Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
PROLOGUE
The Outcast Dead
The fog was thick, muffling sound and sight. Where it parted, Wil Herondale could see the street rising ahead of him, slick and wet and black with rain, and he could hear the voices of the dead.
Not al Shadowhunters could hear ghosts, unless the ghosts chose to be heard, but Wil was one of those who could. As he approached the old cemetery, their voices rose in a ragged chorus—wails and pleading, cries and snarls. This was not a peaceful burial ground, but Wil knew that; it was not his first visit to the Cross Bones Graveyard near London Bridge. He did his best to block out the noises, hunching his shoulders so that his col ar covered his ears, head down, a fine mist of rain dampening his black hair.
The entrance to the cemetery was halfway down the block: a pair of wrought iron gates set into a high stone wal , though any mundane passing by would have observed nothing but a plot of overgrown land, part of an unnamed builder’s yard. As Wil neared the gates, something else no mundane would have seen materialized out of the fog: a great bronze knocker in the shape of a hand, the fingers bony and skeletal. With a grimace Wil reached out one of his own gloved hands and lifted the knocker, letting it fal once, twice, three times, the hol ow clank resounding through the night.
Beyond the gates mist rose like steam from the ground, obscuring the gleam of bone against the rough ground. Slowly the mist began to coalesce, taking on an eerie blue glow. Wil put his hands to the bars of the gate; the cold of the metal seeped through his gloves, into his bones, and he shivered. It was a more than ordinary cold. When ghosts rose, they drew energy from their surroundings, depriving the air around them of heat. The hairs on the back of Wil ’s neck prickled and stood up as the blue mist formed slowly into the shape of an old woman in a ragged dress and white apron, her head bent.
“Hal o, Mol,” said Wil . “You’re looking particularly fine this evening, if I do say so.”
The ghost raised her head. Old Mol y was a strong spirit, one of the stronger Wil had ever encountered. Even as moonlight speared through a gap in the clouds, she hardly looked transparent. Her body was solid, her hair twisted in a thick yel ow-gray coil over one shoulder, her rough, red hands braced on her hips. Only her eyes were hol ow, twin blue flames flickering in their depths.
“Wil iam ’erondale,” she said. “Back again so soon?”
She moved toward the gate with that gliding motion peculiar to ghosts. Her feet were bare and filthy, despite the fact that they never touched the ground.
Wil leaned against the gate. “You know I missed your pretty face.”
She grinned, her eyes flickering, and he caught a glimpse of the skul beneath the half-transparent skin. Overhead the clouds had closed in on one another again, blocking out the moon. Idly, Wil wondered what Old Mol y had done to get herself buried here, far from consecrated ground.
Most of the wailing voices of the dead belonged to prostitutes, suicides, and stil births—those outcast dead who could not be buried in a churchyard. Although Mol y had managed to make the situation quite profitable for herself, so perhaps she didn’t mind.
She chortled. “What d’you want, then, young Shadowhunter? Malphas venom? I ’ave the talon of a Morax demon, polished very fine, the poison at the tip entirely invisible—”
“No,” Wil said. “That’s not what I need. I need Foraii demon powders, ground fine.”
Mol y turned her head to the side and spat a tendril of blue fire. “Now what’s a fine young man like you want with stuff like that?”
Wil just sighed inwardly; Mol y’s protests were part of the bargaining process. Magnus had already sent Wil to Old Mol several times now, once for black stinking candles that stuck to his skin like tar, once for the bones of an unborn child, and once for a bag of faeries’ eyes, which had dripped blood on his shirt. Foraii demon powder sounded pleasant by comparison.
“You think I’m a fool,” Mol y went on. “This is a trap, innit? You Nephilim catch me sel ing that sort of stuff, an’ it’s the stick for Old Mol, it is.”
“You’re already dead.” Wil did his best not to sound irritable. “I don’t know what you think the Clave could do to you now.”
“Pah.” Her hol ow eyes flamed. “The prisons of the Silent Brothers, beneath the earth, can ’old either the living or the dead; you know that, Shadowhunter.”