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.In a moment it was gone, and Sebastian was still and white again.Unmoving.Unbreathing.Dead.“I can’t bring him back for you,” Simon said.“He’s dead.I’d give you my blood, but he can’t swallow it.”Her breath hissed through her teeth in exasperation, and for a moment her eyes glowed with a harsh acidic light.“First you must bite him,” she said.“You are a Daylighter.Angel blood runs through your body, through your blood and tears, through the fluid in your fangs.Your Daylighter blood will revive him enough that he can swallow and drink.Bite him and give him your blood, and bring him back to me.”Simon stared at her wildly.“But what you’re saying—you’re saying I have the power to bring back the dead?”“Since you’ve been a Daylighter you’ve had that power,” she said.“But not the right to use it.”“The right?”She smiled, tracing the tip of one long red-painted nail across the top of Sebastian’s coffin.“History is written by the winners, they say,” she said.“There might not be so much of a difference between the side of Light and the side of Dark as you suppose.After all, without the Dark, there is nothing for the Light to burn away.”Simon looked at her blankly.“Balance,” she clarified.“There are laws older than any you can imagine.And one of them is that you cannot bring back what is dead.When the soul has left the body, it belongs to death.And it cannot be taken back without a price to pay.”“And you’re willing to pay it? For him?” Simon gestured toward Sebastian.“He is the price.” She threw her head back and laughed.It sounded almost like human laughter.“If the Light brings back a soul, then the Dark has the right to bring one back as well.This is my right.Or perhaps you should ask your little friend Clary what I’m talking about.”Simon looked at Clary.She looked as if she might pass out.“Raziel,” she said faintly.“When Jace died—”“Jace died?” Simon’s voice went up an octave.Jace, despite being the subject under discussion, remained serene and expressionless, his knife hand steady.“Valentine stabbed him,” Clary said in an almost-whisper.“And then the Angel killed Valentine, and he said I could have anything I wanted.And I said I wanted Jace back, I wanted him back, and he brought him back—for me.” Her eyes were huge in her small white face.“He was dead for only a few minutes.hardly any time at all.”“It was enough,” breathed Lilith.“I was hovering near my son during his battle with Jace; I saw him fall and die.I followed Jace to the lake, I watched as Valentine slew him, and then as the Angel raised him again.I knew that was my chance.I raced back to the river and took my son’s body from it.I kept it preserved for just this moment.” She looked fondly down at the coffin.“Everything in balance.An eye for an eye.A tooth for a tooth.A life for a life.Jace is the counterweight.If Jace lives, then so shall Jonathan.”Simon couldn’t tear his eyes away from Clary.“What she’s saying—about the Angel—it’s true?” he said.“And you never told anyone?”To his surprise it was Jace who answered.Brushing his cheek against Clary’s hair, he said, “It was our secret.”Clary’s green eyes flashed, but she didn’t move.“So you see, Daylighter,” said Lilith, “I am only taking what is mine by right.The Law says that the one who was first brought back must be here in the circle when the second is returned.” She indicated Jace with a contemptuous flick of her finger.“He is here.You are here.All is in readiness.”“Then you don’t need Clary,” said Simon.“Leave her out of it.Let her go.”“Of course I need her.I need her to motivate you.I cannot hurt you, Mark-bearer, or threaten you, or kill you.But I can cut out your heart when I cut out her life.And I will.”She looked toward Clary, and Simon’s gaze followed hers.Clary.She was so pale that she looked almost blue, though perhaps that was the cold.Her green eyes were vast in her pale face.A trickle of drying blood spilled from her collarbone to the neckline of her dress, now spotted with red.Her hands hung at her sides, loose, but they were shaking.Simon saw her as she was, but also as she had been when she was seven years old, skinny arms and freckles and those blue plastic barrettes she’d worn in her hair until she was eleven.He thought of the first time he’d noticed she had a real girl’s shape under the baggy T-shirt and jeans she always wore, and how he hadn’t been sure if he should look or look away.He thought of her laugh and her quick pencil moving across a page, leaving intricately designed images behind: spired castles, running horses, brightly colored characters she’d made up in her head.You can walk to school by yourself, her mother had said, but only if Simon goes with you [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]