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CHAPTER THREE:

❝ Shadowhunter ❞

By the time they got to Java Jones, Eric was already onstage, swaying back and forth in front of the microphone with his eyes squinched shut. He'd dyed the tips of his hair pink for the occasion. Behind him, Matt, looking stoned, was beating irregularly on a djembe. "This is going to suck so hard," Clary predicted. She grabbed Simon's sleeve and tugged him towards the doorway. "If we make a run for it, we can still get away." 

He shook his head determinedly. "I'm nothing if not a man of my word." He squared his shoulders. "I'll get the coffee if you find us a seat. What do you want?"

"Just coffee. Black ─ like my soul." Simon shook his head and chuckled then looked at Esme. " And cappuccino for you, I presume?"

She scrunched her nose. "Is that what you think my soul looks like?"

He headed off toward the coffee bar, muttering under his breath something to the effect that it was a far, far better thing he did now than he had ever done before. Clary and Esme went to find them a seat. The coffee shop was crowded for a Monday; most of the threadbare-looking couches and armchairs were taken up with teenagers enjoying a free weeknight. The smell of coffee and clove cigarettes was overwhelming. Finally, they found an unoccupied love seat in a darkened corner toward the back. The only other person nearby was a blonde girl in an orange tank top, absorbed in playing with her iPod. Good, Esme thought, Eric won't be able to find us back here after the show to ask how his poetry was.

Esme roamed her gaze over the boho-chic coffee shop. She heard the bell over the door ring and saw a man enter. For a moment, she thought it was her father. All icy blond and glade-green eyes. But it wasn't. She remembered her father like an entity, a presence to be scared of. She remembered him drunk one night, banging against her bedroom door to yell at her. She'd hidden under her bed until it went quiet - until all she could hear was belt slashing against the skin and her mother's whimpering. Esme closed her eyes ─ she'd never understood why her mother took it for so long. How? She shook her head. She was outside, she was not going to think about this. She could almost hear him open his mouth to shout: Fool. Of course, she was, this wasn't something that could be turned off. It could be overpowered but never gone. She tried her hardest to leave the past alone but couldn't. This crooked story was hers was all she had ever known and she kept telling it because how else would she have lived if not from the scorch marks and nail scratches left behind.

Her attention snapped to Clary when she heard her say, "Uh, no," Clary said. "He's a friend of mine." She looked over. The blonde girl was leaning over asking about something and beaming and she followed their line of sight. Simon headed towards them, face scrunched up in concentration as he tried not to drop the Styrofoam cups.  

The blonde girl said. "He's cute. Does he have a girlfriend?" 

Esme quirked an eyebrow at Clary's hesitation before replying. "No." The girl looked at her as if just realizing she was there, too.

Suspicious, she asked. "Is he gay?" 

They were spared responding to this by Simon's return. The blond girl sat back hastily as he set the cups on the table and threw himself down next to Clary. "I hate it when they run out of mugs. Those things are hot." He blew on his fingers and scowled. Clary tried to hide a smile as she watched him. Esme rolled her eyes at her failure. As she reached for her cup, she found Clary's eyes traveling over Simon's face. She almost spat in her coffee. Before she could say anything, Simon did. "You're staring at me," Simon told her. "Why are you staring at me? Have I got something on my face?"

A moment of contemplation later, Clary said, "Don't look now, but that blond girl over there thinks you're cute," she whispered. Simon's eyes flicked sideways to stare at the girl, who was industriously studying an issue of Shonen Jump. "The girl in the orange top?" Clary nodded. Simon looked dubious. "What makes you think so?"

Clary's eyes flickered from Simon to Esme's who stared over the rim of her Styrofoam cup. Her wide eyes said: Tell him. Go on, tell him.

Clary opened her mouth to reply and was interrupted by a burst of feedback. Esme winced and covered her ears as Eric, onstage, wrestled with his microphone. "Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. "Come, my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!"

Esme choked on her coffee, barely saving her white pants from a spill. Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him." 

Clary giggled. "Who uses the word loins'?"

"Eric," Esme said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them."

"Turgid is my torment!" Eric wailed. "Agony swells within!"

"You bet it does," Clary said. She slid down in the seat next to Simon. "Anyway, about that girl who thinks you're cute ─ "

"Never mind that for a second," Simon said. Clary blinked at him in surprise. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Esme's focus on hiding her face from view was interrupted by Simon's knees knocking against hers as she registered his previous words. With wide eyes, she picked up her coffee and said, "I'm gonna get a brownie." She excused herself from the seat, leaving a very confused Clary asking what Simon needed to talk about with her alone and asking him not to name the band Furious Mole. Anyways, she did want a brownie. Snaking through the maze of chairs and table and couches and taking occasional sips of her still-hot coffee she reached the counter and leaned against it, asking the waitress for a chocolate brownie. As the waitress warmed it up and fetched it for her, she read her name tag: Cia. It was a pretty name, but she guessed the girl didn't like her job as a waitress. Cia's hair floated above her head with static electricity and abject stress. She was muttering under her breath and cursing the coffee machine, jumping and cursing against the beeping of the microwave. Esme pursed her lips and accepted the hot brownie oozing with chocolate with apologetic eyes. Which Cia had no time for. She was already asking the next customer what they wanted.

