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CHAPTER ONE:

❝ Pandemonium ❞

Esme had never met anything beautiful that did not cause pain. Beauty, it seemed was the beginning of terror ─ a sophisticated trap to lure prey and disdain to annihilate it. The ugliest thing about beauty was that it was a mask that, she supposed, could be used to hide the most malicious intents.

She would have never seen the wolf under her father's skin if the moon that night hadn't brought it out. Why was it so that the meanness inside her had only grown after the truth? She would have expected more from herself ─ she did. She thought she'd be afraid to turn into something like her father ─ a monster, but she couldn't understand why this oil spill of hate inside her veins had not stopped raging in a fire.

"So," Simon said, "pretty good music, eh?" 

Esme didn't reply. It was Clary's birthday and they had managed to get inside the all-ages nightclub Pandemonium to celebrate. The people inside were dancing, or what passed for it ─ a lot of swaying back and forth with occasional lunges toward the floor as if one of them had dropped a contact lens ─ in a space between a group of teenage boys in metallic corsets, and a young Asian couple who were making out passionately, their colored hair extensions tangled together like vines. A boy with a lip piercing and a teddy bear backpack was handing out free tablets of herbal ecstasy, his parachute pants flapping in the breeze from the wind machine. 

Clary, it seemed, wasn't paying much attention to their immediate surroundings ─ her curious green eyes were on still the blue-haired boy who'd talked his way into the club just before them. He was prowling through the crowd as if he were looking for something. There was something about the way he moved that . . . "I, for one," Simon went on, clueless, "am enjoying myself immensely."

This seemed unlikely. Simon, as always, stuck out at the club like a sore thumb, in jeans and an old T-shirt that said MADE IN BROOKLYN across the front. His freshly scrubbed hair was dark brown instead of green or pink, and his glasses perched crookedly on the end of his nose. He looked less as if he were contemplating the powers of darkness and more as if he were on his way to chess club. 

"Mmm-hmm." Clary agreed distracted, eyes still on the blue-haired boy.

Esme knew perfectly well that Simon had come to Pandemonium with them only because Clary liked it, that he thought it was boring. She wasn't even sure why it was that Clary liked it ─ the clothes, the music, she supposed, made it like a dream, someone else's life, not their boring real life at all.

Once, Esme had felt bad for Simon. It seemed, apart from Clary, everyone seemed to know he was in love with her. It was in the way he looked at her, in the way he talked to her, the way he'd be the happiest when she was around. But then Esme had realized that this was what it was ─ a beautiful thing: friendship, love, people; all in quiet agony over the twist in their heart. So, she had told him it wasn't worth it. He'd been devastated and angry. He'd been so mad at her that day that for the rest of the week different modes of transportation had to be used to avoid each other. Then he'd forgiven her when she'd explained why. He always did ─ he was good like that ─ beautiful like that. And Esme would have never forgiven herself if she hurt something so beautiful. So she had apologized and begged and cried, and he'd held her in his arms as she'd said she'd only known love as synonymous with pain. And he'd understood. He'd understood what she'd meant. He missed his father terribly and the torment of not being able to tell Clary how he felt sometimes became unbearable.

"I feel," Simon went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?"

Clary rolled her eyes and didn't answer. Simon hated trance music. Esme smacked her lips as a sign of annoyance and said, "Simon." The rest of her words didn't leave her lips, yet he still heard them, as she had always said: Why do you even try?

He was about to snap a reply when someone dancing collided with him. Esme could almost feel the cold drink being spilled down the front of her own sequined shirt as she watched it soak through Simon's under the club's strobing light. As he turned to examine the damage and search for the culprit, her attention drew towards Clary who had stopped dancing and was now staring straight. She followed her gaze. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, the girl in the white billowing dress shone out like a beacon. And reaching for it, the blue-haired boy.

"That boy ─ or girl ─ or person, really," said Simon, his voice hoarse over the blaring music, "spilled their tequila over me. And don't even ask me how I know it's tequila."

