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CHAPTER TWELVE:

❝ The Mortal Cup ❞

Esme didn't remember when she reached back home. She didn't remember when she didn't greet her mother with kindness. She didn't remember her mother asking her what had happened. She didn't remember when they had started fighting, nor how nor why. The only thing she knew was she was screaming and her throat was aching.

"Oh, you," her mother said with the same viciousness she had passed on to her. "You don't understand."

"I've been taking care of you more than half my life," tears were burning at the edges of her eyes, "what don't I understand?"

"I don't want you staying here," Hope said as it were the most natural thing, "locked in this house with this sickness - "

"It's not a sickness," Esme protested softly.

" It kills me that I don't go out. I can but I don't. I sit here all day and it kills me. You're going to die too, someday. How will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for?"

"Mom," Esme choked on the word. It felt alive, like an organ - bloody and mangled and hard to swallow. "Mom, mom." The word was familiar and it hid a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side whether I'm right or wrong. But this was the most her mother had acted like a mother in the longest of times. She meant to say: You. I'd die for you, but the words wouldn't come out. She felt a heart attack coming. "Why are you saying all this?" she asked like a child.

"Because I love you," her mother reasoned patiently. "I want you to go to college. I love you."

The words awakened the killer in her - savage and cut-throat. "Do you? How? Will you throw me to the ground as you stink of alcohol? Reach inside and twist it out of me? Take out my organs and sew your name on them? Because that's what my father taught me! That's love! Do you love me mother, do you really?"

Her mother was quiet after that. Maybe it was because Esme didn't wait to listen. She turned and yanked the front door open and ran out to the road. Great, she thought, she'd managed to alienate herself from everyone. As she felt the beginning of a breakdown come over her, she remembered Simon. Her hand was already reaching for her phone. She slowly shuffled around the perimeter of the yard, watching the sky being overtaken by thunderclouds. Her phone was to her ear, ringing, twice, three times, and then: "Hello?"

He sounded boyish and ordinary. Esme asked, "Did I wake you up?"

She heard Simon fumble for and scrape up his wireframes. "No," he lied, "I was awake."

She sniffled. "Can I come over?" she asked. "I'll keep you company. We can sulk together."

"I'll have to check my calendar," he said, but there was amusement behind his voice. "But I'm sure we can squeeze this sulk session in." A pause, then, "What happened?" Now his voice had changed. She'd never had a sibling, neither wished for one. But she hoped this is what brothers sounded like.

"Oh, nothing," she said, "had a fight with my mother."

"Are you okay? Is she?"

"Yeah," she answered somberly and glanced towards the back door. "Do you think we could we could practice Midnight's children?"

"You want to practice music? Is everything really alright?"

"It's fine jus - "

"Sorry, there's another call, just a sec."

She seated herself under the beech tree in her backyard. After a long moment later, there a beep indicating that she was connected to Simon again. "We're gonna have to reschedule our sulking," he told her. "We're needed."

"By whom?"

There was something in his voice that unnerved her as he said, "Clary."

"Was it bad, your fight? You wouldn't have left her if it wasn't."

"I'll tell you on the way. Meet me at the ice cream parlor." 

Esme waited until she heard that he had hung up. Then she stood up and dusted the grass off her jeans. The ice cream parlor was just around the block and it was one of their rendezvous points. It had a big aqua-themed board that declared in stylized letters: BLUES. She was waiting on the curb when he pulled up in Eric's van, confusing her though she didn't ask. He'd tell her when he was ready or if he wanted. And he had. He had relayed everything - from falling asleep in Clary's room, to opening the door and finding her kissing Jace, to declaring her love for her, to fleeing the Institute in hopes to preserve what was left of his dignity.

"Not that much," she had joked but kissed his cheek in solidarity nonetheless.

And she had told him about her fight with her mother. Well parts, though he had restrained from commenting. He was good like that.

It was still drizzling when Simon pulled the van up at the corner of the Institue and honked twice. Jace squinted through the dripping rain. The five of them had taken shelter under a carved stone cornice. It was a less known fact that Esme knew how to lip-read. Like most things in her life, its origin was stained with her father's presence but then again, wasn't everything. "That's the van?" she thought Jace was saying to Clary. "It looks like a rotting banana."

