City of Ashes recap

Valentine is at large with the Mortal Cup, and Downworlder children begin turning up dead across the city, drained for a ritual. The Clave sends the Inquisitor Imogen Herondale to New York, convinced that Jace, as Valentine's son, is his father's spy; she imprisons him in the Silent City just as Valentine attacks it, slaughters the Silent Brothers and takes the second Mortal Instrument, the Mortal Sword. Jace escapes and shelters with Luke. Clary and Simon try to be a couple, but an audience with the Seelie Queen forces Clary to kiss Jace in front of him, and Simon walks away; shortly afterwards he is killed and rises as a vampire. The Inquisitor's attempt to trade Jace to Valentine collapses when Valentine shows he does not want him back. Valentine seizes four Downworlders, Simon and Maia among them, to complete a ritual aboard his ship. Clary destroys the ship with a rune of her own making. The Inquisitor dies saving Jace, Valentine escapes with the Cup and the Sword, and Simon, revived on Jace's blood, becomes a vampire who can walk in daylight.

Clary Fray grew up believing she was an ordinary Brooklyn teenager until she saw a demon killed in a nightclub and her mother Jocelyn was abducted the next day. She learned that she is Nephilim, a Shadowhunter, one of the angel-descended hunters who police demons and keep treaties with the Downworlder races, and that her memories had been repeatedly wiped by the warlock Magnus Bane at Jocelyn's request. Her father is Valentine Morgenstern, who once led the Circle in an attempt to purge Downworlders and overthrow the Clave, and who faked his death years ago. Clary recovered the Mortal Cup, the object that creates new Shadowhunters, but the Institute's tutor Hodge betrayed them and handed it, and Jace, to Valentine. At a ruined hospital on the river Valentine revealed that he had raised Jace as his own son under a false name, and that Clary is his daughter, so that Jace and Clary, who had begun to fall in love, believe themselves to be brother and sister. Valentine escaped through a Portal with the Cup. Jocelyn was recovered alive but comatose after drinking a potion to escape him, and lies in a hospital nobody can help her from. Clary's family friend Luke was revealed as a werewolf and a former Shadowhunter, Valentine's old sworn partner, and Clary's best friend Simon, an ordinary human, survived being taken by vampires.

Jace has moved out of the Institute. Maryse Lightwood has come back from Idris with her youngest son Max, and she can no longer look at the boy she helped raise without seeing Valentine's son; the Clave has ordered him watched. Clary is trying to live an ordinary life with her mother still comatose, training a little, and has begun dating Simon largely because the alternative is unthinkable. A faerie child is found murdered and drained of blood, the first of several Downworlder deaths that Downworlders are quick to blame on Shadowhunters. Jace picks a fight at a werewolf bar, where he meets Maia Roberts, a young member of Luke's pack. Then the Clave's Inquisitor, Imogen Herondale, arrives from Idris to conduct her own investigation. She has decided in advance that Jace is his father's agent, and she has him arrested and taken to the cells beneath the Silent City.

While Jace is held in the Bone City, Valentine attacks it. He kills the Silent Brothers, takes the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Mortal Sword, and leaves; Jace survives only because he is already in the cells, and walks out through the wreckage. Because the Clave now assumes he was complicit, he cannot go back to the Institute, and Luke takes him in. The murders of Downworlder children continue, the treaty between the Clave and the Downworlders comes under real strain, and the Inquisitor's grip on the investigation tightens rather than loosens. Clary and Jace keep colliding, unable either to be together or to leave each other alone, and Simon can see it happening.

Needing information about Valentine's plans, Clary, Jace, Simon and Isabelle go down into the Seelie Court. The Queen agrees to help, but sets a price: Clary must be kissed by the person she most desires. Clary tries to make it Simon, and it does not work; she kisses Jace instead, in front of everyone, and Simon watches. He ends their relationship on the way out, hurt but clear-eyed about what he has just seen. Shortly afterwards Simon is killed. Because of the vampire blood already in him from the attack a year earlier, he does not stay dead; he is buried, and Clary calls him out of the grave. He rises as a vampire, and has to work out at once what that means for his mother, his band, his school, and everything else he had been trying to keep.

Simon begins learning what he now is, hiding it from his family and refusing to join Raphael's clan. The Inquisitor decides that Jace's real value is as a bargaining chip and opens negotiations to hand him to Valentine in exchange for the Mortal Instruments, over the Lightwoods' objections. Alec, quietly, is spending more time than he can explain with Magnus Bane. Valentine's collection of Downworlder blood continues, and the pattern of the victims makes clear he is preparing a ritual rather than simply killing. Clary keeps producing runes that are not in any book, and nobody, including her, understands where they come from.

The Inquisitor's bargain collapses. Confronted with the offer of his son, Valentine makes it plain that Jace is worth nothing to him, and the Inquisitor's entire theory falls apart in front of her. Her interference has already weakened the Institute's protections, and demons get in. In the fighting a demon that feeds on fear moves through the building, and Clary invents a rune that makes a person fearless in order to face it. The Inquisitor, who has spent the whole book trying to destroy Jace, ends by defending him. Valentine, meanwhile, has what he needs to begin, and is waiting on the water.

Valentine's ritual requires the blood of one of each of the four Downworlder kinds. He takes captives to complete the set, Simon and Maia among them, and holds them aboard his ship in the East River. Luke's pack, the Lightwoods, Clary and Jace converge on the ship. Clary gets aboard and finds Simon barely alive; Jace goes after his father, and the Inquisitor makes her final choice, dying in Jace's place when Valentine strikes at him. Valentine completes the ritual and the Mortal Sword is turned from a heavenly weapon into a demonic one.

On the sinking ship Simon, drained almost to nothing, drinks Jace's blood and survives; it leaves him a Daylighter, a vampire able to walk in sunlight, which no one has ever heard of before. Clary draws a rune of her own making on the hull and the vessel comes apart around them. Valentine escapes into the water with the Mortal Cup and the corrupted Sword; only the third Instrument, the Mirror, remains unfound, and nobody knows what it is. Luke's pack pulls the survivors out of the river. Maryse's suspicion of Jace is broken and he is taken back into the Institute; Clary and Simon are no longer together; Jocelyn is still in her coma; and what happened in the Seelie Court sits unresolved between Clary and Jace, who continue to believe they are brother and sister.

The confrontation ends on Valentine's ship in the East River. He has taken four Downworlder captives, Simon and Maia among them, and completes the ritual that turns the Mortal Sword into a demonic instrument. Jace fights him; the Inquisitor Imogen, who had spent the book trying to destroy Jace, dies taking the blow meant for him, having finally accepted that he is not his father's creature. Simon is drained almost to nothing and revives by drinking Jace's blood, which leaves him a Daylighter, a vampire who can walk in sunlight, something no one has ever heard of. Clary draws an unfamiliar rune on the hull that tears the ship apart, and Valentine escapes into the water with the Cup and the corrupted Sword, leaving two of the three Mortal Instruments in his hands and only the Mirror unaccounted for. The survivors are pulled out of the river by Luke's pack. Maryse's suspicion of Jace is broken and he is welcomed back to the Institute; Clary and Simon have ended their attempt at a relationship, and what happened in the Seelie Court sits unresolved between Clary and Jace, who still believe themselves to be siblings. Jocelyn remains in her coma, and Valentine is stronger than he was.