"The moon illuminates our final night."
Linger in Shadows
At sunrise, Prague was strikingly beautiful. Clary, standing alone at the centre of an aged stone bridge, could recall standing in the very same place not so long ago with Jace. They had stood in relative silence, looking out over the calm city as the sun had slowly risen, bathing the city and them in a warm wash of gold.
Now, Clary was mimicking the same event, but this time by herself. Before now, even with her brother not far away, she had felt relatively peaceful with Jace at her side, but right now, she could feel nothing but a coldly certain unease. It was as if even the warmth cast down from the sun's rays could not touch her.
Without Jace, the city seemed foreign to her; a feeling she had never really had when accompanied by him. She supposed it was his well versed knowledge of places he had read up on that made each destination feel not quite as unfamiliar as it should have done. But even now, with Alec, Isabelle and Simon with her, Clary couldn't shake the feeling that she was in a strange place and surrounded by a culture she didn't understand.
The others were standing a way off from her, over the other side of the bridge, grouped together while they continued to discuss their next plan of action – or, at least tried to discuss it anyhow. When Clary had wandered away, it had been down to Isabelle's constant shooting down of Simon's ideas. It had started to get to her before now, but this time she'd found it difficult not to leap to Simon's defence. Save doing so, she had walked off, ignoring Alec's questioning glance as she turned her back. Simon himself didn't appear all that concerned by Isabelle's baiting - probably because Alec had sided with his idea already - but Clary still preferred the illusion of solitude that she'd given herself while the three of them finished debating out the details.
In any case, debate or not, it wasn't long before Simon's familiar form came into sight as he leant over the side of the bridge next to Clary. He pulled on the strap of his shoulder bag, adjusting the weight around his shoulder and Clary did a double take, noticing the bag for the first time.
"Is that your blood supply?" she asked, eyebrows knitting together.
Simon nodded. "Gross, I know."
Clary shrugged her shoulder nonchalantly. "Not really."
Simon flashed a smile that clearly communicated his disbelief of her casual denial, but did not press the issue. "We're going to rent a hotel room," he informed her quietly, looking straight ahead into the sun and squinting.
Simon knew that it wouldn't really do to be seen standing around talking to himself – Alec had warned him that him, Isabelle and Clary had all cast glamour's over themselves already, so Simon had been left with the not so easy task of looking like he wasn't talking, walking or standing with people that nobody else could see - a feat that would have proven more difficult had Prague's streets been busier than they were.
"Like you suggested," Clary said, somewhat unenthusiastically. "It's the only thing we can do since we're in another country where we don't know anyone. Where else can we stay?"
Simon nodded minutely, already knowing full well that Clary had been wound up by Isabelle's attitude. "Well, we should get moving now. It'll be fully light soon and I have to check us in to the hotel since I'm the only one of us who is decidedly not invisible."
Clary heaved a sigh, turning her back on the sun. "How are we going to pay? We don't have the right currency with us."
Simon looked amused. "They do instant cash conversions now, Clary. Have done for quite a few years."
"Oh." Clary, who was not accustomed to travel, was genuinely surprised to learn this.
"Plus, if we felt like turning this into a holiday, we could hire a suite out. Get a little champagne from the mini-bar, have ourselves a little swaray."
Clary smiled wanly. She appreciated the fact that Simon was being so light hearted over everything, but she couldn't shake off her feelings of apprehension. "This isn't a holiday," she said, "and we can't afford things like that."
"I think you'll find we can. Alec brought enough cash with him to keep us going for half a year, by the looks of it."
Clary raised her eyebrows. "Where did he get that much - oh," she nodded in understanding. "The Institute's stocks. Right."
"Mhm," Simon pushed off from the bridge, lowering his head as he and Clary began to walk over to where Alec and Isabelle were waiting. Simon mechanically took note of Isabelle's posture; she was standing very straight, arms folded and appeared to be thinking about something very hard. Alec meanwhile, was absorbed by what Simon assumed to be his mobile phone. Both of them gleamed in the rising sun, the metal of their Shadowhunter gear glinting and winking with their movements.
