Part I: O Brave New World!

- 1 –

New York City, 1922

Snatching in a swift breath of cutting winter air so cold that it sawed at her throat, Clary leaped backward impatiently. One misplaced step was all it took, for her weight (little though it was) to shatter the slim veneer of ice under her heel. It snapped apart and crumbled as easily as one of her mom's ginger biscuits, until her whole foot slid right into the puddle. Gasping a phrase that nice young ladies weren't supposed to know, she jerked it back, but too late.

Her shoes were long since worn through and her latest pathetic attempt to re-sole them had been peeling apart for days. Now it felt as though they weren't simply letting in water, they let in half the Hudson. Hissing out a little more of her choice vocabulary, she shook her ankle deftly; a frustrated, feline gesture that sent dark splatters of rain water shivering away from her foot but didn't do anything for her already sodden stockings.

It was her own fault, she should have been looking where she was going. Typically, her mind hadn't been in the present, but where it had been for days, ever since she had found the note and first hatched this crazy plan. On her destination.

Ironically, tauntingly, as the trembling, indignant ripples she'd caused settled the black surface sent the upside-down vision of that destination winking jovially up at her once more. Lifting her head past the misty gusts of her nervous breaths spiralling out and disappearing into the dark, she looked at it properly.

The street itself didn't look anything spectacular. It looked like any other warehouse on the river banks: slumping corrugated roof, austere chipped brickwork darkened by years of rain and mud, not to mention towering rows of boarded up windows, many missing glass thanks to local kids or wretched weather. Far away from the amber, artificial glare of streetlights (none nearby were working) it almost blended into the rows of other, identical abandoned, decrepit buildings. Almost.

Ingenious, really. No one would spare this place a second glance, not unless they knew otherwise. It looked- to the ignorant eye- like exactly what it purported to be. Largely because by day it was just an abandoned storehouse in a part of town that had seen better days. But right now, in the freezing dark, if Clary held her breath, strained her ears and concentrated a little in the right spots, she could see the truth. Initially, another brutal, frigid blast of wind struck her already painfully numb face and sent an empty, lonely green bottle skittering loudly across the road toward her. When the echoing rattle of that finally stopped and the lost vessel halted by Clary's soaking foot, other sounds were detectable.

A burst of laughter. The muffled rumble of voices, the patterned tramp and tumble of feet. The delightful clink of glasses. And finally, strongest of all, winding its way around all those other sounds and sustaining them, the unmistakable swift, swaggering, jauntily careless swell and cry of Jazz, the sort that tugged at her body, loosening her limbs and demanded she make them move.

By peeling apart the exterior, careful deceit she caught a glimpse of what she wanted to see more than anything. In the uppermost levels, behind the blocking boards… the covert glow of lights.

Huddled across the street in the coal-black dark, with every muscle seized up and bunched together against the cold so bad it felt as though her bones were breaking apart inside her, in a wind so harsh she could have sworn it bruised her, Clary let a smile peek out. At last.

This place was exclusive and it had taken forever for her to pry from people she wasn't supposed to know, let alone talk to, the location of New York's best, worst kept secret. Everyone knew Pandemonium, anyone who was anybody had been. Or people who wanted to be somebody, like the giddy, nervous girl in the thickest shadows with drenched feet, an old-fashioned hat pulled down low and her hands thrust deep into the holey pockets of her only coat.

Jeez, if her mother knew she were here she'd have a fit. Thankfully she didn't and should all go to plan she wouldn't. In fact, worst case scenario, she never would know and best… well by the time she found out it would be too late to stop anything.

Clary sucked in another breath to steady and steel herself, chancing a look upwards. The night sky was thick with clouds, all of them weightily promising more rain to come. There wasn't a single star in sight. Clary chose to disregard that as a bad omen and believe instead that it was the heavens way of urging her to go inside and seek out another kind of star.

