Cassandra Clare - City of Heavenly Fire

“Why is it,” he said after a moment, “that whenever I think I’ve found the most terrible thing that could happen to me, I’m always wrong.”

As if on cue the door opened, and a tiny figure rushed into the room. A dark shape closed the door instantly behind her, with Secret Service–like speed.

She tiptoed up to the cage and squeezed her face between two bars. “Siiimon,” she breathed.

Maureen.

Simon would normally have at least tried to ask her to let him out, to find a key, to assist him. But something in Maureen’s appearance told him that would not be helpful.

Specifically, the crown of bones she was wearing. Finger bones. Maybe foot bones. And the bone crown was bejeweled—or possibly bedazzled. And then there was the ragged rose-and-gray ball gown, widened at the hips in a style that reminded him of those costume dramas set in the eighteenth century. It was not the kind of outfit that inspired confidence.

“Hey, Maureen,” he said cautiously.

Maureen smiled and pressed her face harder into the opening.

“Do you like your outfit?” she asked. “I have a few for you. I got you a frock coat and a kilt and all kinds of stuff, but I wanted you to wear this one first. I did your makeup too.

That was me.”

Simon didn’t need a mirror to know he was wearing eyeliner. The knowledge was instant, and complete.

“Maureen—”

“I’m making you a necklace,” she said, cutting him off. “I want you to wear more jewelry. I want you to wear more bracelets . I want things around your wrists .”

“Maureen, where am I?”

“You’re with me.”

“Okay. Where are we ?”

“The hotel, the hotel, the hotell. . .”

The Hotel Dumort. At least that made some kind of sense.

“Okay,” he said. “And why am I . . . in a cage?”

Maureen started humming a song to herself and ran her hand along the bars of the cage, lost in her own world.

“Together, together, together . . . now we’re together. You and me. Simon and Maureen.

Finally.”

“Maureen—”

“This will be your room,” she said. “And once you’re ready, you can come out. I’ve got things for you. I’ve got a bed. And other things. Some chairs. Things you’ll like. And the band can play!”

She twirled, almost losing her balance under the strange weight of the dress.

Simon felt he should probably choose his next words very carefully. He knew he had a calming voice. He could be sensitive. Reassuring.

“Maureen . . . you know . . . I like you . . .”

On this, Maureen stopping spinning and gripped the bars again.

“You just need time,” she said with a terrifying kindness in her voice. “Just time. You’ll learn. You’ll fall in love. We’re together now. And we’ll rule. You and me. We will rule my kingdom. Now that I’m queen.”

“Queen?”

“Queen. Queen Maureen. Queen Maureen of the night. Queen Maureen of the darkness. Queen Maureen. Queen Maureen. Queen Maureen of the dead.” She took a candle that burned in a sconce on the wall and suddenly poked it between the bars and in Simon’s general direction. She tipped it ever so slightly, and smiled as the white wax dropped in tear-like forms to the rotted remains of the scarlet carpet on the floor. She bit her lower lip in concentration, turning her wrist gently, pooling the drips together.

“You’re . . . a queen?” Simon said faintly. He’d known Maureen was the leader of the New York vampire clan. She’d killed Camille, after all, and taken her place. But clan leaders weren’t called kings or queens. They dressed normally, like Raphael did, not in costumey getups. They were important figures in the community of the Night’s Children.

But Maureen, of course, was different. Maureen was a child, an undead child. Simon remembered her rainbow arm warmers, her little breathy voice, her big eyes. She’d been a little girl with all the innocence of a little girl when Simon had bitten her, when Camille and Lilith had taken her and changed her, injecting an evil into her veins that had taken all that innocence and corrupted it into madness.

It was his fault, Simon knew. If Maureen hadn’t known him, hadn’t followed him around, none of this would have happened to her.

Maureen nodded and smiled, concentrating on her wax pile, which was now looking like a tiny volcano. “I need . . . to do things,” she said abruptly, and dropped the candle, still burning. It snuffed itself out as it hit the ground, and she bustled toward the door.

The same dark figure opened it the instant she approached. And then Simon was alone again, with the smoking remains of the candle and his new leather pants, and the horrible weight of his guilt.

Maia had been silent the whole way to the Praetor, as the sun had risen higher in the sky and the surroundings had turned from the crowded buildings of Manhattan to the traffic-clogged Long Island Expressway, to the pastoral small towns and farms of the North Fork.

They were close to the Praetor now, and could see the ice-blue waters of the Sound on their left, rippling in the cool wind. Maia imagined plunging into them, and shuddered at the thought of the cold.

“Are you all right?” Jordan had hardly spoken most of the way either. It was chilly inside his truck, and he wore leather driving gloves, but they didn’t conceal his white-knuckle grip on the wheel. Maia could feel the anxiety rolling off him in waves.

“I’m fine,” she said. It wasn’t true. She was worried about Simon, and she was still fighting the words she couldn’t say that choked her throat. Now wasn’t the right time to say them, not with Simon missing, and yet every moment she didn’t say them felt like a lie.

They swung onto the long white drive that stretched into the distance, toward the Sound. Jordan cleared his throat. “You know I love you, right?”

“I know,” Maia said quietly, and fought the urge to say “Thank you.” You weren’t supposed to say “Thank you” when someone said they loved you. You were supposed to say what Jordan was clearly expecting—

She looked out the window and started, jerked out of her reverie. “Jordan, is it snowing ?”

“I don’t think so.” But white flakes were drifting past the windows of the truck, building up on the windshield. Jordan brought the truck to a stop and rolled one of the windows down, opening his hand to catch a flake. He drew it back, his expression darkening.

“That’s not snow,” he said. “That’s ash.”

Maia’s heart lurched as he shoved the truck back into gear and they pitched forward, spinning around the corner of the drive. Up ahead of them, where the Praetor Lupus headquarters should have been rising, gold against the gray noon sky, was a gout of black smoke. Jordan swore and slewed the wheel to the left; the truck bumped into a ditch and sputtered out. He kicked his door open and jumped down; Maia followed a second later.

The Praetor Lupus headquarters had been built on a huge parcel of green land that sloped down to the Sound. The central building was built of golden stone, a Romanesque manor house surrounded by arched porticoes. Or it had been. It was a mass of smoking wood and stone now, charred like bones in a crematorium. White powder and ashes blew thickly across the gardens, and Maia choked on the stinging air, bringing up a hand to shield her face.

Jordan’s brown hair was thickly snowflaked with ash. He stared around him, his expression shocked and uncomprehending. “I don’t—”

Something caught Maia’s eye, a flicker of movement through the smoke. She grabbed Jordan’s sleeve. “Look—there’s someone there—”

He took off, skirting the smoking ruin of the Praetor building. Maia followed him, though she couldn’t help but hang back in horror, staring at the charred remnants of the structure that protruded from the earth—walls holding up a no-longer-existing roof, windows that had blown out or melted, glimpses here and there of white that could have been brick or bones . . .