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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.
