Hey guys! It's been, like, 1000 years since I last updated...sorry. Here is the next installment of City of Bones: Jace POV. This one's a little short, but I hope you like it. SIMON'S HERE!
Songs:
Way Too Deep by Grabbitz
Friends by Grabbitz feat. Faustix
Icy by Approaching Nirvana
305 by Approaching Nirvana
Darkness closed in on him like a wave, rushing in from all directions. His throat closed up, his insides turning to water. Jace hated Portaling simply because of the horrendous sense of freefall, the choking helplessness as he tumbled down into a bottomless pit.
Branches caught at his clothes as he reappeared into the real world. He tucked himself into a ball, prepared to roll as soon as he hit the ground. But when he did land, it was not ground he hit.
His forehead hit another's, his elbows and knees tangling up in someone else's. He was uncomfortably pressed against a human body, caught in their mess of hair and limbs. From under him, the person squirmed. An elbow caught him in the stomach and momentarily knocked the wind from him.
"Owww," he said indignantly. "You elbowed me."
Clary's irritated reply issued from somewhere beneath him. "Well, you landed on me."
Jace pushed himself up and braced his forearms on either side of Clary. Her scarlet hair was tangled and dirty, fanned out under her head like a cushion. The branches had gouged scratched into her neck and Isabelle's tanktop. He grinned down at her.
"Well, you didn't leave me much choice, did you?" he asked, strangely amused. "Not after you decided to leap merrily through that Portal like you were jumping the F train. You're just lucky it didn't dump us out in the East River."
"You didn't have to come after me."
"Yes, I did," he said. "You're far too inexperienced to protect yourself in a hostile situation without me." Although, having seen what she was capable of, he was starting to doubt those words.
She rolled her eyes. "That's sweet. Maybe I'll forgive you."
"For what?"
"For telling me to shut up."
He opened his mouth to protest, closed it, then opened it again. Yes, he had technically told her to shut up, but he hadn't meant it. Not really. "I did not... Well, I did, but you were-" He kept sputtering, searching for the words.
"Never mind," said Clary, rolling out from under him. She craned her head to look behind him, at whoever's property they'd so rudely trespassed. A look of horror crossed her features.
"I know where we are," she whispered.
He looked at her, alert. "What?"
She pulled her legs out from under his torso, pitching him to the side. He caught himself and rolled gracefully to an upright position, holding out a hand to help her up. Stubborn as always, she ignored it and scrambled up on her own, dragging a hand through her tangled hair.
They were standing in front of a gray clapboard house, almost identical to the ones around it, all neatly lined up in a row like a line of birds on a branch. Surrounding the house was a chain link fence that barred entrance. A locked gateway led to a gravel drive, in which deep tire ruts were carved.
A sign hung on the peeling white door. "Garroway Books," Jace read, his voice strangely loud in the uneasy silence. "Fine Used, New, and Out-of-Print. Closed Saturdays." He cast a glance towards the locked door. Luke obviously hadn't been here a while; the stack of unread mail on the doorstep told him that much. The utter stillness sent the familiar crawling sense of dread through Jace.
"He lives in a bookstore?"
Clary glanced behind them at the empty street. "He lives behind the store," she said, craning her neck to see if anyone was around. "Jace, how did we get here?"
Jace bent down and began examining the padlock on the gateway closely. "Through the Portal," he said, sliding his hand under the lock to feel the weight. "It takes you to whatever place you're thinking of."
"But I wasn't thinking of here," she said, bouncing up and down on her toes in agitation. "I wasn't thinking of anywhere."
"You must have been." Jace wasn't about to argue the fact with Clary; he knew how Portals worked, and she didn't. Besides, it really didn't matter. Giving up on the lock, he stood up. Using his stele was not an option; Luke was sure to know how to recognize the signs of a Shadowhunter. After all, he was best friends with one.
"What do you want to do?" he asked her.
Clary blew out a sigh. "Leave, I guess," she muttered. "Luke told me not to come here."
He raised his eyebrows. This wasn't like her at all. "And you just accept that?"
"Do I have a choice?" she said bitterly, wrapping her arms around herself tightly despite the heat.
"We always have choices," Jace said, leaning back against the fence. He studied her face for a while, then spoke in a low voice. "If I were you," he began slowly, "I'd be pretty curious about Luke right now." He glanced behind him. "Do you have keys to the house?"
She shook her head, a light coming to her eyes. "No, but sometimes he leaves the back door unlocked." She gestured to a narrow alley between Luke's house and the one next to it. It was dark and shadowy, more so as night fell, and littered with plastic soda cans and plastic bags.
Jace looked around quickly. "You sure he isn't home."
The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Well, his truck's gone, the store's closed, and all the lights are off. I'd say probably not."
"Then lead the way."
