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CHAPTER NINE:
❝ Dead Man's Party ❞
The directions on the invitation took them to a largely industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn whose streets were lined with factories and warehouses. Some, Esme could see, had been converted into lofts and galleries, but there was still something forbidding about their looming square shapes, boasting only a few windows covered in iron grilles.
They made their way from the subway station, Isabelle navigating with the Sensor, which seemed to have a sort of mapping system built-in. Simon, who loved gadgets, was fascinated - or at least he was pretending it was the Sensor he was fascinated with. Hoping to avoid them, Clary lagged behind as they crossed through a scrubby park, its badly kept grass burned brown by the summer heat. And hoping to avoid everyone, Esme trudged forward alone, to her right the spires of a church gleamed gray and black against the starless night sky. She remembered the last time she'd been in a church. Her mother had been asking for forgiveness the day before she forced her father out of the house. It was the day she had been the proudest of her mother. Wind swept her blonde hair aside and in her face. She tucked it behind her ear again.
"Cold?"
"The jacket's surprisingly warm, actually," she answered, surprised herself.
Nico chuckled. "Isabelle's clothes are practical?" the question seemed to be rhetoric.
"Our sister," it's Alec's voice, sharp and tinged with distaste, "won't like that."
"Oh, you wouldn't - " Nico went to protest and Esme turned around, walking backwards not wanting to miss the fight between the brothers but Nico's gaze focused elsewhere and he trailed off. His eyes were glittering - as if all the stars of the night sky were captured in them. He looked like a little kid and she swore she almost saw him jump with excitement. "Hey, is that - " he started but Alec was already calling for his parabatai.
"Jace!" They paused on the pavement, not far away.
Jace turned, his hand falling away from Clary's shoulder. "Yes?"
"Think we're in the right place?" Alec was pointing at something Esme couldn't see; it was hidden behind the bulk of a large black car.
"What's that?" Jace joined Alec and Nico; Esme heard him laugh. Coming around the car, she saw what they were looking at as Clary joined her: several motorcycles, sleek and silvery, with low-slung black chassis. Oily-looking tubes and pipes slithered up and around them, ropy as veins. There was a queasy sense of something organic about the bikes, like the bio-creatures in a Giger painting. "Vampires," Jace said.