Esme slid away and headed back to her seat, hoping Simon's conversation with Clary had happened and taken a turn for the best. She was really hoping to not buy another brownie but as she came closer she saw him sitting alone with furrowed eyebrows and a solemn pout.

"Did you tell her yet?" she asked.

He looked up so fast he could've gotten a whiplash. "No." She raised her eyebrows. "I was just about to but she just . . . up and left."

Esme's eyebrows furrowed as she fixed her gaze on Clary's coffee cup and her bag still here. "Left?"

"Went outside. I should check ─ "

"Hey, let me. You stay here." She placed her cup and brownie down and gave a very meaningful glare to Simon. "Don't eat my brownie," she threatened before slipping away knowing full well he was already reaching for it.

Esme burst through the doors, seeking her red-haired friend down the alley, and gave a soundless gasp. She was nowhere to be seen, but in the shelter of the shadows of the alley she saw was Jace. He looked up in surprise as the door of the coffee shop fell shut behind her. He was wearing the same dark clothes he'd had on the night before in the club. His arms were bare and covered with faint white lines like old scars. His wrists bore wide metal cuffs; she could see the bone handle of a knife protruding from the left one. In the rapidly falling twilight, his hair looked coppery gold. She blinked ─ and he was gone, the alley deserted as if nothing had been there to start with. Only the rustling leaves left behind in the wake seemed to stand for evidence but the wind could easily be blamed for it. Esme inched her fingers to her inner right forearm feeling the bandaged cut as she looked for some assurance of reality. The door opened and closed behind her and she felt Simon slow to a stop beside her.

"Where's Clary?"

It had been three days, and there was still no news of Clary. The day she'd went missing, Simon and suggested after an hour or so of roaming about the streets of New York that they should probably check her home back in Park Slope. When they had gone there ─ the building was cordoned with police tape and a police car, its blue-and-white light bar flashing, was pulled up to the curb, siren wailing.

Already a small knot of neighbors had gathered, staring as the car door opened and two blue-uniformed officers had emerged. Both Esme and Simon had stopped short, their hearts in their throats. This could not have been happening. But it had. it had happened. Their apartment was trashed and Jocelyn Fray and Clary Fray had been missing for three days straight.

It was Simon's idea. And she had agreed reluctantly. Reluctantly, but Simon seemed to be pushing his luck. "What if something really bad happened to her?"

"Like, really bad? Like being kidnapped?"

"Esme!"

"You're not ─ you're not helping," she shrugged.

He would have asked how, but they had arrived at Clary's house, and her heart had started to thump so loudly that she was sure it must be audible for miles. There was a humming in her ears, and the palms of her hands were damp with sweat. She stopped in front of the box hedges, and raised her eyes slowly, expecting to see yellow police tape cordoning off the front door, smashed glass littering the lawn, the whole thing reduced to rubble. But there were no signs of destruction. Bathed in the pleasant afternoon light, the brownstone seemed to glow. Bees droned lazily around the rosebushes under Madame Dorothea's windows. "It looks the same," Simon said.

Esme swallowed thickly. "Let's get this over with. Do you know how creepy this is? It's like sleeping in a house where people were murdered."

"Hey," Simon protested as they climbed up the stairs. "That's some really good real estate investment. Do you know how many tourists that attracts?" 

She rolled her eyes. "Geeks like you." After a sharp sigh, she added under her breath. "And not after only three days have passed."

They reached the open door, creaking once as the wind blew from their arrival. Without realizing her eyes fell on the scratches on the front door. They looked like claw marks, long and parallel, raked deeply into the wood. Simon pulled on her arm, "I'll go in first," he said. 

She clutched his hand in her tightly. She didn't have to say, he knew what it meant. No, we'll go in together.

Both windows were open, yards of gauzy white curtains blowing in the breeze like restless ghosts. Only when the wind dropped and the curtains settled did Esme see that the cushions had been ripped from the sofa and scattered around the room. Some were torn lengthwise, cotton innards spilling onto the floor. The bookshelves had been tipped over, their contents scattered. The piano bench lay on its side, gaping open like a wound, Jocelyn's beloved music books spewing out. Most terrifying were the paintings. Every single one had been cut from its frame and ripped into strips, which were scattered across the floor. It must have been done with a knife - canvas was almost impossible to tear with your bare hands. The empty frames looked like bones picked clean. 

