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CHAPTER TEN:

❝ The Hostility Of Dreams ❞

Esme watched Clary as she leaned against the refrigerator, biting her lip like she always did when she was upset. Then she looked down at her hands. I wanna go home, she thought. I want my mother. She closed her eyes, only half-listening to Clary and Simon converse about who was going to call Jace. Simon, unfortunately, had the privilege. As he called the blond Shadowhunter, Esme felt arms snaking around her waist and a head full of thick red locks came to rest on her shoulder. Clary said, "I'm so sad."

Because of course, she was sad. And so was Esme. Because even in these little sunshine moments of happiness, it was all covered by a dark blue stroke of grief. And she did not know how to describe grief, how to write sadness down, penned on paper in any other way except, She was sad. Because she was, and she did not see herself finding any light at the end of this tunnel. She twisted her head slightly and pressed a feather-light kiss to Clary's scalp. Sisters.

"He's coming here," Simon said, as he handed the phone back to Clary who untangled herself from Esme's body and sagged against the sink. 

"Now?"

"Now. Magnus and Alec will be with him."

"Magnus?" she said dazedly, and then, "Oh, of course. Jace would have been at Magnus's. I was thinking he was at the Institute, but of course he wouldn't have been there. I — "

A harsh cry from the living room cut her off. Esme's eyes widened. Simon felt the hair on his neck stand up like wires. "It's all right," he said, as soothingly as he could. "Luke wouldn't hurt Maia."

"He is hurting her. He has no choice," Esme said. 

Clary was shaking her head. "That's how it always is these days. There's never any choice." Maia cried out again and Clary gripped the edge of the counter as if she were in pain herself. "I hate this!" she burst out. "I hate all of it! Always being scared, always being hunted, always wondering who's going to get hurt next. I wish I could go back to the way things used to be!"

"But you can't. None of us can," Simon said. "At least you can still go out in daylight."

She turned to him, lips parted, her eyes wide and dark. "Simon, I didn't mean — "

"I know you didn't." He backed away, feeling as if there were something caught in his throat. "I'm going to go see how they're doing." For a moment Esme thought Clary might follow him, but she let the kitchen door fall shut between them without protest.

A moment of silence stretched between them — a moment of mourning, maybe for Clary's stubbornness, maybe for Esme's incendiary heart, maybe for the eclipsing darkness that seemed to be shrouding all the light in its presence.

"When did you — " and Clary stopped abruptly like a car had run over her voice. She struggled again to ask, her lips stretched white. Which always meant she was approaching a very particular topic. "When did you know your father hated you?" How do I know if Simon hates me? When do I know? Can I know? Does he?

Esme leaned against the counter and shook her head softly. "My father didn't hate me — or maybe he did, I wouldn't know? Maybe he thought if he could just twist me right, attach this limb there, flatten my skull a little, maybe he could love that thing after. But that after thing hated him — that after thing hates him. I think he thought too much about: If only she were like that, if only she didn't have this, or felt this, or loved this — I think he thought of me as something he owned, something — something that needed to improve. I think he wanted me to love him a certain way, love only him and choose him over and over and over. I could not love him that way, I — I don't know if that answers your question. Simon — he's nothing like my father, of course, God no. But — but he wants you to love him because you love him, not because he's asking you to love him. Do you love him?"

"Of course, I love him."

"Clary, do you love him?" Esme pressed, her eyes shining. "Did you really want to be his girlfriend? Don't be with him out of pity, for him because he'd wanted you for so long, or for yourself because you can't have Jace — "

Clary cut her off, tongue like a sword, "Jace has nothing to do with this."

"But he does," Esme's face was stretched in a mirthless smile. "He has everything to do with this. Loving the wrong person the wrong way is too familiar for me to ignore." 

They broke apart when they heard a snarl from the front room. They were running out before the wind passed.

Clary pushed the door open as Esme's hand slid into her boot for her dagger, the familiar weight settling in her hand. Clary leaped onto the coffee table, landing lightly as a cat. She held something in her hand, something that flashed a bright white-silver when she raised her arm. Esme saw that it was a dagger as elegantly curved as a bird's wing; a dagger that whipped past Maia's hair, millimeters from her face, and sank to the hilt in gray velveteen. Maia tried to pull away and gasped; the blade had gone through her sleeve and pinned it to the sofa.

