City of Lost Souls

“You didn’t stop me,” he said. It was half accusation, half hope.

“I didn’t want to.” He looked at her. She was on her back, her chest rising and falling fast, as if she’d been running. There were two neat puncture wounds in the side of her throat, and two thin lines of blood that ran down her neck to her collarbone. Obeying an instinct that seemed to run deep under the skin, Simon leaned forward and licked the blood from her throat, tasting salt, tasting Isabelle. She shuddered, her fingers fluttering in his hair. “Simon…”

He drew back. She was looking at him with her big dark eyes, very serious, her cheeks flushed. “I…”

“What?” For a wild moment he thought she was going to say ‘I love you,’ but instead she shook her head, yawned, and hooked her finger through one of the belt loops on his jeans. Her fingers played with the bare skin at his waist.

Somewhere Simon had heard that yawning was a sign of blood loss. He panicked. “Are you okay? Did I drink too much? Do you feel tired? Are—”

She scooted closer to him. “I am fine. You made yourself stop. And I’m a Shadowhunter. We replace blood at triple the rate a normal human being does.”

“Did you…” He could barely bring himself to ask. “Did you like it?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was husky. “I liked it.”

“Really?”

She giggled. “You couldn’t tell?”

“I thought maybe you were faking it.”

She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down at him with her glowing dark eyes—how could eyes be dark and bright at the same time? “I don’t fake things, Simon,” she said. “And I don’t lie, and I don’t pretend.”

“You’re a heartbreaker, Isabelle Lightwood,” he said, as lightly as he could with her blood still running through him like fire. “Jace told Clary once you’d walk all over me in high-heeled boots.”

“That was then. You’re different now.” She eyed him. “You’re not scared of me.”

He touched her face. “And you’re not scared of anything.”

“I don’t know.” Her hair fell forward. “Maybe you’ll break my heart.” Before he could say anything, she kissed him, and he wondered if she could taste her own blood. “Now shut up. I want to sleep,” she said, and she curled up against his side and closed her eyes.

Somehow, now, they fit, where they hadn’t before. Nothing was awkward, or poking into him, or banging against his leg. It didn’t feel like childhood and sunlight and gentleness. It felt strange and heated and exciting and powerful and… different. Simon lay awake, his eyes on the ceiling, his hand stroking Isabelle’s silky black hair absently. He felt like he’d been caught up in a tornado and deposited somewhere very far away, where nothing was familiar. Eventually he turned his head and kissed Izzy, very lightly, on the forehead; she stirred and murmured but didn’t open her eyes.

When Clary woke in the morning, Jace was still asleep, curled on his side, his arm outstretched just enough to touch her shoulder. She kissed his cheek and got to her feet. She was about to pad into the bathroom to take a shower when she was overcome by curiosity. She went quietly to the bedroom door and peered out.

The blood on the hallway wall was gone, the plaster unmarked. It was so clean she wondered if the whole thing had been a dream—the blood, the conversation in the kitchen with Sebastian, all of it. She took a step across the corridor, placed her hand against the wall where the bloody handprint had been—

“Good morning.”

She whirled. It was her brother. He had come out of his room soundlessly and was standing in the middle of the hall, regarding her with a crooked smile. He looked freshly showered; damp, his fair hair was the color of silver, almost metallic.

“You planning to wear that all the time?” he asked, eyeing her nightgown.

“No, I was just…” She didn’t want to say she’d been checking to see if there was still blood in the hall. He just looked at her, amused and superior. Clary backed away. “I’m going to get dressed.”

He said something after her, but she didn’t pause to hear what it was, just darted back into Jace’s bedroom and closed the door behind her. A moment later she heard voices in the hallway—Sebastian’s again, and a girl’s, speaking musical Italian. The girl from last night, she thought. The one he’d said was asleep in his room. It was only then that she realized how much she’d suspected he was lying.