The call came in the middle of the night, yanking Tessa Gray out of a peaceful slumber with the angry buzzing on her night side stand. It was Magnus Bane, she knew it before she even looked at her phone, no one else would call at such a ghastly hour. Her voice was tired in her greeting, though she knew they both knew she was prepared to talk him down from whatever drunken and borderline illegal adventure he was plotting and to coax him to go to bed. What she heard on the other end of the line gave her pause however. Silence. There were no party sounds, no hooting and hollering from whatever bar she'd imagined him in, not even audible evidence of street activity. There was just Magnus' voice, grave and quiet as he said her name. Her heart thudded, "What is it? What's happened."
"Tess." He repeated, "Tess it's Jocelyn."
"Jocelyn." She echoed, her tired mind leaping to make the connection between the name and the vague memory image of red curls and bright green eyes and the tale of a runaway shadow hunter with an infant in need of protection. "Jocelyn Fairchild?"
Tessa had met Jocelyn two years previous, after the battle that put an end to The Circle's reign of terror over the downworlder community. She'd been disinclined to trust the young woman at first, given her position as Valentine's wife, but Jocelyn had seemed as genuinely against The Circle's methods as Tessa was her self. And then there had been the baby. Tessa could never turn away a child in need, so when Jocelyn had come to her, requesting she stand in for the Iron Sister at Clarissa's children's ritual, she couldn't say no. Not to mention Jem had been the Silent Brother present.
"Tessa, are you listening to me?" She became abruptly aware that Magnus had continued talking while she'd been lost in thought as his voice broke through the memories.
"Yes." She hesitated, actually having no clue what he'd been going on about, "I... no. I'm sorry Magnus, can you repeat that?"
"I said Jocelyn is dead." It sounded like a bad joke, but his tone was grim and serious in a way she rarely knew Magnus to be. "The mundanes are calling it a car accident, she was found in the burned remains of a truck belonging to her friend, Luke. He was another shadow hunter, an ex-Circle member, they found his body there too."
"You don't think it was an accident." It wasn't a question, she knew neither of them did, the odds of two shadow hunters dying an a mundane car accident was small, the chances of them both being former Circle member were even smaller.
"Jocelyn came to see me earlier to day. She thought she was being followed." Magnus admitted, a strange tone entering his voice, "She left something with me, said she was putting her trust in us in case something happened to her."
Tessa's mouth ran dry, thinking of all the things Jocelyn could have left them with, all the dangerous things she might have that people were looking for, that people may kill her or Magnus for, "What is it?"
There was a pause and when Magnus finally replied, his tone was dry and unimpressed, "Her spawn."
