Son of the Dawn (Ghosts of the Shadow Market 1)

She gave up and they both hurried after Jonathan, who did not know the layout of the Institute and could only retrace his steps to the kitchen.

Which was where they found him. Jonathan had his shirt pulled up, and he was dabbing a wet dishtowel along the red cut running up his side.

"By the Angel," said Alec. "You're hurt. Why didn't you say?"

Isabelle hit Alec in the arm for not being stealthy.

Jonathan stared at them, guilt written across his face as if he had been stealing from the cookie jar rather than injured.

"Don't tell your parents," he said.

Alec left Isabelle's side and ran to Jonathan. He examined the cut, then shepherded Jonathan toward a stool, making him sit down. Isabelle was unsurprised. Alec always fussed when she or Max fell down.

"It's shallow," Alec said after a moment, "but our parents really would want to know. Mom could put an iratze on--or something--"

"No! It's better for your parents not to know it happened at all. It was just bad luck one of them got me. I'm a good fighter," Jonathan protested sharply.

He was so vehement it was almost alarming. If he hadn't been ten years old, Isabelle would have thought he was worried they might send him away for being an inadequate soldier.

"You're obviously great," said Alec. "You just need someone to have your back."

He put his hand lightly on Jonathan's shoulder as he spoke. It was a small gesture Isabelle would not even have noted, except for the fact she had never seen Alec reach out like that to anyone who was not family and that Jonathan Wayland went perfectly still at his touch, as if he was afraid the tiniest movement would scare Alec away.

"Does it hurt a lot?" Alec added sympathetically.

"No," Jonathan Wayland whispered.

Isabelle thought it was perfectly clear Jonathan Wayland would claim having his leg cut off did not hurt, but Alec was an honest soul.

"Okay," said her brother. "Let me grab a few things from the infirmary. Let's deal with this together."

Alec nodded in an encouraging fashion and went to fetch supplies from the infirmary, leaving Isabelle and this weird bleeding boy alone together.

"So you and your brother seem ... really close," Jonathan said.

Isabelle blinked. "Sure."

What a concept, being close to your family. Isabelle refrained from being sarcastic, as Jonathan was both unwell and a guest.

"So ... I guess you're going to be parabatai," Jonathan ventured.

"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Isabelle. "Being parabatai is a little old-fashioned, isn't it? Besides, I don't like the idea of giving up my independence. Before I am my parents' daughter or my brothers' sister, I am my own. I'm already a lot of people's something. I don't need to be anyone else's anything, not for a long time. You know?"

Jonathan smiled. He had a chipped tooth. Isabelle wondered how that had happened, and hoped it had been chipped in an awesome fight. "I don't know. I'm not really anyone's anything."

Isabelle bit her lip. She had never realized before that she took feeling secure for granted.

Jonathan had glanced at Isabelle as he spoke, but immediately after he returned to watching the door through which Alec had disappeared.

Isabelle could not help observing that Jonathan Wayland had lived in their home for less than three hours, and he was already trying to lock down a parabatai.

Then he slouched farther into his chair, resuming his too-cool-for-the-Institute attitude, and she forgot the thought in annoyance that Jonathan was such a show-off. She, Isabelle, was the only show-off this Institute needed.

She and Jonathan stared each other down until Alec returned.

"Oh--would you rather I put on the bandages or do you want to do it yourself?"

Jonathan's face was opaque. "I can do it myself. I don't need anything."

"Oh," Alec said unhappily.

Isabelle could not tell if Jonathan's expressionless face was to ward them off or protect himself, but he was hurt. Alec was still shy with strangers, and Jonathan was a closed-off human being, so they were going to be awkward even though Isabelle could tell they both really liked each other. Isabelle sighed. Boys were hopeless, and she had to take charge of this situation.

"Hold still, idiot," she ordered Jonathan, seized ointment from Alec's hands, and began to smear it over Jonathan's cut. "I am going to be a ministering angel."

"Um," said Alec. "That's a lot of ointment."

It did look a little like when you squeezed the center of the tube of toothpaste too hard, but Isabelle felt you did not get results without being willing to make a mess.

"It's fine," said Jonathan quickly. "It's great. Thank you, Isabelle."

Isabelle glanced up and grinned at him. Alec efficiently unwound a bandage. Having got them started, Isabelle stepped back. Her parents would object if she accidentally turned their guest into a mummy.

"What's going on?" said Robert Lightwood's voice from the door. "Jonathan! You said you were not hurt."

When Isabelle looked, she saw both her mom and dad standing at the threshold of the kitchen, arms folded and eyes narrowed. She imagined they would have objections to her and Alec playing doctor with the new kid. Strong objections.

"We were just patching Jonathan up," Alec announced anxiously, ranging himself in front of Jonathan's stool. "No big deal."

"It was my fault I got hurt," said Jonathan. "I know excuses are for incompetents. It won't happen again."

"It won't?" asked her mother. "All warriors get wounded sometimes. Planning to run away and become a Silent Brother?"

Jonathan Wayland shrugged. "I applied to the Iron Sisters, but they sent me a hurtful and sexist refusal."

Everyone laughed. Jonathan looked briefly startled again, then pleased, before he shut away his expressions as if slamming a lid down on a treasure chest. Isabelle's mother was the one who went and attended to Jonathan's wound, while her father stayed by the door.

"Jonathan?" Maryse remarked. "Does anyone ever cal

l you anything else?"

"No," said Jonathan. "My father used to tell a joke about having another Jonathan, if I wasn't good enough."

Isabelle did not think that was much of a joke.

"I always think that naming one of our kids Jonathan is like the mundanes calling kids Jebediah," said Isabelle's mother.

"John," said her father. "Mundanes often call their kids John."

"Do they?" asked Maryse, and shrugged. "I could have sworn it was Jebediah."

"My middle name is Christopher," said Jonathan. "You can--you can call me Christopher if you like."

Maryse and Isabelle exchanged a speaking look. She and her mother had always been able to communicate like this. Isabelle thought it was because they were the only girls, and special to each other. She could not imagine her mother telling her anything she would not want to hear.

"We're not going to rename you," said Mom sadly.

Isabelle was not sure if her mother was sad that Jonathan thought they would do that, give him a different name as if he were a pet, or sad that he would have let them.

What Isabelle was sure about was that her mother was watching Jonathan in the same way she had watched Max when he was still learning to walk, and there would be no more discussion of a trial period. Jonathan was obviously here to stay.

"Maybe a nickname," Maryse proposed. "What would you think of Jace?"

He was silent for a moment, observing Isabelle's mother carefully from the corner of his eye. At last he offered her a smile, faint and cool as the light in early morning, but growing warm with hope.

Jonathan Wayland said: "I think Jace will work."

As a boy was introduced to a family, and vampires slept cold but curled together in the hold of a ship, Brother Zachariah walked through a city not his own. The people hurrying by could not see him, but he saw the light in their eyes as if it had been made new. The blare of car horns and scream of tires from yellow cabs and the chatter of many voices in many tongues formed a long, living song. Brother Zachariah could not sing the song, but he could listen.

This was not the first time this had happened to him, seeing a trace of what had been in what was. The coloring was entirely different. The boy did not really have anything to do with Will. Jem knew that. Jem--for in the moments he remembered Will, he was always Jem--was used to seeing his lost and dearest Shadowhunter in a thousand Shadowhunter faces and gestures, the turn of a head or the note of a voice. Never the beloved head, never the long-silent voice, but sometimes, more and more rarely, something close.