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CHAPTER EIGHT:

❝ A Fine And Private Place ❞

The cemetery was in the outskirts of Queens, where apartment buildings gave way to rows of orderly-looking Victorian houses painted gingerbread colors: pink, white, and blue. The streets were wide and mostly deserted, the avenue leading up to the cemetery unlit except by a single streetlight. It took them a short while with their steles to break in through the locked gates, and another while to find a spot hidden enough for Raphael to begin digging. It was at the top of a low hill, sheltered from the road below by a thick line of trees. Clary, Jace, Nico, and Isabelle were protected with glamour, but there was no way to hide Esme or Raphael, or to hide Simon's body, so the trees provided a welcome cover.

The sides of the hill not facing the road were thickly layered with headstones, many of them bearing a pointed Star of David at the top. They gleamed white and smooth as milk in the moonlight. In the distance was a lake, its surface pleated with glittering ripples. A nice place, Esme thought. A good place to come and lay flowers on someone's grave, to sit awhile and think about their life, what they meant to you. Not a good place to come at night, under the cover of darkness, to bury your friend in a shallow dirt grave without the benefit of a coffin or a service.

"Did he suffer?" she asked Raphael.

He looked up from his digging, leaning on the handle of the shovel like the gravedigger in Hamlet. "What?"

"Simon," she said quietly, pushing her champagne hair out of her face. "Did he suffer? Did the vampires hurt him?"

"No. The blood death is not such a bad way to die," said Raphael, his musical voice soft. "The bite drugs you. It is pleasant, like going to sleep."

A wave of dizziness passed over Clary, and for a moment she thought she might faint. "Clary." Jace's voice snapped her out of her reverie. "Come on. You don't have to watch this." He held out his hand to her. Looking past him, she could see Isabelle standing with her whip in her hand. They had wrapped Simon's body in a blanket and he lay on the ground. 

"I want to be here when he wakes up."

"I know. We'll come right back." When she didn't move, Jace took her unresisting arm and drew her away from the clearing and down the side of the hill. 

Esme, unmoving, sat down on the grass just there. She was staring at Simon's wrapped body, rocking back and forth. I'm sorry I wasn't there, I'm sorry I wasn't there, I'm sorry I wasn't there - 

It was surprisingly chilly out. For the first time this season, Esme could see her breath when she exhaled. Nico sat down next to her, witchlight in hand. It illuminated both their faces in a strange glow, softening their sharp edges.

"That mundane's a fighter," he said quietly. "He survived the vampires at the DuMort. He survived the werewolves. He survived high school, for whatever that's worth."

"He is a fighter, isn't he?" she muttered quietly to herself. Pulling her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her legs. "Look, I know you think emotions cloud judgment, and all that crap but, I . . . I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that, . . . all of that contradicts the first rule of being mundane."

"What's the first rule of being mundane?"

"That love makes you stronger. It was my mother's love for me that made her throw my father out. It's love that makes you fight harder for what you want." She gave a mirthless laugh. "I'm so stupid." Something in her voice made him look at her. Under the witchlight, her face looked just as it had when she had been angry earlier.

He wanted to say, No, you're not, but he knew that would make her defensive. Instead, he asked, "Why?"

The ends of her mouth curled meanly. "I don't think that kind of love exists, though. That's the problem with me. I'm surrounded by it, all of it, been surrounded by it all my life but I've never believed that kind of love existed. But everyone I met always said it did. But then I found you, all of you, Shadowhunters." She said the word with such mocking awe that it made Nico blink wide. "All the love you're surrounded by, you know it's not love. Valentine," she said the name like venom, "he loved like that. And everyone knew - knows - he loves like that. You see the reality of love. Love is selfish and unkind. It's cruel, and hostile and asks too much. It's too big, it's a burden. It's a knife of an infected wound."

"That's not loving," Nico protested softly, "that's ownership."

She shook her head. "I don't know the difference." I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine: her father used to love quoting the Bible.

Before Nico could say something, he spotted Alec coming over the hill and behind him Magnus. Alec held up something, bags - blood bags - and Nico immediately pointed them towards the boulder where Jace and Clary sat.

