The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (118 page)

Jace stared at him, his face blank, and Simon was reminded with an unpleasant jolt of the way Jace had looked on the ship, bloody and dying on the metal floor.

Finally, Jace spoke. “So you’re telling me you plan to stay here? In prison? Until when?”

“Until we think of a better idea,” said Simon. “But there is one thing.”

Jace raised his eyebrows. “What’s that?”

“Blood,” said Simon. “The Inquisitor’s trying to starve me into talking. I already feel pretty weak. By tomorrow I’ll be—well, I don’t know how I’ll be. But I don’t want to give in to him. And I
won’t
drink your blood again, or anyone else’s,” he added quickly, before Jace could offer. “Animal blood will do.”

“Blood I can get you,” Jace said. He hesitated. “Did you … tell the Inquisitor that I let you drink my blood? That I saved you?”

Simon shook his head.

Jace’s eyes shone with reflected light. “Why not?”

“I suppose I didn’t want to get you into more trouble.”

“Look, vampire,” Jace said. “Protect the Lightwoods if you can. But don’t protect me.”

Simon raised his head. “Why not?”

“I suppose,” said Jace—and for a moment, as he looked down through the bars, Simon could almost imagine that he were outside, and Jace were the one inside the cell—“because I don’t deserve it.”

Clary woke to a sound like hailstones on a metal roof. She sat up in bed, staring around groggily. The sound came again, a sharp rattle-thump emanating from the window. Peeling her blanket back reluctantly, she went to investigate.

Throwing the window open let in a blast of cold air that cut through her pajamas like a knife. She shivered and leaned out over the sill.

Someone was standing in the garden below, and for a moment, with a leap of her heart, all she saw was that the figure was slender and tall, with boyish, rumpled hair. Then he raised his face and she saw that the hair was dark, not fair, and she realized that for the second time, she’d hoped for Jace and gotten Sebastian instead.

He was holding a handful of pebbles in one hand. He smiled when he saw her poke her head out, and gestured at himself and then at the rose trellis.
Climb downstairs.

She shook her head and pointed toward the front of the house.
Meet me at the front door.
Shutting the window, she hurried downstairs. It was late morning—the light pouring in through the windows was strong and golden—but the lights were all off and the house was quiet.
Amatis must still be asleep
, she thought.

Clary went to the front door, unbolted it, and threw it open. Sebastian was there, standing on the front step, and once again she had that feeling, that strange burst of recognition, though it was fainter this time. She smiled weakly at him. “You threw stones at my window,” she said. “I thought people only did that in movies.”

He grinned. “Nice pajamas. Did I wake you up?”

“Maybe.”

“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t seem sorry. “But this couldn’t wait. You might want to run upstairs and get dressed, by the way. We’ll be spending the day together.”

“Wow. Confident, aren’t you?” she said, but then boys who looked like Sebastian probably had no reason to be anything but confident. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t leave the house. Not today.”

A faint line of concern appeared between his eyes. “You left the house yesterday.”

“I know, but that was before—”
Before Amatis made me feel about two inches tall.
“I just can’t. And please don’t try to argue me out of it, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t argue. But at least let me tell you what I came here to tell you. Then, I promise, if you still want me to go, I’ll go.”

“What is it?”

He raised his face, and she wondered how it was possible that dark eyes could glow just like golden ones. “I know where you can find Ragnor Fell.”

It took Clary less than ten minutes to run upstairs, throw on her clothes, scribble a hasty note to Amatis, and rejoin Sebastian, who was waiting for her at the edge of the canal. He grinned as she ran to meet him, breathless, her green coat flung over one arm. “I’m here,” she said, skidding to a stop. “Can we go now?”

Sebastian insisted on helping her on with the coat. “I don’t think anyone’s ever helped me with my coat before,” Clary observed, freeing the hair that had gotten trapped under her collar. “Well, maybe waiters. Were you ever a waiter?”

“No, but I was brought up by a Frenchwoman,” Sebastian reminded her. “It involved an even more rigorous course of training.”