This was undeniable - Eric had painted the van a neon shade of yellow, and it was blotched with dings and rust like splotches of decay. 

Jace was all in black, Isabelle with her demon-stomping boots and gold whip, Alec with a quiver of arrows strapped across his shoulder and a leather bracer sheathing his right arm from wrist to elbow, and Nico with his seraph blade strapped to his back, with other sharp-edged knives and blades all around his limbs. Including his tongue, Esme thought sourly. They were covered in freshly applied Marks, every inch of bare skin inked with swirling patterns.

Simon honked again. They splashed through the filthy puddles that had collected on the pavement. Simon, leaving the motor idling, crawled into the back to pull the door aside, revealing seats whose upholstery had half-rotted through. Dangerous-looking springs poked through the gaps. Isabelle wrinkled her nose. "Is it safe to sit?"

"Safer than being strapped to the roof," said Simon pleasantly, "which is your other option." He nodded a greeting to Jace and Alec, ignoring Clary completely while Esme stayed completely silent, not sure if she was welcome. "Hey." 

"Hey indeed," said Jace, and lifted the rattling canvas duffel bag that held their weapons. "Where can we put these?"

Esme directed him to the back, where the boys usually kept their musical instruments, while Alec, Nico, and Isabelle crawled into the van's interior and perched on the seats. 

"Shotgun!" announced Clary as Jace and Esme came back around the side of the van. Alec grabbed for his bow, strapped across his back. "Where?"

"She means she wants the front seat," said Jace, pushing wet hair out of his eyes. 

"That's a nice bow," said Simon, with a nod toward Alec.

Alec blinked, rain running off his eyelashes. "Do you know much about archery?" he asked, in a tone that suggested that he doubted it.

"I did archery at camp," said Simon. "Six years running." The response to this was four blank stares, a proud look from Esme, and a supportive smile from Clary, the last of which Simon ignored. He glanced up at the lowering sky. "We should go before it starts pouring again."

Esme, unfortunately, ended up squeezed between Nico and Jace. They all talked softly, discussing battle strategies or the best way to behead a demon without getting ichor on your new leather boots or whatever. She ran her fingers through her rain-wet hair and made a dissatisfying sound.

Simon maneuvered the car onto the FDR parkway, the highway that ran alongside the East River. Then cut off a black SUV whose occupant, a suited man with a cell phone in his hand, made an obscene gesture at them through the tinted windows. 

She heard Simon tell Clary, "'Hello' is girly. Real men are terse. Laconic."

"So the more manly you are, the less you say?" she asked.

"Right." Simon nodded. Past him she could see the humid fog lowering over the East River, shrouding the waterfront in feathery gray mist. The water itself was the color of lead, churned to a whipped cream consistency by the steady wind. "That's why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don't say anything, they just nod. The nod means, 'I am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,' but they don't say anything because they're Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain."

"I attest to that," Esme quipped from behind.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Jace from beside her.

"Good," Clary said and was rewarded by the smallest of smiles from Simon as he turned the van onto the Manhattan Bridge, heading toward Brooklyn and Clary's home.

By the time they reached Clary's house, it had finally stopped raining. Threaded beams of sunlight were burning away the remnants of mist, and the puddles on the sidewalk were drying. Jace, Alec, Nico, and Isabelle made Simon, Esme and Clary wait by the van while they went to check, as Jace said, the "demonic activity levels."

Esme watched as the four Shadowhunters headed up the rose-lined walkway to the house. 

"Demonic activity levels?" Simon asked. "Do they have a device that measures whether the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?"

"No," Clary said, pushing her damp hood back so she could enjoy the feel of the sunlight on her draggled hair. "The Sensor tells them how powerful the demons are - if there are any demons."

Simon looked impressed. "That is useful."

She turned to him. "Simon, about last night - " Esme slipped away as he held up a hand.

"We don't have to talk about it. In fact, I'd rather not."