 Esme shuddered, her legs were frozen. Nico shrugged off his coat and hooked the sleeve holes over her knees. The wool was warm from body heat. Esme pulled it closer and snuggled. It smelled like mint and leather and blood - it smelled like Nico. He said, "I don't know what to say."

"Nothing," she answered, putting her head back on his shoulder, "is just as comforting."

Raphael was tamping down a large rectangle of dirt when they came back into the clearing, Jace and Clary a little ahead of Magnus and Alec, who seemed to be arguing about something. Simon's body was gone. Isabelle was sitting on the ground, her whip coiled at her ankles in a golden circle. She was shivering. "Jesus, it's cold," Clary said, pulling Isabelle's heavy coat close around her. The velvet was warm, at least. She tried to ignore the fact that the hem of it was stained with Simon's blood. "It's as if it turned to winter overnight."

"Be glad it isn't winter," said Raphael, setting the spade against the trunk of a nearby tree. "The ground freezes like iron in winter. Sometimes it is impossible to dig and the fledgling must wait months, starving underground, before it can be born."

"Is that what you call them? Fledglings?" said Clary. The word seemed wrong, too friendly somehow. It reminded her of ducklings.

"Yes," said Raphael. "It means the not-yet or newly born." He caught sight of Magnus then, and for a split second looked surprised before he wiped the expression carefully from his features. "High Warlock," he said. "I hadn't expected to see you here."

"I was curious," said Magnus, his cat eyes glittering. "I've never seen one of the Night Children rise."

Raphael glanced at Jace, who was lounging against a tree trunk. "You keep surprisingly illustrious company, Shadowhunter."

"Are you talking about yourself again?" asked Jace. He smoothed the churned dirt with the tip of a boot. "That seems boastful."

"Maybe he meant me," said Alec. Everyone looked at him in surprise. Alec so rarely made jokes. He smiled nervously. "Sorry," he said. "Nerves."

"There's no need for that," said Magnus, reaching to touch Alec's shoulder. Alec moved quickly out of range, and Magnus's outstretched hand fell to his side.

"So what do we do now?" Esme demanded, hugging herself for warmth. The cold seemed to have seeped into her very bones. Surely it was too cold for late summer.

Raphael, noticing her gesture, smiled minutely. "It is always cold at a rising," he said. "The fledgling draws strength from the living things that surround it, taking from them the energy to rise."

Clary glared at him resentfully. "You don't seem cold."

"I'm not living." He stepped back a little from the edge of the grave — Esme forced herself to think of it as a grave, since that's exactly what it was — and gestured to the others to do the same. "Make room," he said. "Simon can hardly rise if you are all standing on top of him."

They moved hastily backward. Clary found Isabelle clutching her elbow and turned to see that the other girl was white to the lips. "What's wrong?"

"Everything," Isabelle said. "Clary, maybe we should have just let him go — "

"Let him die, you mean." Clary jerked her arm out of Isabelle's grip. "Of course that's what you think. You think everyone who isn't just like you is better off dead anyway."

Isabelle's face was the picture of misery. "That isn't — "

A sound tore through the clearing, a sound, unlike any Esme, had ever heard before — a sort of pounding rhythm coming from deep underground, as if suddenly the heartbeat of the world had become audible. She clutched Nico's arm and he could feel the tremors through her body.

What's happening? Esme thought, and then the ground buckled and heaved under her. She fell to her knees. The grave was roiling like the surface of an unsteady ocean. Ripples appeared in its surface. Suddenly it burst apart, clods of dirt flying. A small mountain of dirt, like an anthill, heaved itself upward. At the center of the mountain was a hand, fingers splayed, clawing at the dirt. Knowing Esme would run, Nico pulled her to her feet and restrained her with his arms.

"Simon!" Clary tried to rush forward, but Raphael yanked her back.

"Let me go!" Esme tried to pull herself free, but Nico's grip was like steel. "Can't you see he needs our help?"

"He should do this himself," Raphael said, without loosening his hold on Clary. "It is better that way."

