He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his arms. Within minutes he was asleep.
He was walking through the desert, over burning sands, past bones whitening in the sun.
He had never been so thirsty. When he swallowed, his mouth felt as if it were coated with sand, his throat lined with knives.
The sharp buzzing of his cell phone woke Simon. He rolled over and clawed tiredly at his jacket. By the time he’d pried the cell phone loose from the pocket, it had stopped ringing.
He turned it over and looked to see who had called. It was Luke.
Crap. I bet my mom called Clary’s house looking for me, he thought, sitting up. His brain was still fuzzy from sleep, and it took a moment for him to remember that when he had fallen asleep in this room, he hadn’t been alone.
He looked quickly toward the window. Jace was still there, but he was clearly asleep—
sitting up, his head leaning against the window glass. Pale blue dawn light filtered past him. He looked very young like that, Simon thought.
No mockery in his expression, no defensiveness or sarcasm. It was almost possible to imagine what Clary saw in him.
It was pretty clear he wasn’t taking his bodyguard duties all that seriously, but that had been obvious from the beginning. Simon wondered, not for the first time, what the hell was going on between Clary and Jace.
The phone started buzzing again. Propelling himself to his feet, Simon padded out into the living room, pressing the talk button just before the call went to voice mail again.
“Luke?”
“Sorry to wake you up, Simon.” Luke was, as always, unfailingly polite.
“I was awake anyway,” Simon lied.
“I need you to meet me in Washington Square Park in half an hour,” said Luke. “At the fountain.”
Now Simon was seriously alarmed. “Is everything okay? Is Clary all right?”
“She’s fine. This isn’t about her.” There was a rumbling sound in the background. Simon guessed that Luke was starting up his truck. “Just meet me in the park. And don’t bring anyone with you.”
He clicked off.
The sound of Luke’s truck pulling out of the driveway woke Clary out of uneasy dreams.
She sat up, and winced.
The chain around her neck had gotten caught in her hair while she slept, and she drew it off over her head, carefully pulling it free of the tangles.
She dropped the ring into her palm, the chain pooling around it. The little silver circlet, stamped with its pattern of stars, seemed to wink up at her mockingly. She remembered when Jace had given it to her, wrapped in the note he’d left behind when he’d gone off to hunt down Jonathan. Despite everything, I can’t bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more than I can bear the thought of leaving you forever.
That had been almost two months ago. She had been sure that he loved her, so sure that the Queen of the Seelie Court had not been able to tempt her. How could there be anything else she wanted, when she had Jace?
But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it. She understood why people talked about hearts “breaking”; she felt as if hers were made of cracked glass, and the shards were like tiny knives inside her chest when she breathed. Imagine your life without him, the Seelie Queen had said—
The phone rang, and for a moment Clary felt only relieved that something, anything, had cut through her misery.
Her second thought was, Jace. Maybe he couldn’t reach her on her cell phone and was calling her house. She dropped the ring on her bedside table and reached to lift the receiver out of its cradle. She was about to voice a greeting when she realized that the phone had already been picked up, by her mother.
“Hello?” Her mother sounded anxious, and surprisingly awake for so early in the morning.
The voice that answered was unfamiliar, faintly accented. “This is Catarina from Beth Israel hospital. I’m looking for Jocelyn.”
Clary froze. The hospital? Had something happened, maybe to Luke? He had pulled out of the driveway awfully fast—
“This is Jocelyn.” Her mother didn’t sound frightened, but rather as if she’d expected the call. “Thank you for calling me back so soon.”
“Of course. I was glad to hear from you. You don’t often see people recover from a curse like the one you were suffering from.” Right, Clary thought. Her mother had been in Beth Israel, comatose from the effects of the potion she’d taken to prevent Valentine from interrogating her. “And any friend of Magnus Bane’s is a friend of mine.”
Jocelyn sounded strained. “Did my message make sense? You know what I was calling about?”
“You wanted to know about the child,” said the woman on the other end of the line. Clary knew she ought to hang up, but she couldn’t. What child? What was going on? “The one who was abandoned.”
There was a catch in Jocelyn’s voice. “Y-yes. I thought—”
“I’m sorry to say this, but he’s dead. He died last night.”
For a moment Jocelyn was silent. Clary could feel her mother’s shock through the phone line. “Died? How?”
“I’m not sure I understand it myself. The priest came last night to baptize the child, and—
”
“Oh, my God.” Jocelyn’s voice shook. “Can I—Could I please come down and look at the body?”
There was a long silence. Finally the nurse said, “I’m not sure about that. The body’s in the morgue now, awaiting transfer to the medical examiner’s office.”
“Catarina, I think I know what happened to the boy.” Jocelyn sounded breathless. “And if I could confirm it, maybe I could prevent it from happening again.”
“Jocelyn—”
“I’m coming down,” Clary’s mother said, and hung up the phone. Clary gazed blankly at the receiver for a moment before hanging up herself. She scrambled to her feet, ran a brush through her hair, tossed on jeans and a sweater, and was out her bedroom door just in time to catch her mother in the living room, scribbling a note on the pad of paper by the telephone. She looked up as Clary came in, and gave a guilty start.
“I was just running out,” she said. “A few last-minute wedding things have come up, and—”
“Don’tbother lying to me,” Clarysaid without preamble.“Iwas listening onthe phone, and Iknow exactlywhere you’re going.”
Jocelyn paled. Slowly she set her pen down. “Clary—”
“You have to stop trying to protect me,” Clary said. “I bet you didn’t say anything to Luke, either, about calling the hospital.”
Jocelyn pushed her hair back nervously. “It seems unfair on him. With the wedding coming up and everything—”
“Right. The wedding. You’re having a wedding. And why is that? Because you’re getting married. Don’t you think it’s time you started trusting Luke? And trusting me?”
“I do trust you,” Jocelyn said softly.
“In that case you won’t mind me coming with you to the hospital.”
“Clary, I don’t think—”
“Iknowwhatyouthink. Youthink this is justlike what happened to Sebastian—
ImeanJonathan. Youthink maybe someone’s out there doing to babies what Valentine did to my brother.”
Jocelyn’s voice shook slightly. “Valentine’s dead. But there are others who were in the Circle who have never been caught.”