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He raised the rune-stone and it flared into light, h the blur he saw the slender figure of a girl standing in front of him, her hands clasped across her chest, her hair a splash of red color against the blackleaping darts of witchlight as if a host of fireflies had risen out of the darkness below "Clary?"

She stared at hi Questions died in his throat--as she doing here? How had she gotten to the ship? A spasripped hi rong with her, with Clary He took a step forward, just as she moved her hands away from her chest and held them out to him They were sticky with blood Blood covered the front of her white dress like a scarlet bib

He caught her with one arht as her weight fell against him He could feel the beat of her heart, the brush of her soft hair against his chin, so fah That scent he associated with Clary, a one; he smelled only blood andup to the whites The wild beating of her heart was slowing--stopping--

"No!" He shook her, hard enough that her head rolled against his arain, and this time her lashes fluttered; he felt his relief like a sudden cold sweat, and then her eyes were open, but they were no longer green; they were an opaque and glohite, white and blinding as headlights on a dark road, white as the cla noise inside his own ht, and then darkness surged up over hi silence with it

There were holes punched into the darkness, gliainst shadow Jace closed his eyes, trying to cal There was a coppery taste in hison a cold h his clothes and into his skin He counted backward fro slowed Then he opened his eyes again

The darkness was still there, but it had resolved itself into faht sky punctuated by stars He was on the deck of the ship, flat on his back in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, which looray roaned and lifted himself onto his elbows--then froze as he becanizably hu over hiot," said the voice that haunted his nightmares "How do you feel?"

Jace sat up and iretted it as his sto in the past ten hours, he was fairly sure he would have thrown it up As it was, the sour taste of bile flooded his mouth "I feel like hell"

Valentine s on a stack of eray suit and tie, as if he were seated behind the elegant any desk at the Wayland manor house in Idris "I have another obvious question for you How did you find me?"

"I tortured it out of your Rauht me where they keep their hearts I threatened it and it told ed to tell me it had come from a ship on the river I looked up and saw the shadow of your boat on the water It told me you’d summoned it too, but I already knew that"

"I see" Valentine see a s before you drop by It would save you a nasty run-in with ainst the coldand took in deep breaths of clean, cold air "You mean demons, don’t you? You used the Sword to summon them"

"I don’t deny that," Valentine said "Lucian’s beasts shattered my army of Forsaken, and I had neither time nor inclination to create er need theht of Clary, bloody and dying in his arms He put a hand to his forehead It was cool where thein the stairwell," he said "It wasn’t Clary, was it?"

"Clary?" Valentine sounded mildly surprised "Is that what you saw?"

"Why wouldn’t it be what I saw?" Jace struggled to keep his voice flat, nonchalant He wasn’t unfamiliar or uncomfortable with secrets--either his own or other people’s--but his feelings for Clary were so he had told himself he could bear only if he did not look at them too closely

But this was Valentine He looked at everything closely, studying it, analyzing in ay it could be turned to his advantage In that way he re, calculating

"What you encountered in the stairwell," Valentine said, "was Agraramon takes the for on your terror, it kills you, presu you are still alive at that point Most ratulated for holding out as long as you did"

"Agramon?" Jace was astonished "That’s a Greater Deet hold of that?"

"I paid a young and hubristic warlock to suht that if the derareatest fear was that a derarah"

"So that’s how he died," Jace said

"Hoho died?"

"The warlock," Jace said "His name was Elias He was sixteen But you knew that, didn’t you? The Ritual of Infernal Conversion--"

Valentine laughed "You have been busy, haven’t you? So you knohy I sent those demons to Lucian’s house, don’t you?"

"You wanted Maia," said Jace "Because she’s a olf child You need her blood"

"I sent the Drevak demons to spy out what there was to see at Lucian’s and report back to me," Valentine said "Lucian killed one of the lycanthrope--"

"You sent the Raum demons to take her" Jace felt suddenly very tired "Because Luke is fond of her and you wanted to hurt him if you could" He paused, and then said, in a measured tone: "Which is pretty low, even for you"

For a er lit Valentine’s eyes; then he threw his head back and roared with mirth "I adot to his feet then and held a hand out for Jace to take "Co I want to show you"

Jace wanted to spurn the offered hand, but wasn’t sure, considering the pain in his head, that he could make it to his feet unaided Besides, it was probably better not to anger his father so soon; whatever ValentineJace’s rebelliousness, he had never had much patience with disobedient behavior

Valentine’s hand was cool and dry, his grip oddly reassuring When Jace was on his feet, Valentine released his hold and drew a stele out of his pocket "Letout for his son

Jace dreay--after a second’s hesitation that Valentine would surely have noticed "I don’t want your help"