City of Ashes characters

Appears from the start

Fifteen, a newly discovered Shadowhunter still living an ordinary Brooklyn life while her mother lies in a coma no doctor can explain. She has begun dating her oldest friend Simon, partly because the alternative is impossible: the boy she actually wants turned out to be her brother. Her one clear gift is for runes, and she has no training worth the name.

Appears from the start

Raised as a Shadowhunter and now known to be Valentine's son, which has poisoned his place in the only home he has. He has moved out of the Institute rather than be watched, is sleeping badly, and takes on fights he does not need to. His feelings for Clary have not changed just because he has been told what she is to him.

Appears from the start

Clary's oldest friend, now her boyfriend, still an ordinary human in a world that keeps nearly killing him. He is trying to hold on to a normal life of band practice and school while knowing exactly how little he can do if anything goes wrong. Being bitten by vampires last year has left marks he does not talk about.

Appears from the start

The Lightwood daughter, a capable and showy fighter who trains hard and flirts harder. She is protective of Jace in her own way and openly amused by Clary's inexperience, though she is willing to teach her.

Appears from the start

The eldest Lightwood child, careful, dutiful and unhappy. He is keeping two secrets at once: that he is in love with someone he cannot admit to, and that the person is not a Shadowhunter at all. His loyalty to Jace remains absolute even as the Clave's suspicion of Jace grows.

Appears from the start

The Lightwoods' youngest child, nine years old, back from Idris with his mother. He is small, short-sighted, obsessed with stories and manga, and desperate to be taken seriously by the older Shadowhunters who mostly forget he is in the room.

Appears from the start

Alec and Isabelle's mother, returned from Idris to run the New York Institute. Formidable and cold under pressure, she was once in Valentine's Circle herself, and the discovery of whose son Jace really is has turned her affection for him into wary suspicion.

Appears from the start

Clary's mother, still unconscious in a Manhattan hospital after taking a potion to put herself beyond Valentine's reach. She is present in the book mainly as an unanswerable question: nobody knows how to wake her, and much of what she did and why she did it remains hers alone.

Appears from the start

Once the Shadowhunter Lucian Graymark, now a werewolf and the leader of a Manhattan pack, and the closest thing Clary has to a guardian while her mother is in hospital. He runs a bookshop, keeps the peace between his pack and the Institute, and lets Jace stay with him when nobody else will.

First appears in chapter 2

A young werewolf of Luke's pack, sharp-tongued and self-possessed, who ran away from a difficult family and was bitten a year or so ago. She meets Jace at a Downworlder bar and dislikes Shadowhunters on principle, having had good reason.

First appears in chapter 3

The Clave's Inquisitor, sent from Idris to investigate the New York Institute and the boy Valentine raised. Rigid, grief-hardened and entirely unmoved by anyone's protests, she treats Jace as an enemy agent from the moment she arrives and is willing to imprison a teenager to prove it.

Appears from the start

Clary's father and the leader of the old Circle, at large with the Mortal Cup and no longer bothering to hide. His campaign against the Clave has resumed, and he is collecting the rest of the Mortal Instruments, the objects the angel Raziel left to the first Shadowhunters.

First appears in chapter 6

The High Warlock of Brooklyn, still charging for his services and still watching Alec Lightwood rather more closely than he admits. He is drawn into the Institute's problems repeatedly, and is one of the few people willing to say plainly what the Clave is doing wrong.

First appears in chapter 8

A knight of the Seelie Court, elegant and evasive, who moves between the faerie realm and the city. He is Isabelle's companion for an evening and the escort who brings the Shadowhunters underground when they need an audience with his queen.

First appears in chapter 8

The ruler of the Seelie Court, beautiful, ancient and precise. She grants audiences freely and gives nothing away without a price, and she prefers her prices to be paid in the form of something the payer will regret.

First appears in chapter 9

The leader of the New York vampire clan, boyish in appearance and formally correct in everything he does. He observes the treaties scrupulously, which does not make him an ally, and he arrives at the Institute carrying news nobody wants to hear.