She shuffled back to the van, towards the back where they had stored their weapons, and propped it open. Her eyes immediately fell first on the bow that Simon had been admiring. It was a good bow. But her eyes flickered to a dagger beside it. It was engraved with a pattern of flames and a carved L in the center. And on the other side, there was something inscribed in Latin: Helm sceal cenum, ond a þæs heanan hyge hord unginnost. She did not understand it. It was double-edged and glinting viciously in the new light of the Sun. A cobalt blue gemstone was embedded in the center of its hilt and looked like an organ caged in a skeleton. She reached and curved her fingers around the hilt, remembering her own knife that was somewhere stashed in her bag back at home. For a moment she thought it pulsed beneath her thumb.

"All right," came Jace's voice, startling her and she turned hastily, standing with her hands behind her back like a kid caught in a forbidden act. "We've checked all four corners of the house - nothing. Low activity. Probably just the forsaken, and they might not even bother us unless we try getting into the upstairs apartment."

"And if they do," said Isabelle, her grin as glittering as her whip, "we'll be ready for them."

Alec dragged the heavy canvas bag out of the back of the van, dropping it on the sidewalk but didn't spare a glance to Esme who was still standing like a statue. 

Nico leaned over and rummaged through the bag, then drew his throwing knives placing them into compartments around his weapons belt. "Ready to go," he announced. 

"Let's kick some demon butt!" Alec said a little loudly, almost toppling over Nico who was standing beside him, in surprise. 

Jace looked at his parabatai a little oddly. "You all right?"

"Fine." Not looking at him, Alec discarded his bow and arrow in favor of a polished wooden feather staff, with two glittering blades that appeared at a light touch from his fingers. "This is better."

Isabelle looked at her brother with concern. "But the bow . . ."

Alec cut her off. "I know what I'm doing, Isabelle."

The bow lay across the backseat, gleaming in the sunlight. Simon reached for it, then drew his hand back as a laughing group of young women pushing strollers headed up the street in the direction of the park. They took no notice of the four heavily armed teenagers crouched by the yellow van. "How come I can see you guys?" Simon asked. "What happened to that invisibility magic of yours?"

"You can see us," said Jace, "because now you know the truth of what you're looking at."

"Yeah," said Simon. "I guess I do."

Esme and he protested a little when they asked them to stay by the van, but Jace impressed upon them the importance of having a getaway vehicle idling by the curb. "Sunlight's fatal to demons, but it won't hurt the Forsaken. What if they chase us? What if the car gets towed?"

The last Clary saw of her friends as she turned to wave from the front porch was Simon's long legs propped up on the dashboard, and Esme's stretched over his stomach, as he sorted through Eric's CD collection. As Simon inserted in the CD of Stepping Razor, Esme leaned forward.

"Do you think I should go to college?" she asked suddenly.

Simon blinked. "What's this about?"

"Nothing," she said idly. "Just thinking."

The space in their conversation was filled by the hard-hitting steel drums and electric guitar as the song played over the stereo.

"Didn't you want to go to Winchester?"

Esme nearly nodded. England. She'd always wanted to study there, live there. Until she was eleven years old. She had grown up there before her mother kicked out her father and they had run to the States days before her twelfth birthday. Esme remembered pieces of it, sometimes, from old pictures, and would dream about it on occasion. But now, the dream seemed too far to reach. Every memory of England was stained by her father's presence in them.

"I do - did." She exhaled annoyed and whined, almost mockingly, "I don't know what to do, Simon!"

He laughed good-naturedly, hand coming to rest on her shin bone. "You - " but his voice was drowned by an inhuman screech. Esme covered her ears behind her hands and shrunk back but Simon was hurrying. He slid his feet off the dashboard and quickly opened the door. Esme turned and exited from the passenger side. Rounding the vehicle, she found Simon standing still.

"Do you think we - " should go help, but the words stilled on her tongue. What good would two mundanes do?

"Maybe, I don't know." But he was staring at the building with such earnestness and restlessness that she turned and yanked open the passenger side door of the van. Simon turned to see her holding Alec's bow out to him.

