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.