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CHAPTER FIVE:

❝ The Circle And The Brotherhood ❞

Esme understood. The ghost on his face was something so familiar yet so different. The killers of his father roamed free and he was bound to never get his vengeance by the mere definition of good and bad. In her mind, she had already had a funeral for her very alive father. Was she worse than him? No, not really. Did it make her bad? Maybe. There was a dead father somewhere in her and he was digging the grave for her decency.

Clary stepped forward to touch Jace's arm, say something, anything ─ what did you say to someone who'd just seen his father's killers? Her hesitation turned out not to matter; Jace shrugged her touch off as if it stung. "We should go," he said, stalking out of the office and into the living room. Clary, Simon, and Esme hurried after him. "We don't know when Luke might come back." 

They left through the back entrance, Jace using his stele to lock up behind them, and made their way out onto the silent street. The moon hung like a locket over the city, casting pearly reflections on the water of the East River. The distant hum of cars going by over the Williamsburg Bridge filled the humid air with a sound like beating wings. Simon said, "Does anyone want to tell me where we're going?"

Esme raised her right hand timidly, "I'd like to know that, too."

"To the L train," said Jace calmly.

"You've got to be kidding me," Simon said, blinking. "Demon slayers take the subway?"

"It's faster than driving."

"I thought it'd be something cooler, like a van with 'Death to Demons' painted on the outside, or . . ." 

Jace didn't even bother to interrupt. Clary shot Jace a sideways look. Sometimes, when Jocelyn was really angry about something or was in one of her upset moods, she would get what Clary called "scary-calm." It was a calm that made Clary think of the deceptive hard sheen office just before it cracked under your weight. Jace was scary-calm. His face was expressionless, but something burned at the backs of his tawny eyes. "Simon," she said. "Enough."

Simon shot her a look as if to say, Whose side are you on? but Clary ignored him. She was still watching Jace as they turned onto Kent Avenue.

Esme's phone vibrated in her pocket. When she looked, no one else had seemed to have heard it. She fetched it out, the screen lighting with a message from her mother's caretaker that said she had made dinner for the night and that her mother had been asking for her. The dinner leftover was in the oven if she wanted to heat it whenever she came back.

Esme shot her a quick thank you text before shoving it back in her pocket. The lights of the bridge behind them lit her hair to an unlikely halo. She wondered if it was wrong that she was glad in some way that there was someone who was around her mother when she wasn't. She wondered if it was wrong that she wasn't around her mother when she needed her.

"Everything okay?" It was Simon. She darted her eyes to his abruptly at the voice. Under the streetlights, he looked strange, shadows playing tricks. "Who was it?"

"Uh, Rose," she said. Her mother's caretaker. Simon's eyebrows crinkled in anticipation, Clary put a delicate arm on Esme's shoulder at the mention. None of which went unseen by Jace. For all the faults her father gave her, she was still her mother's daughter ─ she would swallow herself whole before giving up her aches and pains. "It was nothing. Dinner."

"You live here?" Simon stood staring up at the old cathedral, with its broken-in windows and doors sealed with yellow police tape. "But it's a church."

Jace reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a brass key on the end of a chain. It looked like the sort of key one might use to open an old chest in an attic. Esme watched him, curious as ever. 

"We find it useful to inhabit hallowed ground."

"I get that but, no offense, this place is a dump," Simon said, looking dubiously at the bent iron fence that surrounded the ancient building, the trash piled up beside the steps.

Esme jutted her bottom lip out. It happened so fast yet so slow. In the blink of an eye, in the flutter of a hummingbird's wing. She felt her lashes brush under her eyes momentarily without registering, like always, like every other blink, and then she saw it: soaring spires of the cathedral, the dull gleam of the leaded windows, the brass plate fixed to the stone wall beside the door, the Institute's name etched into it. It was breathtaking and an exhilarated huff left her lips. She said, "No, it's isn't." A secret smile. "This place isn't a dump at all." Her eyes were shining with awe, wide as she tracked her gaze up, up, up till the top of the spires, her lips parted.

