City of Lost Souls

His hand slid up from her wrist, encircling her upper arm with his fingers. “You’re such a little thing. Who’d think you were such a spitfire? Especially in bed.”


She leaped to her feet, jerking away from him. “What did you just say?”

He rose as well, his lips curving up at the corners. He was so much taller than she was, almost exactly as much taller as Jace was. He leaned in close to her when he spoke, and his voice was low and rough. “Everything that marks Jace, marks me,” he said. “Down to your fingernails.” He was grinning. “Eight parallel scratches on my back, little sister. Are you saying you didn’t put them there?”

A soft explosion went off in her head, like a dull firework of rage. She looked at his laughing face, and she thought of Jace, and of Simon, and the words they’d just exchanged. If the Queen really could eavesdrop on her conversations, then she might know about Glorious already. But Sebastian didn’t know. Couldn’t know.

She snatched the ring from his hand, and threw it to the ground. She heard him give a shout, but she’d already brought her foot down on it, feeling it give way, the gold smashing to powder.

He looked at her incredulously as she drew her foot back. “You—”

She drew back her right hand, the strongest one, and drove her fist into his stomach.

He was taller, broader, and stronger than she was, but she had the element of surprise. He doubled over, choking, and she snatched the stele from his weapons belt. Then she ran.

Magnus jerked the wheel to the side so fast that the tires screeched. Isabelle shrieked. They bumped up onto the shoulder of the road, under the shadow of a copse of partly leafless trees.

The next thing Simon knew, the doors were open and everyone was tumbling out onto the blacktop. The sun was going down, and the headlights of the truck were on, lighting them all with an eerie glow.

“All right, vampire boy,” said Magnus, shaking his head hard enough to shed glitter. “What the hell is going on?”

Alec leaned against the truck as Simon explained, repeating the conversation with Clary as accurately as he could before the whole thing flew out of his head.

“Did she say anything about getting her and Jace out of there?” Isabelle asked when he was done, her face pale in the yellowish glow from the headlights.

“No,” said Simon. “And Iz—I don’t think Jace wants to get out. He wants to be where he is.”

Isabelle crossed her arms and looked down at her boots, her black hair sweeping across her face.

“What’s this Seventh Sacred Site business?” said Alec. “I know about the seven wonders of the world, but seven sacred sites?”

“They’re more in the interest of warlocks than Nephilim,” said Magnus. “Each is a place where ley lines converge, forming a matrix—a sort of net within which magical spells are amplified. The seventh is a stone tomb in Ireland, at Poll na mBrón; the name means ‘the cavern of sorrows.’ It’s in a very bleak, uninhabited area called the Burren. A good place to raise a demon, if it’s a big one.” He tugged at a spike of hair. “This is bad. Really bad.”

“You think he could do it? Make—dark Shadowhunters?” Simon asked.

“Everything has an alliance, Simon. The alliance of the Nephilim is seraphic, but if it were demonic, they’d still be as strong, as powerful as they are now. But they would be dedicated to the eradication of mankind instead of its salvation.”

“We have to get there,” Isabelle said. “We have to stop them.”

“‘Him,’ you mean,” said Alec. “We have to stop him. Sebastian.”

“Jace is his ally now. You have to accept that, Alec,” Magnus said. A light misty drizzle had begun to fall. The drops gleamed like gold in the headlights’ glow. “Ireland is five hours ahead. They’re doing the ceremony at midnight. It’s five o’clock here. We have an hour and a half—two hours, at most—to stop them.”

“Then, we shouldn’t be waiting. We should be going,” Isabelle said, a tinge of panic in her voice. “If we’re going to stop him—”

“Iz, there are only four of us,” Alec said. “We don’t even know what kind of numbers we’re up against—”

Simon glanced at Magnus, who was watching Alec and Isabelle argue with a peculiarly detached expression. “Magnus,” Simon said. “Why didn’t we just Portal to the farm? You Portaled half of Idris to Brocelind Plain.”

“I wanted to give you enough time to change your mind,” said Magnus, not taking his eyes off his boyfriend.

“But we can Portal from here,” Simon said. “I mean, you could do that for us.”

“Yeah,” Magnus said. “But like Alec says, we don’t know what we’re up against in terms of numbers. I’m a pretty powerful warlock, but Jonathan Morgenstern is no ordinary Shadowhunter, and neither is Jace, for that matter. And if they succeed in raising Lilith—she’ll be a lot weaker than she was, but she’s still Lilith.”