"Put that six years at cupid camp to use," she told him.

He took it from her, regarding it with a certain respect that only warriors regarded their weapons with. She bent down and pulled the cuffs of her jeans higher, before sliding out the dagger she'd been hiding in her boot. She said, "Let's go save our idiots."

When they arrived, Jace was standing frozen, staring at Alec's crumpled body like someone caught in a dream. Isabelle lay still on the floor like a rag doll thrown aside, her mouth stained with blood, forming sounds that rang like names but were indistinguishable. Nico was bent over his sister in undeniable fear and concern. There was a slash against his arm, jacket torn, and wound bleeding.

Esme heard her breath catch. The creature hovering over them had livid and bruised-looking flesh. Through the seeping skin, bones protruded - not new white bones, but bones that looked as if they had been in the earth a thousand years, black and cracked and filthy. Its fingers were stripped and skeletal, its thin-fleshed arms pocked with dripping black sores through which more yellowing bone was visible. Its face was a skull, its nose and eyes caved-in holes. Its taloned fingers brushed the floor and it was at least nine feet tall. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth.

Springing onto the banister between the creature and Clary, Jace flung himself at the demon. The force of the jump knocked the demon backward; it staggered, Jace clinging to its back. He seized a seraph blade out of its chest, sending up a spray of ichor, and brought the blade down, again and again, into the demon's back, its shoulders running with black fluid. Snarling, Abbadon backed toward the wall. Jace had to drop or be crushed. He fell to the ground, landed lightly, and raised the blade again. But Abbadon was too swift for him; its hand lashed out, knocking Jace into the stairs. Jace went down a circle of talons at his throat. "Tell them to give me the Cup," Abbadon snarled, talons hovering just above Jace's skin. "Tell them to give it to me and I will let them live." 

Jace swallowed. "Clary - " But Clary would never know what he would have said because at that moment the front door flew open. For a moment all she saw was brightness. Then, blinking away the fiery afterimage, she saw Simon and Esme standing in the open doorway. She had forgotten they were outside, had almost forgotten they existed.

Esme saw her, crouched on the stairs, and her gaze moved past her and over Abbadon and Jace. The movement was as smooth and practiced as her fingers expertly braiding her hair. The hilt slipped out her fingers like a petal dropping from a rose. A swift flash of metal and kiss of air surprised Jace as a dagger cut across the infinitesimal distance between him and the demon, burying itself in the demon's rotten flesh. 

It was enough distraction and time for Simon to knock an arrow into the bow and aim. He reached back over his shoulder. He was holding Alec's bow and the quiver was strapped across his back. He drew an arrow from it, fitted it to the string, and lifted the bow expertly as if he'd done the same thing a hundred times before. The arrow sprang free. It made a hot buzzing sound, like a huge bumblebee, as it shot over the demon's head, plunged toward the roof - And shattered the skylight.

The dirty black glass fell like rain, and through the broken pane streamed sunlight, quantities of sunlight, great golden bars of it stabbing downward and flooding the foyer with light. Abbadon screamed and staggered back, shielding its misshapen head with its hands. Jace put a hand to his unharmed throat, staring in disbelief as the demon crumpled, howling, to the floor. Esme half-expected it to burst into flames, but instead, it began to fold in on itself. Its legs collapsed toward its torso, its skull crumpling like burning paper, and within the span of a minute, it had vanished entirely, leaving only scorch marks behind.

Simon lowered the bow. He was blinking behind his glasses, his mouth slightly open. He looked as astonished as Clary felt. Esme's hand was still extended, fingers flexing.

Jace lay on the stairs where the demon had thrown him. He was struggling to sit up as Clary slid down the steps and fell to her knees beside him. "Jace - "

"I'm all right." He sat up, wiping blood from his mouth. He coughed and spit red. "Alec - "

"Your stele," she interrupted, reaching for her pocket. "Do you need it to fix yourself ?"

