“That would be the one,” said Jace, a little dryness in his tone.
“Why on earth would he think she had it?” Dorothea demanded. “Jocelyn, of all people?” Realization dawned on her face before Clary could speak. “Because she wasn’t Jocelyn Fray at all, of course,” she said. “She was Jocelyn Fairchild, his wife. The one everyone thought had died. She took the Cup and fled, didn’t she?”
Something flickered in the back of the witch’s eyes then, but she lowered her lids so quickly that Clary thought she might have imagined it. “So,” Dorothea said, “do you know what you’re going to do now? Wherever she’s hidden it, it can’t be easy to find—if you even want it found. Valentine could do terrible things with his hands on that Cup.”
“I want it found,” said Clary. “We want to—”
Jace cut her off smoothly. “We know where it is,” he said. “It’s only a matter of retrieving it.”
Dorothea’s eyes widened. “Well, where is it?”
“Here,” said Jace, in a tone so smug that Isabelle and Alec wandered over from their perusal of the bookcase to see what was going on.
“Here? You mean you have it with you?”
“Not exactly, dear Lady,” said Jace, who was, Clary felt, enjoying himself in a truly appalling manner. “I meant that you have it.”
Dorothea’s mouth snapped shut. “That’s not funny,” she said, so sharply that Clary became worried that this was all going terribly wrong. Why did Jace always have to antagonize everyone?
“You do have it,” Clary interrupted hurriedly, “but not—”
Dorothea rose from the armchair to her full, magnificent height, and glowered down at them. “You are mistaken,” she said coldly. “Both in imagining that I have the Cup, and in daring to come here and call me a liar.”
Alec’s hand went to his featherstaff. “Oh, boy,” he said under his breath.
Baffled, Clary shook her head. “No,” she said quickly, “I’m not calling you a liar, I promise. I’m saying the Cup is here, but you never knew it.”
Madame Dorothea stared at her. Her eyes, nearly hidden in the folds of her face, were hard as marbles. “Explain yourself,” she said.
“I’m saying my mother hid it here,” said Clary. “Years ago. She never told you because she didn’t want to involve you.”
“So she gave it to you disguised,” Jace explained, “in the form of a gift.”
Dorothea looked at him blankly.
Doesn’t she remember? Clary thought, puzzled. “The tarot deck,” she said. “The cards she painted for you.”
The witch’s gaze went to the cards, lying in their silk wrappings on the table. “The cards?” As her gaze widened, Clary stepped to the table and picked up the deck. They were warm to the touch, almost slippery. Now, as she had not been able to before, she felt the power from the runes painted on their backs pulsing through the tips of her fingers. She found the Ace of Cups by touch and pulled it out, setting the rest of the cards back down on the table.
“Here it is,” she said.
They were all looking at her, expectant, perfectly still. Slowly she turned the card over and looked again at her mother’s artwork: the slim painted hand, its fingers wrapped around the gold stem of the Mortal Cup.
“Jace,” she said. “Give me your stele.”
He pressed it, warm and alive-feeling, into her palm. She turned the card over and traced over the runes painted on its back—a twist here and a line there and they meant something entirely different. When she turned the card back over, the picture had subtly changed: The fingers had released their grip on the Cup’s stem, and the hand seemed almost to be offering the Cup to her as if to say, Here, take it.
She slid the stele into her pocket. Then, though the painted square was no bigger than her hand, she reached into it as if through a wide gap. Her hand wrapped around the base of the Cup—her fingers closed on it—and as she drew her hand back, the Cup gripped firmly in it, she thought she heard the smallest of sighs before the card, now blank and empty, turned to ash that sifted away between her fingers to the carpeted floor.
19
ABBADON
CLARY WASN’T SURE WHAT SHE’D EXPECTED—EXCLAMATIONS of delight, perhaps a smattering of applause. Instead there was silence, broken only when Jace said, “Somehow, I thought it would be bigger.”
Clary looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size, perhaps, of an ordinary wineglass, only much heavier. Power thrummed through it, like blood through living veins. “It’s a perfectly nice size,” she said indignantly.
“Oh, it’s big enough,” he said patronizingly, “but somehow I was expecting something … you know.” He gestured with his hands, indicating something roughly the size of a house cat.
“It’s the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl,” said Isabelle. “Are we done now? Can we go?”
