“Anson Pangborn,” she said, “and Charles Freeman. Neither of whom, I might note, had been heard from since Valentine’s death—”
“But that’s notpossible,” Claryinterrupted. “Luke killed Pangborn, back inAugust—at Renwick’s.”
“He killed Emil Pangborn,” said Maryse. “Anson was Emil’s younger brother. They were both in the Circle together.”
“As was Freeman,” said Luke. “So someone is killing not just Shadowhunters but former Circle members? And leaving their bodies in Downworlder territory?” He shook his head. “It sounds like someone’s trying to shake up some of the more . . . recalcitrant members of the Clave. Get them to rethink the new Accords, perhaps. We should have expected this.”
“I suppose,” Maryse said. “I’ve met with the Seelie Queen already, and I have a message out to Magnus.
Wherever he is.” She rolled her eyes; Maryse and Robert seemed to have accepted Alec’s relationship with Magnus with surprisingly good grace, but Clary could tell that Maryse, at least, didn’t take it seriously. “I just thought, perhaps—” She sighed. “I’ve been so exhausted lately. I feel like I can hardly think straight. I hoped you might have some idea about who might be doing this, some idea that hadn’t occurred to me.”
Luke shook his head. “Someone with a grudge against the new system. But that could be anyone. I suppose there’s no evidence on the bodies?”
Maryse sighed. “Nothing conclusive. If only the dead could talk, eh, Lucian?”
It was as if Maryse had lifted a hand and yanked a curtain across Clary’s vision; everything went dark, except for a single symbol, hanging like a glowing sign against a blank night sky.
It seemed her power had not vanished, after all.
“What if . . . ,” she said slowly, raising her eyes to look at Maryse. “What if they could?”
Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror in Kyle’s small apartment, Simon couldn’t help but wonder where that whole business about vampires not being able to see themselves in mirrors had come from. He was able to see himself perfectly well in the dinged surface—
tousled brown hair, wide brown eyes, white, unmarked skin. He had sponged off the blood from his cut lip, though his skin had already healed over.
He knew, objectively speaking, that becoming a vampire had made him more attractive.
Isabelle had explained to him that his movements had become graceful and that, whereas before he had seemed disheveled, somehow now he looked attractively rumpled, as if he had just gotten out of bed. “Someone else’s bed,” she had noted, which, he’d told her, he had already figured out was what she meant, thank you.
When he looked at himself, though, he didn’t see any of that. The poreless whiteness of his skin, as it always did, disturbed him, as did the dark, spidering veins that showed at his temples, evidence of the fact that he had not fed today. He looked alien and not like himself. Perhaps the whole business about not being able to see yourself in a mirror once you had become a vampire was wishful thinking. Maybe it was just that you no longer recognized the reflection looking back at you.
Cleaned up, he headed back into the living room, where Jace was sprawled out on the futon couch, reading Kyle’s beaten-up copy of The Lord of the Rings. He dropped it onto the coffee table as Simon came in. His hair looked newly wet, as if he’d splashed water on his face from the kitchen sink.
“I can see why you like it here,” he said, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed Kyle’s collection of movie posters and science fiction books. “There’s a thin layer of nerd all over everything.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” Simon gave Jace a hard look. Up close, under the bright light of the unshaded overhead bulb, Jace looked—ill. The shadows Simon had noticed under his eyes before were more pronounced than ever, and his skin seemed tight over the bones of his face. His hand shook a little as he pushed his hair away from his forehead in a characteristic gesture.
Simon shook his head as if to clear it. Since when did he know Jace well enough to be able to identify which gestures of his were characteristic? It wasn’t as if they were friends. “You look lousy,” he said.
Jace blinked. “Seems an odd time to start an insult contest, but if you insist, I could probably think up something good.”
“No, I mean it. You don’t look good.”
“This from a guy who has all the sex appeal of a penguin. Look, I realize you may be jealous that the good Lord didn’t deal you the same chiseled hand he dealt me, but that’s no reason to—”
“I am not trying to insult you,” Simon snapped. “I mean you look sick. When was the last time you ate anything?”
Jace looked thoughtful. “Yesterday?”
“You ate something yesterday. You’re sure?”
Jace shrugged.“Well, Iwouldn’t swear ona stack ofBibles.Ithink itwas yesterday, though.”
Simon had investigated the contents of Kyle’s fridge earlier when he’d been searching the place, and there hadn’t been much to find. A withered-up old lime, some soda cans, a pound of ground beef, and, inexplicably, a single Pop-Tart in the freezer. He grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a supermarket on the corner.
Let’s get you some food.”
Jace looked as if he were in the mood to object, then shrugged. “Fine,” he said, in the tone of someone who didn’t much care where they went or what they did there. “Let’s go.”
Outside on the front steps Simon locked the door behind them with the keys he was still getting used to, while Jace examined the list of names next to the apartment doorbell buzzers. “That one’s yours, huh?” he asked, pointing to 3A. “How come it just says
‘Kyle’? Doesn’t he have a last name?”
“Kyle wants to be a rock star,” Simon said, heading down the stairs. “I think he’s working the one-name thing. Like Rihanna.”
Jace followed him, hunching his shoulders slightly against the wind, though he made no move to zip up the suede jacket he’d retrieved from Clary earlier that day. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
As they rounded the corner onto Avenue B, Simon looked at Jace sideways. “So,” he said. “Were you following me? Or is it just an amazing coincidence that you happened to be on the roof of a building I was walking by when I got attacked?”
Jace stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to turn. Apparently even Shadowhunters had to obey traffic laws. “I was following you.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you’re secretly in love with me? Vampire mojo strikes again.”
“There’s no such thing as vampire mojo,” said Jace, rather eerily echoing Clary’s earlier comment. “And I was following Clary, but then she got into a cab, and I can’t follow a cab. So I doubled back and followed you instead.
Mostly for something to do.”
“You were following Clary?” Simon echoed. “Here’s a hot tip: Most girls don’t like being stalked.”
“She left her phone in the pocket of my jacket,” Jace said, patting his right side, where, presumably, the phone was stashed. “I thought if I could figure out where she was going, I could leave it where she’d find it.”
“Or,” Simon said, “you could call her at home and tell her you had her phone, and she could come and get it from you.”
Jace said nothing. The light changed, and they headed across the street toward the C-Town supermarket. It was still open. Markets in Manhattan never closed, Simon thought, which was a nice change from Brooklyn. Manhattan was a good place to be a vampire.
You could do all your shopping at midnight and no one would think it was weird.
“You’re avoiding Clary,” Simon observed. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me why?”
“No, I don’t,” Jace said. “Just count yourself lucky I was following you, or—”
“Or what? Another mugger would be dead?” Simon could hear the bitterness in his own voice. “You saw what happened.”