Page 10

Dru’s gaze drifted over to the area nearest the stage, where Jace and Clary—Clary in a short dress, Jace in jeans and a black sweater—were dancing, eyes fixed on each other. Sitting on a speaker nearby was Isabelle Lightwood, a warrior goddess in spiked heels and green velvet, her ruby necklace glittering at her throat. On either side of her were Magnus and Alec, Magnus looking fabulous as always in a rainbow leather jacket and jeans covered in rhinestones, and Alec dressed down in black. Magnus’s rings flashed as he gestured dramatically and Izzy laughed. Above them, Simon was still rocking out on the stage with Kirk (who was pounding on the drums like they’d insulted him personally) and Eric, who was howling into the microphone.

Thais poked Dru in the arm. “Don’t you want to go say hi to your friends?” she yelled over the music. Thais’s English was perfect, only slightly accented. “Isn’t that why we came?”

Dru retrieved her maraschino cherry and bit into it. The bright false taste was almost painfully sweet. “Not quite yet,” she said. “I’m scoping for guys.”

That was true. It was also true that she felt a little nervous just going up to Jace, Clary, and the others. Not only were they famous in the Shadowhunter world, they were also friends with Julian and Emma, who were twenty-one and closer to their age. She was pretty sure the New York crew regarded her as a kid, even if she was a kid they liked.

They were also clearly a family, the bonds between them visible in the way they spoke and moved. It made Dru miss her own family. Helen and her wife, Aline, were in Los Angeles, running the Institute there and taking care of Tavvy. (Tavvy had once been like Dru’s shadow, but now she only saw him at holidays and in the summer, which made her sadder than she’d thought it would.) Emma and Julian were in London; Ty was at the Scholomance. They were scattered all over the world, Dru thought with a little twinge, and Mark and Cristina—consorts of Kieran, the Unseelie King—were in Faerie, farther away than the most distant point on a map.

Dru sighed.

“Trying to forget about Mason?” Thais teased. She’d comforted Dru through all of her travails with Mason, just as Dru had tried to always be there for Thais when she had relationship troubles. Thais fell for girls, and boys, hard and fast, but it rarely lasted.

“I’ve already forgotten about Mason.” Dru stabbed another maraschino cherry with her straw. Mason Hardcastle. She wished she’d never given him a second chance. She should have known after what had happened when they’d gone into town together that he was exactly what she’d always thought: perfectly willing to sneak into her room at night, perfectly unwilling to admit in public that he liked her and found her attractive.

He’d come around a few times after their big fight, sulky, wanting to know why Dru had cut things off so abruptly. In Dru’s opinion, if he didn’t see why what he’d done was horrible, he didn’t deserve an explanation. And it had been horrible; so much so that she’d told Thais only about half of it. He seemed to have finally picked up on her anger, at least; he’d stopped coming around, stopped bothering her, and when he saw her these days, he looked almost frightened. Good.

“What about that guy over there?” Thais pointed at a built mundane leaning against one of the vending machines. He was decked out in goth finery, like Dru, with ripped leather pants and a matching jacket.

“Not my type,” said Dru. “He looks like he bench-presses tractors and might not be able to read.”

“Don’t be judgy,” Thais laughed. “He could be a big, muscly astrophysicist.”

“He’s a mundane. Our love is doomed anyway.”

“I never said anything about love,” Thais pointed out, just as Dru noticed Jace, Clary, Magnus, Alec, and Izzy weaving through the crowd toward them. Eyes followed them as they made their way across the room—Downworlders looking curious, though not worried as they might have been before Alec had become Consul, when things between Shadowhunters and Downworlders had been much more tense—and mundanes seeming to sense something unusual was happening, even if they couldn’t see it.

They reached Thais and Dru, and there was a round of hugs and greetings. It was nice not to have to go up onto her tiptoes to hug Clary, Dru thought; Clary was about the same height as her. Magnus was hopeless, so she just waved up at him.

Magnus smiled down at her, though with his usual expression of semi-aloofness. It was the same look he always wore when he saw Dru. They shared a secret—the existence of Livvy-the-ghost—that they’d both sworn never to tell anyone, and Dru could tell that keeping the secret troubled him. She suspected it made him uneasy when he was around her, which struck her as a little unfair. What Ty had done wasn’t her fault, and besides, had what he’d done really been so bad?

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t paid for it, either. The price of a secret he would always have to keep, the weight of the guilt. And losing Kit.

“I see Luke let you out on parole,” said Jace, hopping up onto one of the abandoned chairs. “Good behavior?”

“I don’t think Luke expects good behavior from me at this point,” said Dru. “I think he’s happy with adequate behavior.”

“I’m not sure I’d say he’s happy,” Thais said. “Maybe resigned.”

“Well, he let us out for the weekend, so that’s the main thing,” said Dru, glancing around the strobe-lit room.

“You’re staying at the Institute tonight, right?” Clary said, leaning against Jace. “Great. Tomorrow you can help me look at wedding dresses. I can’t find one that doesn’t make me look like a short pastry.”

“Wedding dresses?” Thais clapped her hands together. “Have you set a date yet?”

Jace, Izzy, and Clary all exchanged a look. “Not yet,” said Isabelle. “We’re still waiting until the Cohort surrenders and the Clave is reunited.”

“Which,” Alec said, “if the current peace plan goes forward as it’s supposed to, might not be that far off.”

“Where are the peace talks happening?” Dru asked. She refrained from repeating what she’d said to Luke: that she saw no reason why they’d ever want the renegade Shadowhunters who had formed the Cohort to rejoin them. The Cohort had been evil, down to its bones, and people didn’t change.

“That’s the holdup,” said Alec. “We’re arguing about a neutral location. Somewhere we can meet and both sides can feel safe.”

“And then? If they do agree to peace?” said Dru.

“Then we try to reintegrate them into Shadowhunter society,” said Jace. “The point isn’t to be harsh to them, it’s to help them understand the ways in which the Cohort is wrong. Although,” he added, “I’m not entirely against a small amount of harsh treatment.”

“I don’t see why we don’t just strip their Marks and send them out into the world as mundanes. They’re the ones who decided they didn’t want to be Shadowhunters,” Dru said.