City of Bones
Page 36

She should have fallen instantly into bed, but despite her exhaustion, sleep remained out of reach. Eventually she pulled her sketchpad out of her backpack and started drawing, propping the tablet against her knees. Idle scribbles at first—a detail from the crumbling facade of the vampire hotel: a fanged gargoyle with bulging eyes. An empty street, a single lamppost casting a yellow pool of illumination, a shadowy figure poised at the edge of the light. She drew Raphael in his bloody white shirt with the scar of the cross on his throat. And then she drew Jace standing on the roof, looking down at the ten-story drop below. Not afraid, but as if the fall challenged him—as if there were no empty space he could not fill with his belief in his own invincibility. As in her dream, she drew him with wings that curved out behind his shoulders in an arc like the wings of the angel statue in the Bone City.
She tried to draw her mother, last. She had told Jace she didn’t feel any different after reading the Gray Book, and it was mostly true. Now, though, as she tried to visualize her mother’s face, she realized there was one thing that was different in her memories of Jocelyn: She could see her mother’s scars, the tiny white marks that covered her back and shoulders as if she had been standing in a snowfall.
It hurt, knowing that the way she’d always seen her mother, all her life, had been a lie. She slid the sketchpad under her pillow, eyes burning.
There was a tap on the door—soft, hesitant. She scrubbed hastily at her eyes. “Come in.”
It was Simon. She hadn’t really focused on what a mess he was. He hadn’t showered, and his clothes were torn and stained, his hair tangled. He hesitated in the doorway, oddly formal.
She scooted sideways, making room for him on the bed. There was nothing strange about sitting in bed with Simon; they’d slept over at each other’s houses for years, made tents and forts with the blankets when they were small, stayed up reading comics when they were older.
“You found your glasses,” she said. One lens was cracked.
“They were in my pocket. They came through better than I would have expected. I’ll have to write a nice note to LensCrafters.” He settled beside her gingerly.
“Did Hodge fix you up?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I still feel like I’ve been worked over with a tire iron, but nothing’s broken—not anymore.” He turned to look at her. His eyes behind the ruined glasses were the eyes she remembered: dark and serious, ringed by the kind of lashes boys didn’t care about and girls would kill for. “Clary, that you came for me—that you would risk all that—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand awkwardly. “You would have done it for me.”
“Of course,” he said, without arrogance or pretension, “but I always thought that was the way things were, with us. You know.”
She scrambled around to face him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Simon, as if he were surprised to find himself explaining something that should have been obvious, “I’ve always been the one who needed you more than you needed me.”
“That’s not true.” Clary was appalled.
“It is,” Simon said with the same unnerving calm. “You’ve never seemed to really need anyone, Clary. You’ve always been so … contained. All you’ve ever needed is your pencils and your imaginary worlds. So many times I’ve had to say things six, seven times before you’d even respond, you were so far away. And then you’d turn to me and smile that funny smile, and I’d know you’d forgotten all about me and just remembered—but I was never mad at you. Half of your attention is better than all of anyone else’s.”
She tried to catch at his hand, but got his wrist. She could feel the pulse under his skin. “I only ever loved three people in my life,” she said. “My mom and Luke, and you. And I’ve lost all of them except you. Don’t ever imagine you aren’t important to me—don’t even think it.”
“My mom says you only need three people you can rely on in order to achieve self-actualization,” said Simon. His tone was light but his voice cracked halfway through “actualization.” “She says you seem pretty self-actualized.”
Clary smiled at him ruefully. “Did your mom have any other words of wisdom about me?”
“Yeah.” He returned her smile with one just as crooked. “But I’m not going to tell you what they were.”
“No fair keeping secrets!”
“Who ever said the world was fair?”
In the end, they lay against each other as they had when they were children: shoulder to shoulder, Clary’s leg thrown over Simon’s. Her toes came to just below his knee. Flat on their backs, they stared up at the ceiling as they talked, a habit left over from the time when Clary’s ceiling had been covered with paste-on glow-in-the-dark stars. Where Jace had smelled like soap and limes, Simon smelled like someone who’d been rolling around the parking lot of a supermarket, but Clary didn’t mind.
“The weird thing is”—simon wound a curl of her hair around his finger—“I was joking with Isabelle about vampires right before it all happened. Just trying to get her to laugh, you know? ‘What freaks out Jewish vampires? Silver stars of David? Chopped liver? Checks for eighteen dollars?’”
Clary laughed.
Simon looked gratified. “Isabelle didn’t laugh.”
Clary thought of a number of things she wanted to say, and didn’t say them. “I’m not sure that’s Isabelle’s kind of humor.”
Simon cut a sideways glance at her under his lashes. “Is she sleeping with Jace?”
Clary’s squeak of surprise turned into a cough. She glared at him. “Ew, no. They’re practically related. They wouldn’t do that.” She paused. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
Simon shrugged. “Not like I care,” he said firmly.
“Sure you don’t.”
“I don’t!” He rolled onto his side. “You know, initially I thought Isabelle seemed, I don’t know—cool. Exciting. Different. Then, at the party, I realized she was actually crazy.”
Clary slit her eyes at him. “Did she tell you to drink the blue cocktail?”
He shook his head. “That was all me. I saw you go off with Jace and Alec, and I don’t know … You looked so different from usual. You seemed so different. I couldn’t help thinking you’d changed already, and this new world of yours would leave me out. I wanted to do something that would make me more a part of it. So when the little green guy came by with the tray of drinks …”
Clary groaned. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”
“Sorry. Was it awful?”
“Being a rat? No. First it was disorienting. I was suddenly at ankle-level with everyone. I thought I’d drunk a shrinking potion, but I couldn’t figure out why I had this urge to chew used gum wrappers.”
