City of Lost Souls

Jordan’s mouth opened. “Simon wasn’t responsible for Turning Maureen,” he said. “I told you—”

Praetor Scott waved away his words. “Yes, I know,” he said, “or you would have been pulled from your assignment, Kyle. But your subject did bite her, and under your watch as well. And it was her association with the Daylighter, however distant, that led to her eventual Turning.”

“The Daylighter is dangerous,” said Raphael, his eyes shining. “It is what I have been saying all along.”

“He is not dangerous,” Maia said fiercely. “He has a good heart.” She saw Jordan glance at her a little, sidelong, so quickly that she wondered if she’d imagined it.

“Yap, yap, yap,” said Raphael dismissively. “You werewolves cannot focus on the matter at hand. I trusted you, Praetor, for new-fledged Downworlders are your department. But allowing Maureen to run wild reflects badly on my clan. If you do not find her soon, I will call up every vampire at my disposal. After all”—he smiled, and his delicate incisors shone—“in the end she is ours to kill.”

When the meal was over, Clary and Jace walked back to the apartment through a mist-shrouded evening. The streets were deserted and the canal water shone like glass. Rounding a corner, they found themselves beside a quiet canal, lined with shuttered houses. Boats bobbed gently on the curving water, each a half-moon of black.

Jace laughed softly and moved forward, his hand pulling out of Clary’s. His eyes were wide and golden in the lamplight. He knelt by the side of the canal, and she saw a flash of white-silver—a stele—and then one of the boats sprang free of its mooring chain and began to drift toward the center of the canal. Jace slid the stele back into his belt and leaped, landing lightly on the wooden seat at the front of the boat. He held his hand out to Clary. “Come on.”

She looked from him to the boat and shook her head. It was only a little bigger than a canoe, painted black, though the paint was damp and splintering. It looked as light and fragile as a toy. She imagined upending it and both of them being dumped into the ice-green canal. “I can’t. I’ll knock it over.”

Jace shook his head impatiently. “You can do it,” he said. “I trained you.” To demonstrate he took a step back. Now he was standing on the thin edge of the boat, just beside the oarlock. He looked at her, his mouth crooked in a half smile. By all the laws of physics, she thought, the boat, unbalanced, ought to have been toppling sideways into the water. But Jace balanced lightly there, back straight, as if he were made of nothing more than smoke. Behind him was the backdrop of water and stone, canal and bridges, not a single modern edifice in sight. With his bright hair and the way he carried himself, he could have been some Renaissance prince.

He held out a hand to her again. “Remember. You’re as light as you want to be.”

She remembered. Hours of training in how to fall, to balance, how to land like Jace did, as if you were a piece of ash sifting gently downward. She sucked her breath in and leaped, the green water flying by beneath her. She alighted in the bow of the boat, wobbling on the wooden seat, but steady.

She let out her breath in a whoosh of relief and heard Jace laugh as he leaped down to the flat bottom of the boat. It was leaky. A thin layer of water covered the wood. He was also nine inches taller than she was, so that with her standing on the seat in the bow, their heads were on a level.

He put his hands on her waist. “So,” he said. “Where do you want to go now?”

She looked around. They had drifted far away from the bank of the canal. “Are we stealing this boat?”

“‘Stealing’ is such an ugly word,” he mused.

“What do you want to call it?”

He picked her up and swung her around before putting her down. “An extreme case of window-shopping.”

He pulled her closer, and she stiffened. Her feet skidded out from under her, and the two of them slid to the curved floor of the boat, which was flat and damp and smelled like water and wet wood.

Clary found herself resting on top of Jace, her knees on either side of his hips. Water was soaking into his shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind. He threw his hands behind his head, folding them, his shirt pulling up. “You literally knocked me down with the strength of your passion,” he observed. “Nice work, Fray.”

“You only fell because you wanted to. I know you,” she said. The moon shone down on them like a spotlight, like they were the only people under it. “You never slip.”

He touched her face. “I may not slip,” he said, “but I fall.”

Her heart pounded, and she had to swallow before she could reply lightly, as if he were joking. “That may be your worst line of all time.”

“Who says it’s a line?”