City of Lost Souls

“Yeah, well, I don’t see anyone here but me. And I just want to clean the blood off you.” He leaned back obediently on his hands. Blood had soaked through the shirt he’d been wearing and streaked his chest and the flat planes of his stomach, but as she ran her fingers carefully over him, she could feel that most of his cuts were shallow. The iratze he’d put on himself earlier was already causing them to fade.

He turned his face up to her, eyes shut, as she ran the damp washcloth over his skin, blood pinking the white cotton. She scrubbed at the dried streaks on his neck, wrung out the cloth, dunked it in the glass of water on the nightstand, and went to work on his chest. He sat with his head tilted back, watching her as the cloth glided over the muscles of his shoulders, the smooth line of arms, forearms, hard chest scarred with white lines, the black of permanent Marks.

“Clary,” he said.

“Yes?”

The humor had gone from his voice. “I won’t remember this,” he said. “When I’m back—like I was, under his control, I won’t remember being myself. I won’t remember being with you, or talking to you like this. So just tell me—are they all right? My family? Do they know—”

“What’s happened to you? A little. And no, they’re not all right.” His eyes closed. “I could lie to you,” she said. “But you should know. They love you so much, and they want you back.”

“Not like this,” he said.

She touched his shoulder. “Are you going to tell me what happened? How you got these cuts?”

He took a deep breath, and the scar on his chest stood out, livid and dark. “I killed someone.”

She felt the shock of his words go through her body like the recoil of a gun. She dropped the bloody towel, then bent down to retrieve it. When she looked up, he was staring down at her. In the moonlight the lines of his face were fine and sharp and sad. “Who?” she asked.

“You met her,” Jace went on, each word like a weight. “The woman you went to visit with Sebastian. The Iron Sister. Magdalena.” He twisted away from her and reached back to retrieve something tangled among the blankets of the bed. The muscles in his arms and back moved under the skin as he took hold of it and turned back to Clary, the object gleaming in his hand.

It was a clear, glassine chalice—an exact replica of the Mortal Cup, except that instead of being gold, it was carved of silvery-white adamas.

“Sebastian sent me—sent him—to get this from her tonight,” Jace said. “And he also gave me the order to kill her. She wasn’t expecting it. She wasn’t expecting any violence, just payment and exchange. She thought we were on the same side. I let her hand me the Cup, and then I took my dagger and I—” He inhaled sharply, as if the memory hurt. “I stabbed her. I meant it to be through the heart, but she turned and I missed by inches. She staggered back and grabbed for her worktable—there was powdered adamas on it—she threw it at me. I think she meant to blind me. I turned my head away, and when I looked back she had an aegis in her hand. I think I knew what it was. The light of it seared my eyes. I cried out as she drove it toward my chest—I felt a searing pain in the Mark, and then the blade shattered.” He looked down and gave a mirthless laugh. “The funny thing is, if I’d been wearing gear, this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t because I didn’t think it was worth the bother. I didn’t think she could hurt me. But the aegis burned the Mark—Lilith’s Mark—and suddenly I was back in myself, standing there over this dead woman with a bloody dagger in my hand and the Cup in the other.”

“I don’t understand. Why did Sebastian tell you to kill her? She was going to give the Cup to you. To Sebastian. She said—”

Jace expelled a ragged breath. “Do you remember what Sebastian said about that clock in Old Town Square? In Prague?”

“That the king had the clock maker’s eyes put out after he made it, so he could never make anything as beautiful again,” Clary said. “But I don’t see—”

“Sebastian wanted Magdalena dead so she could never make anything like this again,” said Jace. “And so she could never tell.”

“Tell what?” She put her hand up, took hold of Jace’s chin, and drew his face down so that he was looking at her. “Jace, what is Sebastian really planning on doing? The story he told in the training room, about wanting to raise demons so he could destroy them—”

“Sebastian wants to raise demons all right.” Jace’s voice was grim. “One demon in particular. Lilith.”

“But Lilith’s dead. Simon destroyed her.”

“Greater Demons don’t die. Not really. Greater Demons inhabit the spaces between worlds, the great Void, the emptiness. What Simon did was shatter her power, send her in shreds back to the nothingness she came from. But she’ll slowly reform there. Be reborn. It would take centuries, but not if Sebastian helps her.”

A cold feeling was growing in the pit of Clary’s stomach. “Helps her how?”

“By summoning her back to this world. He wants to mix her blood and his in a cup and create an army of dark Nephilim. He wants to be Jonathan Shadowhunter reincarnated, but on the side of the demons, not the angels.”