As they neared, Isabelle opened her mouth to speak. "You shouldn't use that," she commented, looking down at her brother's phone. "The Clave could trace it."
"And how are they going to do that?" Alec asked, tone hinting at his aggravation; it appeared that Clary was not the only one who had had enough of Isabelle's temper. "I could point out that the Clave could very well be tracing us right now. It wouldn't be hard to track us, especially not you or me, Izzy. We live at the Institute. Think how many personal objects we've left behind that they could use-"
"Oh, alright. Let's just get off the streets." Isabelle interjected vehemently.
"Right," Alec shot back before looking to Simon as they all took to walking briskly. "Simon, you'll probably have to speak some Czech, but I can stand behind you, so just copy whatever I say."
When Simon raised his eyebrows, clearly deterred by this, Isabelle elicited a short noise of amusement. "Best to keep it simple, Alec."
Clary, who had been doing her best to ignore the hostilities and concentrate on the places that were familiar to her from her last visit, sighed loudly. Nobody said anything further.
Heading the group, Isabelle led them down various roads until Clary, flinging an arm out and very nearly hitting Simon, pointed out a holidaymaker spot, thinking that they might find a place either near or amongst the souvenir shops and other tourist traps in which to stay. "Down there," she announced, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Before long and with little difficulty - considering the fact that three out of the four of them were invisible to the mundanes - they managed to navigate the early morning streets and found a handful places that looked promising and all of which, upon closer inspection, looked decidedly rather expensive.
At first, Alec had frowned unhappily, clearly not comfortable with spending money that did not belong to them, however with Isabelle promptly voicing the fact that there was really nothing else they could do, he had given in, albeit begrudgingly.
Decided on a place, Isabelle and Clary hung back a little, allowing Simon to push his way through the crowd with Alec behind him to act as his invisible translator.
"Alright," Simon murmured as all four of them crossed over the threshold into a richly decorated foyer. "Fancy place. Alec, what's Czech for 'I'd like to rent your best suite'?"
Clary saw Isabelle roll her eyes.
"Jste debil." Alec said shortly, inspiring a chime of laughter from his sister, which left both Simon and Clary doubting that Alec had answered with any sort of sincerity. Simon did not ask what Alec had said, but silently decided that he would not repeat the expression to the receptionist as he approached the front desk.
Jace, who had been alone in the kitchen making coffee, found himself abruptly halting mid action, hand hovering over the kettle. His eyes had flicked out of reflex to the open doorway as a figure rounded the corner. He had been expecting Jonathan of course, not a short white haired female that looked just like him. For a moment, he simply stared before curtly deciding that his coffee was more interesting. "So you're here, then." He commented after a lengthy pause. "That explains the demonic sword on the worktop, at any rate."
"Not really," Lillian said, joining Jace at the counter and reaching for the second cupboard across to pull a mug out. "Jonathan could have summoned it."
Leaning up against the sink, Jace observed her movements; she seemed to know her way around, her actions flowing into one another in a way that suggested she had been living in the apartment for just as long as he had (which wasn't long at all really, but given the fact that this apartment hardly differed from the last, it made navigation easy). Coupled with the fact that Jace himself felt slightly perturbed by the impression that he was looking at a female version of Jonathan, with the only crucial differences besides gender being that of height and hair length, he was not entirely comfortable.
Still, he managed to look indifferent. "Given the complete lack of evidence pertaining to any demonic rituals taking place in our living room as of late, I'm liable to doubt that."
"He could have done it in the basement."
Wrinkling his nose in distaste, Jace twisted to dump the remainder of his coffee straight down the kitchen sink. "What he gets up to in the basement," Jace said, "I'd rather not know about."
The noise of footsteps descending the stairs reached the kitchen, announcing Jonathan's arrival before he appeared in the doorway. "Why are we talking about the basement?" he asked by way of greeting, hands busy at a weapons belt around his waist. He was dressed in gear, Jace noted. So was Lillian. Jace abruptly realised that he was missing something, but did not raise the issue.