"It's a glamour, Simon," Clary said. "It doesn't really look like this."

"If this is your idea of glamour, I'm having second thoughts about letting you make me over."

Jace fitted the key into the lock, glancing over his shoulder at Simon. "I'm not sure you're quite sensible of the honor I'm doing you," he said. "You'll be the first mundane who has ever been inside the Institute."

"What about Esme?"

"She is a mundane, yes, but she has the Sight."

"Probably the smell keeps the rest of them away."

"Ignore him," Clary said to Jace and elbowed Simon in the side. "He always says exactly what comes into his head. No filters."

"Filters are for cigarettes and coffee," Simon muttered under his breath as they went inside. "Two things I could use right now, incidentally."

Esme thought longingly of coffee as they made their way up a winding set of stone stairs, each one carved with a glyph. She thought she recognized some of them ─ they tantalized her sight, the way half-heard words of couples fighting outside coffee shops in a foreign language sometimes tantalized her hearing as if by just concentrating harder she could force some meaning out of them. The four of them reached the elevator and rode up in silence. She was still thinking about coffee, big mugs of coffee that more milk than coffee grounds, the way her mother used to make in the mornings. A tired, guilty sigh left her lips. This was why she had been tugging on the idea of no going to college. She couldn't leave her mother for hours without feeling as if she had killed something innocent. How would she be able to leave her for months?

The elevator came to a hissing stop, and they were in an entryway. Jace shrugged off his jacket, threw it over the back of a nearby chair, and whistled through his teeth. In a few seconds, a blue Persian cat appeared, slinking low to the ground, his yellow eyes gleaming in the dusty air. "Church," Jace said, kneeling down to stroke the cat's gray head. "Where's Alec, Church? Where's Hodge?" Church arched his back and meowed. Esme knitted her eyebrows. How the hell was a cat supposed to answer that? Jace, unfazed continued. "Are they in the library?" He stood up, and Church shook himself, trotted a little way down the corridor, and glanced back over his shoulder. Jace followed the cat as if this were the most natural thing in the world, indicating that Clary, Esme, and Simon were to fall into step behind him with a wave of his hand.

"I don't like cats," Simon said, his shoulder bumping Clary's as they maneuvered the narrow hallway.

"It's unlikely," Jace said, "knowing Church, that he likes you, either."

They were passing through one of the corridors that were lined with bedrooms. Simon's eyebrows rose. "How many people live here, exactly?"

"It's an institute," Clary said. "A place where Shadowhunters can stay when they're in the city. Like a sort of combination safe haven and research facility."

"I thought it was a church."

"It's inside a church."

"Because that's not confusing." 

"It isn't," Esme pushed. But she knew why he was being like this. She could practically hear the nerves under his flippant tone. Clary reached down instead of shushing him and took his hand, winding her fingers through his cold ones. "I know it's weird, you guys," she said quietly, "but you just have to go along with it. Trust me."

Simon's dark eyes were serious. "I trust you," he said. "I don't trust him." He cut his glance toward Jace, who was walking a few paces ahead of them, apparently conversing with the cat. Esme wondered what they were talking about. Politics? Opera? The high price of tuna?

"Well, try," she said. "Right now he's the best chance I'm going to have of finding my mom." 

A little shudder passed over Simon. "This place feels not right to me," he whispered.

Esme, in a way, understood what he meant. This place felt alien ─ as if from a dream. A secret dream ─ a dream of another life, of swords and battles and warriors and glass cities. A strange feeling washed over her ─ she'd seen this somewhere, known this somewhere. In another life, in a different, simpler life, maybe she'd chose to be one of these invisible people who killed demons and wore black as a hobby.

"You don't have to stay with me," Clary said, though Esme had overheard her fighting Jace on the train for the right to keep them with her, pointing out that after their three days of watching Luke, they might well know something that would be useful to them once they had a chance to break it down in detail.

