“Who are you?” Simon’s voice cracked. “Are you a Downworlder too? Is this where they keep us?”
This time there was no answer. Simon called out again, but his neighbor had evidently decided that he’d said all he wanted to say. Nothing answered Simon’s cries but silence.
The pain in his hand had faded. Looking down, Simon saw that the skin no longer looked burned, but the mark of the Seal was printed on his palm as if it had been drawn there in ink. He looked back at the cell bars. He realized now that not all the runes were runes at all: Carved between them were Stars of David and lines from the Torah in Hebrew. The carvings looked new.
The guards were here half the day talking about how to keep you penned in, the voice had said.
But it hadn’t just been because he was a vampire, laughably; it had partly been because he was Jewish. They had spent half the day carving the Seal of Solomon into that doorknob so it would burn him when he touched it. It had taken them this long to turn the articles of his faith against him.
For some reason the realization stripped away the last of Simon’s self-possession. He sank down onto the bed and put his head in his hands.
Princewater Street was dark when Alec returned from the Gard, the windows of the houses shuttered and shaded, only the occasional witchlight streetlamp casting a pool of white illumination onto the cobblestones. The Penhallows’ house was the brightest on the block—candles glowed in the windows, and the front door was slightly ajar, letting a slice of yellow light out to curve along the walkway.
Jace was sitting on the low stone wall that bordered the Penhallows’ front garden, his hair very bright under the light of the nearest streetlamp. He looked up as Alec approached, and shivered a little. He was wearing only a light jacket, Alec saw, and it had grown cold since the sun had gone down. The smell of late roses hung in the chilly air like thin perfume.
Alec sank down onto the wall beside Jace. “Have you been out here waiting for me all this time?”
“Who says I’m waiting for you?”
“It went fine, if that’s what you were worried about. I left Simon with the Inquisitor.”
“You left him? You didn’t stay to make sure everything went all right?”
“It was fine,” Alec repeated. “The Inquisitor said he’d take him inside personally and send him back to—”
“The Inquisitor said, the Inquisitor said,” Jace interrupted. “The last Inquisitor we met completely exceeded her command—if she hadn’t died, the Clave would have relieved her of her position, maybe even cursed her. What’s to say this Inquisitor isn’t a nut job too?”
“He seemed all right,” said Alec. “Nice, even. He was perfectly polite to Simon. Look, Jace—this is how the Clave works. We don’t get to control everything that happens. But you have to trust them, because otherwise everything turns into chaos.”
“But they’ve screwed up a lot recently—you have to admit that.”
“Maybe,” Alec said, “but if you start thinking you know better than the Clave and better than the Law, what makes you any better than the Inquisitor? Or Valentine?”
Jace flinched. He looked as if Alec had hit him, or worse.
Alec’s stomach dropped. “I’m sorry.” He reached out a hand. “I didn’t mean that—”
A beam of bright yellow light cut across the garden suddenly. Alec looked up to see Isabelle framed in the open front door, light pouring out around her. She was only a silhouette, but he could tell from the hands on her hips that she was annoyed. “What are you two doing out here?” she called. “Everyone’s wondering where you are.”
Alec turned back to his friend. “Jace—”
But Jace, getting to his feet, ignored Alec’s outstretched hand. “You’d better be right about the Clave,” was all he said.
Alec watched as Jace stalked back to the house. Unbidden, Simon’s voice came into his mind. Now I wonder all the time how you go back after something like that. Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me.
The front door shut, leaving Alec sitting in the half-lit garden, alone. He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of a face hovering behind his lids. Not Jace’s face, for a change. The eyes set in the face were green, slit-pupiled. Cat eyes.
Opening his eyes, he reached into his satchel and drew out a pen and a piece of paper, torn from the spiral-bound notebook he used as a journal. He wrote a few words on it and then, with his stele, traced the rune for fire at the bottom of the page. It went up faster than he’d thought it would; he let go of the paper as it burned, floating in midair like a firefly. Soon all that was left was a fine drift of ash, sifting like white powder across the rosebushes.