“What’s wrong?” Clary said; Jace suddenly looked a million miles away. Since the heavenly fire had entered his body, he’d tended to drift off more into his head. She had a feeling that it was a side effect of suppressing his emotions. She felt a little pang—Jace, when she had met him, had been so controlled, only a little of his real self leaking out through the cracks in his personal armor, like light through the chinks in a wall. It had taken a long time to break down those defenses. Now, though, the fire in his veins was forcing him to put them back up, to bite down on his emotions for safety’s sake. But when the fire was gone, would he be able to dismantle them again?
He blinked, called back by her voice. The winter sun was high and cold; it sharpened the bones of his face and threw the shadows under his eyes into relief. He reached for her hand, taking a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said in the quiet, more serious voice he reserved only for her. “It is helping—the lessons with Jordan. It is helping, and I do appreciate it.”
“I know.” Clary curled her hand around his wrist. His skin felt warm under her touch; he seemed to run several degrees hotter than normal since his encounter with Glorious. His heart still pounded its familiar, steady rhythm, but the blood being pushed through his veins seemed to thrum under her touch with the kinetic energy of a fire just about to catch.
She went up on her toes to kiss his cheek, but he turned, and their lips brushed. They’d done nothing more than kiss since the fire had first started singing in his blood, and they’d done even that carefully. Jace was careful now, his mouth sliding softly against hers, his hand closing on her shoulder. For a moment they were body to body, and she felt the thrum and pulse of his blood. He moved to pull her closer, and a sharp, dry spark passed between them, like the zing of static electricity.
Jace broke off the kiss and stepped back with an exhale; before Clary could say anything, a chorus of sarcastic applause broke out from the nearby hill. Simon, Isabelle, and Alec waved at them. Jace bowed while Clary stepped back slightly sheepishly, hooking her thumbs into the belt of her jeans.
Jace sighed. “Shall we join our annoying, voyeuristic friends?”
“Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of friends we have.” Clary bumped her shoulder against his arm, and they headed up toward the rocks. Simon and Isabelle were side by side, talking quietly. Alec was sitting a little apart, staring at the screen of his phone with an expression of intense concentration.
Jace threw himself down next to his parabatai. “I’ve heard that if you stare at those things enough, they’ll ring.”
“He’s been texting Magnus,” said Isabelle, glancing over with a disapproving look.
“I haven’t,” Alec said automatically.
“Yes, you have,” said Jace, craning to look over Alec’s shoulder. “And calling. I can see your outgoing calls.”
“It’s his birthday,” Alec said, flipping the phone shut. He looked smaller these days, almost skinny in his worn blue pullover, holes at the elbows, his lips bitten and chapped. Clary’s heart went out to him. He’d spent the first week after Magnus had broken up with him in a sort of daze of sadness and disbelief. None of them could really believe it. She’d always thought Magnus loved Alec, really loved him; clearly Alec had thought so too. “I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t—to think that I forgot.”
“You’re pining,” said Jace.
Alec shrugged. “Look who’s talking. ‘Oh, I love her. Oh, she’s my sister. Oh why, why, why—’?”
Jace threw a handful of dead leaves at Alec, making him splutter.
Isabelle was laughing. “You know he’s right, Jace.”
“Give me your phone,” Jace said, ignoring Isabelle. “Come on, Alexander.”
“It’s none of your business,” Alec said, holding the phone away. “Just forget about it, okay?”
“You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you stare at your phone, and I’m supposed to forget about it?” Jace said. There was a surprising amount of agitation in his voice; Clary knew how upset he’d been that Alec was unhappy, but she wasn’t sure Alec knew it. Under normal circumstances Jace would have killed, or at least threatened, anyone who hurt Alec; this was different. Jace liked to win, but you couldn’t win out over a broken heart, even someone else’s. Even someone you loved.
Jace leaned over and grabbed the phone out of his parabatai’s hand. Alec protested and reached for it, but Jace held him off with one hand, expertly scrolling through the messages on the phone with the other. “Magnus, just call me back. I need to know if you’re okay—” He shook his head. “Okay, no. Just no.” With a decisive move he snapped the phone in half. The screen went blank as Jace dropped the pieces to the ground. “There.”
