A Long Conversation (The Shadowhunter Chronicles), Page 2

  Clary knew she probably shouldn’t be saying any of this to a mundane. On the other hand, she probably shouldn’t have let Rebecca into the Institute at all, much less hired her to provide catering. But when Clary and Jace had taken over running the Institute, they had sworn to each other that they would be a new kind of guardian.

  After all, Clary and Simon had both once been mundanes who weren’t supposed to be in the Institute too.

  Rebecca was shaking her head. “Okay, I don’t understand any of this. But my little brother is a big deal, right?”

  Clary smiled. “He’s always been a big deal to me.”

  “He’s really happy,” Rebecca said. “With his life, with Isabelle.

  And that’s all thanks to you.” She leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “When you and Simon first got to be friends and he brought you home from school, my mom said to me: ‘That girl is going to bring magic into his life.’ And you did.”

  “Literally,” Clary said. Rebecca looked blank. Oh, dear. Jace would have laughed. “I mean, that’s lovely, and I’m so glad—you know I love Simon like a brother—”

  “Clary!” Clary looked up in alarm, fearing that it was Isabelle, but it wasn’t. It was Lily Chen, with Maia Roberts. The heads of the New York vampire clan and the New York werewolf clan, together.

  Not that it was that unusual to see them together: They were friends. But they were also political allies who occasionally found themselves on the opposite sides of an argument.

  “Hi, Rebecca,” Maia said. She waved, and the plain bronze band on her finger glittered. She and Bat had exchanged promise rings some time ago, but nothing was official. Maia was head of the werewolf pack of Manhattan, in charge of rebuilding the Praetor Lupus, and pursuing a BA in business management. She was terrifyingly competent.

  Lily looked at Rebecca without interest. “Clary, we must speak to you,” she said. “I tried to talk to Jace, but he is playing the piano, and Magnus and Alec are busy with those small creatures.”

  “Children,” Clary said. “They’re children.”

  “I informed Alec we needed assistance, but he told me to ask you,” said Lily, sounding put out. She was fond of Alec, in her way. He’d been the first Shadowhunter to truly buckle down and work with Maia and Lily, fusing his Shadowhunter knowledge with their Downworlder skills. When Jace and Clary had taken over the Institute, they’d taken on the odd alliance as well, and Isabelle and Simon joined in when they could. Clary had put together a strategy room for them, full of maps and plans and important contacts in case of emergency.

  And there were plenty of emergencies. The Cold Peace meant that the parts of Manhattan that had belonged to the Fair Folk had been ripped away from them, and other Downworlders scuffled and battled over the scraps. Many were the nights that Clary and Jace, with Alec and Lily and Maia, had sat up trying to hammer out some detail of the vampire/lycanthrope truce or stop a revenge plan before it could begin. Magnus had even woven special spells so that Lily could come into the Institute despite the fact that it was hallowed ground, something that Jace said, as far as he knew, had never been done for another vampire.

  “It’s about the High Line,” said Maia. The High Line was a public park built atop a disused elevated train line on the West Side, recently opened to the public.

  “The High Line?” Clary said. “What, you’re suddenly interested in urban development projects?”

  Rebecca waved at Lily. “Hi, I’m Rebecca. Your eyeliner is incredible.”

  Lily ignored this. “Because of its elevation, it is a new piece of land in Manhattan,” she said, “and therefore it does not belong to either the vampires or the lycanthropes. Both clans have been trying to claim it for their own.”

  “Do we really have to talk about this now?” Clary said. “It’s Isabelle and Simon’s engagement party.”

  “Oh God!” Rebecca leaped up. “I forgot! The slideshow!”

  She bolted from the room, leaving Clary staring after her. “The slideshow?”

  “I understand that at functions such as this, it is a tradition to humiliate the future bride and groom with pictures from their childhoods,” said Lily. Clary and Maia both stared at her. She shrugged. “What? I watch television.”

  “Look, I know it’s a bad time to be bothering you,” said Maia, “but the thing is, apparently there’s a group of werewolves and a group of vamps facing off there right now. We need an assist from the Institute.”

