City of Fallen Angels Read Free Page A

clinical than gentle. She was frowning. Simon had looked at the Mark enough times himself, in the mirror, to know well what it looked like. As if someone had taken a thin paintbrush and drawn a simple design on his forehead, just above and between his eyes. The shape of it seemed to change sometimes, like the moving images found in clouds, but it was always clear and black and somehow dangerous-looking, like a warning sign scrawled in another language.
    “It really … works?” she whispered.
    “Raphael thinks it works,” said Simon. “And I have no reason to think it doesn’t.” He caught her wrist and drew it away from his face. “I’ll be all right, Isabelle.”
    She sighed. “Every bit of my training says this isn’t a good idea.”
    Simon squeezed her fingers. “Come on. You’re curious about what Raphael wants, aren’t you?”
    Isabelle patted his hand and sat back. “Tell me all about it when you get back. Call me
first.”
    “I will.” Simon stood, zipping up his jacket. “And do me a favor, will you? Two favors, actually.”
    She looked at him with guarded amusement. “What?”
    “Clary said she’d be training over at the Institute tonight. If you run into her, don’t tell her where I went. She’ll worry for no reason.”
    Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Second favor?”
    Simon leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Try the borscht before you leave. It’s fantastic.”
    Mr. Walker and Mr. Archer were not the most talkative of companions. They led Simon silently through the streets of the Lower East Side, keeping several steps ahead of him with their odd gliding pace. It was getting late, but the city sidewalks were full of people—getting off a late shift, hurrying home from dinner, heads down, collars turned up against the stiff cold wind. At St. Mark’s Place there were card tables set up along the curb, selling everything from cheap socks to pencil sketches of New York to smoky sandalwood incense. Leaves rattled across the pavement like dried bones. The air smelled like car exhaust mixed with sandalwood, and underneath that, the smell of human beings—skin and blood.
    Simon’s stomach tightened. He tried to keep enough bottles of animal blood in his room—he had a small refrigerator at the back of his closet now, where his mother wouldn’t see it—to keep himself from ever getting hungry. The blood was disgusting. He’d thought he’d get used to it, even start wanting it, but though it killed his hunger pangs, there was nothing about it that he enjoyed the way he’d once enjoyed chocolate or vegetarian burritos or coffee ice cream. It remained blood.
    But being hungry was worse. Being hungry meant that he could smell things he didn’t want to smell—salt on skin; the overripe, sweet smell of blood exuding from the pores of strangers. It made him feel hungry and twisted up and utterly wrong. Hunching over, he jammed his fists into the pockets of his jacket and tried to breathe through his mouth.
    They turned right onto Third Avenue, and paused in front of a restaurant whose sign said CLOISTER CAFÉ. GARDEN OPEN ALL YEAR . Simon blinked up at the sign. “What are we doing here?”
    “This is the meeting place our master has chosen.” Mr. Walker’s tone was bland.
    “Huh.” Simon was puzzled. “I would have thought Raphael’s style was more, you know, arranging meetings on top of an unconsecrated cathedral, or down in some crypt full of bones. He never struck me as the trendy restaurant type.”
    Both subjugates stared at him. “Is there a problem, Daylighter?” asked Mr. Archer finally.
    Simon felt obscurely scolded. “No. No problem.”
    The interior of the restaurant was dark, with a marble-topped bar running along one wall. No servers or waitstaff approached them as they made their way through the room to a door in the back, and through the door into the garden.
    Many New York restaurants had garden terraces; few were open this late into the year. This