"Yes," Simon said, "I do."

"We both do," Esme added quietly and ran her fingers through her tangled hair as they turned through a doorway and found themselves inside a kitchen. It was an enormous kitchen, and unlike the rest of the Institute, it was all modern, with steel counters and glassed-in shelves holding rows of crockery. Next to a red cast-iron stove stood Isabelle, a round spoon in her hand, her dark hair pinned up on top of her head. Though the red pendant still winked at her throat, her dark spiraling tattoos were gone and her skin was as radiant as the moon.

Steam was rising from the pot, and ingredients were strewn everywhere ─ tomatoes, chopped garlic, and onions, strings of dark-looking herbs, grated piles of cheese, some shelled peanuts, a handful of olives, and a whole fish, its eye staring glassily upward.

"I'm making soup," Isabelle said, waving a spoon at Jace. "Are you hungry?"

She glanced behind him then, her dark gaze taking in Simon and Esme as well as Clary. "Oh, my God," she said with finality. "You brought more mundie here? Hodge is going to kill you."

Simon cleared his throat. "I'm Simon," he said. 

Isabelle ignored him. "JACE WAYLAND," she said. "Explain yourself."

Jace was glaring at the cat. "I told you to bring me to Alec! Backstabbing Judas."

Church rolled onto his back, purring contentedly. "Don't blame Church," Isabelle said. "It's not his fault Hodge is going to kill you." She plunged the spoon back into the pot. Esme wondered what exactly peanut-fish-olive-tomato soup tasted like.

"I had to bring them," Jace said. "Isabelle ─ today I saw two of the men who killed my father."

Isabelle's shoulders tightened, but when she turned around, she looked more upset than surprised. "I don't suppose he's one of them?" she asked, pointing her spoon at Simon.

To Esme's surprise, Simon said nothing to this. He was too busy staring at Isabelle, rapt and open-mouthed. Of course, Esme quirked a barely amused eyebrow. Isabelle was exactly Simon's type ─ tall, glamourous, and beautiful. Come to think of it, maybe that was everyone's type.

"Of course not," Jace said. "Do you think he'd be alive now if he were?"

Isabelle cast an indifferent look at Simon. "I suppose not," she said, absently dropping a piece of fish on the floor. Church fell on it ravenously.

"No wonder he brought us here," said Jace disgustedly. "I can't believe you've been stuffing him with fish again. He's looking distinctly podgy."

"He does not look podgy. Besides, none of the rest of you ever eat anything. I got this recipe from a water sprite at the Chelsea Market. He said it was delicious ─ "

"If you knew how to cook, maybe I would eat," Jace muttered. 

Isabelle froze, her spoon poised dangerously. "What did you say?"

Jace edged toward the fridge. "I said I'm going to look for a snack to eat."

"That's what I thought you said." Isabelle returned her attention to the soup. Simon continued to stare at Isabelle. Clary dropped her backpack on the floor with a thump and followed Jace to the refrigerator. 

"I can't believe you're eating," she hissed.

"What should I be doing instead?" he inquired with maddening calm. 

Esme, inching closer, asked, "Is there anything good?" Her stomach grumbled as if to assert the point. Jace threw her an edged glance before returning to the inside of the fridge which was filled with milk cartons whose expiration dates reached back several weeks, and plastic Tupperware containers labeled with masking tape littered in red ink: HODGE'S. DO NOT EAT.

"Wow, he's like a crazy roommate," Clary observed, momentarily diverted.

"What, Hodge? He just likes things in order." Jace took one of the containers out of the fridge and opened it. "Hmm. Spaghetti."

"Don't ruin your appetite," Isabelle called.

"That," said Jace, kicking the fridge door shut and seizing two forks from a drawer, "is exactly what I intend to do." He looked at Clary. "Want some?" She shook her head. He shrugged and handed the other fork to Esme who took it gratefully doing her best to avoid Clary's furious stare.

