“Lie about what? What’s going on, anyway?” Simon realized what it was that had bothered him about the tableau of Shadowhunters in the garden. “Wait a second,” he said. “You’re leaving for Idris right now? Clary thinks you’re going tonight.”
“I know,” Jace said. “And I need you to tell the others that Clary sent you here to say she isn’t coming. Tell them she doesn’t want to go to Idris anymore.” There was an edge to his voice—something Simon barely recognized, or perhaps it was simply so strange coming from Jace that he couldn’t process it. Jace was pleading with him. “They’ll believe you. They know how … how close you two are.”
Simon shook his head. “I can’t believe you. You act like you want me to do something for Clary, but actually you just want me to do something for you.” He started to turn away. “No deal.”
Jace caught his arm, spinning him back around. “This is for Clary. I’m trying to protect her. I thought you’d be at least a little interested in helping me do that.”
Simon looked pointedly at Jace’s hand where it clamped his upper arm. “How can I protect her if you don’t tell me what I’m protecting her from?”
Jace didn’t let go. “Can’t you just trust me that this is important?”
“You don’t understand how badly she wants to go to Idris,” Simon said. “If I’m going to keep that from happening, there had better be a damn good reason.”
Jace exhaled slowly, reluctantly—and let go his grip on Simon’s arm. “What Clary did on Valentine’s ship,” he said, his voice low. “With the rune on the wall—the Rune of Opening—well, you saw what happened.”
“She destroyed the ship,” said Simon. “Saved all our lives.”
“Keep your voice down.” Jace glanced around anxiously.
“You’re not saying no one else knows about that, are you?” Simon demanded in disbelief.
“I know. You know. Luke knows and Magnus knows. No one else.”
“What do they all think happened? The ship just opportunely came apart?”
“I told them Valentine’s Ritual of Conversion must have gone wrong.”
“You lied to the Clave?” Simon wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or dismayed.
“Yes, I lied to the Clave. Isabelle and Alec know Clary has some ability to create new runes, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep that from the Clave or the new Inquisitor. But if they knew she could do what she does—amplify ordinary runes so they have incredible destructive power—they’d want her as a fighter, a weapon. And she’s not equipped for that. She wasn’t brought up for it—” He broke off, as Simon shook his head. “What?”
“You’re Nephilim,” Simon said slowly. “Shouldn’t you want what’s best for the Clave? If that’s using Clary …”
“You want them to have her? To put her in the front lines, up against Valentine and whatever army he’s raising?”
“No,” said Simon. “I don’t want that. But I’m not one of you. I don’t have to ask myself who to put first, Clary or my family.”
Jace flushed a slow, dark red. “It’s not like that. If I thought it would help the Clave—but it won’t. She’ll just get hurt—”
“Even if you thought it would help the Clave,” Simon said, “you’d never let them have her.”
“What makes you say that, vampire?”
“Because no one can have her but you,” said Simon.
The color left Jace’s face. “So you won’t help me,” he said in disbelief. “You won’t help her?”
Simon hesitated—and before he could respond, a noise split the silence between them. A high, shrieking cry, terrible in its desperation, and worse for the abruptness with which it was cut off. Jace whirled around. “What was that?”
The single shriek was joined by other cries, and a harsh clanging that scraped Simon’s eardrums. “Something’s happened—the others—”
But Jace was already gone, running along the path, dodging the undergrowth. After a moment’s hesitation Simon followed. He had forgotten how fast he could run now—he was hard on Jace’s heels as they rounded the corner of the church and burst out into the garden.
Before them was chaos. A white mist blanketed the garden, and there was a heavy smell in the air—the sharp tang of ozone and something else under it, sweet and unpleasant. Figures darted back and forth—Simon could see them only in fragments, as they appeared and disappeared through gaps in the fog. He glimpsed Isabelle, her hair snapping around her in black ropes as she swung her whip. It made a deadly fork of golden lightning through the shadows. She was fending off the advance of something lumbering and huge—a demon, Simon thought—but it was full daylight; that was impossible. As he stumbled forward, he saw that the creature was humanoid in shape, but humped and twisted, somehow wrong. It carried a thick wooden plank in one hand and was swinging at Isabelle almost blindly.
Only a short distance away, through a gap in the stone wall, Simon could see the traffic on York Avenue rumbling placidly by. The sky beyond the Institute was clear.
“Forsaken,” Jace whispered. His face was blazing as he drew one of his seraph blades from his belt. “Dozens of them.” He pushed Simon to the side, almost roughly. “Stay here, do you understand? Stay here.”
Simon stood frozen for a moment as Jace plunged forward into the mist. The light of the blade in his hand lit the fog around him to silver; dark figures dashed back and forth inside it, and Simon felt as if he were gazing through a pane of frosted glass, desperately trying to make out what was happening on the other side. Isabelle had vanished; he saw Alec, his arm bleeding, as he sliced through the chest of a Forsaken warrior and watched it crumple to the ground. Another reared up behind him, but Jace was there, now with a blade in each hand; he leaped into the air and brought them up and then down with a vicious scissoring movement—and the Forsaken’s head tumbled free of its neck, black blood spurting. Simon’s stomach wrenched—the blood smelled bitter, poisonous.
He could hear the Shadowhunters calling to one another out of the mist, though the Forsaken were utterly silent. Suddenly the mist cleared, and Simon saw Magnus, standing wild-eyed by the wall of the Institute. His hands were raised, blue lightning sparking between them, and against the wall where he stood, a square black hole seemed to be opening in the stone. It wasn’t empty, or dark precisely, but shone like a mirror with whirling fire trapped within its glass. “The Portal!” he was shouting. “Go through the Portal!”
Several things happened at once. Maryse Lightwood appeared out of the mist, carrying the boy, Max, in her arms. She paused to call something over her shoulder and then plunged toward the Portal and through it, vanishing into the wall. Alec followed, dragging Isabelle after him, her blood-spattered whip trailing on the ground. As he pulled her toward the Portal, something surged up out of the mist behind them—a Forsaken warrior, swinging a double-bladed knife.
Simon unfroze. Darting forward, he called out Isabelle’s name—then stumbled and pitched forward, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him, if he’d had any breath. He scrambled into a sitting position, turning to see what he’d tripped over.
It was a body. The body of a woman, her throat slit, her eyes wide and blue in death. Blood stained her pale hair. Madeleine.
“Simon, move!” It was Jace, shouting; Simon looked and saw the other boy running toward him out of the fog, bloody seraph blades in his hands. Then he looked up. The Forsaken warrior he’d seen chasing Isabelle loomed over him, its scarred face twisted into a rictus grin. Simon twisted away as the double-bladed knife swung down toward him, but even with his improved reflexes, he wasn’t fast enough. A searing pain shot through him as everything went black.