City of Bones Chapter 1 Summary

How It All Goes Down

Pandemonium

  • Welcome to the City of Bones, Part One: "Dark Descent."
  • Clary Fray, fifteen, and her best friend, Simon, wait in line to enter the Pandemonium Club.
  • A mysterious—but cute!—blue-haired boy in a red jacket jokes to the bouncer that's he a vampire hunter, and gains admittance to the club before Clary and her friend.
  • He stalks a beautiful black-haired girl through the club and follows her into a secluded storage area.
  • We get a glimpse into his thoughts as he slinks through the club. He has some sort of magical powers that affect perception and he really doesn't have a high opinion of humans, whom he calls "mundies."
  • Unable to take her eyes off the blue-haired—and cute!—boy, Clary notices that he's being followed, too, and one of his (two male) followers has a knife.
  • She decides to follow them herself, to which we say, Bad Idea. If they were any closer, it would be a Conga line of death.
  • Before Clary arrives, we get a glimpse of what's going on in the storage room.
  • It seems that the girl, whose name is Isabelle, was acting as bait to lure the blue-haired boy into a trap. According to the blue-haired boy (did we mention that Clary thinks he's cute?), whose minutes are numbered, the girl and her two male friends are Shadowhunters. They're also all really pretty.
  • Clary sneaks in and starts eavesdropping on the confusing conversation they're having.
  • They talk about things like Demons, the Clave, and someone named Valentine. She also learns that the two boys not tied up right now are named Alec and Jace.
  • Right before Jace is about to stab the blue-haired boy, Clary shouts out for them to stop.
  • The Shadowhunters are all, wait, she can see us?
  • While the Shadowhunters are preoccupied with Clary, the blue-haired demon boy decides to seize the opportunity to escape. He grasps Jace's throat with his claws.
  • The struggle doesn't last long. The Shadowhunters dispatch the demon, and he disintegrates.
  • So now what? They debate about whether to take Clary back with them to "the Institute," and ask her confusing questions about Night Children and warlocks. Um… what are Night Children?
  • Finally, Simon pops into the storage room, oh, only about ten minutes too late, with security guards in tow.
  • Strangely, they can only see Clary in the room, by herself. They can't see the Shadowhunters.
  • And that's the end of that. Clary and Simon hail a cab back to Brooklyn.
  • Normally when we're in a cab, we're too busy trying not to feel motion sick, but Clary's busy trying to feel like she's not totally crazy.