"Well," said Jace, picking it up and thrusting his arms hastily into the sleeves, as if he were suddenly in a hurry, "now you don't have to."
"Jace," Luke said in that calming tone he had, "we're going to get an early dinner in Park Slope after this. You're welcome to come along."
"No," Jace said, zipping the jacket up. "I've got training this afternoon. I'd better head out."
"Training?" Clary echoed. "But we trained yesterday."
"Some of us have to train every day, Clary." Jace didn't sound angry, but there was a harshness to his tone, and Clary flushed. "I'll see you later," he added without looking at her, and practically flung himself toward the door.
As it shut behind him, Clary reached up and angrily yanked the pins out of her hair. It cascaded in tangles down around her shoulders.
"Clary," Luke said gently. He stood up. "What are you doing?"
"My hair." She yanked the last pin out, hard. Her eyes were shining, and Simon could tell she was forcibly willing herself not to cry. "I don't want to wear it like this. It looks stupid."
"No, it doesn't." Luke took the pins from her and set them down on one of the small white end tables. "Look, weddings make men nervous, okay? It doesn't mean anything."
"Right." Clary tried to smile. She nearly managed it, but Simon could tell she didn't believe Luke. He could hardly blame her. After seeing the look on Jace's face, Simon didn't believe him either.
In the distance the Fifth Avenue Diner was lit up like a star against the blue twilight. Simon walked beside Clary down the avenue blocks, Jocelyn and Luke a few steps ahead of them. Clary had changed out of her dress and was back in jeans now, a thick white scarf wound around her neck. Every once in a while she would reach up and twirl the ring on the chain around her neck, a nervous gesture he wondered if she was even aware of.
When they'd left the bridal store, he had asked her if she knew what was wrong with Jace, but she hadn't really answered him. She'd shrugged it off, and started asking him about what was going on with him, if he'd talked to his mother yet, and whether he minded staying with Eric. When he told her he was crashing with Kyle, she was surprised.
"But you hardly even know him," she said. "He could be a serial killer."
"I did have that thought. I checked the apartment out, but if he's got an ice cooler full of arms in it, I haven't seen it yet. Anyway, he seems pretty sincere."
"So what's his apartment like?"
"Nice for Alphabet City. You should come over later."
"Not tonight," Clary said, a little absently. She was fiddling with the ring again. "Maybe tomorrow?"
Going to see Jace? Simon thought, but he didn't press the point. If she didn't want to talk about it, he wasn't going to make her. "Here we are." He opened the diner door for her, and a blast of warm souvlaki-smelling air hit them.
They found a booth over by one of the big flat-screen TVs that lined the walls. They crowded into it as Jocelyn and Luke chattered animatedly with each other about wedding plans. Luke's pack, it seemed, felt insulted that they hadn't been invited to the ceremony-even though the guest list was tiny-and were insisting on holding their own celebration in a renovated factory in Queens. Clary listened, not saying anything; the waitress came around, handing out menus so stiffly laminated they could have been used as weapons. Simon set his own on the table and stared out the window. There was a gym across the street, and he could see people through the plate glass that fronted it, running on treadmills, arms pumping, headphones clamped to their ears. All that running and getting nowhere, he thought. Story of my life.
He tried to force his thoughts away from dark places, and almost succeeded. This was one of the most familiar scenes in his life, he thought-a corner booth in a diner, himself and Clary and her family. Luke had always been family, even when he hadn't been about to marry Clary's mom. Simon ought to feel at home. He tried to force a smile, only to realize that Clary's mother had just asked him something and he hadn't heard her. Everyone at the table was staring at him expectantly.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't-What did you say?"
Jocelyn smiled patiently. "Clary told me you've added a new member to your band?"
Simon knew she was just being polite. Well, polite in that way parents were when they pretended to take your hobbies seriously. Still, she'd come to several of his gigs before, just to help fill up the room. She did care about him; she always had. In the very dark, tucked-away places of his mind, Simon suspected she had always known how he felt about Clary, and he wondered if she wouldn't have wanted her daughter to make a different choice, had it been something she could control. He knew she didn't entirely like Jace. It was clear even in the way she said his name.