It certainly felt she were on the cusp of something. To her naïve mind this really could be the first and last time she would have to live as an outsider looking in- the place really did call to her. She swayed on the grim grey of the sooty pavement and her whole body leaned forward, into the beckoning sound, the beckoning world. She had guessed that this moment, perched on the edge of the right side of the street that felt to her so wrong, was a pivotal one. There was nothing stopping her from scurrying back home, and there ought to have been plenty stopping her from crossing the inky gash of a bare road. But she was helpless really, against the allure. If the promise was enough to lure her astray what she saw out the inside certainly wasn't about to dissuade her.

Later she would revise her assumption. Standing in the dark for the last time had not felt like that cataclysmic moment after all, it simply felt the pretext to one. And it had been. Just not in the way she had expected.

The excited, barely trepid girl thought she was about to lose an innocence she didn't believe she really possessed any more, street smart and forward-thinking member of the modern as she was. She had thought she knew she was about to enter the bad, sure, the technically criminal, but also the hidden, dazzling underside of the greatest city in the world.

Clary Fray was ready to taste the magical, the mythical and the truth from all the stories she had heard. That girl had no idea what the truth of this world looked like, she would also think later. But, God help her, she was about to find out.

-x.x.x.x.x.x-

Jace snubbed his cigarette downwards into the ashtray, watching the stunted white form buckle and fold downwards into itself, snout first. Malcontentedly, he shuffled it against the bottom of the tray, watching the ash collapse around it, like snow ploughed off a wall. Accepting unhappily that he had failed to quash his boredom with the cigarette he released it altogether. So he puffed out the last swathe of smoke and turned to face his unwanted guest.

He was convinced, in fact he was in no way uncertain, that he had enjoyed merrier funerals than this night in Jonathan Morgenstern's company. He also suspected that the feeling was mutual, given the way in which his companion mirrored that unshakeable boredom by twirling his cigarette holder between his long, fingers and stared blankly over the railing and down onto the dancefloor.

Pandemonium, the city's classiest speakeasy- apparently, such a thing existed- was built on levels.

The bottom, which had once been some kind of shop floor, had the widest unencumbered space, so it became the dancefloor.

The stage lay in the very centre and upon it a line of sparkling, scantily attired girls spun and kicked and twirled in perfect, rapid fire formation. It was ringed by the band, the brass of their instruments catching the lighting and shooting off sparks. The rest of the space was taken up by other dancers; the paying couples who sought to Charleston or Lindy Hop into the wee hours.

The rest of the establishment was split onto levels, the soaring walls of the former warehouse ringed by railings, which were crowded in turn by tables, all of them filled with the customers who would rather drink the night away, like Jace. The bar was on the bottom as well, facing the back wall and surrounded by crates, right over at trap door so that the liquor could be quickly and efficiently hidden or removed in case of a raid.

The levels ranged here as they did at the opera. The lower levels closest to the stage were the best, for the highest payers. The uppermost and the few tables clustered together at the far end of the dancefloor were for the hoi polloi. And even they were paying handsomely enough for their entry and booze. For esteemed customers, however, again like Jace or, more accurately, the young Mr Morgenstern, there was no need to traipse all the way down there every time one wanted a top up. For that there were lithe girls in tight, dark dresses, who darted up and down the rusty steps with the ease only practise and pressure could provide, bearing trays of drinks, cigarettes, nuts and so on.

In the past year Jace had seen plenty of speakeasies, but he had to concede this one held as much charm as one of its kind was likely to. He had been expecting grimy, under the table kind of establishments, and he had encountered one or two of that ilk. But this one was definitely his favourite.