Oh, Esme thought, Clary. Sometimes she concluded it was because of the artist inside the redhead that seemed to seek the obscure and make it seem far more beautiful than it actually was. Sometimes she wished she could see the world through Clary's eyes ─ the stark colors, the refracting rays, the slopes, and hard lines, the softness and curves. But then again, she was happy she didn't ─ there'd be more to be afraid of, more to expect pain from if she saw more beauty. No wonder her attention was captured by the strangeness of the blue-haired boy.

Esme studied his movements, not noticing when she slowed her dancing or when she stopped altogether. He seemed to follow the girl in the white dress as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him ─ even the three dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd. Esme stared. She could just make out that the shapes were boys, tall and wearing black clothes. She couldn't have said how she knew that they were following the other boy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, the slinking grace of their movements. Something spread over her chest ─ like a spill that was impossible to clean. Apprehension coiled around the bones of her ribs.

"Meanwhile," Simon added, "I wanted to tell you that lately, I've been crossdressing. Also, Clary, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know."

The girl had reached the wall and was opening a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her, and they slipped through the door. It wasn't anything Esme hadn't seen before, a couple sneaking off to the dark corners of the club to make out-but that made it even weirder that they were being followed.

She saw clary, who was shorter than her, raising herself on tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd. The three guys had stopped at the door and seemed to be conferring with each other. One of them was blond, the other two dark-haired. The blond one reached into his jacket and drew out something long and sharp that flashed under the strobing lights. A knife.

Esme gasped. Clary seemed to come around at the same time. "Simon!" she shouted and seized his arm.

"What?" Simon looked alarmed. "I'm not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn't a very attractive woman, for her age."

"Simon!" Esme protested and the urgency in her voice seemed to shut up his rambling.

"Do you see those guys?" Clary pointed wildly, almost hitting a curvy black girl who was dancing nearby. The girl shot her an evil look. "Sorry ─ sorry!" Clary turned back to Simon. "Do you see those two guys over there? By that door?"

Simon squinted, then shrugged. "I don't see anything."

"There are three of them," Esme specified, indirectly agreeing with Clary.

"They were following the guy with the blue hair ─ "

Simon cut Clary off. "The one you thought was cute?"

"Yes, but that's not the point. The blond one pulled a knife."

"Are you sure?" Simon stared harder, shaking his head. "I still don't see anyone."

"I'm sure."

Suddenly all business, Simon squared his shoulders. "I'll get one of the security guards. You two stay here." He strode away, pushing through the crowd.

They turned just in time to see the blond boy slip through the no admittance door, his friends right on his heels. Esme looked around; Simon was still trying to shove his way across the dance floor, but he wasn't making much progress. Even if they yelled now, no one would hear them, and by the time Simon got back, something terrible might already have happened. Biting hard on her lower lip, Clary started to wriggle through the crowd. And with one impatient groan later, so did Esme.

Clary pushed the door to the storage room open and stepped inside. Esme took a preparatory breath ─ she didn't know why but something in her said she'd need it. Clary stood very still in the doorway and Esme, pressing herself closer, looked inside over her shoulder.

For a moment she thought it was deserted. The only windows were high up and barred; faint street noise came through them, the sound of honking cars and squealing brakes. The room smelled like old paint, and a heavy layer of dust covered the floor, marked by smeared shoe prints. Clary passed her a bewildered look that said, There's no one in here. It was cold in the room, despite the August heat outside. Her back was icy with sweat. 

Clary took a step forward, tangling her feet in electrical wires. She pulled her feet, trying to free them before Esme crouched down to help. She untangled the twisted cables to free her sneaker from the ─ and heard voices. A girl's laugh, a boy answering sharply. Her head snapped up, wide blue eyes meeting Clary's.

When she straightened up, she saw them. It was as if they had sprung into existence between one blink of her eyes and the next. There was the girl in her long white dress, her black hair hanging down her back like damp seaweed. The three boys were with her ─ the tall ones with black hair like hers, and the smaller, fair one, whose hair gleamed like brass in the dim light coming through the windows high above. The blond boy was standing with his hands in his pockets, facing the punk kid, who was tied to a pillar with what looked like piano wire, his hands stretched behind him, his legs bound at the ankles. His face was pulled tight with pain and fear. 

