“I—,” he began helplessly, and then the elevator doors opened again, and Clary stepped out. Her shoes were gone, her lovely satin dress in bloody rags, bruises already fading on her bare arms and legs. But she was smiling —radiant even, happier than Simon had seen her look in weeks.
“Mom!” she exclaimed, and then Jocelyn had flown at her and was hugging her. Clary smiled at Simon over her mother’s shoulder. Simon glanced around the room. Alec and Magnus were still wrapped up in each other, and Maia and Jordan had vanished. Isabelle was still surrounded by Shadowhunters, and Simon could hear gasps of horror and amazement rise from the group surrounding her as she recounted her story. He suspected some part of her was enjoying it. Isabelle did love being the center of attention, no matter what the cause.
He felt a hand come down on his shoulder. It was Luke. “Are you all right, Simon?”
Simon looked up at him. Luke looked as he always did: solid, professorial, utterly reliable. Not even the least bit put out that his engagement party had been disrupted by a sudden dramatic emergency.
Simon’s father had died so long ago that he barely remembered him. Rebecca recalled bits about him—that he had a beard, and would help her build elaborate towers out of blocks—but Simon didn’t. It was one of the things he’d thought he always had in common with Clary, that had bonded them: both with dead fathers, both brought up by strong single women.
Well, at least one of those things had turned out to be true, Simon thought. Though his mother had dated, he’d never had a consistent fatherly presence in his life, other than Luke. He supposed that in a way, he and Clary had shared Luke. And the wolf pack looked up to Luke for guidance, as well. For a bachelor who’d never had children, Simon thought, Luke had an awful lot of kids to look after.
“I don’t know,” Simon said, giving Luke the honest answer he’d like to think he’d have given his own father. “I don’t think so.”
Luke turned Simon to face him. “You’re covered in blood,” he said. “And I’m guessing it’s not yours, because . . .”
He gestured toward the Mark on Simon’s forehead. “But hey.” His voice was gentle.
“Even covered in blood and with the Mark of Cain on you, you’re still Simon. Can you tell me what happened?”
“It’s not my blood, you’re right,” Simon said hoarsely. “But it’s also kind of a long story.” He tilted his head back to look up at Luke; he’d always wondered if maybe he’d have another growth spurt some day, grow a few more inches than the five-ten he was now, be able to look Luke—not to mention Jace—straight in the eye. But that would never happen now. “Luke,” he said. “Do you think it’s possible to do something so bad, even if you didn’t mean to do it, that you can never come back from it? That no one can forgive you?”
Luke looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he said, “Think of someone you love, Simon. Really love. Is there anything they could ever do that would mean you would stop loving them?”
Images flashed through Simon’s mind, like the pages of a flip-book: Clary, turning to smile at him over her shoulder; his sister, tickling him when he was just a little kid; his mother, asleep on the sofa with the coverlet pulled up to her shoulders; Izzy—
He shut the thoughts off hastily. Clary hadn’t done anything so terrible that he needed to dredge up forgiveness for her; none of the people he was picturing had. He thought of Clary, forgiving her mother for having stolen her memories. He thought of Jace, what he had done on the roof, how he had looked afterward. He had done what he had done withoutvolitionof his own, but Simondoubted Jace would be able to forgive himself, regardless.And then he thought of Jordan—not forgiving himself for what he had done to Maia, but forging ahead anyway, joining the Praetor Lupus, making a life out of helping others.
“I bit someone,” he said. The words came out of his mouth, and he wished he could swallow them back. He braced himself for Luke’s look of horror, but it didn’t come.
“Did they live?” Luke said. “This person that you bit. Did they survive?”
“I—” How to explain about Maureen? Lilith had ordered her away, but Simon was sure they hadn’t seen the last of her. “I didn’t kill her.”
Luke nodded once. “You know how werewolves become pack leaders,” he said. “They have to kill the old pack leader. I’ve done that twice. I have the scars to prove it.” He drew the collar of his shirt aside slightly, and Simon saw the edge of a thick white scar that looked ragged, as if his chest had been clawed. “The second time it was a calculated move. Cold-blooded killing. I wanted to become the leader, and that was how I did it.”
He shrugged.
“You’re a vampire. It’s in your nature to want to drink blood. You’ve held out a long time without doing it. I know you can walk in the sun, Simon, and so you pride yourself on being a normal human boy, but you’re still what you are.
Just like I am. The more you try to crush your true nature, the more it will control you. Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.”
Simon said hoarsely, “My mom—”
“Clary told me what happened with your mother, and that you’ve been crashing with Jordan Kyle,” said Luke.