They half-walked, half-jogged to the safety of the shadowy alley, hiding to settle their nerves more than anything. Jace picked his way carefully through the mess of cans and bottles and other trash. He could tell by the brands (Lucky Charms, Lay's, Tropicana) that most of it was Luke's neighbor, not him. Unless Luke was hiding a four-year-old in his house.
Behind the house was a fence, cutting off the house and its tiny backyard garden from the rest of the world. If a pile of weeds looking like that could even be called a garden.
Jace dug the tip of his shoes into one of the gaps in the fence. Unlike the front of the house, this side had no gateway. "Up and over," he said, scaling the fence. He kept his weight even on his legs, so the fence didn't shake too much. He cleared the top and leapt deftly over the spiked top, landing not on the ground but once again on another being.
An ear-shattering yowl escaped the bushes underneath him and he fell to the side as whoever he'd landed on leapt out of the shrubbery and shot across the yard. Jace rolled to his feet, furious, and darted after the shape.
Whoever it was was undoubtedly not a Shadowhunter. There was no grace to their gait, no evasive maneuvering whatsoever. Jace overtook them easily and lunged, throwing his body weight across the person - a boy, of about Jace's age. The boy struggled underneath Jace, who sat triumphantly on the boy's back, legs straddling his sides.
"Got him," Jace called back to Clary, who made her way over to the, brushing dirt off her - Isabelle's - jeans. When she arrived, Jace grabbed the boy's wrist, twisting it upwards. Showing off, maybe, just a little.
"Come on," he said, tightening his grip on the boy's wrist. "Let's see your face-"
The boy struggled upright, or as upright as he could go with Jace directly on top of him. "Get the hell off me, you pretentious asshole," he snarled, his voice very familiar. Jace took a good look at him, at the mussed hair, the battered glasses, the pinched expression.
Clary stopped dead. "Simon?"
Jace let out a sigh. "Oh, God," he said, almost forlornly. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd gotten hold of something interesting." He pulled himself off Simon and leaned against the porch railing.
Letting out a motherly sigh, Clary rushed to Simon's side and helped him up. Jace watched with a growing sense of dislike for the boy as Clary gently brushed the dirt and grass from Simon's hair.
"But what were you doing hiding in Luke's bushes?" she asked, rubbing off a patch of dirt off his cheek with her thumb. Jace's stomach turned over, watching her. "That's the part I don't get."
Simon, humiliated, jerked away from her. "All right, Fray," he snarled in a way that was entirely too ungrateful considering what she'd been doing for him. "That's enough. I can fix my own hair."
She stepped back, raising her hands in surrender. "I mean, did Luke know you were there?"
"Of course he didn't know I was there," he snapped. "I've never asked him, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random strangers lurking in his shrubbery."
"You're not random," she said fondly. "He knows you. The main thing is that you're all right."
Simon's dark eyes widened in disbelief. "That I'm all right?" He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. "Clary do you have any idea what I've been through this past couple of days?" He shook his head. "The last time I saw you, you were running out of Java Jones like a bat out of hell, and then you just...disappeared. You never picked up your cell - then your home phone was disconnected - then Luke told me you were off staying with some relatives upstate when I know you don't have any other relatives." Anger had turned to desperation now. "I thought I'd done something to piss you off."
She was still looking at him in that tender way that made Jace's skin crawl. The weasel-faced brat didn't deserve her compassion. Angrily, he used the end of the stele to scratch at his nails, chipping one.
"What could you have possibly done?" she said softly, reaching out her hand for his. He pulled it away, not looking at her.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "Something."
Jace scoffed, keeping his eyes trained on his nails. He could feel the heat of Clary's glare.
"You're my best friend," she said. "I wasn't mad at you."
Simon huffed and crossed his arms. "Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn't be bothered to call me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wannabe goth you probably met at Pandemonium." He blew out a breath. "After I spent the past three days wondering if you were dead."
Jace raised his eyebrows as high as they could go. "Dyed-blond wannabe goth," that was a new one. He glanced at Clary, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"I was not shacking up!" she snapped. Jace could almost see her blush through the darkness.
He sighed, filing his thumbnail with the stele. "And my hair is naturally blond," he said. "Just for the record."
"So what have you been doing these past three days, then?" asked Simon, beady eyes squinted all the more with suspicion. "Do you really have a great-aunt Matilda who contracted avian flu and needed to be nursed back to health?"
Jace raised his eyebrows. Clary's mouth widened into an O. "Did Luke actually say that?"
"No. He just said you had gone to visit a sick relative, and that your phone probably just didn't work in the country. Not that I believed him. After he shooed me off his front porch, I went around the side of the house and looked in the back window. Watching him packing up a green duffel bag like he was going away for the weekend. That was when I decided to stick around and keep an eye on things."
"Why?" asked Clary. "Because he was packing a bag?"
