We watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer before everyone was tired and ready to go to bed. Except for no one really goes to their rooms.

I wake up the next morning with a sleepy yawn and a small smile as I realize that Jace is using my lap as a pillow. I don't even really remember when I'd moved to the end of the couch or when he'd laid down, but it still caused butterflies to rush around in my stomach nevertheless. I look around the room and see that everyone else in there as well. Jonathan is on the floor in front of the couch, his head right next to my feet. Isabelle and Simon are both still on the palate and Alec and Magnus are sharing the chair in a strange and unsettling manner so that they look like a heap of tangled limbs.

I pat Jace's shoulder gently. He grumbles slightly in his sleep and rolls so that his face is buried in my stomach and covered by a messy tangle of hair. "Just a few more minutes," he grumbles. It is almost enough to make me let him, but I resist the temptation and push on him again. He sighs lowly and turns so that he is looking at me with half closed eyes. He yawns and looks at me a little more lucidly. "Can I help you?"

"Well, you see," I say in a conversational tone. "I need to get up and take a shower."

"You smell fine," Jace mumbles. "Stop talking and go back to sleep."

"It's time to get up," I press, shaking my head. "Let me up and you can go back to sleep."

"If you're going to make me lose my pillow I won't," Jace informs me. I look at him a second longer and he just sits up slowly and waves me away. "Fine, your highness, go ahead."

I smirk as I lean over and press my lips against his cheek quickly before I jump up, narrowly missing Jon's head, and moving toward my bedroom. It doesn't take long for me to gather the supplies for a shower and move toward the bathroom. I hum along to a tune that is playing in my head as I strip down and get the water going. I hop in, feeling more cheerful that I probably should with all of the potential problems that are building up around me.

I am massaging conditioner into my hair when the lights flicker. I look up and around, but shrug it off; they're still on and that's all that matters. I go back to running the conditioner through my hair, smiling as I go. I finally back into the line of water and let it run from my hair, down my back. Just as I am lifting my hands up to help assist the water in getting the conditioner out of my hair, the lights flicker again, only this time they stay off. I swear quietly and hurriedly get the rest of the conditioner out of my hair before turning around.

It is pitch black, and I can't see a thing as I blindly grope around for the knobs to turn the faucet off. It takes a moment longer than normal, and after a couple of mistakes with the directions of the knobs, the noise of the water roaring around me abruptly cuts off. I stand straight up again and take a deep breath, my hand blindly reaching out for the shower curtain, not really wanting to break my neck. As I find it and start pushing it back, I hear the confused voices of the others in the front room, though I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying.

"This is just what we needed," I mutter to myself as I lean over and try to find the edge of the tub. "Jace is hurt, we're stranded here, and now we have absolutely no power, so we're all going to freeze to death." I am being slightly over dramatic, but it still worries me that there is no power.

I finally make it out of the bath tub alive. I make it to the countertop, where I'd set my clothes and towel. My hands grope around, trying to find something to dry myself off with. I find the towel first and immediately wrap it around my chest. Thankfully it was long enough and wide enough to cover me. I'd get changed in the bedroom, where there was a window with a little bit of light shining through. I step forward slowly, not wanting to fall, and my foot lands in a small puddle of water. Before I can correct myself, I start sliding and fall backward. My head hits something that feels like the edge of the bath tub before anything else has a chance to hit the ground. I then land on the tiled floor, my head hitting once again. The fall sounds painful enough, but it is nothing compared to the actual feeling.

I groan and try to force myself to sit up, but the blood that is sloshing around it my head makes me too dizzy to do anything of the sort. "Clary!" my brother's voice echoes into my head. He sounds as though I am hearing him from down a tunnel, but I imagine that is because he is somewhere out in the hallway. I groan out again, in too much pain for actual words.

"What's wrong with Clary?" Jace's voice came next. I feel my heart pick up its pace at his words, though I am pretty sure that everyone is concerned by this time because I haven't answered in actual words.

"Jace," I hear Izzy snap next. "You're hurt and in no condition to—"

"Let me up!" I hear Jace's indignant voice call next. "I'm fine. I want to see Clary!"

"Calm down," it was Magnus this time. "She's in the bathroom, which means that she's probably not exactly decent yet!"

There was a long silence, and I try to get up once again. No such luck. Rolling waves of nausea wash over me and I almost hurl from the smallest movements that I make. As I lay my head back down on the tile, noticing how it is slowly beginning to cool off, the door cracks open. "Clary?" I hear Isabelle ask tentatively. "Are you alright?"

"Hit my head," I manage to say. My head starts pounding and I close my eyes to ward off the pain. "Other than the dizziness and the headache, I'm sure that I'm fine." I haven't opened my eyes yet, so I have to rely on my other senses to tell me what is going on. I am able to hear Isabelle take another step into the room, and a moment later, I feel her hand on my arm.

"It's a good thing you covered yourself before you fell," she says, as though that makes up for the fact that I am laying down on a tiled floor with a mind-blowing headache.

I don't reply, not sure if I will be able to control the rolling in my stomach if I do. "Come on," she says, and I open my eyes finally to see that she is kneeling down beside me. "Let's get you up and into the bedroom so we can get some clothes on you."