  Clary frowned. “How do you know this is going on?”

  Maia held up her phone. “I just talked to them,” she said.

  “Give it to me,” Clary said grimly. “All right, who am I talking to?”

  “Leila Haryana,” said Maia. “She’s one of my pack.”

  Clary took the phone, hit the redial button, and waited until a girl’s voice picked up on the other end. “Leila,” she said. “This is Clarissa Fairchild at the Institute.” She paused. “Yes, the head of the Institute. That’s me. Look, I know you’re on the High Line. I know you’re about to fight a clan of vampires. I need you to stop.”

  Indignant yelling followed. Clary sighed.

  “The Accords are still the Accords,” she said. “And this breaks them. According to, um, section seven, paragraph forty-two, you’re required to bring a territorial dispute to the nearest Institute for settling before you start a fight.”

  More subdued arguing.

  Clary cut it off. “Tell the vampires what I said. And be here tomorrow at the Sanctuary, early.” She thought of the champagne in the music room. “Maybe not that early. Get here at eleven, two vamps and two lycanthropes, and we’ll hash this out. If not, you’ll be considered enemies of the Institute.”

  Grumbled agreement.

  Clary paused. “Okay,” she said. “Good-bye, then. Have a nice day.”

  She hung up.

  “Have a nice day?” Lily said, raising her eyebrows.

  Clary groaned, handing Maia back her phone. “I suck at a good sign-off.”

  “What’s section seven, paragraph forty-two?” Maia asked.

  “I have no idea,” Clary said. “I made it up.”

  “Not bad,” admitted Lily. “Now, I am going to go back to the music room and tell Alec that next time we need him, he had better hop to it or I might nibble one of those children of his.”

  She flounced off in a swirl of skirts.

  “I’m going to go prevent that disaster from happening,” Maia said hastily. “See you later, Clary!”

  She departed, leaving Clary to lean back against the massive table in the middle of the room and take deep, calming breaths. She tried to envision herself in a soothing place, maybe at the beach, but that just made her think of the Los Angeles Institute.

  She and Jace had gone there in the year after the Dark War to help put the place back together—it had been the most badly hit of the Institutes Sebastian had attacked. Emma Carstairs had helped them in Idris, and Clary felt protective of the small blond girl.

  They’d spent a day sorting books in the new library, and then Clary had taken Emma down to the beach, to look for shells and sea glass.

  Emma had refused to go in the water, though, or even really look at it for very long.

  Clary had asked her if she was all right.

  “It’s not me I worry about,” Emma had said. “It’s Jules. I would do anything, if only Jules would be all right.”

  Clary had given her a long look then, but Emma, gazing out at the flaring red-orange sunset, hadn’t seen it.

  “Clary!” The door burst open again. It was finally Isabelle, looking radiant in a lilac silk dress with sparkling sandals. The moment she stepped into the room, she started to sneeze.

  Clary bolted upright. “By the Angel—” The Shadowhunter epithet came to her now without a thought, when once it had seemed an odd saying. “Come on.”

  “Tulips,” Isabelle said in a choked voice as Clary steered her out into the hallway.

  “I know,” C
lary said, fanning the other girl and wondering if a healing rune would help allergies. Isabelle sneezed again, her eyes watering. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Ib not your foot,” Isabelle said, which Clary translated as allergic-speak for it’s not your fault.

  “It is, though!”

  “Pffbt,” Isabelle said inelegantly, and waved a hand. “Doan worry. It’ll be better in a second.”

  “I ordered roses,” Clary said. “I swear I did. I don’t know what happened. I’ll go down to the florist and kill them tomorrow. Or maybe Alec might do it. He seems murderous tonight.”

  “Nothing’s ruined,” Isabelle said in a more normal voice. “And no one needs to be killed. Clary, I’m getting married! To Simon! I’m happy!” She beamed. “I used to think there was something weak about giving your heart to someone. That they might break it.

  But I know better now. And it’s thanks to Simon, but also thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean, thanks to me?”

  Isabelle shrugged a little shyly. “It’s just that you love so much. So hard. You give so much. And it’s always made you stronger.”

