City of Lost Souls

“Who calls on the Iron Sisters?” she said. “Speak your names.”


Isabelle looked toward Jocelyn, who gestured that she should speak first. She cleared her throat. “I am Isabelle Lightwood, and this is Jocelyn Fr—Fairchild. We have come to ask your help.”

“Jocelyn Morgenstern,” said the woman. “Born Fairchild, but you cannot so easily erase the taint of Valentine from your past. Have you not turned your back on the Clave?”

“It is true,” said Jocelyn. “I am outcast. But Isabelle is a daughter of the Clave. Her mother—”

“Runs the New York Institute,” said the woman. “We are remote here but not without sources of information; I am no fool. My name is Sister Cleophas, and I am a Maker. I shape the adamas for the other sisters to carve. I recognize that whip you wind so cunningly around your wrist.” She indicated Isabelle. “As for that bauble about your throat—”

“If you know so much,” said Jocelyn, as Isabelle’s hand crept to the ruby at her neck, “then do you know why we are here? Why we have come to you?”

Sister Cleophas’s eyelids lowered and she smiled slowly. “Unlike our speechless brethren, we cannot read minds here in the Fortress. Therefore we rely upon a network of information, most of it very reliable. I assume this visit has something to do with the situation involving Jace Lightwood—as his sister is here—and your son, Jonathan Morgenstern.”

“We have a conundrum,” said Jocelyn. “Jonathan Morgenstern plots against the Clave, like his father. The Clave has issued a death warrant against him. But Jace—Jonathan Lightwood—is very much loved by his family, who have done no wrong, and by my daughter. The conundrum is that Jace and Jonathan are bound, by very ancient blood magic.”

“Blood magic? What sort of blood magic?”

Jocelyn took Magnus’s folded notes from the pocket of her gear and handed them over. Cleophas studied them with her intent fiery gaze. Isabelle saw with a start that the fingers of her hands were very long—not elegantly long but grotesquely so, as if the bones had been stretched so that each hand resembled an albino spider. Her nails were filed to points, each tipped with electrum.

She shook her head. “The Sisters have little to do with blood magic.” The flame color of her eyes seemed to leap and then dim, and a moment later another shadow appeared behind the frosted-glass surface of the adamas wall. This time Isabelle watched more closely as a second Iron Sister stepped through. It was like watching someone emerge from a haze of white smoke.

“Sister Dolores,” said Cleophas, handing Magnus’s notes to the new arrival. She looked much like Cleophas—the same tall narrow form, the same white dress, the same long hair, though in this case her hair was gray, and bound at the ends of her two braids with gold wire. Despite her gray hair, her face was lineless, her fire-colored eyes bright. “Can you make sense of this?”

Dolores glanced over the pages briefly. “A twinning spell,” she said. “Much like our own parabatai ceremony, but its alliance is demonic.”

“What makes it demonic?” Isabelle demanded. “If the parabatai spell is harmless—”

“Is it?” said Cleophas, but Dolores shot her a quelling look.

“The parabatai ritual binds two individuals but leaves their wills free,” Dolores explained. “This binds two but makes one subordinate to the other. What the primary of the two believes, the other will believe; what the first one wants, the second will want. It essentially removes the free will of the secondary partner in the spell, and that is why it is demonic. For free will is what makes us Heaven’s creatures.”

“It also seems to mean that when one is wounded, the other is wounded,” said Jocelyn. “Might we presume the same about death?”

“Yes. Neither will survive the death of the other. This again is not part of our parabatai ritual, for it is too cruel.”

“Our question to you is this,” said Jocelyn. “Is there any weapon forged, or that you might create, that could harm one but not the other? Or that might cut them apart?

Sister Dolores looked down at the notes, then handed them to Jocelyn. Her hands, like those of her colleague, were long and thin and as white as floss. “No weapon we have forged or could ever forge might do that.”

Isabelle’s hand tightened at her side, her nails cutting into her palm. “You mean there’s nothing?”

“Nothing in this world,” said Dolores. “A blade of Heaven or Hell might do it. The sword of the Archangel Michael, that Joshua fought with at Jericho, for it is infused with heavenly fire. And there are blades forged in the blackness of the Pit that might aid you, though how one might be obtained, I do not know.”

“And we would be prevented from telling you by the Law if we did know,” said Cleophas with asperity. “You understand, of course, that we will also have to tell the Clave about this visit of yours—”