Dressed, Clary went with Jace to his room, where he packed a small canvas bag with things to bring with him to the Silent City, as if, she thought, he were going to some grim sleepover party. Weapons mostly-a few seraph blades; his stele; and almost as an afterthought, the silver-handled knife, its blade now cleaned of blood. He slid on a black leather jacket, and she watched as he zipped it, pulling loose strands of blond hair free of his collar. When he turned to look at her, slinging his bag across his shoulder, he smiled faintly, and she saw the slight chip in his front left incisor that she had always thought was endearing, a little flaw in looks that would otherwise be too perfect. Her heart contracted, and for a moment she looked away from him, hardly able to breathe.
He held out his hand to her. “Let’s go.”
There was no way to summon the Silent Brothers to come and get them, so Jace and Clary took a taxi heading downtown toward Houston and the Marble Cemetery. Clary supposed they could just have Portaled into the Bone City-she’d been there before; she knew what it looked like-but Jace said there were rules about that sort of thing, and Clary couldn’t shake the feeling that the Silent Brothers might find it rather rude.
Jace sat beside her in the back of the taxi, holding one of her hands and tracing patterns on the back of it with his fingers. This was distracting, but not so distracting that she couldn’t concentrate while he filled her in on what had been going on with Simon, the story of Jordan, their capture of Camille, and her demand to speak to Magnus.
“Simon’s all right?” she said worriedly. “I didn’t realize. He was in the Institute, and I didn’t even see him-“
“He wasn’t in the Institute; he was in the Sanctuary. And he seems to be holding his own. Better than I would have thought for someone who was so recently a mundane.”
“But the plan sounds dangerous. I mean Camille, she’s absolutely crazy, isn’t she?”
Jace traced his fingers over her knuckles. “You have to stop thinking of Simon as the mundane boy you used to know. The one who required so much saving. He’s almost beyond being harmed now. You haven’t seen that Mark you gave him in action. I have. Like the wrath of God being visited upon the world. I suppose you should be proud.”
She shivered. “I don’t know. I did it because I had to do it, but it’s still a curse. And I didn’t know he was going through all this. He didn’t say. I knew Isabelle and Maia had found out about each other, but I didn’t know about Jordan. That he was really Maia’s ex, or-any of it.” Because you haven’t asked. You were too busy worrying about Jace. Not good.
“Well,” Jace said, “have you been telling him what you’re up to? Because it has to go both ways.”
“No. I haven’t really told anyone,” Clary said, and filled Jace in on her trip to the Silent City with Luke and Maryse, what she had found at the morgue at Beth Israel, and her subsequent discovery of the Church of Talto.
“Never heard of it,” Jace said. “But Isabelle’s right, there are all sorts of bizarro demon-worshipping sects out there. Most of them never actually succeed in summoning up a demon. Sounds like this one did.”
“Do you think the demon we killed was the one they were worshipping? Do you think now they might-stop?”
Jace shook his head. “That was just a Hydra demon, a sort of guard dog. Besides, ‘Her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.’ Sounds like a female demon to me. And it’s the cults that worship female demons that often do horrible stuff with babies. They have all sorts of twisted ideas about fertility and infants.” He sat back against the seat, half-closing his eyes. “I’m sure the Conclave will go to the church and check it out, but twenty to one they don’t find anything. You killed their guard demon, so the cult’s going to clear out and ditch the evidence. We might have to wait until they set up shop again somewhere else.”
“But-” Clary’s stomach clenched. “That baby. And the pictures in the book I saw. I think they’re trying to make more children like-like Sebastian.”
“They can’t,” said Jace. “They shot up a human baby with demon blood, which is pretty bad, yes. But you get something like Sebastian only if what you’re doing is using demon blood on Shadowhunter children. Instead the baby died.” He squeezed her hand lightly, as if for reassurance. “They’re not nice people, but I can’t imagine they’d try the same thing again, since it didn’t work.”
The taxi came to a screeching halt at the corner of Houston and Second Avenue. “Meter’s broken,” said the cabbie. “Ten bucks.”
Jace, who under other circumstances would probably have made a sarcastic remark, tossed the cabbie a twenty and got out of the car, holding the door open for Clary to follow. “You ready?” he asked as they headed toward the iron gate that led to the City.
She nodded. “I can’t say my last trip here was much fun, but yes, I’m ready.” She took his hand. “As long as we’re together, I’m ready for anything.”
The Silent Brothers were waiting for them in the entryway of the City, almost as if they had been expecting them. Clary recognized Brother Zachariah among the group. They stood in a silent line, blocking Clary and Jace’s farther ingress into the City.
Why have you come here, daughter of Valentine and son of the Institute? Clary wasn’t sure which of them was speaking to her inside her head, or if all of them were. It is unusual for children to enter the Silent City unsupervised.
The appellation “children” stung, though Clary was aware that as far as Shadowhunters were concerned, everyone under eighteen was a child and subject to different rules.
“We need your help,” Clary said when it became apparent Jace wasn’t going to say anything. He was looking from one of the Silent Brothers to the other with a curious listlessness, like someone who had received countless terminal diagnoses from different doctors and now, having reached the end of the line, waited without much hope for a specialist’s verdict. “Isn’t that your job-helping Shadowhunters?”
