City of Bones Read Free

as hell’s denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension—”
    “That’s enough, Jace,” said the girl.
    “Isabelle’s right,” agreed the taller boy. “Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics—or demonology.”
    They’re crazy
, Clary thought.
Actually crazy.
    Jace raised his head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something that reminded Clary of documentaries she’d watched about lions on the Discovery Channel, the way the big cats would raise their heads and sniff the air for prey. “Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much,” he said, confidingly. “Do
you
think I talk too much?”
    The blue-haired boy didn’t reply. His mouth was still working. “I could give you information,” he said. “I know where Valentine is.”
    Jace glanced back at Alec, who shrugged. “Valentine’s in the ground,” Jace said. “The thing’s just toying with us.”
    Isabelle tossed her hair. “Kill it, Jace,” she said. “It’s not going to tell us anything.”
    Jace raised his hand, and Clary saw dim light spark off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones.
    The bound boy gasped. “Valentine is back!” he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. “All the Infernal Worlds know it—I know it—I can tell you where he is—”
    Rage flared suddenly in Jace’s icy eyes. “By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He’s in hell. And you—” Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. “You can
join him there.
”
    Clary could take no more. She stepped out from behind the pillar. “Stop!” she cried. “You can’t do this.”
    Jace whirled, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle and Alec turned along with him, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired boy hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping.
    It was Alec who spoke first. “What’s this?” he demanded, looking from Clary to his companions, as if they might know what she was doing there.
    “It’s a girl,” Jace said, recovering his composure. “Surely you’ve seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one.” He took a step closer to Clary, squinting as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “A mundie girl,” he said, half to himself. “And she can see us.”
    “Of course I can see you,” Clary said. “I’m not blind, you know.”
    “Oh, but you are,” said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. “You just don’t know it.” He straightened up. “You’d better get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”
    “I’m not going anywhere,” Clary said. “If I do, you’ll kill him.” She pointed at the boy with the blue hair.
    “That’s true,” admitted Jace, twirling the knife between his fingers. “What do you care if I kill him or not?”
    “Be-because—” Clary spluttered. “You can’t just go around killing people.”
    “You’re right,” said Jace. “You can’t go around killing
people.
” He pointed at the boy with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Clary wondered if he’d fainted. “That’s not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it’s a monster.”
    “Jace,”
said Isabelle warningly. “That’s enough.”
    “You’re crazy,” Clary said, backing away from him. “I’ve called the police, you know. They’ll be here any second.”
    “She’s lying,” said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. “Jace, do you—”
    He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the