She felt Simon's hold on her hand tighten, felt the scream perched under her throat rise and push against her tongue. What horrible thing had happened here?

Eyes stinging, she followed after Simon as he drifted towards the kitchen. It was empty, the cabinet doors open, a smashed bottle of Tabasco sauce spilling peppery red liquid onto the linoleum. What if robbers had come, what if her Clary and her mother had put up a fight ─ ? Then another thought argued. What kind of robbers didn't take a wallet with them, or the TV, the DVD player, or the expensive laptops? 

Something creaked. Esme's head snapped up too fast and her eyes darted from side to side. As Simon began to reach for the door to Jocelyn's room, she grabbed his hand. His wide eyes met hers and she put a finger to her lips. They strained their ears and Esme picked up hushed whispers and muffled voices. Her fingers curled around Simon's wrist and she soundlessly took off towards the fire escape.

Simon jumped down the ladder then helped her down. With her feet now firmly on solid ground, there was only one thought in her head. "Do you think Luke knows what happened?"

Simon said, "I don't even know what happened."

"What do you think happened, Simon?" Esme asked irritably. The site inside had unnerved her enough. "She - she could be hurt or - or worse, she could be ─ " Simon slapped his hand over her mouth. His glare was angry and desperate.

"Don't say that."

She reached with her hand and pulled his hand down slowly. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. Without announcing, they both started walking together. The moment she'd gone home that night ─ a terrible ache had started throbbing and kept her up, staring at the stars. She couldn't sleep and only could pray and hope that Clary was alright. In the middle of the night, she'd heard her mother start to sing quietly to herself. She hadn't been sleeping either. Then, she had collected her covers and padded down the stair then slid into the bed beside her. She hadn't slept beside her mother since she had been four, aside from the occasional night terrors or bouts of illness. Her mother had cradled her head and hummed the tune all night long to bring her unsteady worrying heart to sleep. She still didn't know what song it was but it made her dream of swords and battles and warriors and glass cities. 

She sniffed and said, "I tried to call Luke the day after. He didn't even answer. And then he ─ he was just gone." They both remembered the day they'd watch him leave, abandoning everything with a green duffle bag filled with questionable articles.

"Well," Simon hesitated just a moment, "let's go see if we could find something there."

"Answers," she prayed. Then sullenly, she added, "I hope she's okay."

Simon put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer, comforting her. He said quietly, "I do, too."

She saw the brown grass of a dead lawn, a chain-link fence, and more of the gray clapboard house that was painstakingly familiar. 

"Are you sure?" she had asked. The day after Clary had gone missing, she had waited outside while Simon had gone in to ask Luke. And when he had come back, he had told her that Luke had said that Clary and her mother had gone to visit some sick relative out of the country. She had only half-believed it and for the record so had Simon. She had asked what else Luke had said but Simon had started pulling her to the side of the house around the front porch.

They had stopped just under the back window. Esme had pushed herself to her tiptoes and could barely glance inside through. They had stood and watched as Luke had mulled about, packing a green duffel bag as if he were planning to go away for the weekend. It was the contents of the bag that sent a shock through her. She had immediately been reminded of the knife that had nicked her arm and drawn blood. Nico's knife ─ the only other person other than her father who had made her bleed. She had shuddered.

Again, it had been Simon's idea. In hindsight, maybe she should stop listening to him. He came up with stupid ideas anyway, but at that time it had seemed logical. They'd decided to stay back and wait to see what happened. And it was a long wait. They had hidden behind the bushes by the back under the chain-link fence but all that had happened that night was Luke driving away in his truck.

They stood in front of a small gray row house, nestled among the other row houses that lined the Williamsburg waterfront. A breeze blew off the East River, setting a small sign swinging over the brick front steps. The block-lettered words read GARROWWAY BOOKS. FINE USED, NEW, AND OUT-OF-PRINT. CLOSED SATURDAYS. She glanced at the dark front door, its knob wound with a heavy padlock. A few days' worth of mail lay on the doormat, untouched. 

"Should've brought snacks," Esme said as they headed towards the narrow alley between Luke's row house and the next. Plastic trash cans were propped in a neat row beside stacks of folded newspapers and a plastic tub of empty soda bottles. 

"You sure he isn't home?" she asked, just to be sure.

Simon glanced at the empty curb. "Well, his truck's gone, the store's closed, and all the lights are off. I'd say probably not."

The narrow aisle between the row houses ended in a high chain-link fence. It surrounded Luke's small back garden, where the only plants flourishing seemed to be the weeds that had sprung up through the paving stones, cracking them into powdery shards. Jamming the toe of her boot into a gap in the fence, Esme began to climb. The fence rattled so loudly that she froze and glanced around nervously, but there were no lights on in the neighbors' house. Slowly she climbed up and over the top of the fence and sprang down the other side, landing in the bushes. She crouched behind the line of bushes and waited for Simon who wormed his way a moment later. And they sat and they watched, waiting for something, anything.