Dorothea had her head cocked to one side, her beady eyes bright and interested. “But it’s damaged!” she exclaimed. “How did that happen?”
“Damaged?” Clary looked at the Cup in bewilderment. It looked fine to her.
“Here,” said the witch, “let me show you,” and she took a step toward Clary, holding her long red-nailed hands out for the Cup. Clary, without knowing why, shrank back. Suddenly Jace was between them, his hand hovering near the sword at his waist.
“No offense,” he said calmly, “but nobody touches the Mortal Cup except us.”
Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and that same strange blankness returned to her eyes. “Now,” she said, “let’s not be hasty. Valentine would be displeased if anything were to happen to the Cup.”
With a soft snick, the sword at Jace’s waist came free. The point hovered just below Dorothea’s chin. Jace’s look was steady. “I don’t know what this is about,” he said. “But we’re leaving.”
The old woman’s eyes gleamed. “Of course, Shadowhunter,” she said, backing up to the curtained wall. “Would you like to use the Portal?”
The point of Jace’s sword wavered as he stared in momentary confusion. Then Clary saw his jaw tighten. “Don’t touch that—”
Dorothea chuckled, and quick as a flash she jerked down the curtains hanging along the wall. They fell with a sound of soft collapse. The Portal behind them was open.
Clary heard Alec, behind her, suck in his breath. “What is that?” Clary had caught only a glimpse of what was visible through the door—red roiling clouds shot through with black lightning, and a terrible dark, rushing shape that hurtled toward them—when Jace shouted for them to get down. He dropped to the floor, yanking Clary down with him. Flat on her stomach on the carpet, she lifted her head in time to see the rushing dark thing strike Madame Dorothea, who screamed, thrusting her arms upward. Rather than knocking her down, the dark thing wrapped her like a shroud, its blackness seeming to seep into her like ink sinking into paper. Her back humped monstrously, her whole shape elongating as she rose and rose into the air, her bulk stretching and re-forming. A sharp rattle of objects striking the floor made Clary look down: They were Dorothea’s bracelets, twisted and broken. Scattered among the jewels were what looked like small white stones. It took Clary a moment to realize that they were teeth.
Beside her Jace whispered something. It sounded like an exclamation of disbelief. Next to him, Alec in a choked voice said, “But you said there wasn’t much demonic activity—you said the levels were low!”
“They were low,” Jace growled.
“Your version of low must be different from mine!” Alec shouted, as the thing that had once been Dorothea howled and twisted. It seemed to be spreading, humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen—
Clary tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her after him. Isabelle and Alec stumbled to their feet, gripping their weapons. The hand holding Isabelle’s whip was trembling slightly.
“Move!” Jace shoved Clary toward the apartment door. When she tried to look back over her shoulder, she saw only a thickly swirling grayness, like storm clouds, a dark shape at its center …
The four of them burst out into the foyer, Isabelle in the lead. She raced toward the front door, tried it, and turned with a stricken face. “It’s resistant. Must be a spell—”
Jace swore and fumbled in his jacket. “Where the hell is my stele?”
“I have it,” Clary said, remembering. As she reached for her pocket, a noise like thunder exploded through the room. The floor heaved under her feet. She stumbled and nearly fell, catching at the banister for support. When she looked up, she saw a gaping new hole in the wall separating the foyer from Dorothea’s apartment, lined all around its ragged edges with wood and plaster rubble, through which something was climbing—almost oozing—
“Alec!” It was Jace, shouting: Alec was standing in front of the hole, white-faced and horrified-looking. Swearing, Jace ran up and grabbed him, dragging him back just as the oozing thing pulled itself free of the wall and into the foyer.
Clary heard her breath catch. The creature’s flesh was livid and bruised-looking. Through the seeping skin, bones protruded—not new white bones, but bones that looked as if they had been in the earth a thousand years, black and cracked and filthy. Its fingers were stripped and skeletal, its thin-fleshed arms pocked with dripping black sores through which more yellowing bone was visible. Its face was a skull, its nose and eyes caved-in holes. Its taloned fingers brushed the floor. Tangled around its wrists and shoulders were bright swatches of cloth: all that remained of Madame Dorothea’s silk scarves and turban. It was at least nine feet tall.
It looked down at the four teenagers with empty eye sockets. “Give me,” it said, in a voice like the wind blowing trash across empty pavement, “the Mortal Cup. Give it to me, and I will let you live.”
