There was a rustling noise. An audible sigh. Then Samuel spoke. “I heard you. I just don’t know what you want me to do about it.” He paused. “I’m sorry for you, Daylighter, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t really,” Simon said. “The Inquisitor wants me to lie. Wants me to tell him that the Lightwoods are in league with Valentine. Then he’ll send me home.” He rolled over onto his stomach, the stones jabbing into his skin. “Never mind. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Samuel made a noise halfway between a chuckle and a cough. “Actually, I do. I knew the Lightwoods. We were in the Circle together. The Lightwoods, the Waylands, the Pangborns, the Herondales, the Penhallows. All the fine families of Alicante.”
“And Hodge Starkweather,” Simon said, thinking of the Lightwoods’ tutor. “He was too, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” said Samuel. “But his family was hardly a well-respected one. Hodge showed some promise once, but I fear he never lived up to it.” He paused. “Aldertree’s always hated the Lightwoods, of course, since we were children. He wasn’t rich or clever or attractive, and, well, they weren’t very kind to him. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over it.”
“Rich?” Simon said. “I thought all Shadowhunters got paid by the Clave. Like … I don’t know, communism or something.”
“In theory all Shadowhunters are fairly and equally paid,” said Samuel. “Some, like those with high positions in the Clave, or those with great responsibility—running an Institute, for example—receive a higher salary. Then there are those who live outside Idris and choose to make money in the mundane world; it’s not forbidden, as long as they tithe a part of it to the Clave. But”—Samuel hesitated—“you saw the Penhallows’ house, didn’t you? What did you think of it?”
Simon cast his mind back. “Very fancy.”
“It’s one of the finest houses in Alicante,” said Samuel. “And they have another house, a manor out in the country. Almost all the rich families do. You see, there’s another way for Nephilim to gain wealth. They call it ‘spoils.’ Anything owned by a demon or Downworlder who is killed by a Shadowhunter becomes that Shadowhunter’s property. So if a wealthy warlock breaks the Law, and is killed by a Nephilim …”
Simon shivered. “So killing Downworlders is a lucrative business?”
“It can be,” said Samuel bitterly, “if you’re not too choosy about who you kill. You can see why there’s so much opposition to the Accords. It cuts into people’s pocketbooks, having to be careful about murdering Downworlders. Perhaps that’s why I joined the Circle. My family was never a rich one, and to be looked down on for not accepting blood money—” He broke off.
“But the Circle murdered Downworlders too,” said Simon.
“Because they thought it was their sacred duty,” said Samuel. “Not out of greed. Though I can’t imagine now why I ever thought that mattered.” He sounded exhausted. “It was Valentine. He had a way about him. He could convince you of anything. I remember standing beside him with my hands covered in blood, looking down at the body of a dead woman, and thinking only that what I was doing had to be right, because Valentine said it was so.”
“A dead Downworlder?”
Samuel breathed raggedly on the other side of the wall. At last, he said, “You must understand: I would have done anything he asked. Any of us would have. The Lightwoods as well. The Inquisitor knows that, and that is what he is trying to exploit. But you should know—there’s the chance that if you give in to him and throw blame on the Lightwoods, he’ll kill you anyway to shut you up. It depends on whether the idea of being merciful makes him feel powerful at the time.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Simon said. “I’m not going to do it. I won’t betray the Lightwoods.”
“Really?” Samuel sounded unconvinced. “Is there some reason why not? Do you care for the Lightwoods that much?”
“Anything I told him about them would be a lie.”
“But it might be the lie he wants to hear. You do want to go home, don’t you?”
Simon stared at the wall as if he could somehow see through it to the man on the other side. “Is that what you’d do? Lie to him?”
Samuel coughed—a wheezy sort of cough, as if he wasn’t very healthy. Then again, it was damp and cold down here, which didn’t bother Simon, but would probably bother a normal human being very much. “I wouldn’t take moral advice from me,” he said. “But yes, I probably would. I’ve always put saving my own skin first.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Actually,” said Samuel, “it is. One thing you’ll learn as you get older, Simon, is that when people tell you something unpleasant about themselves, it’s usually true.”
But I’m not going to get older, Simon thought. Out loud he said, “That’s the first time you’ve called me Simon. Simon and not Daylighter.”
“I suppose it is.”
“And as for the Lightwoods,” Simon said, “it’s not that I like them that much. I mean, I like Isabelle, and I sort of like Alec and Jace, too. But there’s this girl. And Jace is her brother.”
When Samuel replied, he sounded, for the first time, genuinely amused. “Isn’t there always a girl.”
The moment the door shut behind Clary, Jace slumped back against the wall, as if his legs had been cut out from under him. He looked gray with a mixture of horror, shock, and what looked almost like … relief, as if a catastrophe had been narrowly avoided.
“Jace,” Alec said, taking a step toward his friend. “Do you really think—”
Jace spoke in a low voice, cutting Alec off. “Get out,” he said. “Just get out, both of you.”
“So you can do what?” Isabelle demanded. “Wreck your life some more? What the hell was that about?”