"Of course not," he said around a mouthful, "you ate all those sandwiches."

As Esme dug into the food with her fork, Clary said, "It wasn't that many sandwiches." She glanced over at Simon, who appeared to have succeeded in engaging Isabelle in conversation. "Can we go find Hodge now?"

"You seem awfully eager to get out of here."

"Don't you want to tell him what we saw?"

"I haven't decided yet." Jace set the container down and thoughtfully licked spaghetti sauce off his knuckle. 

Through a mouthful, Esme complained, "Dude!"

He ignored her, "But if you want to go so badly ─ "

"I do."

"Fine." He seemed awfully calm. He glanced at Esme, reaching for another bite, and slapped her hand. The fork almost fell and she looked up to glare at him. He pointed his finger at her as if he was threatening and he said, "Don't eat all of it." She grumbled under her breath as she stabbed the lump of spaghetti with her fork.

"Where are you going?" Simon looked up as they reached the door. Jagged bits of dark hair fell into his eyes; he looked stupidly dazed, Clary thought unkindly, as if someone had hit him across the back of the head with a two-by-four.

"To find Hodge," she said. "I need to tell him about what happened at Luke's."

Isabelle looked up. "Are you going to tell him that you saw those men, Jace? The ones that ─ "

"I don't know." He cut her off. Something in his voice made Esme stop eating and look up, the fork still in her mouth. "So keep it to yourself for now."

She shrugged. "All right. Are you going to come back? Do you want any soup?"

"No," said Jace.

"Do you think Hodge will want any soup?"

"No one wants any soup."

"I want some soup," Simon said.

"No, you don't," said Jace. "You just want to sleep with Isabelle."

Simon was appalled. "That is not true."

"How flattering," Isabelle murmured into the soup, but she was smirking.

"Oh, yes it is," said Jace. "Go ahead and ask her ─ then she can turn you down and the rest of us can get on with our lives while you fester in miserable humiliation." He snapped his fingers. "Hurry up, mundie boy, we've got work to do." Simon looked away, flushed with embarrassment. 

Clary, who a moment ago would have been meanly pleased, felt a rush of anger toward Jace. "Leave him alone," she snapped. "There's no need to be sadistic just because he isn't one of you."

"One of us," said Jace, but the sharp look had gone out of his eyes. "I'm going to find Hodge. Come along or not, it's your choice." The kitchen door swung shut behind him, leaving Clary alone with Simon, Esme, and Isabelle. 

Isabelle ladled some of the soup into a bowl and pushed it across the counter towards Simon without looking at him. She was still smirking, though. The soup was a dark green color, studded with floating brown things.

"I'm going with Jace," Clary said. "Simon . . . ?"

"Mmgnstayhr," he mumbled, looking at his feet.

"What?"

"I'm going to stay here." Simon parked himself on a stool. "I'm hungry."

"Fine." Clary's throat felt tight as if she'd swallowed something either very hot or very cold. She quickly looked at Esme who ducked her head and dropped the fork, gesturing she did want to go with her.

Clary stalked out of the kitchen with Esme following her with rapid footsteps and Church slinking at the blonde's feet like a cloudy gray shadow. In the hallway, Jace was twirling one of the seraph blades between his fingers. He pocketed it when he saw them. "Kind of you to leave the lovebirds to it." 

Clary frowned at him. "Why are you always such an asshat?"

"An asshat?" Jace looked as if he were about to laugh.

"What you said to Simon ─ "

"I was trying to save him some pain. Isabelle will cut out his heart and walk all over it in high-heeled boots. That's what she does to boys like that."

"Is that what she did to you?" Clary said, but Jace only shook his head before turning to Church.

"Hodge," he said. "And really Hodge this time. Bring us anywhere else, and I'll make you into a tennis racket." The Persian snorted and slunk down the hall ahead of them. 

