Ch. 1

Clary Fray was sitting in her room at the New York Institute, sketching her boyfriend, Jace, by the moonlight, for what seemed like the millionth time. She found that she could never get his face right no matter how many times she tried. As she lightly drew the beginning of the hairline she heard the door open. Speak of the devil, she thought. "Hey, Clary, what are you drawing?" Jace asked.

"Is it really your business?" she asked, suddenly embarrassed. He had caught her drawing him before and teased her constantly about it.

"Let's see, if you won't willingly show me then I will have to get it myself" he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Oh no you don't" Clary began but Jace had already began to move. He jumped onto her bed and got behind her then tickled her until she dropped her sketchpad. Last time I ever tell anyone I am ticklish there… Clary thought and tried to grab her sketchpad but Jace's quickness could be matched by nearly nobody and he had it before she even reached for it.

"Oh, my perfection again, Clary? This is getting a bit obsessive, isn't it. Maybe we need to take you to a psychiatrist for that." He taunted, holding the book. Clary reached back for it but Jace was flipping through the pages and didn't look like he was going to give it up. He was looking at a picture she had drawn at Central Park one day. It was of some geese and a pond. Jace took out the pencil that was clipped onto the binding of the sketchpad. "Hey, I bet I can draw like that too!" Jace declared and set to work drawing a… Clary couldn't figure out what Jace was drawing. She could see it perfectly fine but Jace wasn't Van Gough to say the least. It looked like a kitchen spoon on top of a box with flippers.

"Umm Jace? Sorry to interrupt your artistic rampage but may I ask what in the Angel's name is that?" Clary asked

"It's a duck!" Jace exclaimed, looking insulted but Clary knew he was just pretending. Jace was rarely insulted by anything and if anybody tried to insult him he usually just made a joke out of it. Clary was about to make a response comparing Jace's drawing skills to those of a real duck when a rune flashed across her mind, like ink splats on pure white paper. "Clary? Daydreaming of me again?" Jace teased but Clary was too busy concentrating on the rune to be annoyed. "Clary?" Jace repeated, with real concern.

"Give me the sketchpad." Clary said, in a way that she would have normally described as scary calm but right now she needed to concentrate. Jace gave her the sketchpad, looking confused. She etched the rune next to Jace's drawing and it rose up on the paper, glowed once, and then fell like a deep breath. Clary and Jace watched in amazement as Jace's poor duck drawing turned amazingly realistic but then morphed into a morbid but slightly amusing picture of a duck eating a person then it became smaller and smaller but multiplied until about 100 ducks eating people were on the paper, covering Clary's earlier goose drawing.

"Wow." Jace said. This was saying something as Jace was never the one to show amazement, more the one that someone said Wow about.

"Exactly what I thought. What does it mean?" Clary asked. She had made runes before but never one like this. "It made the picture good-"

"Are you saying it wasn't good in the first place?" Jace interjected.

"Yes Jace, it was the most amazing duck picture I had ever seen in my life" Clary said sarcastically. "Well it made it good, and then it turned morbid. It couldn't possibly be predicting the future, could it? It's so weird. Ducks eating people! What in the world does it mean?" she repeated, frustrated.

Jace, who had looked lost in thought began to speak but was interrupted by the sound of a church bell that was the summoning bell. He and Clary looked outside to see a girl, about their age at the Institute's door. She had long brown hair that fell in curls down to her waist and she was wearing a striped blue and white blouse with a long blue skirt. She was also wearing a strange pendant around her neck that neither Jace nor Clary could make out from the second story of the Institute.

Clary looked at Jace, even more confused than before. The girl wasn't pale enough to be a vampire, had no visible warlocks mark, and the werewolves were all wolf right now because of the full moon. If she were a shadowhunter, she could get in easily enough by herself. She couldn't be a mundane because they can't see the Institute. Who knows, maybe she's a warlock and had a tail under that skirt. It's not like it hasn't happened before. "Does she look familiar to you?"

"No. Come on," He said, standing up. "Let's go meet a new friend! Maybe she knows about these mysterious ducks" laughing, he held out his arm and Clary took it.