Pandemonium had mustered together just enough of its original, forgotten purpose with the still rusty stairs and railings, the visible strips of flecked brickwork walls and the huge boxes that held the prohibited nectar of the gods which could be easily shut up and pushed back under the floorboards. Somehow it also held a flair of grandeur, with the sweeping velvet curtains that covered the windows to smother draughts and stifle untoward sounds, and the thick carpets intermittently adorning the sagging wooden floors that ranged from turkey to fur. A panache only accentuated by the brightly coloured jars which held the table lights and of course the glistening black chandelier hanging gaudily from the ceiling. Or the fact that the coppery, smudged railings were also ringed with pearls, or faux ivy, or silk ribbons. The whole place had no collective theme, it opted instead to blend several things that should not mix in an oddly effective way. It twisted what should have been tasteless (again, a bleeding chandelier sporting real, live candles) into something that smacked off elegance. The garish, the mundane, it all melted to one in this glorious, glittering crucible.

Poet that he longed to be, Jace could not but nod at the cleverness of the paradox. Warehouse, opera, manor house, all wound into one. Nothing here was what it seemed, the wasted shell hiding a pearl. None of it should belong- this place should not exist. And thus it became exactly the sort of place that brought people back again and again, for it always gave them whatever they thought they wanted. A true escape, a secret oasis, a sense that the impossible could and did exist.

Just the right, tantalising amount of Pandemonium. A chaos that was crucially controlled. Only just.

Jace had been here several times, yet tonight Pandemonium didn't hold the lustre or appeal it had previously. Which was ironic, since these were the best seats he had ever had. And someone else was paying for the drinks.

Something had him on edge all night, some inexplicable sense of urgent discomfort hooked in his gut that had stopped him from enjoying the fancy dinner Morgenstern had also footed the bill for. He had hoped that once they got to the club and he'd indulged in several glasses of scotch this paranoia would abate, but as the hours trickled by it only intensified. Admittedly, being alone with Jonathan was never destined to be fun no matter the venue or occasion, but knowing that couldn't stop Jace shooting wistful glances at the chair Alec had vacated. His friend had excused himself what felt like years ago. He was needed backstage, with his sister.

And in his absence, keeping their third party amused fell to Jace. A task at which he was apparently failing miserably. Really, he hadn't needed to come tonight. Truthfully, he hadn't been invited. But he had been lounging in the Lightwoods day room that afternoon, flipping through the time-yellowed pages of a first edition Jude the Obscure (one that had evaded the burnings!) pilfered from his cousin's library and listening to Izzy ramble and fret about her big night. Somehow he'd ended up promising his presence when she made her grand debut. Which had led to a red faced, disgruntled Alec cursing that he'd mixed up the dates and he was supposed to be going to dinner with Jonathan Morgenstern and he couldn't very well cancel plans with Jonathan goddamn Morgenstern. After a small tantrum and Jace's best wheedling it had been decided that after what was sure to be a dull but extravagant meal of food so daringly new-fangled that how to physically go about eating what was on the plate would perplex even the brightest minds, it had been arranged that they would go to Pandemonium afterward.

Now here they were, on the coveted first floor, staring listlessly out at the other clients and being ogled in turn. Jace supposed he should have basked in the attention, lapped up their curiosity, not so long ago he had thrived on having all eyes on him. On this occasion he mostly felt like a cow staring out of a bier. Maybe he was just jealous because he knew the real attraction was not him but the suavely dressed, slick silver haired young man sitting opposite. A little fascination was to be expected, coming hand in hand with the way in which this table had been fussed over all night, to the degree that, unless Jace was mistaken, another couple had been impetuously chased away so they could have it. Nothing was too good for Jonathan, no request too unreasonable. After all, he was the son of the club's supplier. In fact, Jace doubted there were too many speakeasies in this city Jonathan could grace with his presence and not get special treatment; his father supplied them all. Realistically, there had to be some that fell beyond the Morgenstern sphere of influence, but they were few and far between, and Manhattan was their stronghold.