Heart hammering in her chest, Clary pulled on Esme's hand and ducked behind the nearest concrete pillar, peering around it. They watched as the fair-haired boy paced back and forth, his arms now crossed over his chest. 

"So," he said. "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you."

Your kind? Esme wondered what he was talking about as she exchanged glances with Clary.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly.

"He means other demons," said the dark-haired boy, the middle in height of the three boys, speaking for the first time. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?"

The boy tied to the pillar turned his face away, his mouth working. 

"Demons," drawled the blond boy, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension ─ "

"That's enough, Jace," said the girl.

"Isabelle's right," agreed the tallest boy. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics ─ or demonology."

They're crazy, Clary thought and saw Esme gesture the same ─ her index finger drawing invisible circles over her temple. Actually crazy.

The blond one, Jace, raised his head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something threatening and challenging. "Isabelle, Nico, and Alec think I talk too much," he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"

The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Valentine is."

Jace glanced back at the tallest boy (Nico? Alec?), who shrugged. "Valentine's in the ground," Jace said. 

"The thing's just toying with us." Isabelle tossed her hair. "Kill it, Jace," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything."

Jace raised his hand, and Esme saw dim light spark off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones. The bound boy gasped. "Valentine is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it ─ I know it ─ I can tell you where he is ─ " Rage flared suddenly in Jace's icy eyes. 

"By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you ─ " Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there."

Esme saw the beginning of a horror movie ─ or a romance one, really it was all just the same to her. Pain, pain, and pain. She saw the glint of the light as it bent about the knife in the blond's grasp, saw the bounds cause burns around the blue-haired boy, saw the necklace around the girl's throat pulse like a separate, disembodied heart. She saw all this but never felt Clary slip away from beside her, only heard her voice: loud and clear as she cried, "Stop!" Esme felt the preparatory breath she had taken get lodged in her throat. "You can't do this." She pressed herself harder against the pillar to hide from view and swallowed harshly.

Jace whirled, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle, Nico, and Alec turned along with him, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired boy hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping. 

It was the tallest boy who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from Clary to his companions as if they might know what she was doing there.

"It's a girl," Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one." So he was Alec, and the girl was his sister.

He took a step closer to Clary, squinting as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. Clary cast a self-preservational glace towards Esme who gritted her teeth and gestured her to come back into hiding.

"A mundie girl," Alec said, half to himself. "And she can see us."

"Of course I can see you," Clary said. "I'm not blind, you know." 

"Oh, but you are," said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. "You just don't know it." He straightened up. "You'd better get out of here if you know what's good for you."

"We're not going anywhere," Clary said. "If we do, you'll kill him." She pointed at the boy with blue hair.

"We?" asked the girl and Esme winced behind the pillar. Clary cast a glance towards her, pushing her to slowly inch out of hiding. Their eyebrows rose, but the surprise had already been half-out.

"That's true," admitted Jace to Clary's protest, twirling the knife between his fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"

"Be ─ because ─," Clary spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people."

"You're right," said Jace. "You can't go around killing people." 

He pointed at the boy with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Esme wondered if he'd fainted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster."

"Jace," said Isabelle warningly. "That's enough."

"You're crazy," Esme said, backing away from him and pulling on Clary's arm. "We've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second."

"She's lying," said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. "Jace, do you ─ " 

He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar and flung himself on Jace. They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Clary backed up taking Esme with her, wanting to run. But Esme's feet caught on a loop of wiring and she went down, taking Clary along, knocking the breath out of her chest. 

She could hear Isabelle shrieking. Rolling over, Esme saw the blue-haired boy sitting on Jace's chest. Blood gleamed at the tips of his razorlike claws. Isabelle, Nico, and Alec were running toward them, Isabelle brandishing a whip in her hand. The blue-haired boy slashed at Jace with claws extended. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The blue-haired boy lunged again ─ and Isabelle's whip came down across his back. 

