The Mortal Instruments: City of Past Ghosts (Book 1)

Chapter 24: The Serpent Among Them

Chapter 24: The Serpent Among Them

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Jace ran a hand through his hair. He didn't think he could've taken another second of it.

A few seconds after Clary had left the infirmary, Luke had gone into a certain shocked state and had gone almost hyperventilative. Magnus and Jocelyn had to almost drag Luke out to calm down. It was very stressful to see one of the most emotionally stable men Jace knew break down like that.

"Alec, Jace, tell me everything that happened in London." Maryse said sternly.

Jace leaned back in the chair he was sitting on, gesturing for Alec to start talking. He already had to retell the whole thing to a murderous warlock so it was only fair Alec now had a go.

Jace immediately zoned out the moment Alec started talking.

The urge to walk around and do something was too strong to ignore as Jace stood up and walked over to one of the towering bookshelves, randomly yanked a book out and flipped open to one of the pages.

Detailed and descriptive drawings filled the while book, mainly pentgrams and funny looking wildflowers. He looked at the cover which was a velvet hardcover book with silver words scrawled across the front.

It was called Banned Pentagrams, Spells and Curses. Seemed interesting enough.

Jace made his way back over to Maryse and Alec, standing behind his adoptive mother as he read. She seemed to barely acknowledge Jace as she payed attention to her oldest son as he spoke, sounding almost mechanical as he retold what happened.

The marble desk was littered with official letters from the Clave and what seemed like stacks of books that weighed several tonnes, giving the anguished angels finally a reason to look as if the large marble table had really something on them that was breaking their backs.

Jace flipped open his own book and read—of rather slid over—on the many said notorious and dangerous banned pentagrams and spells.

It turned out from the detailed explanations that most of these banned and dangerous pentagrams and spells were simply faulty, unfinished and unpredictable, some impossibly easy to manipulate into something really dangerous.

Only several Jace had come across of being really dangerous. He almost pitied the true dangers being stuck in a book with a bunch of other unpredictable and lousy excuses for dangerous.

As pathetic as it was, Jace found certain entries interesting and the rest just plain old amusing rubbish—the useless type that is so bad you can't help but laugh at it.

"Isn't that right, Jace?" Alec's voice was like background elevator music to Jace. It was there, you knew it, but you chose to ignore it. He only responded when he heard the melodic, angelic sound of his four lettered name.

"Hmm?" 

"The name Evangelyn gave us. Martin Starkweather, wasnt it?" Alec said.

"Yes..." Jace said, his eyes still cast downwards on the book he was reading. He wondered if he could match any of the pentagrams in the journals to the ones in these books.

"Martin Starkweather?" Maryse said. "There are still some living Starkweathers but I don't remember there ever being a Martin Starkweather."

"Well, whoever he is, he's long dead." Jace said, closing the fat book. He eyed the pentagrams scattered on Maryse's table. They spoke of something dark and bloodthirsty. Jace could see it in them.