He looked at her. The sunlight pouring through the shattered skylight lit his face. He looked as if he were holding himself back from something with a terrible effort. "I'm all right," he said again, and pushed her aside, none too gently. He got to his feet, staggered, and nearly fell - the first ungraceful thing she'd ever seen him do. "Alec?"

Esme watched him as he limped across the foyer toward his unconscious friend. Isabelle had crawled to her brother's side and was cradling his head in her lap, stroking his hair. Nico's eyes were red, his face twisted in anguish, and it seemed his twin brother's barely moving state was hurting him more severely than the deep gash in his arm. Esme remembered his words, I can't imagine my life without him.

 Alec's chest rose and fell - slowly, but he was breathing. Simon, leaning against the wall watching them, looked utterly drained. Clary squeezed his hand as she passed him. "Thank you," she whispered. "That was amazing."

"Don't thank me," he said, "thank the archery program at B'nai B'rith summer camp." He cast a look at Esme. "And that's what's it called, by the way, not cupid camp."

Esme didn't smile, she was still watching the Lightwoods. She barely even heard, her feet guiding her towards their huddled forms on their own accros.

"Clary!" It was Jace, calling her. "Bring my stele."

Esme knelt down next to the Shadowhunters as Clary arrived. Alec's face was white, freckled with drops of blood, his eyes unnaturally blue. His grip on Jace's wrist left bloody smears. "Did I . . . ," he started, then seemed to see Clary, as if for the first time. There was something in his look she hadn't expected. Triumph. "Did I kill it?"

Jace's face twisted painfully. "You - "

"Yes," Clary said unhesitantly. "It's dead." Alec looked at her and laughed. Blood bubbled up in his mouth. Nico made a sound in the back of his throat that Esme realized was a strangled cry. Jace pulled his wrist free, touched his fingers to either side of Alec's face. "Don't," he said. "Hold still, just hold still." 

Alec closed his eyes. "Do what you have to," he whispered.

Isabelle held her stele out to Jace. "Take it."

He nodded and drew the tip of the stele down the front of Alec's shirt. The material parted as if he'd sliced it with a knife. Isabelle watched him through frantic eyes as he yanked the shirt open, leaving Alec's chest bare. His skin was very white, marked here and there with old translucent scars. There were other injuries there too: a darkening lattice of claw marks, each hole red and oozing. Jaw set, Jace set the stele to Alec's skin, moving it back and forth with the ease of long practice. 

But there was something wrong. Even as he drew the healing marks, they seemed to vanish as if he were writing on water. Jace threw the stele aside. "Damn it."

Nico's voice was uneven. "What's going on?"

"It cut him with its talons," Jace said. "There's demon poison in him. The Marks can't work." He touched Alec's face again, gently. "Alec," he said. "Can you hear me?" Alec didn't move. The shadows under his eyes looked blue and as dark as bruises. If it weren't for his breathing, Esme would have thought he was already dead.

Isabelle bent her head, her hair covering Alec's face. Her arms were around him. "Maybe," she whispered, "we could - "

"Take him to the hospital." It was Simon, standing over them, the bow dangling in his hand. "I'll help you carry him to the van. There's Methodist down on Seventh Avenue - " 

"No hospitals," said Nico, sounding strangled as if he were forcing the words out. "We need to get him to the Institute."

"But - " Esme went to protest softly.

"They won't know how to treat him in a hospital," said Jace. "He's been cut by a Greater Demon. No mundane doctor would know how to heal those wounds."

Simon nodded. "All right. Let's get him to the car."

In a stroke of good luck, the van hadn't been towed. Isabelle draped a dirty blanket across the backseat and they laid Alec down across it, his head on Isabelle's lap. Jace crouched down on the floor beside his friend. His shirt was stained dark across the sleeves and chest with blood, demon, and human. 

Nico sat down beside him and Esme fell lightly down to the floor. His bloody arm was just beside her face and now she could see how badly he'd been cut. Dark sanguine blood stained his skin and - she averted her eyes before she saw flesh. 

When Jace looked at Simon, Clary saw that all the gold seemed washed out of his eyes by something she had never seen in them before. Panic. "Drive fast, mundane," he said. "Drive like hell was following you."