Clary yanked the blade back. It was one of Luke's. The moment she'd cracked open the kitchen door and gotten a look at what was going on in the living room, she'd made a beeline for the personal weapons stash he kept in his office. Maia might be weakened and sick, but she'd looked mad enough to kill, and Esme didn't doubt her abilities. She lifted her hand, her own dagger glinting dangerously in the light.

"What the hell is it with you?" The steel in Clary's voice astonished her. "Werewolves, vampires — you're both Downworlders."

"Werewolves don't hurt people or each other. Vampires are murderers. One killed a boy down at the Hunter's Moon just the other day — "

"That wasn't a vampire." Esme saw Maia blanch at the certainty in Clary's voice. "And if you could stop blaming each other all the time for every bad thing that happens Downworld, maybe the Nephilim would start taking you seriously and actually do something about it." 

Esme turned to Simon. The vicious cuts across his cheek were already healing to silvery red lines. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." His voice was barely audible. She could see the hurt in his eyes, and for a moment she wrestled the urge to call Maia a number of unprintable names. "I'm fine."

Clary said to the werewolf girl, "You're lucky he's not as much of a bigot as you are, or I'd complain to the Clave and make the whole pack pay for your behavior." With a sharp tug, she yanked the knife loose, freeing Maia's T-shirt.

Maia bristled. "You don't get it. Vampires are what they are because they're infected with demon energies — "

"So are lycanthropes!" Clary said. "I may not know much, but I do know that."

"But that's the problem. The demon energies change us, make us different — you can call it a sickness or whatever you want, but the demons who created vampires and the demons who created werewolves came from species who were at war with each other. They hated each other, so it's in our blood to hate each other too. We can't help it. A werewolf and a vampire can never be friends because of it." She looked at Simon. Her eyes were bright with anger and something else. "You'll start hating me soon enough," she said. "You'll hate Luke, too. You won't be able to help it."

"Hate Luke?" Simon was ashen, but before Esme could reassure him, the front door banged open. She looked around, expecting Luke, but it wasn't Luke. It was Jace. He was all in black, two seraph blades stuck through the belt that circled his narrow hips. Alec and Magnus were just behind him, Magnus in a long, swirling cape that looked as if it were decorated with bits of crushed glass.

Jace's golden eyes, with the precision of a laser, fixed immediately on Clary. If she'd thought he might look apologetic, concerned, or even ashamed after all that had happened, she was wrong. All he looked was angry. "What," he said, with a sharp and deliberate annoyance, "do you think you're doing?"

Clary glanced down at herself. She was still perched on the coffee table, knife in hand. She fought the urge to hide it behind her back. "We had an incident. I took care of it."

"Really." Jace's voice dripped sarcasm. "Do you even know how to use that knife, Clarissa? Without poking a hole in yourself or any innocent bystanders?"

"I didn't hurt anyone," Clary said between her teeth.

"She stabbed the couch," said Maia in a dull voice, her eyes falling shut. Her cheeks were still flushed red with fever and rage, but the rest of her face was alarmingly pale.

Simon looked at her worriedly. "I think she's getting worse."

Magnus cleared his throat. When Simon didn't move, he said, "Get out of the way, mundane," in a tone of immense annoyance. Esme fought the urge to point out he wasn't a mundane anymore. He flung his cloak back as he stalked across the room to where Maia lay on the couch. "I take it you're my patient?" he inquired, gazing down at her through glitter-crusted lashes.

Maia stared up at him with unfocused eyes.

"I'm Magnus Bane," he went on in a soothing tone, stretching out his ringed hands. Blue sparks had begun to dance between them like bioluminescence dancing in water. "I'm the warlock who's here to cure you. Didn't they tell you I was coming?"

"I know who you are, but . . ." Maia looked dazed. "You look so . . . so . . . shiny."

