City of Lost Souls

“You want me to believe you care if this world is destroyed?”


“Well, I do live here,” Sebastian said, more mildly than she would have expected. “And sometimes extreme situations call for extreme measures. To destroy the enemy it can be necessary to understand him, even to treat with him. If I can make those Greater Demons trust me, then I can lure them here, where they can be destroyed, and their followers as well. That ought to turn back the tide. Demons will know that this world is not as easy pickings as they imagined it.”

Clary shook her head. “And you’re going to do this with what, just you and Jace? You’re pretty impressive, don’t get me wrong, but even the two of you—”

Sebastian stood up. “You really don’t imagine I could have thought this through, do you?” He looked down at her, the fall wind blowing his white hair across his face. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

She hesitated. “Jace—”

“Is still asleep. Trust me, I know.” He held out his hand. “Come with me, Clary. If I can’t make you believe I have a plan, maybe I can prove it to you.”

She stared at him. Images tumbled through her mind like shaken confetti: the junk shop in Prague, her gold leaf-ring falling away into darkness, Jace holding her in the alcove in the club, the glass tanks of dead bodies. Sebastian with a seraph blade in his grip.

Prove it to you.

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

It was decided, though not without a great deal of arguing, that in order for the summoning of Raziel to take place, Team Good would need to find a fairly secluded location. “We can’t summon a sixty-foot angel in the middle of Central Park,” Magnus observed dryly. “People might notice, even in New York.”

“Raziel’s sixty feet tall?” Isabelle said. She was slumped down in an armchair she had pulled up to the table. There were rings under her dark eyes; she—like Alec, Magnus, and Simon—was exhausted. They had all been awake for hours, poring through books of Magnus’s so old that their pages were as thin as onionskin. Both Isabelle and Alec could read Greek and Latin, and Alec had a better knowledge of demon languages than Izzy did, but there were still many only Magnus could understand. Maia and Jordan, realizing they could be more help elsewhere, had left for the police station to check on Luke. Meanwhile, Simon had tried to make himself useful in other ways—getting food and coffee, copying down symbols as Magnus instructed, fetching more paper and pencils, and even feeding Chairman Meow, who had thanked him by coughing up a hair ball on the floor of Magnus’s kitchen.

“Actually, he’s only fifty-nine feet tall, but he likes to exaggerate,” said Magnus. Tiredness was not improving his temper. His hair was sticking straight up, and there were smudges of glitter on the backs of his hands where he had rubbed his eyes. “He’s an angel, Isabelle. Haven’t you ever studied anything?”

Isabelle clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Valentine raised an angel in his cellar. I don’t see why you need all this space—”

“Because Valentine is just WAY MORE AWESOME than me,” snapped Magnus, dropping his pen. “Look—”

“Don’t shout at my sister,” said Alec. He said it quietly, but with force behind the words. Magnus looked at him in surprise. Alec continued, “Isabelle, the size of angels, when they appear in the earthly dimension, varies depending on their power. The angel Valentine summoned was of a lower rank than Raziel. And if you were to summon an angel of an even higher rank, Michael, or Gabriel—”

“I couldn’t make a spell that would bind them, even momentarily,” said Magnus in a subdued voice. “We’re summoning Raziel in part because we’re hoping that as the creator of Shadowhunters, he will have a special compassion—or, really, any compassion—for your situation. He’s also of about the right rank. A less powerful angel might not be able to help us, but a more powerful angel… well, if something went wrong…”

“It might not just be me who dies,” said Simon.

Magnus looked pained, and Alec glanced down at the papers strewn across the table. Isabelle put her hand on top of Simon’s. “I can’t believe we’re actually sitting here talking about summoning an angel,” she said. “My whole life we’ve sworn on the Angel’s name. We know our power comes from angels. But the idea of seeing one… I can’t really imagine it. When I try to think about it, it’s too big an idea.”

A silence fell across the table. There was a darkness in Magnus’s eyes that made Simon wonder if he had ever seen an angel. He wondered whether he ought to ask, but was saved deciding by the buzzing of his cell phone.

“One second,” he muttered, and got to his feet. He flipped the phone open and leaned against one of the loft’s pillars. It was a text—several—from Maia.