And yet we are not servants, at your beck and call. Nor does every problem fall under our jurisdiction.
“But this one does,” Clary said firmly. “I believe someone is reaching into Jace’s mind-someone with power-and messing with his memories and dreams. Making him do things he doesn’t want to do.”
Hypnomancy, said one of the Silent Brothers. The magic of dreams. That is the province of only the greatest and most powerful users of magic.
“Like angels,” said Clary, and she was rewarded by a stiff, surprised silence.
Perhaps, said Brother Zachariah finally, you should come with us to the Speaking Stars. This was not an invitation, clearly, but an order, for they turned immediately and began walking into the heart of the City, not waiting to see if Jace and Clary followed.
They reached the pavilion of the Speaking Stars, where the Brothers took their places behind their black basalt table. The Mortal Sword was back in its place, gleaming on the wall behind them like the wing of a silver bird. Jace moved to the center of the room and stared down at the pattern of metallic stars burned into the red and gold tiles of the floor. Clary watched him, feeling her heart ache. It was hard to see him like this, all his usual burning energy gone, like witchlight suffocating under a covering of ash.
He raised his blond head then, blinking, and Clary knew that the Silent Brothers were speaking inside his mind, saying words she couldn’t hear. She saw him shake his head and heard him say, “I don’t know. I thought they weren’t anything but ordinary dreams.” His mouth tightened then, and she couldn’t help wondering what they were asking him. “Visions? I don’t think so. Yes, I did encounter the Angel, but it’s Clary who had the prophetic dreams. Not me.”
Clary tensed. They were getting awfully close to asking about what had happened with Jace and the Angel that night by Lake Lyn. She hadn’t thought about that. When the Silent Brothers pried into your mind, just what did they see? Only what they were looking for? Or everything?
Jace nodded then. “Fine. I’m ready if you are.”
He closed his eyes, and Clary, watching, relaxed slightly. This must have been what it had been like for Jace to watch her, she thought, the first time the Silent Brothers had delved into her mind. She saw details she hadn’t noticed then, for she had been caught inside the nets of their minds and her own, reeling back into her memories, lost to the world.
She saw Jace stiffen all over as if they had touched him with their hands. His head went back. His hands, at his sides, opened and closed, as the stars on the floor at his feet flared up with a blinding silver light. She blinked away tears from the brightness; he was a graceful dark outline against a sheet of blinding silver, as if he stood in the heart of a waterfall. All around them was noise, a soft, incomprehensible whispering.
As she watched, he went to his knees, his hands braced against the ground. Her heart tightened. Having the Silent Brothers in her head had nearly made her faint, but Jace was stronger than that, wasn’t he? Slowly he doubled in on himself, hands gripped against his stomach, agony in every line of him, though he never cried out. Clary could take it no longer-she darted toward him, through the sheets of light, and went on her knees next to him, throwing her arms around his body. The whispering voices around her rose to a storm of protest as he turned his head and looked at her. The silver light had washed out his eyes, and they looked flat and as white as marble tiles. His lips shaped her name.
And then it was gone-the light, the sound, all of it, and they knelt together on the bare floor of the pavilion, silence and shadow all around them. Jace was shaking, and when his hands released each other, she saw that they were bloody where his nails had torn the skin. Still holding him by the arm, she looked up at the Silent Brothers, fighting back her anger. She knew it was like being furious at a doctor who had to administer a painful but lifesaving treatment, but it was hard-so hard-to be reasonable when it was someone that you loved.
There is something you have not told us, Clarissa Morgenstern, said Brother Zachariah. A secret you both have been keeping.
An icy hand closed around Clary’s heart. “What do you mean?”
The mark of death is on this boy. It was another of the Brothers speaking-Enoch, she thought.
“Death?” said Jace. “Do you mean I’m going to die?” He didn’t sound surprised.
We mean that you were dead. You had passed beyond the portal into the shadow realms, your soul untethered from your body.
Clary and Jace exchanged a look. She swallowed. “The Angel Raziel-,” she began.
Yes, his mark is all over the boy as well. Enoch’s voice was without emotion. There are only two ways to bring back the dead. The way of necromancy, the black sorcery of bell, book, and candle. That will return a semblance of life. But only an Angel of God’s own right hand could place a human’s soul back into their body as easily as life was breathed into the first of men. He shook his head. The balance of life and death, of good and evil, is a delicate one, young Shadowhunters. You have upset it.
“But Raziel’s the Angel,” said Clary. “He can do whatever he wants. You worship him, don’t you? If he chose to do this-“
Did he? asked another of the Brothers. Did he choose?
“I …” Clary looked at Jace. She thought, I could have asked for anything else in the universe. World peace, a cure to disease, to live forever. But all I wanted was you.
We know the ritual of the Instruments, said Zachariah. We know that he who possesses them all, who is their Lord, may request of the Angel one thing. I do not think he could have refused you.
Clary set her chin. “Well,” she said, “it’s done now.”
Jace gave the ghost of a laugh. “They could always kill me, you know,” he said. “Bring things back into balance.”