Blinking indolently, the Morgenstern present trailed his cigarette holder through the air again, as if it were some languid wand work. He had inserted another cigarette at some point while Jace's thoughts wandered and lit it. But, due to habit, he didn't bother to take a single drag. No, he opted to let it smoulder untouched. If it flickered out he would relight it and resume watching it burn itself out. In all the time Jace had known and watched it he had never actually smoked one of the damn things. Why, God only knew. Maybe just to demonstrate he could. It went beyond that, Jace had noted tonight too, when after ordering the most expensive thing on the menu Jonathan had nibbled at maybe a quarter of it. If he hadn't liked it, if there had been some sort of problem Jace doubted the chap would hesitate to send it back. He didn't strike him as the sort to bite his tongue and suffer in silence. Then he remembered reading of some great banquets of the past, where or when he had forgotten, when nobles had made a point of letting the food rot, again simply to show that they could afford to be wasteful.

Jace had to smirk at the instinctive disapproval such a notion roiled within him. It was not as if the trappings of wealth or overt displays of it were foreign to him, but would seem that he was, after it all, still a creature of the old world and old money. Apparently he had not entirely discharged the sensibilities that came on the coattails of that. Jace thought himself one of the more progressive sorts, but he could not deny the way his blood ran; ancient, English and- most likely- blue. When you hailed from a lineage that could, though not without difficulty and probably some fibbing, trace itself back to the Norman Conquest, you also inherited the tendency to sniff at those less well established. He had been from birth fed two fundamental truths, the foundations of the universe according to his grandfather: that monarchism was the only true, divinely approved mode of government and that money and class were not the same thing.

Whatever would his grandfather, the man who had never understood what would take any sane person further than London think of him now, in this den of inequity in the New World and its proud democracy, drinking with the son of a man who no-one had ever heard of ten years ago and worse, letting him buy the drinks. Somewhere, under the wet, Anglican soil of their village churchyard, the man was convulsing and somersaulting in his grave.

The smirk that lifted the corner of Jace's mouth snared Jonathan's attention. "Some joke you want to share?" His dark eyes glinted disconcertingly in the faint reddish light from the Victorian oil lamp planted between them.

Jace, who had always found the charm which intermittingly oozed off the other fellow unavoidably shallow and false, got the sense that Jonathan was fearful he was the source of the laughter. Personally, Jace didn't care for him at all and would gladly start a fight. Men who hadn't the pluck to puff on a cigarette should be easy picking. Then again, he was more eager not to cause any trouble for Alec. His friend has been too good to him to deserve that. So instead Jace smiled blithely and opted for honesty.

"It just occurred to me that those from my old life would not be best pleased with me if they knew where I was, what I was doing, and with whom."

The comment was met with a short gust of laughter. "Naturally."

So, the curiosity was mutual. To Jonathan, Jace was also intriguing specimen from the opposite side of the spectrum. The boy who had grown up in the sixteenth-century manor, the son of the Tory minister squinting at the boy who had grown up in a house built by some fool who had made a fortune out west in the oil rush to die of a heart attack soon after and raised by the same breed of self-made man.

Even so, acknowledging that did not mean Jace liked the way he was looked at, as if he were some particularly interesting phenomena on the other end of a microscope lens.

Jonathan appraised him over the rim of his drink, swirling the honey dark liquid within. "Alec tells me you're writing a book."

With a choked laugh Jace shifted in his seat and tossed his eyes away hastily across the other dimly lit tables, crossing and uncrossing his ankles, yanking at his necktie. He cleared his throat and made to shrug it off, "I am in the process of writing something," he granted.

Lies. Damned lies. That 'something' was merely an overflowing pile of paper in the bin by his desk, a much-cursed typewriter, a small notebook of blotted and scored out handwritten garbling and a head resembling a hornet's nest; with countless frenetic, fleeting ideas buzzing around in it. None of which he could ever commit more than few weeks to.

"A novel he told me." Even if he had wanted to talk about his ambitions, Jace could not pick someone he would seek to do it with less. He was pretentious and overbearing, of that there was no doubt, but he drew the line at spewing novel ideas to strangers. He was not that bothersome old sot. Not yet, anyway.

