City of Lost Souls

She screamed as enormous white blisters appeared on her skin. Alec could feel the heat from her bubbling hand. Fingers laced with hers, he jerked her hand upright, back into the shadows. She snarled and snapped at him. He elbowed her in the mouth, splitting her lip. Vampire blood—shimmering bright red, brighter than human blood—dripped from the corner of her mouth.

“Have you had enough?” he snarled. “Do you want more?” He began to force her hand back toward the sunlight. It had already begun to heal, the red, blistered skin fading to pink.

“No!” She gasped, coughed, and began to tremble, her whole body spasming. After a moment he realized she was laughing—laughing up at him through the blood. “That made me feel alive, little Nephilim. A good fight like that—I should thank you.”

“Thank me by giving me the answer to my question,” Alec said, panting. “Or I’ll ash you. I’m sick of your games.”

Her lips stretched into a smile. Her cuts had healed already, though her face was still bloody. “There is no way to make you immortal. Not without black magic or turning you into a vampire, and you have rejected both options.”

“But you said—you said there was another way we could be together—”

“Oh, there is.” Her eyes danced. “You may not be able to give yourself immortality, little Nephilim, at least not on any terms that would be acceptable to you. But you can take Magnus’s away.”

Clary sat in her bedroom at Luke’s, a pen clutched in her hand, a piece of paper spread out on the desk in front of her. The sun had gone down, and the desk light was on, blazing down on the rune she had just begun.

It had started to come to her on the L train home as she’d stared unseeingly out the window. It was nothing that had ever existed before, and she had rushed home from the station while the image was still fresh in her mind, brushing away her mother’s inquiries, closing herself in her room, putting pen to paper—

A knock came on the door. Quickly Clary slid the paper she was drawing on under a blank sheet as her mother came into the room.

“I know, I know,” Jocelyn said, holding up a hand against Clary’s protest. “You want to be left alone. But Luke made dinner, and you should eat.”

Clary gave her mother a look. “So should you.” Jocelyn, like her daughter, was given to loss of appetite under stress, and her face looked hollow. She should have been preparing for her honeymoon now, getting ready to pack her bags for somewhere beautiful and far away. Instead the wedding was postponed indefinitely, and Clary could hear her crying through the walls at night. Clary knew that kind of crying, born out of anger and guilt, a crying that said This is all my fault.

“I’ll eat if you will,” Jocelyn said, forcing a smile. “Luke made pasta.”

Clary turned her chair around, deliberately angling her body to block her mother’s view of her desk. “Mom,” she said. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it?”

Clary bit the end of her pen, a bad habit she’d had since she started to draw. “When I was in the Silent City with Jace, the Brothers told me that there’s a ceremony performed on Shadowhunters at birth, a ceremony that protects them. That the Iron Sisters and the Silent Brothers have to perform it. And I was wondering…”

“If the ceremony was ever performed on you?”

Clary nodded.

Jocelyn exhaled and pushed her hands through her hair. “It was,” she said. “I arranged it through Magnus. A Silent Brother was present, someone sworn to secrecy, and a female warlock who took the place of the Iron Sister. I almost didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to think you could be in danger from the supernatural after I’d hidden you so carefully. But Magnus talked me into it, and he was right.”

Clary looked at her curiously. “Who was the female warlock?”

“Jocelyn!” It was Luke calling from the kitchen. “The water’s boiling over!”

Jocelyn dropped a quick kiss on Clary’s head. “Sorry. Culinary emergency. See you in five?”

Clary nodded as her mother hurried from the room, then turned back to her desk. The rune she had been creating was still there, teasing the edge of her mind. She began to draw again, completing the design she had started. As she finished, she sat back and stared at what she’d made. It looked a little like the Opening rune but wasn’t. It was a pattern as simple as a cross and as new to the world as a just-born baby. It held a sleeping threat, a sense that it had been born out of her rage and guilt and impotent anger.

It was a powerful rune. But though she knew exactly what it meant and how it could be used, she couldn’t think of a single way in which it could possibly be helpful in the current situation. It was like having your car break down on a lonely road, rooting desperately around in the trunk, and triumphantly pulling out an electrical extension cord instead of jumper cables.

She felt as if her own power was laughing at her. With a curse, she dropped her pen onto the desk and put her face in her hands.