Esme said, "Do you think he understands you?"

"Oh, he understands me, alright."

"Jace," Clary said suddenly.

He looked at her. "What?"

"I'm sorry. For snapping at you."

He chuckled. "Which time?"

"You snap at me, too, you know."

"I know," he said, surprising her. "There's something about you that's so ─ "

"Irritating?"

"Infuriating?" Esme suggested.

"Unsettling," Jace said.

A moment later, Clary asked, "Does Isabelle always make dinner for you?" she asked.

"No, thank God. Most of the time the Lightwoods are here and Maryse ─ that's Isabelle, Alec, and Nico's mother ─ she cooks for us. She's an amazing cook." He looked dreamy the way Simon had looked gazing at Isabelle over the soup.

"Then how come she never taught Isabelle?" They were passing through the music room now where shadows had gathered thickly in the corners.

"Because," Jace said slowly, and under his voice flowed a melody, "it's only been recently that women have been Shadowhunters along with men." Someone was playing music. "I mean, there have always been women in the Clave ─ mastering the runes, creating weaponry, teaching the Killing Arts ─ but only a few were warriors, ones with exceptional abilities. They had to fight to be trained."

Esme fell back, lingering, the airy tunes teasing her ears. It was a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes by a waterfall. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale gray. Each side of the corridor was lined with closed doors. She glanced over her shoulder where Jace and Clary, still conversing were being led away by Church.

The sound she was following grew louder. Now she could identify it as the sound of a piano being played delicately and carefully, as if afraid of a mistake, though she couldn't identify the tune. Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A covered harp occupied the center of the room.

Nico was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving carefully over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweater that seemed to have unraveled at more than a few places. His tousled black hair was swept to one side but stuck up defiantly around his head. She hung over the doorway like a shadow, watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys. Listening to him play was like discovering an eagle in the wild. It was tumblingly bewitching. She always paid attention to fingers rather than faces because they told so much more. People remembered to guard their faces. They forgot their hands. Her own were small though in comparison to his long, wiry ones, jumping from one to the next as if gliding through the air.

She had always wanted to be the kind of person who could play the Moonlight Sonata. She buried her failure in this, as she buried all her failures, in the hollow grave in her chest. She must have made some noise, because he twisted around on the stool, blinking into the shadows. "Alec?" he said. "Is that you?"

"It's not Alec." She stepped farther into the room. "It's me." 

Piano keys jangled as he got to his feet. "What are you doing here?" His face was sharp, with angular features and a watchful expression. He had large black doe eyes, thick eyelashes. His jet black hair spilled like oil, hanging over his forehead. He was tall and slender, emphasizing his height even more. The way he stood, his shoulders curved in, hanging low and the sweater hung loosely over his frame, so much so that Esme wondered if it was even his size. His eyes were inquisitive again, big doe eyes that seemed to observe and judge everything so innocently ─ take in the surrounding as if they were afraid there was a predator nearby, ready to attack.

She took a breath, made sure enough oxygen reached her head, and cleared them off their thought. "Jace brought us here," she said.

"Us?"

"Simon and me."

His eyes slit, challenging. "He would've never."

She cracked. "Clary insisted."

"That girl . . . " he said under his breath with frustration and something else, something twisted. She wandered, admiring the instruments. Nico followed her with those eyes, those grasping doe eyes, those eyes that seemed to suck out truths from beneath the grave. He hadn't been able to sleep that night ─ the first night he'd seen her. When they had got back Isabelle had returned him his knife, he'd sat in his bed for hours, his head bowed, twisting the blade over and over. On the edge, there had been dried rust-colored blood. Her angry, accusing, unbelieving blue eyes had haunted him the whole night. And then, Alec had jostled in, his expression shattered, and all had been forgotten in an attempt to comfort his twin brother.

