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, and Isabelle were
protected with glamour, but there was no way to hide 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, Clary
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 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 grave digger in
Hamlet. "What?"
"Simon. 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 her, 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 it lay on the ground at her feet, as if
she were guarding it. Not it, Clary reminded herself fiercely. Him. Simon.
"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. There were boulders here, just
above the first line of graves; he sat down on one, zipping up his jacket. It was surprisingly chilly
out. For the first time this season Clary could see her breath when she exhaled.
She sat down on the boulder beside Jace and stared down at the lake. She could hear the
rhythmic thump-thump of Raphael's spade hitting the dirt and the shoveled dirt hitting the ground.
Raphael wasn't human; he worked fast. It wouldn't take that long for him to dig a grave. And
Simon wasn't all that big a person; the grave wouldn't have to be that deep.
A stab of pain twisted through her abdomen. She bent forward, hands splayed across her
stomach. "I feel sick."
"I know. That's why I brought you out here. You looked like you were going to throw up on
Raphael's feet."
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She made a soft groaning noise.
"Might have wiped the smirk off his face," Jace observed reflectively. "There's that to
consider."
"Shut up." The pain had eased. She tipped her head back, looking up at the moon, a circle of
chipped silver polish floating in a sea of stars. "This is my fault."
"It's not your fault."
"You're right. It's our fault."
Jace turned toward her, exasperation clear in the lines of his shoulders. "How do you figure
that?"
She looked at him silently for a moment. He needed a haircut. His hair curled the way vines
did when they got too long, in looping tendrils, the color of white gold in the moonlight. The
scars on his face and throat looked like they had been etched there with metallic ink. He was
beautiful, she thought miserably, beautiful and there was nothing there in him, not an expression,
not a slant of cheekbone or shape of jaw or curve of lips that bespoke any family resemblance to
herself or her mother at all. He didn't even really look like Valentine.
"What?" he said. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
She wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob at the exact same time that she wanted to
pound on him with her fists. Instead, she said, "If it weren't for what happened in the faerie court,
Simon would still be alive."
He reached down and savagely yanked a hunk of grass out of the ground. Dirt still clung to the
roots. He tossed it aside. "We were forced to do what we did. It's not as if we did it for fun, or to
hurt him. Besides," he said, with the ghost of a smile, "you're my sister."
"Don't say it like that—"
"What, 'sister'?" He shook his head. "When I was a little kid, I realized that if you say any
word over and over fast enough, it loses all its meaning. I'd lie awake saying the words over and
over to myself—'sugar,' 'mirror,' 'whisper,' 'dark.' 'Sister,' " he said, softly. "You're my sister."
"It doesn't matter how many times you say it. It'll still be true."
"And it doesn't matter what you won't let me say, that'll still be true too."
"Jace!" Another voice, calling his name. It was Alec, slightly out of breath from running. He
was holding a black plastic bag in one hand. Behind him stalked Magnus, impossibly tall and thin
and glowering in a long leather coat that flapped in the wind like a bat's wing. Alec came to a stop
in front of Jace and held out the bag. "I brought blood," he said. "Like you asked."
Jace opened the top of the bag, peered in, and wrinkled his nose. "Do I want to ask you where
you got this?"
"From a butcher shop in Greenpoint," said Magnus, joining them. "They bleed their meat to
make it halal. It's animal blood."
"Blood is blood," said Jace, and stood up. He looked down at Clary and hesitated. "When
Raphael said this wouldn't be pleasant, he wasn't lying. You can stay here. I'll send Isabelle down
to wait with you."
She tipped her head back to look up at him. The moonlight cast the shadow of branches
across his face. "Have you ever seen a vampire rise?"
"No, but I—"
"Then you don't really know, do you?" She stood up, and Isabelle's blue coat fell around her
in rustling folds. "I want to be there. I have to be there."
She could see only part of his face in the shadows, but she thought he looked almost—
impressed. "I know better than to tell you there's anything you can't do," he said. "Let's go."
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?" Clary demanded, hugging herself for warmth. Cold seemed to have
seeped into every pore of her body. 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—Clary 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 Clary had ever heard before—a sort of
pounding rhythm coming from deep underground, as if suddenly the heartbeat of the world had
become audible.
What's happening? Clary 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.
"Simon!" Clary tried to rush forward, but Raphael yanked her back.
"Let me go!" She tried to pull herself free, but Raphael'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 her. "It is better that
way."
"It's your way! It's not mine!" She 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," she whispered. Because of course it was Simon, Simon, not an it. She 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. Suddenly terrified, she kicked out at him, 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. 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. Clary turned away and stumbled out of the clearing, hearing Jace call out for her but
ignoring him, starting to run when she reached the trees. She was halfway down the hill when the
pain hit. She went to her knees, gagging, as everything in her stomach came up in a wrenching
flood. When it was over, she crawled a short distance away and collapsed against the ground.
She knew she was probably lying on someone's grave, but she didn't care. She rested her hot
face against the cool dirt and thought, for the first time, that maybe the dead weren't so unlucky
after all.
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