Just beside Esme, Alec made a noise that sounded very much like a laugh stifled by a cough as Magnus's thin hands wove a shimmering blue curtain of magic around the werewolf girl. She looked up at him, and the familiarity struck her, suddenly missing Nico.

Jace wasn't laughing. "Where," he asked, "is Luke?"

"He's outside," Simon said. "He was moving the truck off the lawn."

Jace and Alec exchanged a quick look.

"Funny," Jace said. He didn't sound amused. "I didn't see him when we were coming up the stairs."

A thin tendril of panic unfurled like a leaf inside Clary's chest. "Did you see his pickup?"

"I saw it," Alec said. "It was in the driveway. The lights were off."

At that even Magnus, intent on Maia, looked up. Through the net of enchantment, he had woven around himself and the werewolf girl, his features seemed blurred and indistinct as if he were looking at them through water. "I don't like it," he said, his voice sounding hollow and far away. "Not after a Drevak attack. They roam in packs."

Jace's hand was already reaching for one of his seraph blades. "I'll go check on him. Alec, you stay here, keep the house secure."

Clary jumped down from the table. "I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not." He headed for the door, not glancing behind him to see if she was following.

She put on a burst of speed and threw herself between him and the front door. "Stop."

For a moment she thought he was going to keep right on going even if he had to walk through her, but he paused, just inches from her, so close she could feel his breath stir her hair when he spoke. "I will knock you down if I have to, Clarissa."

"Stop calling me that."

"Clary," he said in a low voice.

She spoke around the breathless catch in her voice. "He's my uncle, not yours — "

A savage humor flashed across his face. "Any uncle of yours is an uncle of mine, darling sister," he said, "and he's no blood relation to either of us."

"Jace — "

"Besides, I haven't got time to Mark you," he said, lazy gold eyes raking her, "and all you've got is that knife. It won't be much use if it's demons we're dealing with."

She jammed the knife into the wall beside the door, point-first, and was rewarded by the look of surprise on his face. "So what? You've got two seraph blades; give me one."

"Oh, for the love of — " It was Simon, hands jammed into his pockets, eyes burning like black coals in his white face. "I'll go."

Clary said, "Simon, don't — "

"At least I'm not wasting my time standing here flirting while we don't know what's happened to Luke." He gestured for her to move aside from the door.

Jace's lips thinned. "We'll all go." To Clary's surprise, he jerked a seraph blade out of his belt and handed it to her. "Take it."

"What's its name?" she asked, moving away from the door.

"Nakir."

As they left, Esme turned to Alec. "Would you care for a blueberry jam sandwich?"

Esme spread the jam over a slice of bread and covered it with another before biting into it. She discarded the butter knife in the sink and turned to look at Alec who was eating his own sandwich. "This is good," he spoke through a mouthful.

"It's jam," she shrugged.

A bit of it fell on the floor. Alec picked it up and put it back in his mouth. Esme made a sound of disgust. He said, "It turns out politics have already eroded my principles and manners." He shrugged. "All that's left is the sandwich, which I will have without any judgment." Suddenly Esme felt bad, it must be hard not being open and yourself in such a strict society.

"Does it ever get tiring?" she asked. He looked up from under his lashes. "Not being — " and now she stopped, not knowing how to phrase it anymore. It already seemed like a mistake. Open? Yourself? Happy?

But when Alec answered, she released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Sometimes. You get used to it." But that's not a good thing, she thought but didn't say it. Alec looked at her as if he was looking at her for the very first time. He said, "What did you say to Nico?"

Esme's eyebrows raised involuntarily. Nico and her hadn't talked since Simon's — she shook her head and glanced at Alec. "Why?"

Alec stared at her in a way that made her squirm, but she held herself in her place. Then, he said, "Nothing," and went back to his sandwich.

But something had stirred in Esme. Something foul and vile, something mean and selfish, something ugly. She spoke words meant to maim, "Nico, is he okay?"

Alec, in the process of biting into his sandwich, looked at her so quickly she thought he might get a whiplash. He bit into it, and chewed in silence. Esme finished hers and wiped her hand clean. Alec swallowed, and he said, "No." Esme paused. Esme blinked. She looked at him from under her lashes, something wretched in her heart she couldn't quite identify. "I don't know if it was something I said, or you, or Mom — he's just — " he's punishing himself, but he cut himself off to eat the last bite of the sandwich.