"He was packing it full of weapons," Simon said grimly. "Knives, a couple daggers, even a sword. Funny thing is, some of the weapons looked like they were glowing." He looked at Clary, his expression sour. "Now, are you going to say I was imagining it?"
Jace was listening closely. It couldn't be a coincidence; Luke, best friend of an ex-Shadowhunter, leaving the house armed to the teeth with Shadowhunter weapons?
"No," Clary was saying. "I'm not going to say that." She turned to Jace, the last rays of sunlight setting her hair on fire. He could see the tiny amber sparks in the centers of her eyes, all the way from here. "I'm going to tell him the truth," she said.
"I know," he said quietly.
"Are you going to try and stop me?"
Jace looked down at his hands, criss-crossed with the patterned scars of previous Marks. Knives in his jacket, on his belt. He was a Shadowhunter, forced into silence. "My oath to the Covenant binds me," he said softly. "No such oath binds you."
She looked relieved, as if his approval meant a great deal to her. Turning back to Simon, she took a deep breath. "All right," she said, gearing up for the long monologue ahead. "Here's what you need to know."
Jace was half-asleep by the time Clary finished. Darkness had fallen completely, shrouding Simon's face. Clary's voice was almost gone.
"So," she rasped, clearing her throat. "Any questions?"
Simon raised his hand quickly. "Oh, I've got questions," he said, sounding slightly dazed. "Several."
"Okay. Shoot."
Jace raised his eyebrows - the amount of times he was doing this was ridiculous - and listened closely. Would Simon freak out? Would his utter mundaneness get the better of him and break that special little bond he shared with Clary?
"Now," said Simon, pointing at Jace. "He's a - what do you call people like him again?"
"He's a Shadowhunter," Clary said, tossing a look at Jace.
Jace was feeling distinctly bored. It had been bad enough to describe the complicated nature of his people; now Simon was here, and needed another explanation. He seemed a little skeptical of it all as well, eyeing Clary suspiciously. All the better if he didn't believe, Jace realized. He didn't want a mundane tagging along with them.
"And there are vampires, too?" said Simon, chewing on his lip ferociously. "Werewolves, warlocks, all that stuff."
Clary looked slightly nervous. "So I hear."
Simon looked at Jace for confirmation. "And you kill them too?"
Eyes down to his nails, Jace replied in a neutral tone. Simon clearly had too strong of a practical streak; he would think them crazy. "Only when they've been naughty."
At this, Simon promptly sat down. The darkness hid his face from view, but Jace knew what his expression would be. Shock, disbelief, then blankness as his brain gave up on trying to understand it all. He'd go into denial, as mundies so often did, and Jace would have to drag Clary away. There had been no point to spending three hours of explaining the unexplainable to someone so shallow.
"That is so awesome," said Simon.
Jace dropped his stele, startled. "Awesome?"
Simon was nodding vigorously. "Totally," he said, voice bright with enthusiasm. "It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but real."
Dungeons and Dragons? What in Raziel's name was that? Jace regarded Simon with apprehension. Was the kid mad? "It's like what?"
Clary looked slightly embarrassed. "It's a game," she explained hastily. "People pretend to be wizards and elves, and they kill monsters and stuff."
First of all, thought Jace, utterly stupefied, elves were a secluded race that did not engage with monsters. That was the sole job of Shadowhunters. And what kind of a game would it be where wizards went around killing demons, anyway? Did Simon and his stupid little friends spend their time frolicking around Central Park, dressed as Gandalf?
"I've heard of dungeons," he said delicately, not wanting to seem stupid. "Also dragons. Although they're mostly extinct."
Simon looked disappointed. "You've never killed a dragon?"
"He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf woman in a fur bikini, either," she snapped. "Lay off, Simon."
Six-foot elf? In a bikini? Not something Jace would say no to, but still. This kid was weird.
"But vampires are hot, right?" The boy seemed desperate to find something solid he could compare to his clouded mess of a reality. "I mean, some of them are babes, aren't they?"
Jace regarded him. There was nothing special about Simon, he decided. He was just another geeky New York bred mundane, with not a drop of honorable quality in him. There was no competition coming from this direction. No harm in answering the question. "Some of them, maybe."
"Awesome," said Simon.
Clary frowned.
"So," Jace said, sliding off the porch railing and landing gracefully on his feet. Simon's mouth dropped open. "Are we going to search the house, or not?"
"I'm game," said Simon eagerly, scrambling to his feet. Jace noticed that he took his position a little closer to Clary than he liked. "What are we looking for?"
Once again, Jace's eyebrows shot up. His forehead was beginning to hurt. "We?" he asked, adding a sinister undercurrent to his voice that made the mundane flinch. "I don't remember inviting you along."
He made the mistake of glancing at Clary, and the phrase "if looks could kill" came into his mind. "Jace," she snapped, and he raised his hands in surrender.
"Just joking," he said lightly, smiling at her. He stepped aside to let her by to the door. "Shall we?"