  Clary realized she was tearing up. “You know, you marrying Simon means we’re going to be sisters, basically, right? Isn’t the person married to your parabatai like your sister?”

  Isabelle threw her arms around her. For a moment, they clung to each other in the shadowy hallway. Clary couldn’t help but remember the first friendly overtures she and Isabelle had really made toward each other, so long ago now, here in the hallways of the Institute. I wasn’t just worried about Alec, I was worried about you, too.

  “Speaking of love and love-related things,” Isabelle said with a mischievous smile, drawing away from Clary, “what about a double wedding? You and Jace—”

  Clary’s heart skipped a beat. She’d never been someone who was good at hiding her expressions or feelings. Isabelle looked at her, puzzled, about to ask something—probably if there was anything wrong—when the door to the music room opened and light and music poured into the hallway. Isabelle’s mother, Maryse, leaned out.

  She was smiling, clearly happy. Clary was pleased to see it. Maryse and Robert had finalized their divorce after the Dark War. Robert had moved to the Inquisitor’s house in Idris. Maryse had remained in New York to run the Institute, but she had handed it over gladly to Clary and Jace a few years later. She had stayed in New York, nominally to help them in case they were ever in over their heads, but Clary suspected it was to be closer to her children—and to her grandson Max.

  There was more white in her hair now than Clary remembered her having when they’d met, but her back was straight, her stance still a Shadowhunter’s. “Isabelle!” she called. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  “Good,” Isabelle said, “then I can make an entrance,” and she linked her arm with Clary’s before starting down the hallway. The flaring lights of the music room were in front of them suddenly, the room full of people turning, smiling to see them in the doorway.

  Clary saw Jace, as she always did: his was always the first face she saw when she walked into a room. He was still playing, a light, unobtrusive melody, but he looked over when she came into the room and winked.

  The Herondale ring on his finger sparked in the illumination from the dozens of star-shaped globes of light that were drifting around the room—doubtless Magnus’s work. Clary thought of Tessa, who had given her that ring to give to Jace, and wished she were there. She always loved to see Jace play the piano.

  A cheer had gone up when Isabelle came into the room. She looked around, glowing, clearly in her element. She blew a kiss toward Magnus and Alec where they sat snuggled up with Max and Rafe, who was watching with dark-eyed puzzlement. Maia and Bat whistled, Lily raised her glass, Luke and Rebecca beamed, and Maryse and Robert watched proudly as Isabelle stepped forward and took Simon’s hand.

  Simon’s face blazed with happiness. On the wall behind him, the slideshow Rebecca had mentioned was still going on. A framed quote flashed up against the wall: Marriage is like a long conversation that always ends too soon.

  Ack, Clary thought. Morbid. She saw Magnus put his hand over Alec’s. Alec was watching the slideshow, Rafael on his lap. Pictures of Simon—and much fewer of Isabelle; Shadowhunters weren’t big on photographs—flickered, appearing and disappearing on the blank wall behind the harpsichord.

  There was Simon as a baby, in his mother’s arms—Clary wished she could have been here, but Elaine’s knowledge of Shadowhunters was nil. As far as she knew, Isabelle was a nice girl who worked in a tattoo parlor. And Simon when he was six, grinning with two teeth missing. Simon as a teenager with his guitar. Simon and Clary, ten years old, in the park, under a shower of falling autumn leaves.

  Simon glanced at the picture and smiled at Clary, his eyes crinkling around the corners. Clary touched her fingers to her right forearm, where her parabatai mark was. She hoped he could see in her eyes all that she felt: that he was her anchor, the bedrock of her childhood and the guidepost of her adult life.

  Through a blur of tears she realized the music had stopped.

  Jace was across the room, whispering to Alec, their dark and light heads bent together. Alec’s hand was on Jace’s shoulder and he was nodding.

  For so long she had looked at Jace and Alec and seen best friends. She’d known how much Jace loved Alec, known since the first time she’d seen Alec injured and Jace—whose self-possession was near terrifying—had come apart. She’d seen the way he’d looked at anyone who said a bad word about Alec, his eyes narrowed, deadly gold. And she’d thought she understood, thought best friends, the way she and Simon were.

