"I can't help it," Clary said. "If I were allowed to patrol-if I were allowed to do anything-I think it wouldn't be so bad."
"I don't know." Isabelle sounded weary. For the past two weeks she and Alec had been exhausted and gray-faced from sixteen-hour patrols and searches. When Clary had found out she was banned from patrolling or searching for Jace in any way until the Council decided what to do about the fact that she had brought him back from the dead, she had kicked a hole in her bedroom door. "Sometimes it feels so futile," Isabelle added.
Ice crackled up and down Clary's bones. "You mean you think he's dead?"
"No, I don't. I mean I think there's no way they're still in New York."
"But they're patrolling in other cities, right?" Clary put a hand to her throat, forgetting that the Morgenstern ring no longer hung there. Magnus was still trying to track Jace, though no tracking had yet worked.
"Of course they are." Isabelle reached out curiously and touched the delicate silver bell that hung around Clary's neck now, in place of the ring. "What's that?"
Clary hesitated. The bell had been a gift from the Seelie Queen. No, that wasn't quite right. The Queen of the faeries didn't give gifts. The bell was meant to signal the Seelie Queen that Clary wanted her help. Clary had found her hand wandering to it more and more often as the days dragged on with no sign of Jace. The only thing that stopped Clary was the knowledge that the Seelie Queen never gave anything without the expectation of something terrible in return.
Before Clary could reply to Isabelle, the door opened. Both girls sat up ramrod straight, Clary clutching one of Izzy's pink pillows so hard that the rhinestones on it dug into the skin of her palms.
"Hey." A slim figure stepped into the room and shut the door. Alec, Isabelle's older brother, was dressed in Council wear-a black robe figured with silver runes, open now over jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. All the black made his pale skin look paler, his crystal-blue eyes bluer. His hair was black and straight like his sister's, but shorter, cut just above his jawline. His mouth was set in a thin line.
Clary's heart started to pound. Alec didn't look happy. Whatever the news was, it couldn't be good.
It was Isabelle who spoke. "How did it go?" she said quietly. "What's the verdict?"
Alec sat down at the vanity table, swinging himself around the chair to face Izzy and Clary over the back. At another time it would have been comical-Alec was very tall, with long legs like a dancer, and the way he folded himself awkwardly around the chair made it look like dollhouse furniture.
"Clary," he said. "Jia Penhallow handed down the verdict. You're cleared of any wrongdoing. You broke no Laws, and Jia feels that you've been punished enough."
Isabelle exhaled an audible breath and smiled. For just a moment a feeling of relief broke through the layer of ice over all of Clary's emotions. She wasn't going to be punished, locked up in the Silent City, trapped somewhere where she couldn't help Jace. Luke, who as the representative of the werewolves on the Council had been present for the verdict, had promised to call Jocelyn as soon as the meeting ended, but Clary reached for her phone anyway; the prospect of giving her mother good news for a change was too tempting.
"Clary," Alec said as she flipped her phone open. "Wait."
She looked at him. His expression was still as serious as an undertaker's. With a sudden sense of foreboding, Clary put her phone back down on the bed. "Alec-what is it?"
"It wasn't your verdict that took the Council so long," said Alec. "There was another matter under discussion."
The ice was back. Clary shivered. "Jace?"
"Not exactly." Alec leaned forward, folding his hands along the back of the chair. "A report came in early this morning from the Moscow Institute. The wardings over Wrangel Island were smashed through yesterday. They've sent a repair team, but having such important wards down for so long-that's a Council priority."
Wards-which served, as Clary understood it, as a sort of magical fence system-surrounded Earth, put there by the first generation of Shadowhunters. They could be bypassed by demons but not easily, and kept out the vast majority of them, preventing the world from being flooded by a massive demon invasion. She remembered something that Jace had said to her, what felt like years ago: There used to be only small demon invasions into this world, easily contained. But even in my lifetime more and more of them have spilled in through the wardings.
"Well, that's bad," Clary said. "But I don't see what it has to do with-"
"The Clave has its priorities," Alec interrupted. "Searching for Jace and Sebastian has been top priority for the past two weeks. But they've scoured everything, and there's no sign of either of them in any Downworld haunt. None of Magnus's tracking spells have worked. Elodie, the woman who brought up the real Sebastian Verlac, confirmed that no one's tried to get in touch with her. That was a long shot, anyway. No spies have reported any unusual activity among the known members of Valentine's old Circle. And the Silent Brothers haven't been able to figure out exactly what the ritual Lilith performed was supposed to do, or whether it succeeded. The general consensus is that Sebastian-of course, they call him Jonathan when they talk about him-kidnapped Jace, but that's not anything we didn't know."
"So?" Isabelle said. "What does that mean? More searching? More patrolling?"
Alec shook his head. "They're not discussing expanding the search," he said quietly. "They're de-prioritizing it. It's been two weeks and they haven't found anything. The specially commissioned groups brought over from Idris are going to be sent home. The situation with the ward is taking priority now. Not to mention that the Council has been in the middle of delicate negotiations, updating the Laws to allow for the new makeup of the Council, appointing a new Consul and Inquisitor, determining different treatment of Downworlders-they don't want to be thrown completely off track."
Clary stared. "They don't want Jace's disappearance to throw them off the track of changing a bunch of stupid old Laws? They're giving up?"
"They're not giving up-"
"Alec," Isabelle said sharply.
Alec took a breath and put his hands up to cover his face. He had long fingers, like Jace's, scarred like Jace's were as well. The eye Mark of the Shadowhunters decorated the back of his right hand. "Clary, for you-for us-this has always been about searching for Jace. For the Clave it's about searching for Sebastian. Jace as well, but primarily Sebastian. He's the danger. He destroyed the wards of Alicante. He's a mass murderer. Jace is..."
"Just another Shadowhunter," said Isabelle. "We die and go missing all the time."
"He gets a little extra for being a hero of the Mortal War," said Alec. "But in the end the Clave was clear: The search will be kept up, but right now it's a waiting game. They expect Sebastian to make the next move. In the meantime it's third priority for the Clave. If that. They expect us to go back to normal life."
Normal life? Clary couldn't believe it. A normal life without Jace?
"That's what they told us after Max died," said Izzy, her black eyes tearless but burning with anger. "That we'd get over our grief faster if we just went back to normal life."