City of Lost Souls

“Quit what?”


“Morbidly thinking about all the horrible things that are going to happen to you, or that you wish would happen to you because you’re alive and Jace is… missing.” Isabelle’s voice jumped, like a record skipping a groove. She never spoke of Jace as being dead or even gone—she and Alec refused to entertain the possibility. And Isabelle had never reproached Clary once for keeping such an enormous secret. Throughout everything, in fact, Isabelle had been her staunchest defender. Meeting her every day at the door to the Council Hall, she had held Clary firmly by the arm as she’d marched her past clumps of glaring, muttering Shadowhunters. She had waited through endless Council interrogations, shooting dagger glances at anyone who dared look at Clary sideways. Clary had been astonished. She and Isabelle had never been enormously close, both of them being the sort of girls who were more comfortable with boys than other female companionship. But Isabelle didn’t leave her side. Clary was as bewildered as she was grateful.

“I can’t help it,” Clary said. “If I were allowed to patrol—if I were allowed to do anything—I think it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“I don’t know.” Isabelle sounded weary. For the past two weeks she and Alec had been exhausted and gray-faced from sixteen-hour patrols and searches. When Clary had found out she was banned from patrolling or searching for Jace in any way until the Council decided what to do about the fact that she had brought him back from the dead, she had kicked a hole in her bedroom door. “Sometimes it feels so futile,” Isabelle added.

Ice crackled up and down Clary’s bones. “You mean you think he’s dead?”

“No, I don’t. I mean I think there’s no way they’re still in New York.”

“But they’re patrolling in other cities, right?” Clary put a hand to her throat, forgetting that the Morgenstern ring no longer hung there. Magnus was still trying to track Jace, though no tracking had yet worked.

“Of course they are.” Isabelle reached out curiously and touched the delicate silver bell that hung around Clary’s neck now, in place of the ring. “What’s that?”

Clary hesitated. The bell had been a gift from the Seelie Queen. No, that wasn’t quite right. The Queen of the faeries didn’t give gifts. The bell was meant to signal the Seelie Queen that Clary wanted her help. Clary had found her hand wandering to it more and more often as the days dragged on with no sign of Jace. The only thing that stopped Clary was the knowledge that the Seelie Queen never gave anything without the expectation of something terrible in return.

Before Clary could reply to Isabelle, the door opened. Both girls sat up ramrod straight, Clary clutching one of Izzy’s pink pillows so hard that the rhinestones on it dug into the skin of her palms.

“Hey.” A slim figure stepped into the room and shut the door. Alec, Isabelle’s older brother, was dressed in Council wear—a black robe figured with silver runes, open now over jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. All the black made his pale skin look paler, his crystal-blue eyes bluer. His hair was black and straight like his sister’s, but shorter, cut just above his jawline. His mouth was set in a thin line.

Clary’s heart started to pound. Alec didn’t look happy. Whatever the news was, it couldn’t be good.

It was Isabelle who spoke. “How did it go?” she said quietly. “What’s the verdict?”

Alec sat down at the vanity table, swinging himself around the chair to face Izzy and Clary over the back. At another time it would have been comical—Alec was very tall, with long legs like a dancer, and the way he folded himself awkwardly around the chair made it look like dollhouse furniture.

“Clary,” he said. “Jia Penhallow handed down the verdict. You’re cleared of any wrongdoing. You broke no Laws, and Jia feels that you’ve been punished enough.”

Isabelle exhaled an audible breath and smiled. For just a moment a feeling of relief broke through the layer of ice over all of Clary’s emotions. She wasn’t going to be punished, locked up in the Silent City, trapped somewhere where she couldn’t help Jace. Luke, who as the representative of the werewolves on the Council had been present for the verdict, had promised to call Jocelyn as soon as the meeting ended, but Clary reached for her phone anyway; the prospect of giving her mother good news for a change was too tempting.

“Clary,” Alec said as she flipped her phone open. “Wait.”

She looked at him. His expression was still as serious as an undertaker’s. With a sudden sense of foreboding, Clary put her phone back down on the bed. “Alec—what is it?”

“It wasn’t your verdict that took the Council so long,” said Alec. “There was another matter under discussion.”