"Yeah," he said. "Kyle. He's kind of a weird guy, but supernice." Invited, by Luke, to expand on the topic of Kyle's weirdness, Simon told them about Kyle's apartment-careful to leave out the detail that it was now his apartment too-his bike messenger job, and his ancient, beat-up pickup truck. "And he grows these weird plants on the balcony," he added. "Not pot-I checked. They have sort of silvery leaves-"
Luke frowned, but before he could say anything, the waitress arrived, carrying a big silver coffee pitcher. She was young, with bleached pale hair tied into two braids. As she bent to fill Simon's coffee cup, one of them brushed his arm. He could smell sweat on her, and under that, blood. Human blood, the sweetest smell of all. He felt a familiar tightening in his stomach. Coldness spread through him. He was hungry, and all he had back at Kyle's place was room-temperature blood that was already beginning to separate-a sickening prospect, even for a vampire.
You have never fed on a human, have you? You will. And when you do, you will not forget it.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the waitress was gone and Clary was staring at him curiously across the table. "Is everything okay?"
"Fine." He closed his hand around his coffee cup. It was shaking. Above them the TV was still blaring the nightly news.
"Ugh," Clary said, looking up at the screen. "Are you listening to this?"
Simon followed her gaze. The news anchor was wearing that expression news anchors tended to wear when they were reporting on something especially grim. "No one has come forward to identify an infant boy found abandoned in an alley behind Beth Israel hospital several days ago," he was saying. "The infant is white, weighs six pounds and eight ounces, and is otherwise healthy. He was discovered strapped to an infant car seat behind a Dumpster in the alley," the anchor went on. "Most disturbing, a handwritten note tucked into the child's blanket begged hospital authorities to euthanize the child because 'I don't have the strength to do it myself.' Police say it is likely that the child's mother was mentally ill, and claim they have 'promising leads.' Anyone with information about this child should call Crime Stoppers at-"
"That's so horrible," Clary said, turning away from the TV with a shudder. "I can't understand how people just dump their babies off like they're trash-"
"Jocelyn," Luke said, his voice sharp with concern. Simon looked toward Clary's mother. She was as white as a sheet and looked as if she were about to throw up. She pushed her plate away abruptly, stood up from the table, and hurried toward the bathroom. After a moment Luke dropped his napkin and went after her.
"Oh, crap." Clary put her hand over her mouth. "I can't believe I said that. I'm so stupid."
Simon was thoroughly perplexed. "What's going on?"
Clary slunk down in her seat. "She was thinking about Sebastian," she said. "I mean Jonathan. My brother. I assume you remember him."
She was being sarcastic. None of them was likely to forget Sebastian, whose real name was Jonathan and who had murdered Hodge and Max and had nearly succeeded in helping Valentine win a war that would have seen the destruction of all Shadowhunters. Jonathan, who had had burning black eyes and a smile like a razor blade. Jonathan, whose blood had tasted like battery acid when Simon had bitten him once. Not that he regretted it.
"But your mom didn't abandon him," Simon said. "She stuck with raising him even though she knew there was something horribly wrong with him."
"She hated him, though," Clary said. "I don't think she's ever gotten over that. Imagine hating your own baby. She used to take out a box that had his baby things in it and cry over it every year on his birthday. I think she was crying over the son she would have had-you know, if Valentine hadn't done what he had."
"And you would have had a brother," said Simon. "Like, an actual one. Not a murdering psychopath."
Looking close to tears, Clary pushed her plate away. "I feel sick now," she said. "You know that feeling like you're hungry but you can't bring yourself to eat?"
Simon looked over at the bleached-haired waitress, who was leaning against the diner counter. "Yeah," he said. "I know."
Luke returned to the table eventually, but only to tell Clary and Simon that he was taking Jocelyn home. He left some money, which they used to pay the bill before wandering out of the diner and over to Galaxy Comics on Seventh Avenue. Neither of them could concentrate enough to enjoy themselves, though, so they split up, with a promise to see each other the next day.