“Look, your mother will come around, Simon. Like Amatis did, with me. You’re still her son. I’ll talk to her, if you want me to.”
Simon shook his head silently. His mother had always liked Luke. Dealing with the fact that Luke was a werewolf would probably make things worse, not better.
Luke nodded as if he understood. “If you don’t want to go back to Jordan’s, you’re more than welcome to stay on my sofa tonight. I’m sure Clary would be glad to have you around, and we can talk about what to do about your mother tomorrow.”
Simon squared his shoulders. He looked at Isabelle across the room, the gleam of her whip, the shine of the pendant at her throat, the flutter of her hands as she talked. Isabelle, who wasn’t afraid of anything. He thought of his mother, the way she had backed away from him, the fear in her eyes. He’d been hiding from the memory, running from it,ever since.Butit was time to stop running. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but Ithink Idon’t need a place to crash tonight. I think . . . that I’m going to go home.”
Jace stood alone on the roof, looking out over the city, the East River a silvery-black snake twining between Brooklyn and Manhattan. His hands, his lips, still felt warm from Clary’s touch, but the wind off the river was icy, and the warmth was fading fast.
Without a jacket the air cut through the thin material of his shirt like the blade of a knife.
He took a deep breath, sucking the cold air into his lungs, and let it out slowly. His whole body felt tense. He was waiting for the sound of the elevator, the doors opening, the Shadowhunters flooding out into the garden. They would be sympathetic at first, he thought, worried about him. Then, as they understood what had happened—then would come the shrinking away, the meaningful looks exchanged when they thought he wasn’t watching. He had been possessed—not just by a demon, but by a Greater Demon—had acted against the Clave, had threatened and hurt another Shadowhunter.
He thought about how Jocelyn would look at him when she heard what he’d done to Clary. Luke might understand, forgive. But Jocelyn. He had never been able to bring himself to speak to her honestly, to say the words he thought might reassure her. I love your daughter, more than I ever thought it was possible to love anything. I would never hurt her.
She would just look at him, he thought, with those green eyes that were so like Clary’s.
She would want more than that. She would want to hear him say what he wasn’t sure was true.
I am nothing like Valentine.
Aren’t you? The words seemed carried on the cold air, a whisper meant only for his ears.
You never knew your mother. You never knew your father. You gave your heart to Valentine when you were a child, as children do, and made yourselfa partofhim.Youcannot cut that awayfrom yourselfnow withone cleanslice of a blade.
His left hand was cold. He looked down and saw, to his shock, that somehow he had picked up the dagger—his real father’s etched silver dagger—and was holding it in his hand. The blade, though eaten away by Lilith’s blood, was whole again, and shining like a promise. A cold that had nothing to do with the weather began to spread through his chest. How many times had he woken up like this, gasping and sweating, the dagger in his hand? And Clary, always Clary, dead at his feet.
But Lilith was dead. It was over. He tried to slide the dagger into his belt, but his hand didn’t seem to want to obey the command his mind was giving it. He felt a sense of stinging heat across his chest, a searing pain. Looking down, he saw that the bloody line that had split Lilith’s mark in half, where Clary had slashed him with the dagger, had healed. The mark gleamed redly against his chest.
Jace stopped trying to shove the dagger into his belt. His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the hilt, his wrist twisting, desperately trying to turn the blade on himself. His heart was pounding. He had accepted no iratzes. How had the mark healed so fast? If he could gash it again, disfigure it, even temporarily—
But his hand wouldn’t obey him. His arm stayed stiffly at his side as his body turned, against his own will, toward the pedestal where Sebastian’s body lay.
The coffin had begun to glow, with a cloudy greenish light—almost a witchlight glow, but there was something painful about this light, something that seemed to pierce the eye.
Jace tried to take a step back, but his legs wouldn’t move. Icy sweat trickled down his back. A voice whispered at the back of his mind.
Come here.
It was Sebastian’s voice.
Did you think you were free because Lilith is gone? The vampire’s bite woke me; now her blood in my veins compels you.
Come here.
Jace tried to dig in his heels, but his body betrayed him, carrying him forward, though his conscious mind strained against it. Even as he tried to hang back, his feet moved him down the path, toward the coffin. The painted circle flashed green as he moved across it, and the coffin seemed to answer with a second flash of emerald light. And then he was standing over it, looking down.
