Cassandra Clare: City of Ashes

"Orange juice, molasses, eggs—weeks past their sell-bydate, though—and something that looks kind of like lettuce."

"Lettuce?" Clary peered over Simon's shoulder into the fridge. "Oh. That's some mozzarella."

Simon shuddered and kicked Luke's fridge door shut. "Order pizza?"

"I already did," said Luke, coming into the kitchen with the cordless phone in hand. "One large veggie pie, three Cokes. And I called the hospital," he added, hanging the phone up. "There's been no change with Jocelyn."

"Oh," Clary said. She sat down at the wooden table in Luke's kitchen. Usually Luke was pretty neat, but at the moment the table was covered in unopened mail and stacks of dirty plates. Luke's green duffel hung across the back of a chair. She knew she should be helping with the cleaning up, but lately she just hadn't had the energy. Luke's kitchen was small and a little dingy at the best of times—he wasn't much of a cook, as evidenced by the fact that the spice rack that hung over the old-fashioned gas stove was empty of spices. Instead, he used it to hold boxes of coffee and tea.

Simon sat down next to her as Luke cleared the dirty dishes off the table and dumped them into the sink. "Are you okay?" he asked in a low voice.

"I'm all right." Clary managed a smile. "I didn't expect my mom to wake up today, Simon. I have this feeling she's—waiting for something."

"Do you know what?"

"No. Just that something's missing." She looked up at Luke, but he was involved in vigorously scrubbing the plates clean in the sink. "Or someone."

Simon looked quizzically at her, then shrugged. "So it sounds like the scene at the Institute was pretty intense."

Clary shuddered. "Alec and Isabelle's mom is scary."

"What's her name again?"

"May-ris," said Clary, copying Luke's pronunciation.

"It's an old Shadowhunter name." Luke dried his hands on a dishcloth.

"And Jace decided to stay there and deal with this Inquisitor person? He didn't want to leave?" Simon said.

"It's what he has to do if he ever wants to have a life as a Shadowhunter," said Luke. "And being that—one of the Nephilim—means everything to him. I knew other Shadowhunters like him, back in Idris. If you took that away from him—"

The familiar buzz of the doorbell sounded. Luke tossed the dishcloth onto the counter. "I'll be right back."

As soon as he was out of the kitchen, Simon said, "It's really weird thinking of Luke as someone who was once a Shadowhunter. Weirder than it is thinking of him as a werewolf."

"Really? Why?"

Simon shrugged. "I've heard of werewolves before. They're sort of a known element. So he turns into a wolf once a month, so what. But the Shadowhunter thing—they're like a cult."

"They're not like a cult."

"Sure they are. Shadowhunting is their whole lives. And they look down on everyone else. They call us mundanes. Like they're not human beings. They're not friends with ordinary people, they don't go to the same places, they don't know the same jokes, they think they're above us." Simon pulled one gangly leg up and twisted the frayed edge of the hole in the knee of his jeans. "I met another werewolf today."

"Don't tell me you were hanging out with Freaky Pete at the Hunter's Moon." There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she couldn't have said exactly what was causing it. Probably free-floating stress.

"No. It was a girl," Simon said. "About our age. Named Maia."

"Maia?" Luke was back in the kitchen carrying a square white pizza box. He dropped it onto the table and Clary reached over to pop it open. The smell of hot dough, tomato sauce, and cheese reminded her how starved she was. She tore off a slice, not waiting for Luke to slide a plate across the table to her. He sat down with a grin, shaking his head.

"Maia's one of the pack, right?" Simon asked, taking a slice himself.

Luke nodded. "Sure. She's a good kid. I've had her over here a few times looking out for the bookstore while I've been at the hospital. She lets me pay her in books."

Simon looked at Luke over his pizza. "Are you low on money?"

Luke shrugged. "Money's never been important to me, and the pack looks after its own."

Clary said, "My mom always said that when we ran low on money she'd sell one of my dad's stocks. But since the guy I thought was my dad wasn't my dad, and I doubt Valentine has any stocks—"

"Your mother was selling her jewelry off bit by bit," said Luke. "Valentine had given her some of his family's pieces, jewelry that had been with the Morgensterns for generations. Even a small piece would fetch a high price at auction." He sighed. "Those are gone now—though Valentine may have recovered them from the wreckage of your old apartment."

"Well, I hope it gave her some satisfaction, anyway," Simon said. "Selling off his stuff like that." He took a third piece of pizza. It was truly amazing, Clary thought, how much teenage boys were able to eat without ever gaining weight or making themselves sick.

"It must have been weird for you," she said to Luke. "Seeing Maryse Lightwood like that, after such a long time."

"Not precisely weird. Maryse isn't that different now from how she was then—in fact, she's more like herself than ever, if that makes sense."

Clary thought it did. The way that Maryse Lightwood had looked recollected to her the slim dark girl in the photo Hodge had given her, the one with the haughty tilt to her chin. "How do you think she feels about you?" she asked. "Do you really think they hoped you were dead?"

Luke smiled. "Maybe not out of hatred, no, but it would have been more convenient and less messy for them if I had died, certainly. That I'm not just alive but am leading the downtown pack can't be something they'd hoped for. It's their job, after all, to keep the peace between Downworlders—and here I come, with a history with them and plenty of reason to want revenge. They'll be worried I'm a wild card."

"Are you?" asked Simon. They were out of pizza, so he reached over without looking and took one of Clary's nibbled crusts. He knew she hated crust. "A wild card, I mean."

"There's nothing wild about me. I'm stolid. Middle-aged."

"Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things," Clary said.

"It could be worse," Luke said. "Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels."

"You're only thirty-eight," Simon pointed out. "That's not middle-aged."

"Thank you, Simon, I appreciate that." Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh. "Though you did eat all the pizza."

"I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs.

"How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to know.

"Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this mean you're going to wolf out and eat me?"

"Certainly not." Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. "You would be stringy and hard to digest."

"But kosher," Simon pointed out cheerfully.

"I'll be sure to point any Jewish lycanthropes your way." Luke leaned his back against the sink. "But to answer your earlier question, Clary, it was strange seeing Maryse Lightwood, but not because of her . It was the surroundings. The Institute reminded me too much of the Hall of Accords in Idris—I could feel the strength of the Gray Book's runes all around me, after fifteen years of trying to forget them."

"Did you?" Clary asked. "Manage to forget them?"

"There are some things you never forget. The runes of the Book are more than illustrations. They become part of you. Part of your skin. Being a Shadowhunter never leaves you. It's a gift that's carried in your blood, and you can no more change it than you can change your blood type."