Alec looked down at the shattered pieces in disbelief. “You BROKE my PHONE.”
Jace shrugged. “Guys don’t let other guys keep calling other guys. Okay, that came out wrong. Friends don’t let friends keep calling their exes and hanging up. Seriously. You have to stop.”
Alec looked furious. “So you broke my brand-new phone? Thanks a lot.”
Jace smiled serenely and lay back on the rock. “You’re welcome.”
“Look on the bright side,” Isabelle said. “You won’t be able to get texts from Mom anymore. She’s texted me six times today. I turned my phone off.” She patted her pocket with a significant look.
“What does she want?” Simon asked.
“Constant meetings,” Isabelle said. “Depositions. The Clave keeps wanting to hear what happened when we fought Sebastian at the Burren. We’ve all had to give accounts, like, fifty times. How Jace absorbed the heavenly fire from Glorious. Descriptions of the Dark Shadowhunters, the Infernal Cup, the weapons they used, the runes that were on them. What we were wearing, what Sebastian was wearing, what everyone was wearing . . . like phone sex but boring.”
Simon made a choking noise.
“What we think Sebastian wants,” Alec added. “When he’ll come back. What he’ll do when he does.”
Clary leaned her elbows on her knees. “Always good to know the Clave has a well-thought-out and reliable plan.”
“They don’t want to believe it,” said Jace, staring at the sky. “That’s the problem. No matter how many times we tell them what we saw at the Burren. No matter how many times we tell them how dangerous the Endarkened are. They don’t want to believe that Nephilim could really be corrupted. That Shadowhunters could kill Shadowhunters.”
Clary had been there when Sebastian had created the first of the Endarkened. She had seen the blankness in their eyes, the fury with which they’d fought. They terrified her. “They’re not Shadowhunters anymore,” she added in a low voice. “They’re not people.”
“It’s hard to believe that if you haven’t seen it,” Alec said. “And Sebastian has only so many of them. A small force, scattered—they don’t want to believe he’s really a threat. Or if he is a threat, they’d rather believe it was more a threat to us, to New York, than to Shadowhunters at large.”
“They’re not wrong that if Sebastian cares about anything, it’s about Clary,” Jace said, and Clary felt a cold shiver at her spine, a mixture of disgust and apprehension. “He doesn’t really have emotions. Not like we do. But if he did, he’d have them about her. And he has them about Jocelyn. He hates her.” He paused, thoughtful. “But I don’t think he’d be likely to strike directly here. Too . . . obvious.”
“I hope you told the Clave this,” Simon said.
“About a thousand times,” said Jace. “I don’t think they hold my insights in particularly high regard.”
Clary looked down at her hands. She had been deposed by the Clave, just like the rest of them; she’d given answers to all their questions. There were still things about Sebastian she hadn’t told them, hadn’t told anyone. The things he’d said he wanted from her.
She hadn’t dreamed much since they’d come back from the Burren with Jace’s veins full of fire, but when she did have nightmares, they were about her brother.
“It’s like trying to fight a ghost,” Jace said. “They can’t track Sebastian, they can’t find him, they can’t find the Shadowhunters he’s turned.”
“They’re doing what they can,” Alec said. “They’re shoring up the wards around Idris and Alicante. All the wards, in fact. They’ve sent dozens of experts to Wrangel Island.”
Wrangel Island was the seat of all the world’s wards, the spells that protected the globe, and Idris in particular, from demons and demon invasion. The network of wards wasn’t perfect, and demons slipped through sometimes anyway, but Clary could only imagine how bad the situation would get if the wards didn’t exist.
“I heard Mom say that the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth have been looking for a way to reverse the effects of the Infernal Cup,” said Isabelle. “Of course it would be easier if they had bodies to study. . . .”
She trailed off; Clary knew why. The bodies of the Dark Shadowhunters killed at the Burren had been brought back to the Bone City for the Silent Brothers to examine. The Brothers had never gotten the chance. Overnight the bodies had rotted away to the equivalent of decade-old corpses. There had been nothing to do but burn the remains.