"Because we were debating the thought of keeping a pet Ravener down there," he answered instead, rinsing his cup under the tap and flicking the excess water out as Lillian rifled through the cutlery drawer.
"In the weapons room?" Jonathan asked, clearly more than used to Jace's sarcasm by now. "How fitting."
"I thought so." Jace said, leaning across to pick up the coffee jar, examining the label and then putting it back down. "Why the hell would anyone want to drink decaf?" he asked of no one in particular.
"For the taste of coffee without the caffeine rush, of course." Jonathan pointed out on his way past Jace, who ignored the comment altogether but watched as Jonathan deftly lifted the demonic sword from the kitchen counter, unsheathing it. "Have you seen this?"
"How could I miss it? It's not exactly compact in size, is it?"
"It's from Lilith," Jonathan said, satisfaction in his voice. The runes along the blade glowed dully and as before, the blade seemed to draw on the natural light in the room, making the air seem thicker and dimmer, somehow.
"She's seems to be giving you a lot, lately," Jace observed dryly. "A sister, a sword. You should ask her for something really useful, like an endless supply of instant coffee or a sense of morality."
"Will you put that away?" Lillian chimed in from Jace's left, displeased black eyes on Jonathan for all her tone was pleasant. "It's turning our living space into a scene from the set of Apocalypse Now."
"From what?"
She smiled, stirring her tea and then tossing the spoon into the sink. "It's a movie."
"How do you know that and I don't?" Jonathan asked, casting his gaze over the length of the blade before sheathing it and taking pause as something occurred to him. "Doesn't this sword have a name?"
Lillian regarded him over her mug. "If it does, I don't know it."
"Why would Lilith give us a demonic sword and fail to mention its name?" Jace mused aloud, frowning at the weapon in Jonathan's grip.
"Because it doesn't matter." Jonathan said. "I was asking out of curiosity, not necessity. And for clarity, she gave it to me, not us." He set the sword back down onto the counter and for a suspended moment, all three occupants of the kitchen seemed to stare at the dormant object.
Jace was the first to move, muttering something under his breath about caffeine withdrawals and provoking a noise of irritation from Jonathan, who threw an arm out, pointing. "There is instant in that cupboard, you know."
"No," Jace began, looking distinctly happier as he sauntered over to retrieve it. "I didn't know. But that knowledge makes my morning better by a gargantuan amount."
"Well hurry up," Jonathan advised, aimlessly flipping out a kinjal, turning the blade over as if inspecting it.
Already busy with his second mug of coffee, Jace did not look up at first. "Why?" he asked, recalling that both Jonathan and Lillian were wearing gear. "Do you have some poor defenceless individuals you want to disembowel before lunch time?"
"No," Jonathan said, smiling in a way that Jace did not entirely trust, "but we do need to deliver a message to the Clave."
"Let's not do that again," announced Simon, who had taken it upon himself to slouch down onto the nearest bed as soon as the hotel door was shut behind the four of them.
Alec, taking care of the lock, threw a look Simon's way. "It could have been worse," he commented. "They were curious why you wanted a room for four when they could only see you, that's all. You did fine."
At that, both Simon and Isabelle scoffed at the same time, which ended in an awkward but temporary meeting of their gazes from across the room. Isabelle was the first one to look away, flinging down her seraph blades onto the other bed and then her coat along with them.
"How long are we going to stay here?" Clary asked, one hand propped against the patio door which she had wrenched open, spilling fresh morning air into the room.
"Until nightfall," Alec half-sighed, unbuckling the set of arrows strapped to his back and propping them upright on the surface of a large old fashioned bureau to join his bow. "We have to keep moving. Just in case the Clave do decide to track us."
"They could find us while we're here," Simon said, frowning at the thought.
"I know," Alec said evenly, "but we can't stay on the move forever. We have to rest."
"Clary, you should start thinking about what other places we can go," Isabelle suddenly input, for the first time since they had arrived managing to look more concerned than irate. "If we find nothing here, we need to be out of Prague as soon as possible."