Simon rode into the city with his hood pulled up and his iPod on, blasting music into his ears. Music had always been his way of blocking everything out. By the time he got out at Second Avenue and headed down Houston, a light rain had started to fall, and his stomach was in knots.
He cut over to First Street, which was mostly deserted, a strip of darkness between the bright lights of First Avenue and Avenue A. Because he had his iPod on, he didn't hear them coming up behind him until they were nearly on him. The first intimation he had that something was wrong was a long shadow that fell across the sidewalk, overlapping his own. Another shadow joined it, this one on his other side. He turned-
And saw two men behind him. Both were dressed exactly like the mugger who had attacked him the other night-gray tracksuits, gray hoods pulled up to hide their faces. They were close enough to touch him.
Simon leaped back, with a force that surprised him. Because his vampire strength was so new, it still had the power to shock him. When, a moment later, he found himself perched on the stoop of a brownstone, several feet away from the muggers, he was so astonished to be there that he froze.
The muggers advanced on him. They were speaking the same guttural language as the first mugger-who, Simon was beginning to suspect, had not been a mugger at all. Muggers, as far as he knew, didn't work in gangs, and it was unlikely that the first mugger had criminal friends who had decided to take revenge on him for their comrade's demise. Something else was clearly going on here.
They had reached the stoop, effectively trapping him on the steps. Simon tore his iPod headphones from his ears and hastily held his hands up. "Look," he said, "I don't know what this is about, but you really want to leave me alone."
The muggers just looked at him. Or at least he thought they were looking at him. Under the shadows of their hoods, it was impossible to see their faces.
"I'm getting the feeling someone sent you after me," he said. "But it's a suicide mission. Seriously. I don't know what they're paying you, but it's not enough."
One of the tracksuited figures laughed. The other had reached into his pocket and drawn something out. Something that shone black under the streetlights.
A gun.
"Oh, man," Simon said. "You really, really don't want to do that. I'm not kidding." He took a step back, up one of the stairs. Maybe if he got enough height, he could actually jump over them, or past them. Anything but let them attack him. He didn't think he could face what that meant. Not again.
The man with the gun raised it. There was a click as he pulled the hammer back.
Simon bit his lip. In his panic his fangs had come out. Pain shot through him as they sank into his skin. "Don't-"
A dark object fell from the sky. At first Simon thought something had merely tumbled from one of the upper windows-an air conditioner ripping loose, or someone too lazy to drag their trash downstairs. But the falling thing, he saw, was a person-falling with direction, purpose, and grace. The person landed on the mugger, knocking him flat. The gun skittered out of his hand, and he screamed, a thin, high sound.
The second mugger bent and seized the gun. Before Simon could react, the guy had raised it and pulled the trigger. A spark of flame appeared at the gun's muzzle.
And the gun blew apart. It blew apart, and the mugger blew apart along with it, too fast to even scream. He had intended a quick death for Simon, and an even quicker death was what he got in return. He shattered apart like glass, like the outward-flying colors in a kaleidoscope. There was a soft explosion-the sound of displaced air-and then nothing but a soft drizzle of salt, falling onto the pavement like solidified rain.
Simon's vision blurred, and he sank down onto the steps. He was aware of a loud humming in his ears, and then someone grabbed him roughly by the wrists and shook him, hard. "Simon. Simon!"
He looked up. The person grabbing him and shaking him was Jace. The other boy wasn't in gear, but was still wearing his jeans and the jacket he'd taken back from Clary. He was disheveled, his clothes and face streaked with dirt and soot. His hair was wet from the rain.
"What the hell was that?" Jace asked.
Simon looked up and down the street. It was still deserted. The asphalt shone, black and wet and empty. The second mugger was gone.
"You," he said, a little groggily. "You jumped the muggers-"
"Those weren't muggers. They were following you since you got off the subway. Someone sent those guys." Jace spoke with complete surety.
"The other one," Simon said. "What happened to him?"