fealty I render the Clave.

“So that’s settled,” Magnus said. He made a strange pair with the Silent Brother beside him, one of them pale and blanched in robes, the other in bright yellow pajamas. “Any new insight into Lilith’s runes?”

I have studied the runes carefully and listened to all the testimony given in the Council, said Brother Zachariah. I believe that her ritual was twofold. First she used the Daylighter’s bite to revive Jonathan Morgenstern’s consciousness. His body was still weak, but his mind and will were alive. I believe that when Jace Herondale was left alone on the roof with him, Jonathan drew on the power of Lilith’s runes and forced Jace to enter the enspelled circle that surrounded him. At that point Jace’s will would have been subject to his. I believe he would have drawn on Jace’s blood for the strength to rise and escape the roof, taking Jace with him.

“And somehow all that created a connection between them?” Clary said. “Because when my mother stabbed Sebastian, Jace started to bleed.”

Yes. What Lilith did was a sort of twinning ritual, not unlike our own parabatai ceremony but much more powerful and dangerous. The two are now bound inextricably. Should one die, the other will follow. No weapon in this world can wound only one of them.