Nodding, Clary moved away from the open patio, sitting at the edge of the bed next to Simon's. "Then Paris next, maybe. We spent a while there." She said, "I don't know after that, though. I'll have to think about it."
"We can't afford to have any maybes, Clary," Alec called out, causing everyone to follow the direction of his voice. He was standing in the open doorway of another room, looking into it. "The other two beds are in here."
Spying Isabelle's things already strewn over the bed which Clary was sitting at the edge of, Simon took the initiative and pushed himself to his feet. "Then I call dibs that that's the boy's room."
"This one is already taken, so we had first dibs." Isabelle said.
"But you didn't call it." Simon pointed out, daring to smile and hoping that it wouldn't inspire yet another glare to be thrown in his direction. It didn't, much to his relief, although Isabelle looked far from her usual pleasantly determined self. As Simon turned away, he noticed than Alec was staring at his sister with something resembling concern on his face, but the moment passed as he moved aside to let Simon enter the room behind.
"I want a shower. Where's the bathroom?" Simon heard Isabelle ask from the next room, followed by the dull thud of her heels on the carpet as she strode across the room, wrenching the only other door open that was situated directly between both bedrooms. The door shut behind her, leaving an uncomfortable silence in her wake.
Simon could sense the fact that all three of them wanted to voice their concern, but also that all of them knew it would be moronic to do so when Isabelle was literally only one room and four walls away.
Resisting the urge to heave a sigh that he knew would give him no relief as far as breathing was concerned, Simon instead turned to Alec, who he wasn't entirely comfortable being around, being as the two had not really interacted all that much in the past.
"Which bed do you want?" he asked.
"What?" Alec turned his head, confusion plain in his blue eyes for a moment. Clearly, his mind was still on Isabelle. "Oh. I don't care. Any."
This time, Simon did sigh. Nodding, he sank down onto the bed nearest the window, letting his mind wander away from Isabelle and instead, onto Clary, who he had a mental image of sitting curled up on her bed in the next room, looking small and fragile.
"Simon?"
Until Alec's voice disturbed him, Simon hadn't realised that his eyes had been closed, nor that he was drifting off in light of the quiet morning. He turned to see Alec looking at him with a question in his eyes.
"Did you bring any blood with you?"
Simon pulled on the strap of his bag in reply, which drew a nod of understanding from the eldest Lightwood. "That can't be pleasant for you," Alec said quietly, a note of sympathy in his voice.
Simon shrugged, inwardly appreciative of Alec's concern. "I'll manage." He said, stretching out across the bed and sinking into a comfortable drowsiness almost immediately.
Clary had left the patio door open but pulled the curtains across in the room she was sharing with Isabelle. After switching beds, given that Isabelle's belongings were strewn across the covers of the one nearest the window, for a good half an hour, she had been lying on her back, head cushioned by a fluffed pillow.
In her hands, she was holding the creased paper bearing the reciprocity rune, staring at it as if it might suddenly present her with an answer to their many dilemmas. It didn't, of course. All she succeeded in doing was managing to burn the image of the new rune into her mind's eye, which was really rather inconvenient when Clary closed her eyes, willing herself to get some rest while she could.
Releasing the page, she tried again to coax rest to her, allowing the image of the rune to fall away from behind her closed eyes and instead, thinking of the next time she would see Jace and hoping beyond reason that he would be her Jace again.
"Why does she look like you?" Jace asked as he dug into the open wardrobe before him. "It's disturbing." There had been no suitable hunting gear in his own bedroom, so he had been reduced to digging through Jonathan's closet for something suitable. "And why do you have a pink scarf in here? That's even more disturbing."
"It's red," Jonathan countered placidly from where he was lounging across his bed, spying the scarf in question as Jace held it up. "And it is not disturbing."
"It's barely red and it is disturbing." Jace refuted, returning it to the wardrobe and dragging out a jacket instead. "Like her."
"It faded in the wash."