Jace bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain might shock him out of the dream state he was in. It didn’t work. He tasted his own blood as he stared down at Sebastian, who floated like a drowned corpse in the water. Those are pearls that were his eyes. His hair was colorless seaweed, his closed eyelids blue. His mouth had the cold, hard set of his father’s mouth. It was like looking at a young Valentine.
Without his volition, absolutely against his will, Jace’s hands began to rise. His left hand laid the edge of the dagger against the inside of his right palm, where life and love lines crisscrossed each other.
Words spilled from his own lips. He heard them as if from an immense distance. They were in no language he knew or understood, but he knew what they were—ritual chanting. His mind was screaming at his body to stop, but it appeared to make no difference. He left hand came down, the knife clenched in it. The blade sliced a clean, sure, shallow cut across his right palm. Almost instantly it began to bleed. He tried to draw back, tried to pull his arm away, but it was as if he were encased in cement. As he watched in horror, the first blood drops splashed onto Sebastian’s face.
Sebastian’s eyes flew open. They were black, blacker than Valentine’s, as black as the demon’s who had called herself his mother. They fixed on Jace, like great dark mirrors, giving him back his own face, twisted and unrecognizable, his mouth shaping the words of the ritual, spilling forth in a meaningless babble like a river of black water.
The blood was flowing more freely now, turning the cloudy liquid inside the coffin a darker red. Sebastian moved.
The bloody water shifted and spilled as he sat up, his black eyes fixed on Jace.
The second part of the ritual. His voice spoke inside Jace’s head. It is almost complete.
Water ran off him like tears. His pale hair, pasted to his forehead, seemed to have no color at all. He raised one hand and held it out, and Jace, against the cry inside his own mind, held out the dagger, blade forward. Sebastian slid his hand along the length of the cold, sharp blade. Blood sprang up in a line across his palm. He knocked the dagger aside and took Jace’s hand, gripping it with his own.
It was the last thing Jace had expected. He couldn’t move to pull away. He felt each of Sebastian’s cold fingers as they wrapped his hand, pressing their bleeding cuts together.
It was like being gripped by cold metal. Ice began to spread up his veins from his hand. A shudder passed over him, and then another, powerful physical tremors so painful it felt as if his body were being turned inside out. He tried to scream—
And the cry died in his throat. He looked down at his and Sebastian’s hands, clenched together. Blood ran through their fingers and down their wrists, as elegant as red lacework. It glittered in the cold electric light of the city. It moved not like liquid, but like moving red wires. It wrapped their hands together in a scarlet binding.
A peculiar sense of peace stole over Jace. The world seemed to fall away, and he was standing on the peak of a mountain, the world spread out before him, everything in it his for the taking. The lights of the city around him were no longer electric, but were the light of a thousand diamond-like stars. They seemed to shine down on him with a benevolent glow that said, This is good. This is right. This is what your father would have wanted.
He saw Clary in his mind’s eye, her pale face, the fall of her red hair, her mouth as it moved, shaping the words I’ll be right back. Five minutes.
And then her voice faded as another spoke over it, drowning it out. The image of her in his mind receded, vanishing imploringly into the darkness, as Eurydice had vanished when Orpheus had turned to look at her one last time. Her saw her, her white arms held out to him, and then the shadows closed over her and she was gone.
A new voice spoke in Jace’s head now, a familiar voice, once hated, now oddly welcome.
Sebastian’s voice. It seemed to run through his blood, through the blood that passed through Sebastian’s hand into his, like a fiery chain.
We are one now, little brother, you and I, Sebastian said.
We are one.
*****
The End
*****
Acknowledgments
As always, family provides the core of support needed to make a novel happen: my husband Josh, my mother and father, Jim Hill and Kate Connor; the Esons family; Melanie, Jonathan and Helen Lewis; Florence and Joyce. This book even more than any other was the product of intense group work, so many thanks to: Delia Sherman, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Justine Larbalestier, Elka Cloke, Robin Wasserman, and special mention to Maureen Johnson for lending her name to the character Maureen.
Thanks to Wayne Miller for helping me with Latin translations. Thanks to Margie Longoria for her support of Project Book Babe: Michael Garza, the owner of the Big Apple Deli, is named for her son, Michael Eliseo Joe Garza. My always gratitude to my agent, Barry Goldblatt; to my editor, Karen Wojtyla; to Emily Fabre, for making changes long past the time changes can be made; to Cliff Nielson and Russell Gordon, for making beautiful covers; and to the teams at Simon and Schuster and Walker Books for making the rest of the magic happen. And lastly, my thanks to Linus and Lucy, my cats, who only threw up on my manuscript once. only threw up on my manuscript once.