Her hands tightened on his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was thin. She tensed further as Brother Zachariah broke away from the tight group of Silent Brothers and approached them, his feet gliding silently over the Speaking Stars. He reached Jace, and Clary had to fight the urge to push him away as he bent down and placed his long fingers under Jace’s chin, raising the boy’s face to his. Zachariah’s fingers were slim, unlined-a young man’s fingers. She had never given much thought to the ages of the Silent Brothers before, assuming them to be all some species of wizened and old.
Jace, kneeling, gazed up at Zachariah, who looked down at him with his blind, impassive expression. Clary could not help but think of medieval paintings of saints on their knees, gazing upward, their faces suffused with shining golden light. Would that I had been here, he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle, when you were growing up. I would have seen the truth in your face, Jace Lightwood, and known who you were.
Jace looked puzzled but didn’t move to pull away.
Zachariah turned to the others. We cannot and should not harm the boy. Old ties exist between the Herondales and the Brothers. We owe him help.
“Help with what?” Clary demanded. “Can you see something wrong with him-something inside his head?”
When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters.
The Iron Sisters, Clary knew from her studies, were the sister sect of the Silent Brothers; even more retiring than their brethren, they were in charge of crafting Shadowhunter weapons.
Brother Zachariah went on. When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as an unlocked door-open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence.
Clary licked her dry lips. “Possession, you mean?”
Not possession. Influence. I suspect that a powerful demonic power whispers into your ears, Jonathan Herondale. You are strong, you fight it, but it wears you down as the sea wears down the sand.
“Jace,” he whispered through white lips. “Jace Lightwood, not Herondale.”
Clary, clinging to practicalities, said, “How can you be sure it’s a demon? And what can we do to get it to leave him alone?”
Enoch, sounding thoughtful, said, The ritual must be performed again, the protections laid upon him a second time, as if he had just been born.
“Can you do it?” Clary asked.
Zachariah inclined his head. It can be done. The preparations must be made, one of the Iron Sisters called on, an amulet crafted… He trailed off. Jonathan must remain with us until the ritual is finished. This is the safest place for him.
Clary looked at Jace again, searching for an expression-any expression-of hope, relief, delight, anything. But his face was impassive. “For how long?” he said.
Zachariah spread his thin hands wide. A day, perhaps two. The ritual is meant for infants; we will have to change it, alter it to fit an adult. If he were older than eighteen, it would be impossible. As it is, it will be difficult. But he is not beyond saving.
Not beyond saving. It was not what Clary had hoped for; she had wanted to be told that the problem was simple, easily solved. She looked at Jace. His head was bowed, his hair falling forward; the back of his neck looked so vulnerable to her, it made her heart ache.
“It’s fine,” she said softly. “I’ll stay here with you-“
No. The Brothers spoke as a group, their voices inexorable. He must remain here alone. For what we must do, he cannot afford to be distracted.
She felt Jace’s body tighten. The last time he had been alone in the Silent City, he had been unfairly imprisoned, present for the horrible deaths of most of the Silent Brothers, and tormented by Valentine. She could not imagine that the idea of another night alone in the City would be anything but awful for him.
“Jace,” she whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. If you want to go…”
“I’ll stay,” he said. He had raised his head, and his voice was strong and clear. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever I have to do to fix this. I just need you to call Izzy and Alec. Tell them-tell them I’m staying at Simon’s to keep an eye on him. Tell them I’ll see them tomorrow or the next day.”
“But…”
“Clary.” Gently he took both her hands and held them between his. “You were right. This isn’t coming from inside me. Something is doing this to me. To us. You know what that means? If I can be … cured … then I don’t have to be afraid of myself when I’m around you anymore. I’d spend a thousand nights in the Silent City for that.”
She leaned forward, heedless of the presence of the Silent Brothers, and kissed him, a quick press of her lips against his. “I’ll be back,” she whispered. “Tomorrow night, after the Ironworks party, I’ll come back and see you.”
The hopefulness in his eyes was enough to break her heart. “Maybe I’ll be cured by then.”
She touched his face with her fingertips. “Maybe you will be.”
Simon woke still feeling exhausted after a long night of bad dreams. He rolled onto his back and stared at the light coming in the single window in his bedroom.
He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d sleep better if he did what other vampires did, and slept during the day. Despite the fact that the sun didn’t harm him, he could feel the pull of the nights, the desire to be out under the dark sky and the glimmering stars. There was something in him that wanted to live in shadows, that felt the sunlight like a thin, knifelike pain-just like there was something in him that wanted blood. And look how fighting that had turned out for him.
He staggered upright and threw on some clothes, then made his way out into the living room. The place smelled like toast and coffee. Jordan was sitting on one of the counter stools, his hair sticking out every which way as usual, his shoulders hunched.
“Hey,” Simon said. “What’s up?”
Jordan looked over at him. He was pale under his tan. “We have a problem,” he said.
Simon blinked. He hadn’t seen his werewolf roommate since the day before. He’d come home from the Institute last night and collapsed in exhaustion. Jordan hadn’t been here, and Simon had figured he was out working. But maybe something had happened. “What’s wrong?”