Isabelle found her voice again: “And the Iron Sisters are churning out weapons. We’re getting thousands more seraph blades, swords, chakhrams, everything . . . forged in heavenly fire.” She looked at Jace. In the days immediately following the battle at the Burren, when the fire had raged through Jace’s veins violently enough to make him scream sometimes with the pain, the Silent Brothers had examined him over and over, had tested him with ice and flame, with blessed metal and cold iron, trying to see if there was some way to draw the fire out of him, to contain it.
They hadn’t found one. The fire of Glorious, having once been captured in a blade, seemed in no hurry to inhabit another, or indeed to leave Jace’s body for any kind of vessel. Brother Zachariah had told Clary that in the earliest days of Shadowhunters, the Nephilim had sought to capture heavenly fire in a weapon, something that could be wielded against demons. They had never managed it, and eventually seraph blades had become their weapons of choice. In the end, again, the Silent Brothers had given up. Glorious’s fire lay curled in Jace’s veins like a serpent, and the best he could hope for was to control it so that it didn’t destroy him.
The loud beep of a text message sounded; Isabelle had flicked on her phone again. “Mom says to get back to the Institute now,” she said. “There’s some meeting. We have to be at it.” She stood up, brushing dirt from her dress. “I’d invite you back,” she said to Simon, “but you know, banned for being undead and all.”
“I did remember that,” Simon said, getting to his feet. Clary scrambled up and reached a hand down to Jace. He took it and stood.
“Simon and I are going Christmas shopping,” she said. “And none of you can come, because we have to get you presents.”
Alec looked horrified. “Oh, God. Does that mean I have to get you guys presents?”
Clary shook her head. “Don’t Shadowhunters do . . . you know, Christmas?” She thought back suddenly to the rather distressing Thanksgiving dinner at Luke’s when Jace, on being asked to carve the turkey, had laid into the bird with a sword until there had been little left but turkey flakes. Maybe not?
“We exchange gifts, we honor the change of the seasons,” said Isabelle. “There used to be a winter celebration of the Angel. It observed the day the Mortal Instruments were given to Jonathan Shadowhunter. I think Shadowhunters got annoyed with being left out of all the mundane celebrations, though, so a lot of Institutes have Christmas parties. The London one is famous.” She shrugged. “I just don’t think we’re going to do it . . . this year.”
“Oh.” Clary felt awful. Of course they didn’t want to celebrate Christmas after losing Max. “Well, let us get you presents, at least. There doesn’t have to be a party, or anything like that.”
“Exactly.” Simon threw his arms up. “I have to buy Hanukkah presents. It’s mandated by Jewish law. The God of the Jews is an angry God. And very gift-oriented.”
Clary smiled at him. He was finding it easier and easier to say the word “God” these days.
Jace sighed, and kissed Clary—a quick good-bye brush of lips against her temple, but it made her shiver. Not being able to touch Jace or kiss him properly was starting to make her jump out of her own skin. She’d promised him it would never matter, that she’d love him even if they could never touch again, but she hated it anyway, hated missing the reassurance of the way they had always fit together physically. “See you later,” Jace said. “I’m going to head back with Alec and Izzy—”
“No, you’re not,” Isabelle said unexpectedly. “You broke Alec’s phone. Granted, we’ve all been wanting to do that for weeks—”
“ISABELLE,” Alec said.
“But the fact is, you’re his parabatai, and you’re the only one who hasn’t been to see Magnus. Go talk to him.”
“And tell him what?” Jace said. “You can’t talk people into not breaking up with you. . . . Or maybe you can,” he added hastily, at Alec’s expression. “Who can say? I’ll give it a try.”
“Thanks.” Alec clapped Jace on the shoulder. “I’ve heard you can be charming when you want to be.”
“I’ve heard the same,” Jace said, breaking into a backward jog. He was even graceful doing that, Clary thought gloomily. And sexy. Definitely sexy. She lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.
“See you later,” she called. If I’m not dead from frustration by then.