He shrieked and fell to the side. Swift as a flick of Isabelle's whip, Jace rolled over. There was a blade gleaming in his hand. He sank the knife into the blue-haired boy's chest. Esme gave an audible gasp, her hand moving instinctively to cover her mouth. Blackish liquid exploded around the hilt. The boy arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting. With a grimace Jace stood up. His black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. He looked down at the twitching form at his feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid. The blue-haired boy's eyes flickered open. His eyes, fixed on Jace, seemed to burn. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all." Jace seemed to snarl. The boy's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller untilhe vanished entirely. 

Clary scrambled to her feet, kicking free of the electrical wiring. She grabbed for Esme, whatever she could hold, and hauled the blonde to her feet by her shirt. They began to back away. None of them were paying attention to them. Alec had reached Jace and was holding his arm, pulling at the sleeve, probably trying to get a good look at the wound. The girls turned to run ─ and found her way blocked by Isabelle, whip in hand. The gold length of it was stained with dark fluid. She flicked it towards Clary, and the end wrapped itself around her wrist and jerked tight. Clary gasped with pain and surprise. "Stupid little mundie," Isabelle said between her teeth. "You could have gotten Jace killed."

"He's crazy," Clary said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy."

Esme reached for the whip to free Clary, both her hands going to wrap around the golden rope when her right one seemed to jerk with a movement as fast as a scorpion's stinger. The next she knew, her arm was restrained to the wall, a knife buried just under. The ring knife gleaming silver pinned the excess of her sleeve (which wasn't much) and she could feel the warmth of the liquid starting to soak the fabric over where it had nicked her. She followed the trajectory of the throw and found Nico, standing cautiously a few feet away, as if waiting for her to make a move. In her peripheral vision, she saw a metal glint in the hand behind his back.

"What do you think you are, vigilante killers?" Clary went on as she studied the knife wedged below Esme's arm. "The police ─ "

"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Jace.

Cradling his arm, he picked his way across the cable-strewn floor toward the girls. Alec followed behind him, face screwed into a scowl. Esme glanced at the spot where the boy had disappeared from and said nothing. There wasn't even a smear of blood there ─ nothing to show that the boy had ever existed. "They return to their home dimensions when they die," said Jace. "In case you were wondering."

"Jace," Alec hissed. "Be careful."

Jace drew his arm away. A ghoulish freckling of blood marked his face. He made Esme's heart go very still. He was no doubt beautiful with his wide-spaced, light-colored eyes, and that tawny gold hair. And no doubt filled with malice, if killing was what he did. "They can see us, Alec," he said. "They already know too much."

"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle demanded, her whip still around Clary's wrist.

"Let her go," Jace said quietly. Isabelle shot him a surprised, almost angry look, but didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing Clary's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist and her eyes flitted towards Esme who still had her arm pinned against the wall like an insect to styrofoam. Jace seemed to notice the green movement of her eyes and said, "You just keep looking for excuses to use your knife, Nico."

Nico said nothing, even when Esem glared at him with venom in her eyes. He rocked back on his heels as if wanting to retreat into the shadows that seemed to reach for him. His narrowed eyes stayed still on her as Isabelle wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the knife. First Esme thought there was malice in them or loathing, maybe at least a little bit of bitterness. She imagined those would be much better than the unabashed curiousness that seemed to shine in his raven eyes. She felt a sting on her arm and hissed as Isabelle pulled away from the knife and in the same fluid motion tossed it back to Nico whose hand, it seemed had already reached out to grab it. Esme tried to follow the knife but it was already back where it was supposed to be, no evidence of its existence other than the small amount of blood that stained her sleeve. She brought her fingers to where the knife had torn through and wondered how the hell she was going to get out of there. 

"Maybe we should bring them back with us," Alec said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to them."

"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," said Isabelle. "She's a mundie."

