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CHAPTER SIX:
❝ Fever Dream ❞
She hit packed earth, stumbled, and felt a hand on her arm, steadying her. It was Jace. He stared at her for a moment, then let her go, and she realized he had been concerned. She scoffed internally and brushed it off. No way.
She was soaking wet, rivulets of cold water running down the back of her shirt, her damp hair clinging to her face. Her drenched clothes felt as if they weighed a ton.
They were in a hollowed-out dirt corridor, illuminated by faintly glowing moss. A tangle of dangling vines formed a curtain at one end of the corridor and long, hairy tendrils hung like dead snakes from the ceiling. Tree roots, Esme realized. They were underground. And it was cold down here, cold enough to make her breath puff out in an icy mist when she exhaled.
"Cold?" Jace asked Clary, both of whom were soaking wet too.
Clary, water clinging to her lashes, blurring her vision like tears, said. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine." He moved closer to his sister, just as a dark shape hurtled by, just out of the corner of her eye, and hit the ground with a thud. It was Simon, also soaking wet. He rolled onto his knees and looked around frantically. "My glasses — "
"I've got them." Clary was used to retrieving Simon's glasses for him during soccer games. They always seemed to fall just under his feet, where they were inevitably stepped on. "Here you go."
He slid them on, scraping dirt off the lenses. "Thanks."
Simon stood up with a frown, just as Isabelle dropped out of the heavens, landing gracefully on her feet. Followed by Nico, light on his feet. Water flattened his hair down, making it fall over his eyes.
"Oooh," Isabelle exclaimed, "that was fun."
"That does it," said Jace. "I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year."
"Why?" Isabelle said.
"So you can look up 'fun.' I'm not sure you know what it means."
Isabelle pulled the long heavy mass of her wet hair forward and wrung it out as if it were wet washing. "You're raining on my parade."
"It's a pretty wet parade already if you hadn't noticed." Jace glanced around. "Now what? Which way do we go?"
"Neither way," said Isabelle. "We wait here, and they come and get us."
Clary was not impressed by this suggestion. "How do they know we're here? Is there a doorbell we have to ring or something?"
"The Court knows all that happens in their lands," Nico explained. Esme felt a prick again, like a thorn under her fingerpad. "Our presence won't go unnoticed." Of course, he would know that.