Clary giggled. “No. I mean the vampire hotel—was that awful?”
Something flickered behind his eyes. He looked away. “No. I don’t really remember much between the party and landing in the parking lot.”
“Probably better that way.”
He started to say something but was arrested mid-yawn. The light in the room had slowly faded. Disentangling herself from Simon and the bedsheets, Clary got up and pushed aside the window curtains. Outside, the city was bathed in the reddish glow of sunset. The silvery roof of the Chrysler Building, fifty blocks downtown, glowed like a poker left too long in the fire. “The sun’s setting. Maybe we should look for some dinner.”
There was no response. Turning, she saw that Simon was asleep, his arms folded under his head, legs sprawled. She sighed, went over to the bed, plucked his glasses off, and set them on the night table. She couldn’t count the times he’d fallen asleep with them on and been woken by the sound of cracking lenses.
Now where am I going to sleep? Not that she minded sharing a bed with Simon, but he hadn’t exactly left her any room. She considered poking him awake, but he looked so peaceful. Besides, she wasn’t sleepy. She was just reaching for the sketchpad under the pillow when a knock sounded on the door.
She padded barefoot across the room and turned the doorknob quietly. It was Jace. Clean, in jeans and a gray shirt, his washed hair a halo of damp gold. The bruises on his face were already fading from purple to faint gray, and his hands were behind his back.
“Were you asleep?” he asked. There was no contrition in his voice, only curiosity.
“No.” Clary stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her. “Why would you think that?”
He eyed her baby-blue cotton tank top and sleep shorts set. “No reason.”
“I was in bed most of the day,” she said, which was technically true. Seeing him, her jitter level had shot up about a thousand percent, but she saw no reason to share that information. “What about you? Aren’t you exhausted?”
He shook his head. “Much like the postal service, demon hunters never sleep. ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these—’”
“You’d be in major trouble if gloom of night did stay you,” she pointed out.
He grinned. Unlike his hair, his teeth weren’t perfect. An upper incisor was slightly, endearingly chipped.
She gripped her elbows. It was chilly in the hallway and she could feel goose bumps starting up her arms. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“‘Here’ as in your bedroom or ‘here’ as in the great spiritual question of our purpose here on this planet? If you’re asking whether it’s all just a cosmic coincidence or there’s a greater metaethical purpose to life, well, that’s a puzzler for the ages. I mean, simple ontological reductionism is clearly a fallacious argument, but—”
“I’m going back to bed.” Clary reached for the doorknob.
He slid nimbly between her and the door. “I’m here,” he said, “because Hodge reminded me it was your birthday.”
Clary exhaled in exasperation. “Not until tomorrow.”
“That’s no reason not to start celebrating now.”
She eyed him. “You’re avoiding Alec and Isabelle.”
He nodded. “Both of them are trying to pick fights with me.”
“For the same reason?”
“I couldn’t tell.” He glanced furtively up and down the hallway. “Hodge, too. Everyone wants to talk to me. Except you. I bet you don’t want to talk to me.”
“No,” said Clary. “I want to eat. I’m starving.”
He brought his hand out from behind his back. In it was a slightly crumpled paper bag. “I sneaked some food from the kitchen when Isabelle wasn’t looking.”
Clary grinned. “A picnic? It’s a little late for Central Park, don’t you think? It’s full of—”
He waved a hand. “Faeries. I know.”
“I was going to say muggers,” said Clary. “Though I pity the mugger who goes after you.”
“That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it,” said Jace, looking gratified. “But I wasn’t thinking of Central Park. How about the greenhouse?”
“Now? At night? Won’t it be—dark?”
He smiled as if at a secret. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
17
THE MIDNIGHT FLOWER
IN THE HALF-LIGHT THE BIG EMPTY ROOMS THEY PASSED through on their way to the roof looked as deserted as stage sets, the white-draped furniture looming up out of the dimness like icebergs through fog.
When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat’s paw: the rich dark smell of earth and the stronger, soapy scent of night-blooming flowers—moonflowers, white angel’s trumpet, four-o’clocks—and some she didn’t recognize, like a plant bearing a star-shaped yellow blossom whose petals were medallioned with golden pollen. Through the glass walls of the enclosure she could see the lights of Manhattan burning like cold jewels.
“Wow.” She turned slowly, taking it in. “It’s so beautiful here at night.”
Jace grinned. “And we have the place to ourselves. Alec and Isabelle hate it up here. They have allergies.”
Clary shivered, though she wasn’t at all cold. “What kind of flowers are these?”
Jace shrugged and sat down, carefully, next to a glossy green shrub dotted all over with tightly closed flower buds. “No idea. You think I pay attention in botany class? I’m not going to be an archivist. I don’t need to know about that stuff.”
“You just need to know how to kill things?”
He looked up at her and smiled. He looked like a fair-haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish mouth. “That’s right.” He took a napkin-wrapped package out of the bag and offered it to her. “Also,” he added, “I make a mean cheese sandwich. Try one.”
Clary smiled reluctantly and sat down across from him. The stone floor of the greenhouse was cold against her skin, but it was pleasant after so many days of relentless heat. Out of the paper bag Jace drew some apples, a bar of fruit and nut chocolate, and a bottle of water. “Not a bad haul,” she said admiringly.
The cheese sandwich was warm and a little limp, but it tasted fine. From one of the innumerable pockets inside his jacket, Jace produced a bone-handled knife that looked capable of disemboweling a grizzly. He set to work on the apples, carving them into meticulous eighths. “Well, it’s not birthday cake,” he said, handing her a section, “but hopefully it’s better than nothing.”