"Or is she?" said Jace softly. His quiet tone was worse than Isabelle's snapping or Alec's anger, and his interest seemed solely to be directed towards Clary. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you ─ "

"My name is not 'little girl,'" Clary interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about." 

Don't you? said a voice in the back of Esme's head. You saw that boy vanish into thin air. She closed her eyes, her lips a thin line; she knew who came next. No, said another voice. She'd always hated this voice. The voice of her father. You're just lonely. Without any preamble, it had declared such a thought. Esme couldn't even bear to argue. She started in exhaustion, "I don't believe in ─ in demons, or whatever you ─ " 

"Clary?" It was Simon's voice. "Es?" They whirled around. He was standing by the storage room door. One of the burly bouncers who'd been stamping hands at the front door was next to him. "Are you guys okay?" He peered at them through the gloom. "Why are you in here by yourselves? What happened to the guys ─ you know, the ones with the knives?" 

Esme stared at him, then looked behind her, where Jace, Isabelle, Nico, and Alec stood, Jace still in his bloody shirt with the knife in his hand. He grinned and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. Clearly, he wasn't surprised that neither Simon nor the bouncer could see them. Somehow neither was Clary. Esme, on the other hand, was sure her ears were buzzing and the cut on her arm stung. Slowly she turned back to Simon, knowing how she must look to him, standing alone in a damp storage room, her feet tangled in bright plastic wiring cables, talking to air. 

"I thought they went in here," Clary said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." She glanced from Simon, whose expression was changing from worried to embarrassed, to the bouncer, who just looked annoyed. "It was a mistake." Behind them, Isabelle giggled.

"I don't believe it," Simon said stubbornly as Clary, standing at the curb, tried desperately to hail a cab. Street cleaners had come down Orchard while they were inside the club, and the street was glossed black with oily water. 

"I know," she agreed. "You'd think there'd be some cabs. Where is everyone going at midnight on a Sunday?" She turned back to him, shrugging. 

Esme, trying to quieten the voice of her father, asked, "You think we'd have better luck on Houston?"

"Not the cabs," Simon said to both of them. "You ─ I don't believe you. I don't believe those guys with the knives just disappeared." 

Esme sniffed and pressed the inside of her arm against her body, hiding the wound. 

Clary sighed.  "Maybe there weren't any guys with knives, Simon. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing."

"Both of you?" Simon said accusingly. "No way." He raised his hand over his head, but the oncoming taxis whizzed by him, spraying dirty water. "I saw your faces when I came into that storage room. You looked seriously freaked out like you'd seen a ghost."

Esme thought of Nico with his curious raven eyes. She glanced down at her forearm, a thin red line that still was letting blood where Nico's knife had cut. No, not a ghost, she thought. A hollow feeling took home in her chest ─ a feeling that left a blank emptiness with nothing to fill it. "It was just a mistake," she said wearily. She wondered why they weren't telling him the truth. Except, of course, that he'd think they were crazy. 

"Well, it was a hell of an embarrassing mistake," Simon said. He glanced back at the club, where a thin line still snaked out the door and halfway down the block. "I doubt they'll ever let us back into Pandemonium."

"What do you care? You hate Pandemonium." Clary raised her hand again as a yellow shape sped toward them through the fog. This time, though, the taxi screeched to a halt at their corner, the driver laying into his horn as if he needed to get their attention. 

"Finally we get lucky." Esme yanked the taxi door open and slid onto the plastic-covered backseat. Simon followed, then Clary. Inhaling the familiar New York cab smell of old cigarette smoke, leather, and hair spray, she said, "I don't care if they don't let me in. I'm never coming back here again."

"We're going to Brooklyn," Simon said to the cabbie, and then he turned to Esme. Without warning, he'd taken her left hand in his and squeezed it tight. It to this day unnerved Esme how Simon knew when she needed words and when she didn't. Right now, she was only thankful the wound was on her other arm. She let a small smile slip on her lips as a way of assurance before he turned to Clary. "Look, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

Clary hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Sure, Simon," she said. "I know I can." She slammed the cab door shut behind her, and the taxi took off into the night.