“Aren’t you, uh …” Clary searched for the right word. “Reproducing?”
Jace burst out laughing just as the carriage made a sudden, sharp left turn. He braced himself, but Clary was thrown against him. He caught her, hands holding her lightly but firmly away from him. She felt the cool impress of his ring like a sliver of ice against her sweaty skin. “Sure,” he said. “We love reproducing. It’s one of our favorite things.”
Clary pulled away from him, her face burning in the darkness, and turned to look out the window. They were rolling toward a heavy wrought-iron gate, trellised with dark vines.
“We’re here,” announced Jace as the smooth roll of wheels over pavement turned to the jounce of cobblestones. Clary glimpsed words across the arch as they rolled under it: NEW YORK CITY MARBLE CEMETERY.
“But they stopped burying people in Manhattan a century ago because they ran out of room—didn’t they?” she said. They were moving down a narrow alley with high stone walls on either side.
“The Bone City has been here longer than that.” The carriage came to a shuddering halt. Clary jumped as Jace stretched his arm out, but he was only reaching past her to open the door on her side. His arm was lightly muscled and downed with golden hairs fine as pollen.
“You don’t get a choice, do you?” she asked. “About being a Shadowhunter. You can’t just opt out.”
“No,” he said. The door swung open, letting in a blast of muggy air. The carriage had drawn to a stop on a wide square of green grass surrounded by mossy marble walls. “But if I had a choice, this is still what I’d choose.”
“Why?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow, which made Clary instantly jealous. She’d always wanted to be able to do that. “Because,” he said. “It’s what I’m good at.”
He jumped down from the carriage. Clary slid to the edge of her seat, dangling her legs. It was a long drop to the cobblestones. She jumped. The impact stung her feet, but she didn’t fall. She swung around in triumph to find Jace watching her. “I would have helped you down,” he said.
She blinked. “It’s okay. You didn’t have to.”
He glanced behind him. Brother Jeremiah was descending from his perch behind the horses in a silent fall of robes. He cast no shadow on the sun-baked grass.
Come, he said. He glided away from the carriage and the comforting lights of Second Avenue, moving toward the dark center of the garden. It was clear that he expected them to follow.
The grass was dry and crackling underfoot, the marble walls to either side smooth and pearly. There were names carved into the stone of the walls, names and dates. It took Clary a moment to realize that they were grave markers. A chill scraped up her spine. Where were the bodies? In the walls, buried upright as if they’d been walled in alive …?
She had forgotten to look where she was going. When she collided with something unmistakably alive, she yelped out loud.
It was Jace. “Don’t screech like that. You’ll wake the dead.”
She frowned at him. “Why are we stopping?”
He pointed at Brother Jeremiah, who had come to a halt in front of a statue just slightly taller than he was, its base overgrown with moss. The statue was of an angel. The marble of the statue was so smooth it was almost translucent. The face of the angel was fierce and beautiful and sad. In long white hands the angel held a cup, its rim studded with marble jewels. Something about the statue tickled Clary’s memory with an uneasy familiarity. There was a date inscribed on the base, 1234, and words inscribed around it: NEPHILIM: FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO.
“Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?” she asked.
Jace nodded. “And that’s the motto of the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters—there on the base.”
“What does it mean?”
Jace’s grin was a white flash in the darkness. “It means ‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.’”
“Jace—”
It means, said Jeremiah, “The descent into Hell is easy.”
“Nice and cheery,” said Clary, but a shiver passed over her skin despite the heat.
“It’s the Brothers’ little joke, having that here,” said Jace. “You’ll see.”
She looked at Brother Jeremiah. He had drawn a stele, faintly glowing, from some inner pocket of his robe, and with the tip he traced the pattern of a rune on the statue’s base. The mouth of the stone angel suddenly gaped wide in a silent scream, and a yawning black hole opened in the grassy turf at Jeremiah’s feet. It looked like an open grave.
Slowly Clary approached the edge of it and peered inside. A set of granite steps led down into the hole, their edges worn soft by years of use. Torches were set along the steps at intervals, flaring hot green and icy blue. The bottom of the stairs was lost in darkness.
Jace took the stairs with the ease of someone who finds a situation familiar if not exactly comfortable. Halfway to the first torch, he paused and looked up at her. “Come on,” he said impatiently.
Clary had barely set her foot on the first step when she felt her arm caught in a cold grip. She looked up in astonishment. Brother Jeremiah was holding her wrist, his icy white fingers digging into the skin. She could see the bony gleam of his scarred face beneath the edge of his cowl.
Do not fear, said his voice inside her head. It would take more than a single human cry to wake these dead.
When he released her arm, she skittered down the stairs after Jace, her heart pounding against her ribs. He was waiting for her at the foot of the steps. He’d taken one of the green burning torches out of its bracket and was holding it at eye level. It lent a pale green cast to his skin. “You all right?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The stairs ended in a shallow landing; ahead of them stretched a tunnel, long and black, ridged with the curling roots of trees. A faint bluish light was visible at the tunnel’s end. “It’s so … dark,” she said lamely.
“You want me to hold your hand?”
Clary put both her hands behind her back like a small child. “Don’t talk down to me.”
“Well, I could hardly talk up to you. You’re too short.” Jace glanced past her, the torch showering sparks as he moved. “No need to stand on ceremony, Brother Jeremiah,” he drawled. “Lead on. We’ll be right behind you.”
Clary jumped. She still wasn’t used to the archivist’s silent comings and goings. He moved noiselessly from where he had been standing behind her and headed into the tunnel. After a moment she followed, knocking Jace’s outstretched hand aside as she went.