:: where all love ends ::
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
- T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"
"I hate inventory," Jace groaned. He shoved a stack of musty leather-bound books across the table, his mouth set in a thin line of distaste. "Such a waste of my incredibly valuable time."
"Do you have something better to do?" Alec asked, hauling a large wooden crate onto the table.
"Of course," Jace replied easily, then frowned at the seemingly endless heaps of books, boxes and artifacts still lying around in the dimly-lit apartment. "Honestly, Alec, I might've cured some fatal disease in the time it took to sort through all this junk."
Alec laughed, but said nothing. Last week, Alec and Jace had apprehended a female warlock who'd been using mundanes as part of some strange ritual sacrifice—and, now that she was in the hands of the Clave, it was time to find out what, if any, dangerous or valuable artifacts the warlock had kept in her home.
Clave custom dictated that the property of any Downworlder who is taken into custody for breaking the Accords belongs to the arresting Shadowhunters. Therefore, anything recovered from the warlock's apartment technically belonged to Alec and Jace.
Which was fine, really, except that the warlock was unquestionably some kind of hoarder. They'd been painstakingly picking through the apartment since early this morning, and had come up with nothing but outdated spell books, dirty clothes, worn-out amulets and a couple of mummified cats.
"Think there's anything worth keeping around here?" Alec asked hopelessly. He wandered over a large wooden chest shoved up against a wall, half-buried under a mountain of musty blankets.
"In this dump?" Jace scoffed. "Hardly. We'll be lucky if we find some loose change under the couch cushions."
Bending, Alec opened the chest and began poking around inside. A brief glint caught his eye; when he looked closer, he spotted a slim, metal chain that glimmered among the surrounding pieces of junk. Alec tugged on the chain—and unearthed a heavy, dust-covered pendant from the depths of the chest.
"This is kind of nice," Alec mused, holding the pendant up to the light.
"Is it a longhorn skull?" Jace called from across the room. "I hope so. It will go perfectly with the décor of the apartment—I'm going for a sort of rustic, Wild West feel, if you know what I mean. I think the cowboy look will look good on me. Of course, everything looks good on me, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I can't say Clary approves of all the cowboy hats she keeps finding everywhere, but I—"
Rolling his eyes, Alec rubbed his thumb across the pendant, wiping the grime from its surface. The moment he touched the pendant, a strange pinprick of heat sparked beneath his thumb—then spread through his hand, racing up his arm and into his chest, where it spread and intensified, like a fiery flower blooming inside his body. Alec's heart throbbed painfully, but the rest of his body went strangely numb. He felt as though he'd turned to mist, his legs giving way beneath him, but he was only distantly aware of himself as he crumpled, dashing his head against the edge of the desk. Behind him, Jace leaped to attention, calling Alec's name—
And then he was outside, the soles of his leather sandals tapping the cobblestone as he chased Jonathan through the crowded marketplace. The summer sun beat down against his back
"Alexander!"Jonathan called. "Are you coming or aren't you?" His laughter, loud and heartfelt, echoed through the air. Alexander could see him bobbing through the crowd, his shining golden hair like a beacon.
Turning a corner, Alexander found himself in an empty side street, where the cobblestone turned to hard-packed earth, worn flat by countless feet. Jonathan leaned against the wall, his golden eyes looking Alexander up and down, slow as syrup. Alexander's heart contracted.
"Took you long enough," Jonathan said, a smile quirking the edge of his perfect mouth.
Alexander reached up, brushing his fingers along Jonathan's jaw: a familiar gesture, a welcomed touch. Jonathan was watching him expectantly, and Alexander moved closer, closing the distance between them, lowering his mouth to Jonathan's—
X
Gasping, Alec's eyes flew open. He was sprawled on the filthy carpet of the warlock's apartment, his whole body tingling, still half-numb.
"Alec?" Jace knelt over him, his brow creased with something like concern. "You all right?"
"How... How long was I out?" Alec asked, blinking. He pushed himself upright.
"Not long. What happened? You just dropped."
"I'm not sure." Alec's gaze found the pendant: It lay nearby, pulsing faintly. Pulling his sleeve down to cover his hand, he picked it up. "When I touched this pendant, I... saw something."
"Saw what?" Jace pressed, squinting at the pendant.
Alec shook his head. "It was almost like a dream," he said. "I was myself, but I wasn't myself." But that wasn't quite right, and he knew it. If it had been a dream, the details of it would have already started to disperse. They wouldn't still stand out as clear to him as memories—the way the cobblestone had felt beneath his feet, the hot breeze, the way the harsh sunlight illuminated Jace's hair.
Jace? he thought suddenly, bewildered. It was only now, looking back, that he realized the young man in his dream—vision, whatever—had been . . . Alec shook his head.
"I think you were there, Jace," he said finally.
"Let me see that pendant." Covering his hand as Alec had done, Jace took the pendant. "It happened when you touched it with your bare skin?"
"Yeah."
"That is odd." Jace squinted at the pendant, and Alec followed suit. Upon closer inspection, Alec could see that the pendant was made of a translucent dark blue stone, perhaps a sapphire, set in bright silver. Peering through the stone was like looking through dark water—but Alec noticed that an unfamiliar rune was carved into the inside of the silver backing.
"Do you recognize that rune?" he asked, pointing it out. "It looks almost like a Mark."
"Not any Mark I've ever seen," Jace murmured. Standing, he swung it before his eyes like a hypnotist's pendulum. "But Clary might recognize it. Let's take it to her."
X
Author's Note: This is a pretty short introductory chapter, just setting things up. The juicier stuff will come a bit later. :) I hope you enjoyed it. The next chapter should be ready within the next week or so. In the meantime, free to speculate about where this story is headed in your reviews! :D