He watched her now, springing from one adorned instrument to the next with curious eyes ─ something he noticed the blue of her eyes held well, curiousness. She looked like a pixie, small and blonde. Unlike Jace's hair which was more tawny blonde with hints of brass and gold in them, hers had more white. Champagne blonde hair hung over her shoulder. In a baby pink sweater that looked handwoven and acid wash jeans, she skipped around from strumming the harp to examining the cello. When she turned, the edges of his mouth itched. He said, "You've got spaghetti sauce on your chin, did you know that?"

Her hand went immediately to her chin to wipe, embarrassed and half-angry at Jace and Clary for not telling her. "Uh . . . "

"What are doing, wandering the halls alone?"

"Well," she started forward, "I was accompanying them, looking for Hodge ─ "

"He's in the greenhouse, you could've asked me."

"There's a greenhouse?" Her eyes were wide as they could get. She could not believe such a place existed. A beautiful place. Her heart stopped. No, beautiful caused pain. She swallowed, it was hard ─ he was watching her with the same raven eyes he'd watched before in Pandemonium where shadows had seemed to reach for him to embrace. She ran her hand over the closed lid of the piano. "Anyways, I heard you playing."

"So you just," he seemed to search for words as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, "snuck off?" Standing like this, he looked even leaner. He was as tall as, well, tall, and he tried to make himself smaller. Tried to seem less intimidating ─ donning softer materials in his choice of ─ clothes, sitting in bigger chairs, or even in his posture ─ but it was hardly successful. Even though Alec and he had the same build he seemed to fit into it more than Nico did. Nico seemed like someone had taken a hanger and put some clothes on it.

"Apparently," Esme said smiling mischievously and leaned against the piano. "Did you learn somewhere?"

"A little, from Jace," he said. "I'm not as good as him, but ─ " Growling cut him off. Embarrassed, Esme glanced down at her stomach.

"Sorry," she apologized. "Jace stopped me from eating the rest of the spaghetti." She pointed around her face and he nodded understandingly. She glanced around the room. "I like this, it's so . . . " Whimsical, she thought, as a fairytale come to life. Like golden stardust had sprinkled over dreams and sprung them into reality.

Of course, you like it, Nico thought. You only get to see the pretty parts. And before you know it, you'll be out of here, recounting someone about a dream you once had of the grandest music room. You won't have to see the blood spilled or hear the bones break. Won't have to clean guilty blood off your blade every night. You won't have to live this life. Everything from the outside seemed more desirable. Like a life of normalcy seemed more desirable to him. Nico closed his eyes and shook his head. "You should see the library, then," he said, monotone all of a sudden. She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. His face was white, skin stretched thin over his bones as if he had seen a ghost. He spoke like that too, words choking out of his neck as if he was being strangled.

Nico felt sick. There was something in her eyes that was so familiar to him, he'd seen it in the reflection of every polished surface of these instruments littered around the room. An eye for the beautiful. In this life he lived of killing and hunting and slaying there was so little time to appreciate the beautiful. It was so simple for them, mundanes, to get lost in things. They did it so easily, too. Losing themselves was one of the things mundanes were good at ─ submitting themselves to beauty. And beauty was terror. He watched her nose scrunch and her lips move as she asked, "Are you okay? You look pale."

"It's the light," he said almost automatically. A voice shouted in his head, She's a mundane. She was mundane.

Esme frowned. She had hoped the next words would have been an apology. She was hoping this whitening on his face had been because of the realization of him stabbing her with his knife. Well, not stabbing, but whatever, that wasn't the point. Her bottom lips jutted, she stared at him and he stared right back, his eyes lighting with a fire behind them. Her own reciprocated, looking like the sky burst open. His lips pursed wire-thin, he said indignantly, "You shouldn't be here."

"Why?" she rebutted haughtily. "Is this room prohibited?"

"No," he almost snarled. "This is no place for mundanes." Then he turned on his heels and vanished, leaving Esme standing alone among beautiful things, bubbling in anger.