Shamed, Esme said, "If it was something I said, tell him I'm sorry." Then she sighed, and said, "Alec, I'm sorry."

"It's not just that. It's Nico —" Alec broke off, very completely, and Esme understood. He was a boy of few words, he'd used enough of them today, and he had never felt comfortable spilling secrets that weren't his. He had been on the other side, and he knew he didn't want his secrets spilled either.

She was standing by the door, Magnus was waiting on the front porch, when Simon and Jace carried Luke, slumped between them, up the stairs. Having finished with Maia, Magnus had put her to bed in Luke's room, so they set Luke down on the sofa where she'd been lying and let Magnus go to work on him.

"Will he be all right?" Clary demanded, hovering around the couch as Magnus summoned blue fire that shimmered between his hands.

"He'll be fine. Raum poison is a little more complex than a Drevak sting, but nothing I can't handle." Magnus motioned her away. "At least not if you get back and let me work."

Reluctantly, she sank down into an armchair. Jace and Alec were over by the window, heads close together. Jace was gesturing with his hands. She guessed he was explaining to Alec what had happened with the demons. Simon, looking uncomfortable, was leaning against the wall beside the kitchen door. 

Esme had her phone in hand, distressed. Deliberating and debating, she sunk down on a chair and pulled her feet up, knees close to her chest. Without wanting to her, eyes flickered in the direction of the coat rack, to Nico's thick wool coat hanging like a greying memory. She could still smell it — mint and leather and blood — and Nico. She closed her eyes and let the ugly wanting wash over her for a rotten moment. Then she blinked open her eyes in commotion.

Magnus was getting to his feet. The blue light was gone. Luke's eyes were still closed but the ugly grayish tint had gone from his skin, and his breathing was deep and regular.

"He's all right!" Clary exclaimed, and they all came hurrying over to have a look. Simon slid his hand into Clary's, and she wrapped her fingers around his, glad for the reassurance.

"So he'll live?" Simon said as Magnus sank down onto the armrest of the nearest chair. He looked exhausted, drawn, and bluish. "You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Magnus said. "I'm the High Warlock of Brooklyn; I know what I'm doing." His eyes moved to Jace, who had just said something to Alec in a voice too low for any of the rest of them to hear. "Which reminds me," Magnus went on, sounding stiff — and Esme had never heard him sound stiff before — "that I'm not exactly sure what it is you think you're doing, calling on me every time one of you has so much as an ingrown toenail that needs clipping. As High Warlock, my time is valuable. There are plenty of lesser warlocks who'd be happy to do a job for you at a greatly reduced rate."

Clary blinked at him in surprise. "You're charging us? But Luke is a friend!"

Magnus took a thin blue cigarette out of his shirt pocket. "Not a friend of mine," he said. "I met him only on the few occasions when your mother brought him along when your memory spells were being refreshed." He passed his hand across the cigarette's tip and it lit with a multicolored flame. "Did you think I was helping you out of the goodness of my heart? Or am I just the only warlock you happen to know?"

Jace had listened to this short speech with a smolder of fury sparking his amber eyes to gold. "No," he said now, "but you are the only warlock we know who happens to be dating a friend of ours."

For a moment everyone stared at him — Alec in sheer horror, Magnus in astonished anger, and Clary and Simon and Esme in surprise. It was Alec who spoke first, his voice shaking. "Why would you say something like that?"

Jace looked baffled. "Something like what?"

"That I'm dating — that we're — it's not true," Alec said, his voice rising and dropping several octaves as he fought to control it.

Jace looked at him steadily. "I didn't say he was dating you," he said, "but funny that you knew just what I meant, isn't it?"

"We're not dating," Alec said again.

"Oh?" Magnus said. "So you're just that friendly with everybody, is that it?"

"Magnus." Alec stared imploringly at the warlock. Magnus, however, it seemed, had had enough. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in silence, regarding the scene before him with slitted eyes.