Another tug on the necktie. Jace frowned slightly and tried to disarm the other bloke as best he could, "At the moment it is more of a character study. A social commentary of sorts." He slurped in another mouthful of whiskey, appreciating all at once that he was not drunk enough for this.

"Tales of those you've encountered in New York, I was led to believe."

"Oh yes," Jace agreed, dryly, with a rolling shrug of his shoulders, "It teems with beautiful, desolate souls. Colourful sirens of girls who do all sorts of outrageous things like rouge their cheeks and want to vote and otherwise lead unsuspecting men astray. Their men who are brilliant and brave and changing the world one crate of smuggled spirits at a time." The biting sarcasm cannot have been lost on his host, for Jace had not gone to pains to disguise it. He could not help it, his literary striving, or-he may as well be honest even if only to himself- struggling was a testy nerve. However, Jonathan chose to ignore his digging.

"Hmm. Yes." He chortled again and prised his slender, pale index finger, upon which a huge black jewel blinked, away from his glass to point it at Jace, "I figured you might be amusing."

That was all it took to send yet more unconsidered parched wit spinning off Jace's tongue, "Oh you'll find me quite the performing monkey."

"I do hope so. A social commentary, huh? Bootleggers and chorus girls, then?"

"It couldn't be true to life without them."

Another idle twitch to send a cascade of limp ash into the waiting tray, "And for the former I'm the case study, right?"

Blast Alec and his whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-god attitudes. Who did he think he was? More to the point, where did he think transparency was going to get him in his new line of work? Perhaps his new method of ingratiating himself with the Morgensterns was by laying down and upholding some sort of honour amongst thieves. That would be so like him.

"All names will be changed," Jace insisted smoothly, much more placidly than he felt.

"What a relief," Jonathan agreed every bit as blithely. How odd, Jace thought snidely, for him to have apparently found his match in one so different. A droll silence hung between them every bit as tangibly as the gauze of cigarette smoke that hung over everything in this establishment. Then Morgenstern offered a lazy, razored smile. "Well if you want a true to life account you may just have to get your hands a little dirty."

Jace lifted a bland smile in return, swallowing another generous mouthful of whiskey, years of cold mud and hot blood all threatening to clamour to the surface. "Then I suppose it's fortunate my hands weren't clean to begin with."

A short wolfish bark of laughter met that comment. Jonathan sliced his eyes back to the heaving dancefloor, and they sat on in silence for what felt like hours. The cigarette in Morgenstern's grip grew limp and with a last, weary splutter of orange light and a final weak wheeze of smoke it smouldered out. By the time the black eyes across the table were back on Jace's they were the most animated he had ever seen them. His nose twitched as if he had just caught a whiff of something delicious and a wide, vicious grin split his already striking face. "My appointment had just arrived."

That was the first Jace had been aware the other fellow had one and was left to blink with what he feared was inane shock at the pronouncement. Thankfully, he was spared the embarrassment of articulating that ignorance. "Here's your chance for your first real taste of New York."

It would be hours, days even, before it occurred to Jace that he'd had a choice to make in that moment. That he could have chosen another path. But at the time, under those heady, throbbing lights and faced with the still growing smug, savage excitement of the closest thing he had to a Muse, Jace Herondale did not think he made any decision at all. His companion jumped up to beckon with a ring bearing, scarred hand. Jace drained the dregs of his drink and that metaphorical little butterfly unfurled and fluttered its wings.

They descended the steps with ease, skirted the dancefloor and slipped out through a door that had not seemed to exist a moment before.

Jace followed Jonathan Morgenstern into the dark.

-x.x.x.x.x.x-

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! This has been sitting on my computer for a while now and I figured I might as well share. I needed a break from TFF and have of lost the run of it, so I've taken to jotting down this for the past while. So I guess it's kind of the side chick or, to employ an even worse analogy, the Jon Snow to my Stark baby, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Please let me know what you think so far! xx