Jace slid into the jacket and turned to regard Jonathan. "What did? Your sister?"
Looking unimpressed, Jonathan shook his head in censure. "Do I look like I'm in the mood for games?"
Jace did up the zip and buckles on the jacket. "When are you ever, unless you're the one playing them?" he asked mildly.
"Precisely, so shut up."
Shrugging, Jace adjusted his weapons belt.
"She looks like me because she was made to mimic my likeness," Jonathan explained shortly. "You'd know all of this already if you'd stayed awake last night like I told you to. Lilith gave her my memories, so it isn't as if things are nearly as inconvenient as you're behaving like they are. She's fully trained and has all the appropriate runes, just like you and me." He paused, a smile coming to his face. "But more like me."
"I never said things were inconvenient," Jace replied, raising his eyebrows.
"I saw your face in the kitchen," Jonathan replied, tone as dark as his eyes. "There are two of me now, angel boy. I suggest you get used to it."
Jace reached behind him to close the wardrobe doors. "Alright, but if I run out of gear again, don't expect me to look in her wardrobe instead of yours." He commented, looking overly mournful. "Even if you do have pink scarves in there."
Jonathan's hand was a blur at his weapons belt, the grin reaching his face a half second before the blade flicked in Jace's direction buried point first up to the hilt through the wardrobe door.
"You missed."
"You moved."
Jace grinned knowingly. "You still would have missed."
The field Clary stood in was dark, lit only by moonlight. No matter which way she turned her head, there was nothing but the expanse of the space she was in to see in all directions. Despite the huge field, Clary couldn't shake the feeling of being closed in. She shivered, turning about face and abruptly paused.
There were three people standing across from her, utterly motionless and shadowed by the light of the moon. She could only make out the outlines of each individual, their shadows stretching out before them on the grass, but two of them she recognised from stance alone. She tried to move, to step towards them, but found that she could not move her feet. Rooted to the ground, she struggled.
Clary opened her mouth, calling Jace's name. She stared, but he did not move. Clary paused; what if it wasn't Jace, after all? The three figures were stood unnaturally still, unmoving whatsoever. They seemed to be waiting, but waiting for what? For her? Yes, that must have been it.
Bewildered, she called to Jace again, sure that it was him, but it was not Jace who answered, albeit not even with words. It was the figure standing next to him. Jonathan, her brother. Slowly, she watched in silence as Jonathan's arm raised, pointing at something behind her. Clary turned slowly, sudden caution seeming to root her even more firmly to the floor and as she did, a great curling shadow loomed up, dark, fierce, biting, howling and -
"Clary,"
She opened her eyes.
"Clary, we have to leave soon. It's almost midday." Isabelle, dressed in the same gear from before, was standing over her, pulling her long hair up into a simple ponytail. She frowned. "Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Heart pounding, Clary pushed her hair from out of her eyes and sat up slowly. "You scared me," she said, rubbing a hand across her eyes.
"Sorry," Isabelle said, "I called three times before I shook you."
"Are Alec and Simon awake?"
Isabelle nodded, hands on her hips.
"Okay," Clary said, blinking away the imprint from her vision of both the roarring shadow from her dream and the reciprocity rune. "Just give me a few minutes."
A/N: I know, I know. I made an assumption that Alec knows Czech. I know it's a technicality problem, but come on. Work with me here.
For anyone curious as to what Alec said to Simon in Czech, various translators (which are probably mournfully wrong, given the unreliability of internet translators) pertain to "Jste debil" as meaning, "You moron".
Personally, I don't know if that's right, wrong or just plain ridiculous. If it is wrong and woefully so, if anyone out there can offer a correction, please do. On the flip side, if it happens to be correct, I'll sit here waving my victory flag.
Last thing before I stop bothering you, consider the lengthy chapter as an apology for the lengthy time between updates. I have no excuse other than I was very unmotivated. Fortunately, a friend of mine left a couple of reviews recently which more than kicked my butt into shape – you know who you are, so thank you, but I'll call you my angel boy, just so it's clear.