Alec turned to Jace. "You don't — " he began. "I mean, you couldn't possibly think — "

Jace was shaking his head in puzzlement. "What I don't get is you going to all these lengths to hide your relationship with Magnus from me when it's not as if I would mind if you did tell me about it."

If he meant his words to be reassuring, it was clear that they weren't. Alec went a pale gray color, and said nothing. Jace turned to Magnus. "Help me convince him," he said, "that I really don't care."

"Oh," Magnus said quietly, "I think he believes you about that."

"Then I don't . . . " Bewilderment was plain on Jace's face, and for a moment Esme saw Magnus's expression and knew he was strongly tempted to answer. 

Moved by an inexplicable protectiveness for Alec, Esme said, "Jace, that's enough. Leave it alone."

"Leave what alone?" Luke inquired. Clary whirled around to find him sitting up on the couch, wincing a little with pain but looking otherwise healthy enough.

"Luke!" She darted to the side of the sofa, considered hugging him, saw the way he was holding his shoulder, and decided against it. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Not really." Luke passed a hand across his face. "The last thing I remember was going out to the truck. Something hit my shoulder and jerked me sideways. I remember the most incredible pain — Anyway, I must have passed out after that. The next thing I knew I was listening to six people shouting. What was all that about, anyway?"

"Nothing," chorused Clary, Simon, Alec, Esme, Magnus, and Jace, in surprising and probably never-to-be-repeated unison.

Despite his obvious exhaustion, Luke's eyebrows shot up. But "I see," was all he said.

Since Maia was still asleep in Luke's bedroom, he announced that he'd be just fine on the couch. Clary tried to give him the bed in her room, but he refused to take it. Giving up, she headed into the narrow hallway to retrieve sheets and blankets from the linen closet.

It turned out that Magnus and Jace weren't leaving after all; Magnus wanted to spend a few more hours at the house to make sure that Maia and Luke were recovering as expected. After a few minutes of awkward conversation with a bored Magnus, while Jace, sitting on Luke's piano bench and industriously studying some sheet music, ignored her, Clary decided to go to bed early and Esme resigned and told them she was going home and would be back next morning to check on Luke.

It was quite late when Esme called that night, long after Alec had returned to the Institute, long after Isabelle and Max had gone to bed.

No one else was awake.

"Nico?" Esme asked.

Something anxious in him stilled.

"Tell me a story," she said. "I can't sleep."

He went at once to the kitchen, moving as quietly as he could, thinking of something to tell her. As he sat on the floor, he said in a low voice, "Idris is the most beautiful place. You've never seen a city until you see the glass city of Idris. "

Esme's voice was quiet, too, on the other end of the phone. "I assume you mean a city made of glass, not inside one."

"Snowglobe city." Nico scrubbed a hand through his hair, remembering. The floorboards felt cool on the bottoms of his bare feet. For some reason, the feeling was sensuous and distracting, a reminder of Esme's skin. Nico closed his eyes. He could hear the rustling of her sheets from the other end of the phone. 

Esme said, "Are you angry with me?"

Nico closed his eyes and wondered. Was he angry with her? Or was he just angry at everything else—- the line he couldn't cross, the want to sit beside her and have this conversation face-to-face and not through the phone? He said, "No. No, I'm not."

It seemed to satisfy her. Or maybe she didn't want to push. "What was Idris like?"

"Prettier than you're thinking. So pretty."

She paused. "I'd like to go, one day."

He didn't give himself time to doubt the wisdom of saying it out loud before he replied, "I know how to get there, if you want company."

After a long pause, Esme said, in a different voice, "I'm going to go sing myself to sleep. See you tomorrow. If you want company."

The phone went quiet. It was never enough, but it was something. Nico opened his eyes.

Alec sat against the doorjamb of the kitchen. When Nico thought about it, he thought that possibly he had been sitting there for a long time.

There was nothing inherently guilty about the moment except that Nico burned with guilt and thrill and desire and the nebulous feeling of being truly known. It was on the inside of him, and the inside was all Alec ever really paid attention to.

The other boy wore a knowing expression.

"Don't tell the others," Nico said.

"I'm gay," Alec replied. "Not stupid."