The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (346 page)

Alec caught his breath and looked down at his hands. “What are you saying?” His voice was uneven. “That you want to get back together?”

“If you want to,” Magnus said, and he actually sounded uncertain, enough that Alec looked at him in surprise. Magnus looked very young, his eyes wide and gold-green, his hair brushing his temples in wisps of black. “If you . . .”

Alec sat, frozen. For weeks he’d sat and daydreamed about Magnus saying these exact words, but now that Magnus was, it didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would. There were no
fireworks in his chest; he felt empty and cold. “I don’t know,” he said.

The light died out of Magnus’s eyes. He said, “Well, I can understand that you—I wasn’t very kind to you.”

“No,” Alec said bluntly. “You weren’t, but I guess it’s hard to break up with someone kindly. The thing is, I
am
sorry about what I did. I was wrong. Incredibly wrong. But the reason I did it, that isn’t going to change. I can’t go through my life feeling like I don’t know you at all. You keep saying the past is the past, but the past made you who you are. I want to know about your life. And if you’re not willing to tell me about it, then I shouldn’t be with you. Because I know me, and I won’t ever be okay with it. So I shouldn’t put us both through that again.”

Magnus pulled his knees up to his chest. In the darkening twilight he looked gangly against the shadows, all long legs and arms and thin fingers sparkling with rings. “I love you,” he said quietly.

“Don’t—” Alec said. “Don’t. It’s not fair. Besides—” He glanced away. “I doubt I’m the first one who ever broke your heart.”

“My heart’s been broken more times than the Clave’s Law about Shadowhunters not engaging in romances with Downworlders,” Magnus said, but his voice sounded brittle. “Alec . . . you’re right.”

Alec cut his eyes sideways. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the warlock look so vulnerable.

“It’s not fair to you,” Magnus said. “I’ve always told myself I was going to be open to new experiences, and so when I started to—to harden—I was shocked. I thought I’d done everything
right, not closed my heart off. And then I thought about what you said, and I realized why I was starting to die inside. If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I did that were good, the things I did that were shameful—if I kept them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear. And then I would disappear.”

“I . . .” Alec wasn’t sure what to say.

“I had a lot of time to think, after we broke up,” Magnus said. “And I wrote this.” He pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket: just a very ordinary spiral-bound notebook of lined paper, but when the wind flapped it open, Alec could see that the pages were covered with thin, looping handwriting. Magnus’s handwriting. “I wrote down my life.”

Alec’s eyes widened. “Your whole life?”

“Not all of it,” Magnus said carefully. “But some of the incidents that have shaped me. How I first met Raphael, when he was very young,” Magnus said, and sounded sad. “How I fell in love with Camille. The story of the Hotel Dumort, though Catarina had to help me with that. Some of my early loves, and some of my later ones. Names you might know—Herondale—”

“Will Herondale,” said Alec. “Camille mentioned him.” He took the notebook; the thin pages felt bumpy, as if Magnus had pressed the pen very hard into the paper while writing. “Were you . . .
with
him?”

Magnus laughed and shook his head. “No—though, there are a lot of Herondales in the pages. Will’s son, James Herondale, was remarkable, and so was James’s sister, Lucie, but I have to say Stephen Herondale rather put me off the family until Jace came along. That guy was a pill.” He noticed Alec staring at
him, and added quickly, “No Herondales. No Shadowhunters at all, in fact.”

“No Shadowhunters?”

“None in my heart like you are,” Magnus said. He tapped the notebook lightly. “Consider this a first installment of everything I want to tell you. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped—if you wanted to be with me, as I want to be with you, you might take this as evidence. Evidence that I am willing to give you something I have never given anyone: my past, the truth of myself. I want to share my life with you, and that means today, and the future, and all of my past, if you want it. If you want me.”

Alec lowered the notebook. There was writing on the first page, a scrawled inscription:
Dear Alec . . .

He could see the path in front of him very clearly: He could hand back the book, walk away from Magnus, find someone else, some Shadowhunter to love, be with him, share the kinship of predictable days and nights, the daily poetry of an ordinary life.

Or he could take the step out into nothingness and choose Magnus, the far stranger poetry of him, his brilliance and anger, his sulks and joys, the extraordinary abilities of his magic and the no less breathtaking magic of the extraordinary way he loved.

It was hardly a choice at all. Alec took a deep breath, and jumped.

“All right,” he said.

Magnus whipped toward him in the dark, all coiled energy now, all cheekbones and shimmering eyes. “Really?”

“Really,” Alec said. He reached out a hand, and interlinked his fingers with Magnus’s. There was a glow being woken in
Alec’s chest, where all had been dark. Magnus cupped his long fingers under Alec’s jawline and kissed him, his touch light against Alec’s skin: a slow and gentle kiss, a kiss that promised more later, when they were no longer on a roof and could be seen by anyone walking by.

“So I’m your first ever Shadowhunter, huh?” Alec said when they separated at last.

“You’re my first so many things, Alec Lightwood,” Magnus said.

The sun was setting when Jace dropped Clary off at Amatis’s house, kissed her, and headed back down the canal toward the Inquisitor’s. Clary watched him walk away before turning back to the house with a sigh; she was glad they were leaving the next day.

There were things she loved about Idris. Alicante was still the loveliest city she had seen: Over the houses, now, she could see the sunset striking sparks off the clear tops of the demon towers. The rows of houses along the canal were softened by shadow, like velvet silhouettes. But it was heart-achingly sad being inside Amatis’s house, knowing now, with certainty, that she would never come back to it.

Inside, the house was warm and dimly lit. Luke was sitting on the sofa, reading a book. Jocelyn was asleep beside him, curled up with a throw rug over her. Luke smiled at Clary as she came in, and he pointed toward the kitchen, making a bizarre gesture that Clary translated as an indication that there was food in there if she wanted it.

