12
THE STUFF OF HEAVEN
When Alec returned to Magnus’s apartment, all the lights were off, but the living room was glowing with a blue-white flame. It took him several moments to realize it was coming from the pentagram.
He kicked his shoes off by the door and padded as quietly as he could into the master bedroom. The room was dark, a strand of multicolored Christmas lights wrapped around the window frame the only illumination. Magnus was asleep on his back, the covers pulled up to his waist, his hand flat against his belly-button-free stomach.
Alec quickly stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed, hoping not to wake Magnus. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on Chairman Meow, who had tucked himself under the covers. Alec’s elbow came down squarely on the cat’s tail, and the Chairman yowled and darted off the bed, causing Magnus to sit up, blinking.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Alec said, silently cursing all cats. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you went out?” Magnus rolled onto his side and touched Alec’s bare shoulder. “Your skin’s cold, and you smell like nighttime.”
“I was walking around,” Alec said, glad it was too dim in the room for Magnus to really see his face. He knew he was a terrible liar.
“Around where?”
One must preserve some mystery in one’s relationship, Alec Lightwood.
“Places,” Alec said airily. “You know. Mysterious places.”
“Mysterious places?”
Alec nodded.
Magnus flopped back against the pillows. “I see you went to Crazytown,” he muttered, closing his eyes. “Did you bring me anything back?”
Alec leaned over and kissed Magnus on the mouth. “Just that,” he said softly, drawing back, but Magnus, who had started to smile, already had hold of his arms.
“Well, if you’re going to wake me up,” he said, “you might as well make it worth my time,” and he pulled Alec down on top of him.
Considering they’d already spent one night in bed together, Simon hadn’t expected his second night with Isabelle to be quite so awkward. But then again, this time Isabelle was sober, and awake, and obviously expecting something from him. The problem was, he wasn’t sure exactly what.
He had given her a button-down shirt of his to wear, and he looked away politely while she climbed under the blanket and edged back against the wall, giving him plenty of space.
He didn’t bother changing, just took off his shoes and socks and crawled in next to her in his T-shirt and jeans. They lay side by side for a moment, and then Isabelle rolled against him, draping an arm awkwardly across his side. Their knees bumped together. One of Isabelle’s toenails scratched his ankle. He tried to move forward, and their foreheads knocked.
“Ouch!” Isabelle said indignantly. “Shouldn’t you be better at this?”
Simon was bewildered. “Why?”
“All those nights you’ve spent in Clary’s bed, wrapped in your beautiful platonic embraces,” she said, pressing her face against his shoulder so her voice was muffled. “I figured…”
“We just slept,” said Simon. He didn’t want to say anything about how Clary fit perfectly against him, about how being in a bed with her was as natural as breathing, about the way the scent of her hair reminded him of childhood and sunshine and simplicity and grace. That, he had a feeling, would not be helpful.
“I know. But I don’t just sleep,” Isabelle said irritably. “With anybody. I don’t stay the night usually at all. Like, ever.”
“You said you wanted to—”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, and kissed him. This was marginally more successful. He’d kissed Isabelle before. He loved the texture of her soft lips, the way his hands felt in her long, dark hair. But as she pressed herself against him, he also felt the warmth of her body, her long bare legs against him, the pulse of her blood—and the snap of his fang teeth as they came out.
He pulled back hastily.
“Now what is it? You don’t want to kiss me?”
“I do,” he tried to say, but his fangs were in the way. Isabelle’s eyes widened.
“Oh, you’re hungry,” she said. “When was the last time you had any blood?”
“Yesterday,” he managed to say, with some difficulty.
She lay back against his pillow. Her eyes were impossibly big and black and lustrous. “Maybe you should feed yourself,” she said. “You know what happens if you don’t.”
“I don’t have any blood with me. I’ll have to go back to the apartment,” Simon said. His fangs had already begun to retract.
Isabelle caught him by the arm. “You don’t have to drink cold animal blood. I’m right here.”
The shock of her words was like a pulse of energy zipping through his body, setting his nerves on fire. “You’re not serious.”
“Sure I am.” She started to unbutton the shirt she was wearing, baring her throat, her collarbone, the tracery of faint veins visible beneath her pale skin. The shirt fell open. Her blue bra covered a lot more than many bikinis might, but Simon still felt his mouth go dry. Her ruby flashed like a red stoplight below her collarbone. Isabelle. As if reading his mind, she reached up and drew her hair back, draping it over one shoulder, leaving the side of her throat naked. “Don’t you want… ?”
He caught her wrist. “Isabelle, don’t,” he said urgently. “I can’t control myself, can’t control it. I could hurt you, kill you.”
Her eyes shone. “You won’t. You can hold yourself back. You did with Jace.”
“I’m not attracted to Jace.”
“Not even a little?” she said hopefully. “Eensy bit? Because that would be kind of hot. Ah, well. Too bad. Look, attracted or not, you bit him when you were starving and dying, and you still held back.”
“I didn’t hold back with Maureen. Jordan had to pull me off.”
“You would have.” She took her finger and pressed it to his lips, then ran it down his throat, across his chest, coming to a stop where his heart had once beat. “I trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I’m a Shadowhunter. I can fight you off if I have to.”
“Jace didn’t fight me off.”
“Jace is in love with the idea of dying,” said Isabelle. “I’m not.” She slung her legs around his hips—she was amazingly flexible—and slid forward until she could brush her lips against his. He wanted to kiss her, wanted it so badly his whole body ached. He opened his mouth tentatively, touched his tongue to hers, and felt a sharp pain. His tongue had slid along the razor edge of his fang. He tasted his own blood and drew back abruptly, turning his face away from her.
“Isabelle, I can’t.” He closed his eyes. She was warm and soft in his lap, teasing, torturous. His fangs ached painfully; his whole body felt like sharp wires were twisting through his veins. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Simon.” Gently she touched his cheek, turning his face toward her. “This is who you are—”
His fangs had retracted, slowly, but they still ached. He hid his face in his hands and spoke between his fingers. “You can’t possibly want this. You can’t possibly want me. My own mother threw me out of the house. I bit Maureen—she was only a kid. I mean, look at me, look what I am, where I live, what I do. I’m nothing.”
Isabelle stroked his hair lightly. He looked at her between his fingers. Up close he could see that her eyes weren’t black but a very dark brown, flecked with gold. He was sure he could see pity in them. He didn’t know what he expected her to say. Isabelle used boys and threw them away. Isabelle was beautiful and tough and perfect and didn’t need anything. Least of all a vampire who wasn’t even very good at being a vampire.
He could feel her breathing. She smelled sweet—blood, mortality, gardenias. “You’re not nothing,” she said. “Simon. Please. Let me see your face.”
Reluctantly he lowered his hands. He could see her more clearly now. She looked soft and lovely in the moonlight, her skin pale and creamy, her hair like a black waterfall. She unlooped her hands from around his neck. “Look at these,” she said, touching the white scars of healed Marks that snowflaked her silvery skin—on her throat, on her arms, on the curves of her breasts. “Ugly, aren’t they?”
“Nothing about you is ugly, Izzy,” said Simon, honestly shocked.
“Girls aren’t supposed to be covered in scars,” Isabelle said matter-of-factly. “But they don’t bother you.”
“They’re part of you—No, of course they don’t bother me.”
She touched his lips with her fingers. “Being a vampire is part of you. I didn’t ask you to come here last night because I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask. I want to be with you, Simon. It scares the hell out of me, but I do.”