Cassandra Clare - City of Glass

He watched Aline touch Jace’s wrist with her fingers as she reached for a piece of apple, and felt himself tense. But this is what you want him to do, he told himself, and yet somehow he couldn’t get rid of the sense that Clary was being disregarded.

Jace met his eyes over Aline’s head and smiled. Somehow, even though he wasn’t a vampire, he was able to manage a smile that seemed to be all pointed teeth. Simon looked away, glancing around the room. He noticed that the music he’d heard earlier wasn’t coming from a stereo at all but from a complicated-looking mechanical contraption.

He thought about striking up a conversation with Isabelle, but she was chatting with Sebastian, whose elegant face was bent attentively down to hers. Jace had laughed at Simon’s crush on Isabelle once, but Sebastian could doubtless handle her. Shadowhunters were brought up to handle anything, weren’t they? Although the look on Jace’s face when he’d said that he planned to be only Clary’s brother made Simon wonder.

“We’re out of wine,” Isabelle declared, setting the bottle down on the table with a thump. “I’m going to get some more.” With a wink at Sebastian, she disappeared into the kitchen.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem a little quiet.” It was Sebastian, leaning over the back of Simon’s chair with a disarming smile. For someone with such dark hair, Simon thought, Sebastian’s skin was very fair, as if he didn’t go out in the sun much. “Everything all right?”

Simon shrugged. “There aren’t a lot of openings for me in the conversation. It seems to be either about Shadowhunter politics or people I’ve never heard of, or both.”

The smile disappeared. “We can be something of a closed circle, we Nephilim. It’s the way of those who are shut out from the rest of the world.”

“Don’t you think you shut yourselves out? You despise ordinary humans—”

“‘Despise’ is a little strong,” said Sebastian. “And do you really think the world of humans would want anything to do with us? All we are is a living reminder that whenever they comfort themselves that there are no real vampires, no real demons or monsters under the bed—they’re lying.” He turned his head to look at Jace, who, Simon realized, had been staring at them both in silence for several minutes. “Don’t you agree?”

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi c? v? ascultam conversatia?”

Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de când ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama dac? nu m? placi ori dac? eşti atât de b?nuitor cu toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to see what’s taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.” He disappeared through the doorway, leaving Jace staring after him with a puzzled expression.

“What’s wrong? Does he not speak Romanian after all?” Simon asked.

“No,” said Jace. A small frown line had appeared between his eyes. “No, he speaks it all right.”

Before Simon could ask him what he meant by that, Alec entered the room. He was frowning, just as he had been when he’d left. His gaze lingered momentarily on Simon, a look almost of confusion in his blue eyes.

Jace glanced up. “Back so soon?”

“Not for long.” Alec reached down to pluck an apple off the table with a gloved hand. “I just came back to get—him,” he said, gesturing toward Simon with the apple. “He’s wanted at the Gard.”

Aline looked surprised. “Really?” she said, but Jace was already rising from the couch, disentangling his hand from hers.

“Wanted for what?” he said, with a dangerous calm. “I hope you found that out before you promised to deliver him, at least.”

“Of course I asked ,” Alec snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, come on,” said Isabelle. She had reappeared in the doorway with Sebastian, who was holding a bottle. “Sometimes you are a bit stupid, you know. Just a bit ,” she repeated as Alec shot her a murderous glare.

“They’re sending Simon back to New York,” he said. “Through the Portal.”

“But he just got here!” Isabelle protested with a pout. “That’s no fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun, Izzy. Simon coming here was an accident, so the Clave thinks the best thing is for him to go home.”

“Great,” Simon said. “Maybe I’ll even make it back before my mother notices I’m gone. What’s the time difference between here and Manhattan?”

“You have a mother ?” Aline looked amazed.

Simon chose to ignore this. “Seriously,” he said, as Alec and Jace exchanged glances. “It’s fine. All I want is to get out of this place.”

“You’ll go with him?” Jace said to Alec. “And make sure everything’s all right?”

They were looking at each other in a way that was familiar to Simon. It was the way he and Clary sometimes looked at each other, exchanging coded glances when they didn’t want their parents to know what they were planning.

“What?” he said, looking from one to the other. “What’s wrong?”

They broke their stare; Alec glanced away, and Jace turned a bland and smiling look on Simon. “Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Congratulations, vampire—you get to go home.”

Night had fallen over Alicante when Simon and Alec left the Penhallows’ house and headed uphill toward the Gard. The streets of the city were narrow and twisting, wending upward like pale stone ribbons in the moonlight. The air was cold, though Simon felt it only distantly.

Alec walked along in silence, striding ahead of Simon as if pretending that he were alone. In his previous life Simon would have had to hurry, panting, to keep up; now he discovered he could pace Alec just by speeding up his stride. “Must suck,” Simon said finally, as Alec stared morosely ahead. “Getting stuck with escorting me, I mean.”

Alec shrugged. “I’m eighteen. I’m an adult, so I have to be the responsible one. I’m the only one who can go in and out of the Gard when the Clave’s in session, and besides, the Consul knows me.”

“What’s a Consul?”

“He’s like a very high officer of the Clave. He counts the votes of the Council, interprets the Law for the Clave, and advises them and the Inquisitor. If you head up an Institute and you run into a problem you don’t know how to deal with, you call the Consul.”

“He advises the Inquisitor? I thought—isn’t the Inquisitor dead?”

Alec snorted. “That’s like saying, ‘Isn’t the president dead?’ Yeah, the Inquisitor died; now there’s a new one. Inquisitor Aldertree.”

Simon glanced down the hill toward the dark water of the canals far below. They’d left the city behind them and were treading a narrow road between shadowy trees. “I’ll tell you, inquisitions haven’t worked out well for my people in the past.” Alec looked blank. “Never mind. Just a mundane history joke. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“You’re not a mundane,” Alec pointed out. “That’s why Aline and Sebastian were so excited to get a look at you. Not that you can tell with Sebastian; he always acts like he’s seen everything already.”

Simon spoke without thinking. “Are he and Isabelle…Is there something going on there?”

That startled a laugh out of Alec. “Isabelle and Sebastian ? Hardly. Sebastian’s a nice guy—Isabelle only likes dating thoroughly inappropriate boys our parents will hate. Mundanes, Downworlders, petty crooks…”

“Thanks,” Simon said. “I’m glad to be classed with the criminal element.”