She nodded and tiptoed up the stairs, careful not to wake her mother. She went into her room already pulling off her coat; it
took her a moment to realize that there was someone else there.

The room was chilly, the cold air pouring in through the half-open window. On the windowsill sat Isabelle. She wore high boots zipped over jeans; her hair was loose, blowing slightly in the breeze. She looked over at Clary as she came into the room, and smiled tightly.

Clary went over to the window and pulled herself up beside Izzy. There was enough room for both of them, but barely; the toes of her shoes nudged up against Izzy’s leg. She folded her hands over her knees and waited.

“Sorry,” Isabelle said, finally. “I probably should have come in through the front door, but I didn’t want to deal with your parents.”

“Was everything okay at the Council meeting?” Clary asked. “Did something happen—”

Isabelle laughed shortly. “The faeries agreed to the Clave’s terms.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“Maybe. Magnus didn’t seem to think so.” Isabelle exhaled. “It just—There were nasty pointy angry bits sticking out everywhere. It didn’t seem like a victory. And they’re sending Helen Blackthorn to Wrangel Island to ‘study the wards.’ Get that. They want to get her away because she’s got faerie blood.”

“That’s horrible! What about Aline?”

“Aline’s going with her. She told Alec,” Isabelle said. “There’s some uncle that’s coming to take care of the Blackthorn kids and the girl—the one who likes you and Jace.”

“Her name’s Emma,” Clary said, poking Isabelle’s leg with her toe. “You could
try
to remember it. She did help us out.”

“Yeah, it’s a little hard for me to be grateful right now.”
Isabelle ran her hands down her denim-clad legs and took a deep breath. “I know there was no other way it could have played out. I keep trying to imagine one, but I can’t think of anything. We had to go after Sebastian, and we had to get out of Edom or we all would have died anyway, but I just
miss
Simon. I miss him all the time, and I came here because you’re the only one who misses him as much as I do.”

Clary stilled. Isabelle was playing with the red stone at her throat, staring out the window with the sort of fixed stare Clary was familiar with. It was the kind of stare that said,
I’m trying not to cry
.

“I know,” Clary said. “I miss him all the time too, just in a different way. It feels like waking up missing an arm or a leg, like there’s something that’s always been there that I relied on, and now it’s gone.”

Isabelle was still staring out the window. “Tell me about the phone call,” she said.

“I don’t know.” Clary hesitated. “It was bad, Iz. I don’t think you really want to—”

“Tell me,”
Isabelle said through her teeth, and Clary sighed and nodded.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t remember; every second of what had happened was burned into her brain.

It had been three days after they had come back, three days during which all of them had been quarantined. No Shadowhunter had survived a trip to a demon dimension before, and the Silent Brothers had wanted to be absolutely sure that they were carrying no dark magic with them. It had been three days of Clary screaming at the Silent Brothers that she wanted her stele, she wanted a Portal, she wanted to see
Simon, she wanted someone to just
check
on him and make sure he was all right. She hadn’t seen Isabelle or any of the others during those days, not even her mother or Luke, but they must have done their own fair share of screaming, because the moment they had all been cleared by the Brothers, a guard had appeared and guided Clary to the Consul’s office.

Inside the office of the Consul, in the Gard on top of Gard Hill, was the only working telephone in Alicante.

It had been enchanted to work sometime around the turn of the century by the warlock Ragnor Fell, a little before the development of fire-messages. It had survived various attempts to remove it on the theory that it might disrupt the wards, as it had shown no sign of ever doing so.

The only other person in the room was Jia Penhallow, and she gestured for Clary to sit. “Magnus Bane has informed me about what happened with your friend Simon Lewis in the demon realms,” she said. “I wished to say that I am so sorry for your loss.”

“He isn’t
dead
,” Clary ground out through her teeth. “At least he isn’t supposed to be. Has anyone bothered to check? Has anyone looked to see if he’s all right?”

“Yes,” Jia said, rather unexpectedly. “He is fine, living at his home with his mother and sister. He seems entirely well: no longer a vampire, of course, but simply a mundane leading a very ordinary life. He appears from observation to have no recollection of the Shadow World.”

Clary flinched, then straightened up. “I want to talk to him.”

Jia thinned her lips. “You know the Law. You cannot tell a mundane about the Shadow World unless he is in danger. You
cannot reveal the truth, Clary. Magnus said the demon who freed you told you as much.”

The demon who freed you.
So Magnus hadn’t mentioned it was his father—not that Clary blamed him. She wouldn’t reveal his secret either. “I won’t tell Simon anything, all right? I just want to hear his voice. I need to know he’s okay.”

Jia sighed and pushed the phone toward her. Clary grabbed it, wondering how you dialed out of Idris—how did they pay their phone bills?—then decided screw it, she was just going to dial as if she were in Brooklyn already. If that didn’t work, she could ask for guidance.

To her surprise the phone rang, and was picked up almost immediately, the familiar voice of Simon’s mother echoing down the line. “Hello?”

“Hello.” The receiver almost slipped in Clary’s hand; her palm was damp with sweat. “Is Simon there?”

“What? Oh, yes, he’s in his room,” said Elaine. “Can I tell him who’s calling?”

Clary closed her eyes. “It’s Clary.”

There was a short silence, and then Elaine said, “I’m sorry, who?”

“Clary Fray.” She tasted bitter metal in the back of her throat. “I—I go to Saint Xavier’s. It’s about our English homework.”

“Oh! Well, all right, then,” said Elaine. “I’ll go get him.” She put the phone down, and Clary waited, waited for the woman who had thrown Simon out of her house and called him a monster, had left him to throw up blood on his knees in the gutter, to go and see if he would pick up a phone call like a normal teenager.