Clary smiled, despite her nervousness. Sebastian was good at making her smile, she realized with a faint sense of surprise. Almost
too
good at it. “Where are we going?” she asked abruptly. “Is Fell’s house near here?”

“He lives outside the city, actually,” said Sebastian, starting toward the bridge. Clary fell into step beside him.

“Is it a long walk?”

“Too long to walk. We’re going to get a ride.”

“A ride? From who?” She came to a dead stop. “Sebastian, we have to be careful. We can’t trust just anyone with the information about what we’re doing—what
I’m
doing. It’s a secret.”

Sebastian regarded her with thoughtful dark eyes. “I swear on the Angel that the friend we’ll be getting a ride from won’t breathe a word to anyone about what we’re doing.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m
very
sure.”

Ragnor Fell
, Clary thought as they weaved through the crowded streets.
I’m going to see Ragnor Fell
. Wild excitement clashed with trepidation—Madeleine had made him sound formidable. What if he had no patience with her, no time? What if she couldn’t make him believe she was who she said she was? What if he didn’t even
remember
her mother?

It didn’t help her nerves that every time she passed a blond man or a girl with long dark hair her insides tensed up as she thought she recognized Jace or Isabelle. But Isabelle would probably just ignore her, she thought glumly, and Jace was doubtless back at the Penhallows’, necking with his new girlfriend.

“You worried about being followed?” Sebastian asked as they turned down a side street that led away from the city center, noticing the way she kept glancing around her.

“I keep thinking I see people I know,” she admitted. “Jace, or the Lightwoods.”

“I don’t think Jace has left the Penhallows’ since they got here. He mostly seems to be skulking in his room. He hurt his hand pretty badly yesterday too—”

“Hurt his hand? How?” Clary, forgetting to look where she was going, stumbled over a rock. The road they’d been walking on had somehow turned from cobblestones to gravel without her noticing. “Ouch.”

“We’re here,” Sebastian announced, stopping in front of a high wood-and-wire fence. There were no houses around—they had rather abruptly left the residential district behind, and there was only this fence on one side and a gravelly slope leading away toward the forest on the other.

There was a door in the fence, but it was padlocked. From his pocket Sebastian produced a heavy steel key and opened the gate. “I’ll be right back with our ride.” He swung the gate shut behind him. Clary put her eye to the slats. Through the gaps she could glimpse what looked like a low-slung red clapboard house. Though it didn’t appear to really have a door—or proper windows—

The gate opened, and Sebastian reappeared, grinning from ear to ear. He held a lead in one hand: Pacing docilely behind him was a huge gray and white horse with a blaze like a star on his forehead.

“A
horse
? You have a horse?” Clary stared in amazement. “Who has a horse?”

Sebastian stroked the horse fondly on the shoulder. “A lot of Shadowhunter families keep a horse in the stables here in Alicante. If you’ve noticed, there are no cars in Idris. They don’t work well with all these wards around.” He patted the pale leather of the horse’s saddle, emblazoned with a crest of arms that depicted a water serpent rising out of a lake in a series of coils. The name
Verlac
was written beneath in delicate script. “Come on up.”

Clary backed up. “I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

“I’ll be riding Wayfarer,” Sebastian reassured her. “You’ll just be sitting in front of me.”

The horse grunted softly. He had huge teeth, Clary noticed uneasily; each one the size of a PEZ dispenser. She imagined those teeth sinking into her leg and thought of all the girls she’d known in middle school who’d wanted ponies of their own. She wondered if they were insane.

Be brave
, she told herself.
It’s what your mother would do.

She took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go.”

Clary’s resolution to be brave lasted as long as it took for Sebastian—after helping her into the saddle—to swing himself up onto the horse behind her and dig in his heels. Wayfarer took off like a shot, pounding over the graveled road with a force that sent jolting shocks up her spine. She clutched at the bit of the saddle that stuck up in front of her, her nails digging into it hard enough to leave marks in the leather.