"It's your way! It's not mine!" Clary jerked herself out of his grip and ran toward the grave, just as it heaved upward, hurling her back to the ground. A hunched shape was forcing itself out of the hastily dug grave, fingers like filthy claws sunk deep into the earth. Its bare arms were streaked black with dirt and blood. It tore itself free of the sucking earth, crawled a few feet, and collapsed onto the ground.

"Simon," Esme whispered. Because of course it was Simon. Simon, Simon, Simon, her heart cried. Clary scrambled to her feet and ran toward him, her sneakers sinking deep into the churned earth.

"Clary!" Jace shouted. "What are you doing?"

She stumbled, her ankle twisting as her leg sank into the dirt. She fell onto her knees next to Simon, who lay as still as if he really were dead. His hair was filthy and matted with clots of dirt, his glasses gone, his T-shirt torn down the side, blood on the skin that showed under it. "Simon," she said, and reached to touch his shoulder. "Simon, are you — "

His body tensed under her fingers, every muscle tightening, his skin hard as iron.

" — all right?" she finished.

He turned his head, and she saw his eyes. They were blank, lifeless. With a sharp cry he rolled over and sprang at her, swift as a striking snake. He struck her squarely, knocking her back into the dirt. "Simon!" she shouted, but he didn't seem to hear. His face was twisted, unrecognizable as he loomed up over her, his lips curling back, and she saw his sharp canines, the fang-teeth, gleam in the moonlight like white bone needles. Esme tried to twist out of Nico's grasp but his hold was iron tight. 

Suddenly terrified, Clary kicked out at Simon, but he grabbed her shoulders and forced her back down into the dirt. His hands were bloody, the nails broken, but he was incredibly strong, stronger even than her own Shadowhunter muscles. The bones in her shoulders ground together painfully as he bent down over her — 

And was plucked away and sent flying as if he weighed no more than a pebble. Clary shot to her feet, gasping, and met Raphael's grim gaze. "I told you to stay away from him," he said, and turned to kneel down by Simon, who had landed a short distance away and was curled, twitching, on the ground.

Clary sucked in a breath. It sounded like a sob. "He doesn't know me."

"He knows you. He doesn't care." Raphael looked over his shoulder at Jace. "He is starving. He needs blood."

Jace, who had been standing white-faced and frozen at the grave's edge, stepped forward and held out the plastic bag mutely, like an offering. Raphael snatched it and tore it open. A number of plastic packets of red fluid fell out. He seized one, muttering, and tore it open with sharp nails, spattering blood down the front of his dirt-stained white shirt.

Simon, as if scenting the blood, curled up and let out a piteous wail. He was still twitching; his broken-nailed hands gouged at the dirt and his eyes were rolled back to the whites. Esme shuddered again, and Nico realized she was crying. She hadn't cried talking about her father, but this terrible thing she could not bear. Raphael held out the blood packet, letting some of the red fluid drip onto Simon's face, streaking the white skin with scarlet. "There you go," he said, almost in a croon. "Drink, little fledgling. Drink."

And Simon, who had been a vegetarian since he was ten years old, who wouldn't drink milk that wasn't organic, who fainted at the sight of needles — Simon snatched the packet of blood out of Raphael's thin brown hand and tore into it with his teeth. He swallowed the blood in a few gulps and tossed the packet aside with another wail; Raphael was ready with a second one, and pressed it into his hand. "Do not drink too fast," he cautioned. "You will make yourself sick." Simon, of course, ignored him; he had managed to get the second packet open without help and was gulping greedily at the contents. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth, down his throat, and spattered his hands with fat red drops. His eyes were closed.

Raphael turned to look at Clary. She could feel Jace staring at her too, and the others, all with identical expressions of horror and disgust. "Next time he feeds," Raphael said calmly, "it will not be quite so messy."

Messy. Esme gave a wretched sob as Clary rushed away from the scene, followed by Jace. Nico turned her away from the scene, her face buried in his neck as she silently sobbed. Esme felt haunted, engulfed in all-encompassing grief, so full of broken sharps that it cut of her breathing. Choking on her sobs, she sank to her knees and covered her face - death had never felt so sudden, so jarring, so much as if the world had stopped spinning.