  Now that Simon was her parabatai, she understood so much more.

  The way you were stronger when your parabatai was there. The way they were like a mirror that showed you your best self. She couldn’t imagine losing your parabatai, couldn’t imagine what hell it would be.

  Keep him safe, Isabelle Lightwood, she thought, looking at Isabelle and Simon, hand in hand. Please keep him safe.

  “Clary.” She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t seen Jace move away from Alec and come toward her. He was behind her now; she could smell the cologne she’d given him for Christmas, the faint scent of his soap and shampoo, felt the softness of his blazer as he brushed his arm against hers. “Let’s go—”

  “We can’t duck out, it’s our party—”

  “Just for a second,” he said, in that low voice of his that made bad ideas seem like good ones. She felt him step backward and followed; they were near the door to the strategy room, and they slipped through it unnoticed.

  Well, nearly unnoticed. Alec was watching them go, and as Jace shut—and locked—the door behind him, he flashed Jace a thumbs-up gesture. Which puzzled Clary a great deal, but she didn’t dwell on it, mostly because Jace strode toward her with a determined look on his face, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

  Her whole body sang, the way it always did when they kissed.

  She’d never grown bored or tired of it or used to it, any more than she imagined that you could get tired of beautiful sunsets or perfect music or your favorite book in the world.

  She didn’t think Jace had gotten tired of it either. At least not from the way he held her, as if each time could be the last time. It was often the way, with him. She knew he’d had a childhood that had left him uncertain of love, and fragile as glass in some ways, and she tried to be mindful of that. She was worried about the party and the guests outside, but she let herself relax into the kiss, her hand lingering against his cheek, until they finally drew apart to breathe.

  “Wow,” she said, running her finger around the inside edge of his collar. “I guess all that romance and flower petals falling from the sky did a number on you, huh?”

  “Shh.” He grinned. His blond hair was tousled, his eyes sleepy. “Let me be in the moment.”

  “What moment is that?” She glanced around, amused. The room was dim, most of its light c
oming from the windows and the band of illumination beneath the door. She could see the shapes of musical instruments, pale ghosts covered in white sheets. A baby grand piano was wedged up against the wall behind them. “The moment of hiding in a closet while our friends’ engagement party happens?”

  Jace didn’t answer. Instead he took her by the waist and lifted her up, sitting her down on the closed lid of the baby grand. Their faces were on a level; Clary looked at him, surprised. His expression was serious. He leaned in to kiss her, hands on her waist, fingers knotting in the material of her dress.

  “Jace,” she whispered. Her heart was pounding. His body leaned into hers, pressing her back against the piano. The sounds of laughter and music from outside were blurring; she could hear Jace’s quick breathing, remembered the boy he had been, in the grass with her in front of the Wayland Manor in Idris, when they had kissed and kissed and she had realized that love could cut you like the edge of a blade.

  She could feel his pulse. His hand slid up, caressed the strap of her dress. His lowered eyes glittered in the dark. “ ‘Green to mend our broken hearts,’ ” he quoted. It was part of a Nephilim children’s rhyme, one Clary knew well. His eyelashes brushed her cheek; his voice was warm in her ear. “You mended my heart,” he whispered.

  “You picked up the pieces of a broken, angry boy and you made him into a happy man, Clary.”

  “No,” she said in a shaking voice. “You did that. I just—cheered you on from the sidelines.”

  “I wouldn’t be here without you,” he said, soft as music against her lips. “Not just you—Alec, Isabelle, even Simon—but you’re my heart.”

  “And you’re mine,” she said. “You know that.”

  He raised his eyes to hers. His were stark gold, hard and beautiful. She loved him so much her rib cage hurt when she breathed.

  “So will you?” he said.

  “Will I what?”

  “Marry me,” he said. “Marry me, Clary.”

  The ground seemed to sweep out from under her. She hesitated, only for a second, but it felt like an eon; she could have sworn a fist was squeezing her heart. She saw the beginning of puzzlement cross his face, and then there was an explosion and the door of the room blew open in a shower of splinters.