Esme did not expect to be jumped awake by an ear-splitting howl. There was a shout and thud as someone fell and she saw Simon spring out from hiding and streak across the yard, keeping low. Behind him another figure darted, cloaked in shadows. Esme reached and curled her fingers around the baseball bat she'd brought with her and was on her feet the next second, running after them.

Just as she neared, she heard the other voice call out triumphantly, "Got him!" Eyes adjusting to the dark, she found him sitting on top of Simon, his back to her. She raised the bat in her hand to strike only to be tackled aside and thrown against grass that was wet with dew. 

The bat ended up on her side, just out of arms reach and air knocked out of her lungs, she heard the voice from earlier call out,  "Come on, let's see your face ─ "

"Get the hell off me, you pretentious asshole," Simon snarled, shoving at the attacker. Esme twisted under whoever was holding her down and turned to throw a punch only to be stopped by stark red hair in her face. Her eyes widened and she struggled halfway into a sitting position. 

"Simon?" Clary's voice. "Esme?"

"Oh, God," said the voice from earlier, sounding resigned. Esme darted her gaze to find a blond boy, Jace. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd got hold of something interesting."

"But what were you doing hiding in Luke's bushes?" Clary asked, brushing leaves out of Simon's hair. He suffered her ministrations with glaring bad grace. "That's the part I don't get."

"All right, that's enough. I can fix my own hair, Fray," Simon said, jerking away from her touch. He gave Esme a hand and pulled her to her feet.

As she brushed her clothes off grass and soil, she gave a very mean glare to her red-haired friend. "Explain."

They were sitting on the steps of Luke's back porch. Jace had propped himself on the porch railing and was assiduously pretending to ignore them while using the stele to file the edges of his fingernails. "I mean, did Luke know you were there?" Clary asked.

"Of course he didn't know we were there," Simon said irritably. "I've never asked him, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random teenagers lurking in his shrubbery."

"You're not random; he knows you." Simon's cheek was still bleeding slightly where a branch had scratched it and Esme itched to clean it. "The main thing is that you're all right."

"That we're all right?" Esme laughed, a sharp, unhappy sound. "Clary, do you have any idea what we've been through this past couple of days?"

"The last time I saw you," Simon continued, "you were running out of Java Jones like a bat out of hell, and then you just . . . disappeared. You never picked up your cell then your home phone was disconnected - then Luke told us you were off staying with some relatives upstate when we know you don't have any other relatives. I thought I'd done something to piss you off."

"What could you possibly have done?" Clary reached for his hand, but he pulled it back without looking at her." I don't know," he said. "Something."

Jace, still occupied with the stele, chuckled low under his breath.

"You're my best friends," Clary said. "I wasn't mad at you."

"Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn't be bothered to call us and tell us you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wanna-be goth you probably met at Pandemonium," Simon pointed out sourly. It hadn't struck Esme until Simon had pointed it out that yes, Clary had met Jace at the Pandemonium. And what the hell was she doing with him? Had she joined their little cult and started killing people too? "After I spent the past three days wondering if you were dead."

"I was not shacking up," Clary said as blood rushed to her face. 

"And my hair is naturally blond," said Jace. "Just for the record."

"So what have you been doing these past three days, then?" Esme said, her blue eyes darkening with suspicion. "Do you really have a great-aunt Matilda who contracted avian flu and needed to be nursed back to health?"

"Did Luke actually say that?"

"No," Simon said. "He just said you had gone to visit a sick relative, and that your phone probably just didn't work out in the country. Not that we believed him. After he shooed me off his front porch, we went around the side of the house and looked in the back window. Watched him packing up a green duffel bag like he was going away for the weekend. That was when we decided to stick around and keep an eye on things."

"Why? Because he was packing a bag?"

"He was packing it full of weapons," Simon said, scrubbing at the blood on his cheek with the sleeve of his T-shirt. "Knives, a couple daggers, even a sword. Funny thing is, some of the weapons looked like they were glowing." Esme gave looked from Clary to Jace, and back again, something behind her eyes that made the redhead swallow thickly. Her gaze was edged as sharply as one of Luke's knives. Simon continues, "Now, are you going to say I was imagining it?"

"No," Clary said. "I'm not going to say that." She glanced at Jace. The last light of sunset struck gold sparks from his eyes. She said, "I'm going to tell them the truth."

"I know."

"Are you going to try to stop me?" He looked down at the stele in his hand. "My oath to the Covenant binds me," he said. "No such oath binds you." She turned back to Simon, taking a deep breath. "All right," she said. "Here's what you have to know."