Simon drove. They careened down Flatbush and rocketed onto the bridge, keeping pace with the Q train as it roared over the blue water. The sun was painfully bright in Esme's eyes, bending down across the window. She clutched Nico's knee with one hand as Simon took the curving ramp off the bridge at fifty miles an hour. She thought about the awful things she'd said and thought about him, the distraught look on his face, his shattered expression at his brother's pain. 

When she turned her head now, she saw him kneeling next to his brother as blood seeped through the blanket. Her eyes stuck on his wound again and she almost reached, her hand lifted frozen in mid-air. Though she'd meant to be discreet, he caught it, eyeing her shaking hand lowering back in her lap.

Isabelle, wrapping the blanket around Alec's throat looked up and met Clary's eyes in the badly angled rear-view mirror. "How much farther?"

"Maybe ten minutes. Simon's driving as fast as he can."

"I know," Isabelle said. "Simon - what you did, that was incredible. You moved so fast. I wouldn't have thought a mundane could have thought of something like that."

Simon didn't seem fazed by praise from such an unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. "You mean shooting out the skylight? It hit me after you guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and how you'd said demons couldn't stand the direct sun. So, actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don't feel bad," he added, "you can't even see that skylight unless you know it's there."

Esme blinked, almost smiled but didn't. Like always. Nico was watching her from the corner of his eyes as he slipped his stele in his hands, fiddling with it nervously.

Jace spoke then. "It was well done," he said.

Esme's eyes narrowed. "So, if you don't mind telling me - that thing, the demon where did it come from?"

"It was Madame Dorothea," said Clary. "I mean, it was sort of her."

"She was never exactly a pinup," Simon said, "but I don't remember her looking that bad."

"I think she was possessed," said Clary slowly, trying to piece it together in her own mind. "She wanted me to give her the Cup. Then she opened the Portal . . ."

"It was clever," said Jace. "The demon possessed her, then hid the majority of its ethereal form just outside the Portal, where the Sensor wouldn't register it. So we went in expecting to fight a few Forsaken. Instead we found ourselves facing a Greater Demon. Abbadon - one of the Ancients. The Lord of the Fallen."

"Well, it looks like the Fallen will just have to learn to get along without him from now on," said Simon, turning onto the street.

"He's not dead," Nico said. His voice was hoarse and rough and Esme almost thought he'd been crying. "Hardly anyone's ever killed a Greater Demon. You have to kill them in their physical and ethereal forms before they'll die. We just scared him off."

"Oh." Simon looked disappointed. "What about Madame Dorothea? Will she be all right now that - "

He broke off, because Alec had begun to choke, his breath rattling in his chest. Nico sat up straighter and Jace swore under his breath with vicious precision. "Why aren't we there yet?"

"We are here. I just don't want to crash into a wall." As Simon pulled up carefully at the corner, Esme saw that the door of the Institute was open, Hodge standing framed in the arch. The van jerked to a halt and Jace and Nico leaped out, reaching back to lift Alec as if he weighed no more than a child. Isabelle followed them up the walk, holding her brother's bloody featherstaff. The Institute door slammed shut behind them.

Tiredness washing over her, Clary looked at her friends. "I'm sorry. I don't know how you're going to explain all the blood to Eric."

"Screw Eric," he said with conviction. "Are you all right?"

"Not a scratch. Everyone else got hurt, but not me."

"It's their job, Clary," Esme said gently. "Fighting demons - it's what they do. Not what you do."

"What do I do, Esme?" she asked, searching her face for an answer. Then to Simon, "What do I do?"

"Well - you got the Cup," he said. "Didn't you?"

She nodded, and tapped her pocket. "Yes."

He looked relieved. "I almost didn't want to ask," he said. "That's good, right?"

"It is," she said. She thought of her mother, and her hand tightened on the Cup."I know it is."

Esme followed after her up the steps of the Insitute. She hesitated at the threshold, but Church met her rubbing his body against her ankle and yowling like a foghorn. She unraveled and let him lead her to the infirmary.