City of Heavenly Fire
Page 153

“You sound so grave, Tessa. Don’t frighten her.” It was Zachariah, coming to stand behind Tessa’s chair.
“I’m not!” Tessa said with a laugh; she had her head tipped back, and Clary wondered if that was how she herself looked, looking up at Jace. She hoped so. It was a safe and happy look, the look of someone who was confident in the love they gave and received. “I was just giving her advice.”
“Sounds terrifying.” It was odd how Zachariah’s speaking voice sounded both like and unlike his voice in Clary’s mind—in life his English accent was stronger than Tessa’s. He also had laughter in his voice as he reached down and helped Tessa up out of her chair. “I’m afraid we must go; we have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Where are you going?” Clary asked, holding the Codex carefully on her lap.
“Los Angeles,” Tessa said, and Clary recalled her saying that the Blackthorns were a family in which she had a particular interest. Clary was glad to hear it. She knew that Emma and the others were living in the Institute with Julian’s uncle, but the idea that they might have someone special to watch over them, a guardian angel of sorts, was reassuring.
“It was good to meet you,” Clary said. “Thank you. For everything.”
Tessa smiled radiantly and disappeared into the crowd, saying she was going to bid Jocelyn good-bye; Zachariah gathered up his coat and her wrap, Clary watching him curiously. “I remember once you told me,” she said, “that you had loved two people more than anything else in the world. Was Tessa one of them?”
“She is one of them,” he said agreeably, shrugging himself into his coat. “I have not stopped loving her, nor my parabatai; love does not stop when someone dies.”
“Your parabatai? You lost your parabatai?” Clary said, feeling a sense of shocked hurt for him; she knew what that meant to Nephilim.
“Not from my heart, for I have not forgotten,” he said, and she heard a whisper of the sadness of ages in his voice, and remembered him in the Silent City, a wraith of parchment smoke. “We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”
Clary thought of Max, of Amatis, of Raphael and Jordan and even of Jonathan, and felt the prickle of tears in her throat.
Zachariah slung Tessa’s scarf around his shoulders. “Tell Jace Herondale that he plays Chopin’s Concerto no. 2 very well,” he said, and vanished after Tessa, into the crowd. She stared after him, clutching the ring and the Codex.
“Has anyone seen Church?” said a voice in her ear. It was Isabelle, her fingers tucked around Simon’s arm. Maia stood beside them, fiddling with a gold clasp in her curly hair. “I think Zachariah just stole our cat. I swear I saw him putting Church into the backseat of a car.”
“There’s no way,” said Jace, appearing beside Clary; he had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and was flushed from the effort of playing. “Church hates everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Clary murmured with a smile.
Simon was looking at Jace as if he were both fascinating and also a little alarming. “Did I—did we ever—did I bite you?”
Jace touched the scar on his throat. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Did we . . . roll around on the bottom of a boat?”
“Yes, you bit me, yes, I kind of liked it, yes, let’s not talk about it again,” said Jace. “You’re not a vampire anymore. Focus.”
“To be fair, you bit Alec, too,” said Isabelle.
“When did that happen?” Maia asked, her face lighting with amusement as Bat came up behind her; without a word he took the clip out of her hand and slid it back into her hair. He snapped the clasp efficiently. His hands lingered a moment, gentle against her hair.
“What happens in the demon realms stays in the demon realms,” said Jace. He glanced over at Clary. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
“A walk or a walk?” Isabelle inquired. “Like, are you going to—”
“I think we should all go down to the lake,” Clary said, standing up, the Codex in one hand and the ring in the other. “It’s beautiful down there. Especially at night. I’d like my friends to see it.”
“I remember it,” Simon said, and gave her a smile that made her heart feel like it was expanding in her chest. The farmhouse was where they had gone every summer; it would always be tied to Simon in her mind. That he remembered it made her happier than she could have imagined being that morning.
She slid her hand into Jace’s as they all headed away from the tent, Isabelle darting off to tell her brother to go fetch Magnus along as well. Clary had wanted to be alone with Jace earlier; now she wanted to be with everyone.
She had loved Jace for what felt like a long time now, loved him so much that sometimes she felt like she might die from it, because it was something she needed and couldn’t have. But that was gone now: desperation replaced by peace and a quiet happiness. Now that she no longer felt that every moment with him was snatched from the possibility of disaster, now that she could imagine a whole lifetime of times with him that were peaceful or funny or casual or relaxed or kind, she wanted nothing more than to walk down to the farmhouse lake with all of her friends and celebrate the day.
As they passed down over the ridge onto the path to the lake, she glanced behind her. She saw Jocelyn and Luke standing by the tent, watching after them. She saw Luke smile at her and her mother raise her hand in a wave before lowering it to clasp her new husband’s. It had been the same for them, she thought, years of separation and sadness, and now they had a lifetime. A lifetime of times. She raised her hand in an answering wave, and then hurried to catch up with her friends.
Magnus was leaning against the outside of the barn, watching Clary and Tessa deep in conversation, when Catarina came up to him. She had blue flowers in her hair that set off her sapphire-blue skin. He glanced out across the orchard, down toward where the lake shimmered like water held in the cup of a hand.
“You look worried,” said Catarina, placing her hand on his shoulder companionably. “What is it? I saw you kissing that Shadowhunter boy of yours earlier, so it can’t be that.”
Magnus shook his head. “No. Everything with Alec is fine.”
“I saw you speaking to Tessa, too,” Catarina said, craning her neck to look. “Strange to have her here. Is that what’s bothering you? Past and future colliding; it must feel a bit strange.”
“Maybe,” Magnus said, though he didn’t think it was that. “Old ghosts, the shadows of might-have-beens. Though I always liked Tessa and her boys.”
“Her son was a piece of work,” said Catarina.
“As was her daughter.” Magnus laughed, though it was as brittle as twigs in winter. “I feel the past weighing on me heavily these days, Catarina. The repetition of old mistakes. I hear things, rumblings in Downworld, the rumor of coming strife. The Fair Folk are a proud people, the proudest; they will not take the shaming from the Clave without retaliation.”
“They are proud but patient,” said Catarina. “They may wait a long time, generations, for vengeance. You cannot fear it coming now, when the shadow may not descend for years yet.”