The road they were on narrowed as they headed out of town, and now there were banks of thick trees on either side of them, walls of green that blocked any wider view. Sebastian drew back on the reins, and the horse ceased his frantic galloping, Clary’s heartbeat slowing along with his pace. As her panic receded, she became slowly conscious of Sebastian behind her—he was holding the reins on either side of her, his arms making a sort of cage around her that kept her from feeling like she was about to slide off the horse. She was suddenly very aware, not just of the hard strength in the arms that held her, but that she was leaning back against his chest and that he smelled of, for some reason, black pepper. Not in a bad way—it was spicy and pleasant, very different from Jace’s smell of soap and sunlight. Not that sunlight had a smell, really, but if it did—

She gritted her teeth. She was here with Sebastian, on her way to see a powerful warlock, and mentally she was maundering on about the way Jace smelled. She forced herself to look around. The green banks of trees were thinning out and now she could see a sweep of marbled countryside to either side. It was beautiful in a stark sort of way: a carpet of green broken up here and there by a scar of gray stone road or a crag of black rock rising up out of the grass. Clusters of delicate white flowers, the same ones she’d seen in the necropolis with Luke, starred the hills like occasional snowfall.

“How did you find out where Ragnor Fell is?” she asked as Sebastian skillfully guided the horse around a rut in the road.

“My aunt Élodie. She’s got quite a network of informants. She knows everything that’s going on in Idris, even though she never comes here herself. She hates to leave the Institute.”

“What about you? Do you come to Idris much?”

“Not really. The last time I was here I was about five years old. I haven’t seen my aunt and uncle since then either, so I’m glad to be here now. It gives me a chance to catch up. Besides, I miss Idris when I’m not here. There’s nowhere else like it. It’s in the earth of the place. You’ll start to feel it, and then you’ll miss it when you’re not here.”

“I know Jace missed it,” she said. “But I thought that was because he lived here for years. He was brought up here.”

“In the Wayland manor,” Sebastian said. “Not that far from where we’re going, in fact.”

“You do seem to know everything.”

“Not
everything
,” Sebastian said with a laugh that Clary felt through her back. “Yeah, Idris works its magic on everyone—even those like Jace who have reason to hate the place.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, he was brought up by Valentine, wasn’t he? And that must have been pretty awful.”

“I don’t know.” Clary hesitated. “The truth is, he has mixed feelings about it. I think Valentine was a horrible father in a way, but in another way the little bits of kindness and love he did show were all the kindness and love Jace ever knew.” She felt a wave of sadness as she spoke. “I think he remembered Valentine with a lot of affection, for a long time.”

“I can’t believe Valentine ever showed Jace kindness or love. Valentine’s a monster.”

“Well, yes, but Jace is his son. And he was just a little boy. I think Valentine did love him, in his way—”

“No.” Sebastian’s voice was sharp. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

Clary blinked and almost turned around to see his face, but then thought better of it. All Shadowhunters were sort of crazy on the topic of Valentine—she thought of the Inquisitor and shuddered inwardly—and she could hardly blame them. “You’re probably right.”

“We’re here,” Sebastian said abruptly—so abruptly that Clary wondered if she really had offended him somehow—and slid down from the horse’s back. But when he looked up at her, he was smiling. “We made good time,” he said, tying the reins to the lower branch of a nearby tree. “Better than I thought we would.”

He indicated with a gesture that she should dismount, and after a moment’s hesitation Clary slid off the horse and into his arms. She clutched him as he caught her, her legs unsteady after the long ride. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to grab you.”

“I wouldn’t apologize for
that
.” His breath was warm against her neck, and she shivered. His hands lingered just a moment longer on her back before he reluctantly let her go.

All this wasn’t helping Clary’s legs feel any steadier. “Thanks,” she said, knowing full well she was blushing, and wishing heartily that her fair skin didn’t show color so readily. “So—this is it?” She looked around. They were standing in a small valley between low hills. There were a number of gnarled-looking trees ranged around a clearing. Their twisted branches had a sculptural beauty against the steel blue sky. But otherwise … “There’s nothing here,” she said with a frown.

“Clary.
Concentrate.
”

“You mean—a glamour? But I don’t usually have to—”

“Glamours in Idris are often stronger than they are elsewhere. You may have to try harder than you usually do.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently. “Look at the clearing.”