Jace shook his head. “I sent her home. It was the best thing for her.”
“You did a hell of a lot more than send her home. You destroyed her. Did you see her face?”
“It was worth it,” said Jace. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“For her, maybe,” Isabelle said. “I hope it winds up worth it for you.”
Jace turned his face away. “Just … leave me alone, Isabelle. Please.”
Isabelle cast a startled look toward her brother. Jace never said please. Alec put a hand on her shoulder. “Never mind, Jace,” he said, as kindly as he could. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Jace raised his head and looked at Alec without actually looking at him—he seemed to be staring off at nothing. “No, she won’t,” he said. “But I knew that. Speaking of which, you might as well tell me what you came in here to tell me. You seemed to think it was pretty important at the time.”
Alec took his hand off Isabelle’s shoulder. “I didn’t want to tell you in front of Clary—”
Jace’s eyes finally focused on Alec. “Didn’t want to tell me what in front of Clary?”
Alec hesitated. He’d rarely seen Jace so upset, and he could only imagine what effect further unpleasant surprises might have on him. But there was no way to hide this. Jace had to know. “Yesterday,” he said, in a low voice, “when I brought Simon up to the Gard, Malachi told me Magnus Bane would be meeting Simon at the other end of the Portal, in New York. So I sent a fire-message to Magnus. I heard back from him this morning. He never met Simon in New York. In fact, he says there’s been no Portal activity in New York since Clary came through.”
“Maybe Malachi was wrong,” Isabelle suggested, after a quick look at Jace’s ashen face. “Maybe someone else met Simon on the other side. And Magnus could be wrong about the Portal activity—”
Alec shook his head. “I went up to the Gard this morning with Mom. I meant to ask Malachi about it myself, but when I saw him—I can’t say why—I ducked behind a corner. I couldn’t face him. Then I heard him talking to one of the guards. Telling them to go bring the vampire upstairs because the Inquisitor wanted to speak to him again.”
“Are you sure they meant Simon?” Isabelle asked, but there was no conviction in her voice. “Maybe …”
“They were talking about how stupid the Downworlder had been to believe that they’d just send him back to New York without questioning him. One of them said that he couldn’t believe anyone had had the gall to try to sneak him into Alicante to begin with. And Malachi said, ‘Well, what do you expect from Valentine’s son?’”
“Oh,” Isabelle whispered. “Oh my God.” She glanced across the room. “Jace …”
Jace’s hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes looked sunken, as if they were pushing back into his skull. In other circumstances Alec would have put a hand on his shoulder, but not now; something about Jace made him hold back. “If it hadn’t been me who brought him through,” Jace said in a low, measured voice, as if he were reciting something, “maybe they would have just let him go home. Maybe they would have believed—”
“No,” Alec said. “No, Jace, it’s not your fault. You saved his life.”
“Saved him so the Clave could torture him,” said Jace. “Some favor. When Clary finds out …” He shook his head blindly. “She’ll think I brought him here on purpose, gave him to the Clave knowing what they’d do.”
“She won’t think that. You’d have no reason to do a thing like that.”
“Perhaps,” Jace said, slowly, “but after how I just treated her …”
“No one could ever think you’d do that, Jace,” said Isabelle. “No one who knows you. No one—”
But Jace didn’t wait to find out what else no one would ever think. Instead he turned around and walked over to the picture window that looked over the canal. He stood there for a moment, the light coming through the window turning the edges of his hair to gold. Then he moved, so quickly Alec didn’t have time to react. By the time he saw what was going to happen and darted forward to prevent it, it was already too late.
There was a crash—the sound of shattering—and a sudden spray of broken glass like a shower of jagged stars. Jace looked down at his left hand, the knuckles streaked with scarlet, with a clinical interest as fat red drops of blood collected and splattered down onto the floor at his feet.
Isabelle stared from Jace to the hole in the glass, lines radiating out from the empty center, a spiderweb of thin silver cracks. “Oh, Jace,” she said, her voice as soft as Alec had ever heard it. “How on earth are we going to explain this to the Penhallows?”
Somehow Clary made it out of the house. She wasn’t sure how—everything was a fast blur of stairs and hallways, and then she was running to the front door and out of it and somehow she was on the Penhallows’ front steps, trying to decide whether or not she was going to throw up in their rosebushes.
They were ideally placed for throwing up in, and her stomach was roiling painfully, but the fact that all she’d eaten was some soup was catching up with her. She didn’t think there was anything in her stomach to throw up. Instead she made her way down the steps and turned blindly out of the front gate—she couldn’t remember which direction she’d come from anymore, or how to get back to Amatis’s, but it didn’t seem to matter much. It wasn’t as if she were looking forward to getting back and explaining to Luke that they had to leave Alicante or Jace would turn them in to the Clave.
Maybe Jace was right. Maybe she was rash and thoughtless. Maybe she never thought about how what she did impacted the people she loved. Simon’s face flashed across her vision, sharp as a photograph, and then Luke’s—