Panicked, Clary stared at the others. Isabelle looked as if the sight of the thing had hit her like a punch to the stomach. Alec was motionless. It was Jace, as always, who spoke. “What are you?” he asked, voice steady, though he looked more rattled than Clary had ever seen him.
The thing inclined its head. “I am Abbadon. I am the Demon of the Abyss. Mine are the empty places between the worlds. Mine is the wind and the howling darkness. I am as unlike those mewling things you call demons as an eagle is unlike a fly. You cannot hope to defeat me. Give me the Cup or die.”
Isabelle’s whip trembled. “It’s a Greater Demon,” she said. “Jace, if we—”
“What about Dorothea?” Clary’s voice came shrilly out of her mouth before she could stop it. “What happened to her?”
The demon’s empty eyes swung to regard her. “She was a vessel only,” it said. “She opened the Portal and I took possession of her. Her death was swift.” Its gaze moved to the Cup in her hand. “Yours will not be.”
It began to move toward her. Jace blocked its way, the glittering sword in one hand, a seraph blade appearing in the other. Alec was watching him, his expression sick with horror.
“By the Angel,” Jace said, looking the demon up and down. “I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell.”
Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth.
“I’m not so sure about this wind and howling darkness business,” Jace went on, “smells more like landfill to me. You sure you’re not from Staten Island?”
The demon leaped at him. Jace whipped his blades up and outward with an almost frightening speed; both sank into the fleshiest part of the demon, its abdomen. It howled and struck at him, knocking him aside the way a cat might bat aside a kitten. Jace rolled and got to his feet, but Clary could see from the way he was holding his arm that he’d been hurt.
That was enough for Isabelle. Darting forward, she lashed out at the demon with her whip. It struck the demon’s gray hide, and a red weal appeared, welling blood. Abbadon ignored her, moving toward Jace.
With his uninjured hand Jace drew out a second seraph blade. He whispered to it and it sprang free, bright and gleaming. He raised it as the demon loomed up before him; he looked impossibly small in front of it, a child dwarfed by a monster. And he was grinning, even as the demon reached for him. Isabelle, screaming, lashed at it, sending blood in a thick spray across the floor—
The demon struck, its razored hand lashing down at Jace. Jace staggered back, but he was unharmed. Something had thrown itself between him and the demon, a slim black shadow with a gleaming blade in its hand. Alec. The demon shrieked—Alec’s featherstaff had pierced its skin. With a snarl it struck again, bone-talons catching Alec a vicious blow that lifted him off his feet and hurled him against the far wall. He struck with a sickening crunch and slid to the floor.
Isabelle screamed her brother’s name. He didn’t move. Lowering the whip, she started to run to him. The demon, turning, caught her a backhanded blow that sent her spinning to the ground. Coughing blood, Isabelle started to get to her feet; Abbadon knocked her down again, and this time she lay still.
The demon moved toward Clary.
Jace stood frozen, staring at Alec’s crumpled body like someone caught in a dream. Clary screamed as Abbadon neared her. She began to back up the stairs, stumbling on the broken steps. The stele burned against her skin. If only she had a weapon, anything—
Isabelle had clawed her way into a sitting position. Pushing her bloody hair back, she screamed at Jace. Clary heard her own name in Isabelle’s screams and saw Jace, blinking as if slapped awake, spin toward her. He began to run. The demon was close enough now that Clary could see the black sores on its skin, could see that there were things crawling inside them. It reached for her—
But Jace was there, knocking Abbadon’s hand aside. He flung the seraph blade at the demon; it stuck in the creature’s chest, next to the two blades already there. The demon snarled as if the blades were no more than an annoyance.
“Shadowhunter,” it snarled. “I shall take pleasure in killing you, in hearing your bones crunch as your friend’s did—”
Springing onto the banister, Jace flung himself at Abbadon. The force of the jump knocked the demon backward; it staggered, Jace clinging to its back. He seized a seraph blade out of its chest, sending up a spray of ichor, and brought the blade down, again and again, into the demon’s back, its shoulders running with black fluid.
Snarling, Abbadon backed toward the wall. Jace had to drop or be crushed. He fell to the ground, landed lightly, and raised the blade again. But Abbadon was too swift for him; its hand lashed out, knocking Jace into the stairs. Jace went down, a circle of talons at his throat.