Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series Read Online Free Page A

HOBOKEN!” Clary heard someone, probably Eric, yell. Another cymbal crashed. She imagined her mother listening to Eric read his poetry, and she shuddered inwardly.
    “I don’t know. If all of you show up here, I think she’ll freak.”
    “Then I’ll come alone. I’ll pick you up and we can walk over there together, meet the rest of them there. Your mom won’t mind. She loves me.”
    Clary had to laugh. “Sign of her questionable taste, if you ask me.”
    “Nobody did.” Simon clicked off, amid shouts from his bandmates.
    Clary hung up the phone and glanced around the living room. Evidence of her mother’s artistic tendencies was everywhere, from the handmade velvet throw pillows piled on the dark red sofa to the walls hung with Jocelyn’s paintings, carefully framed—landscapes, mostly: the winding streets of downtown Manhattan lit with golden light; scenes of Prospect Park in winter, the gray ponds edged with lacelike films of white ice.
    On the mantel over the fireplace was a framed photo of Clary’s father. A thoughtful-looking fair man in military dress, his eyes bore the telltale traces of laugh lines at the corners. He’d been a decorated soldier serving overseas. Jocelyn had some of his medals in a small box by her bed. Not that the medals had done anyone any good when Jonathan Clark had crashed his car into a tree just outside Albany and died before his daughter was even born.
    Jocelyn had gone back to using her maiden name after he died. She never talked about Clary’s father, but she kept the box engraved with his initials, J. C., next to her bed. Along with the medals were one or two photos, a wedding ring, and a singlelock of blond hair. Sometimes Jocelyn took the box out and opened it and held the lock of hair very gently in her hands before putting it back and carefully locking the box up again.
    The sound of the key turning in the front door roused Clary out of her reverie. Hastily she threw herself down on the couch and tried to look as if she were immersed in one of the paperbacks her mother had left stacked on the end table. Jocelyn recognized reading as a sacred pastime and usually wouldn’t interrupt Clary in the middle of a book, even to yell at her.
    The door opened with a thump. It was Luke, his arms full of what looked like big square pieces of pasteboard. When he set them down, Clary saw that they were cardboard boxes, folded flat. He straightened up and turned to her with a smile.
    “Hey, Un—hey, Luke,” she said. He’d asked her to stop calling him Uncle Luke about a year ago, claiming that it made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Besides, he’d reminded her gently, he wasn’t really her uncle, just a close friend of her mother’s who’d known her all her life. “Where’s Mom?”
    “Parking the truck,” he said, straightening his lanky frame with a groan. He was dressed in his usual uniform: old jeans, a flannel shirt, and a bent pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that sat askew on the bridge of his nose. “Remind me again why this building has no service elevator?”
    “Because it’s old, and has character ,” Clary said immediately. Luke grinned. “What are the boxes for?” she asked.
    His grin vanished. “Your mother wanted to pack up some things,” he said, avoiding her gaze.
    “What things?” Clary asked.
    He gave an airy wave. “Extra stuff lying around the house.Getting in the way. You know she never throws anything out. So what are you up to? Studying?” He plucked the book out of her hand and read out loud: “The world still teems with those motley beings whom a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons, still hover about—” He lowered the book and looked at her over his glasses. “Is this for school?”
    “The Golden Bough? No. School’s not for two weeks.” Clary took the book back from him. “It’s my mom’s.”
    “I had a feeling.”
    She dropped it back on the table.