I am silent as we both work together to get myself standing again. By the time that I am back on my feet, I have already fought back the urge to puke three or four times, and my head is spinning so badly that I'm sure that I would have fallen again if Isabelle hadn't been there for me to hold on to.

"You alright, Clary?" Izzy asks me.

I mumble out a weak, "Yes," and she takes that as an initiative to start walking forward.

The hallway is dimly lit by the natural lighting that is shining through the windows in the living room, though considering that not much light is coming out of the sky, thanks to the snow, there really isn't much of anything to see with.

"Thank god," I hear Jace's voice with undisguised relief. I am turned toward the end of the hallway and cannot see him, but I imagine that he is voicing the words that my brother is too emotionally inept to say.

"She's not exactly decent," Isabelle says, stopping what I don't realize until then is the pattering of feet toward us. "I'll take her into the room and get some clothes on her before you all decide to swarm her. No one says anything in return, and it doesn't seem as though Isabelle had expected any one to because she just begins leading me toward our door.

Once we are inside, she leaves me beside the closed door, clinging to my towel, which is the only thing that is preserving my dignity. She barely seems to notice this as she grabs my suitcase from beside the chest of drawers and pulls it on to the bed. After she opens it, she begins to sift through the contents and finds me a white t-shirt and a pair of grey jogging pants. "Doesn't look exactly appealing, but after a fall like that I imagine that you don't really need to be in anything uncomfortable."

"Me either," I say, hobbling forward, wincing with the jolt that every step caused me. I get to the bed and grab the underwear and the clothes that she has gotten out for me. She turns around respectfully as I begin getting dressed. It takes me a moment, thanks to my pounding head, but I manage to get the clothes on without too much heartache. She pushes firmly on my shoulders as soon as the shirt is covering my stomach properly and I am forced on to the bed.

"Stay here. I'll let the others know that you're decent," she instructs me. "Don't go to sleep the two seconds that I'll be gone."

I roll my eyes at her ridiculousness and wave her on. It isn't a second after she leaves the room that Jon is at the door. His green eyes are wide with what I imagine is concern. "What the hell did you do this time?"

I manage a weak smile as the others begin to walk in. Alec is supporting poor Jace, who looks as though he is in enough pain to make me cringe from the very thought of it. "It was dark in the bathroom and I didn't see the puddle of water," I defend. "No big deal."

"Did you hit your head?" Jace asks as Alec deposits him on the bed beside me. He is looking me up and down unsmilingly, making it clear that I am not to make light of anything that just happened to me.

"I did," I admit after a moment of contemplation. "That doesn't mean that you're off the hook for being the crippled one around here. It just means that I have a headache." Jace's expression doesn't change at my words as he continues to look at me.

"Where did you hit it and how hard?" he asks me curtly. I turn and look at the others, who are standing around the bed in a rough semicircle. All of them seem slightly uncomfortable, as though they are fighting with the urge to rush out of the room.

I silently point to the general area on the back of my head that is continuously throbbing without looking away from the others, who are all staring at their feet. "Is there something wrong, guys?" I ask, narrowing my eyes.

"No," Alec says a bit too hurriedly for me to believe. By this time, Jace has looked away from me and over at the five people in front of us.

"You know what," Simon says after a moment, turning toward the door. "I think we should go and check outside. The snow might not be falling as badly right now."

"That's a great idea!" Jonathan says loudly, practically barreling out of the door. Everyone else followed his lead with a little more grace and not two seconds later, Jace and I are the only ones in the room.

"What the hell was that?" I question, turning to look at Jace, who is still staring at the empty doorway, though now he has a scowl.

"Them being douches," he says, turning to look at me after a moment of silence. "Apparently they felt really awkward in here around us."

"Would this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?" I question quietly.

The corners of Jace's lips twitch upward as he contemplates an answer. "That's exactly what this is about," he says after a moment. "Possibly they think that at any moment, we are going to start trying to attack each other."

"That's stupid," I say, shaking my head. "What's wrong with these people?"

"I don't know," Jace replies. "They're terrible liars, though. We just looked out of the window before the lights went off. It hasn't slowed down yet." At his words, I turn around and look out of the window that is peeking around the curtain on the other side of the bed. All I see is blurry white dots falling behind a thick layer of frost.

"Clary," Jace says after a moment. His voice is quiet and almost tentative. "You are okay, right? You're not just telling me what I want to hear because I want to hear it."

"No," I reply easily, my heart fluttering slightly at his concern. "I'll be fine." I smile at him, suddenly feeling longing deep in the pit of my stomach as I look at the concern on his face. He smiles back at me, but it is only a weak one. I wrap an arm around his waist, unable to stand the look on his face and give him a one-sided hug. "I'm fine, Jace."

"I know," he says as he returns the hug firmly. "I'm just thinking of what could have happened if you weren't. It isn't as though we could have taken you to a doctor."

"I think that you should straighten out your priorities," I tell him with a smile as I let him go to see him. I make sure that my tone is light enough for him to know that I don't mean anything by it. "Your leg is pretty bad, after all."

His smile gets a bit stronger as he says, "Don't worry, Clary. My priorities are exactly where they need to be."

"You guys are adorable together," Isabelle says conversationally maybe three hours later. It is getting colder in the house now that the power is out. We are all huddled up in the living room except for Jace, who has managed to hobble to the bathroom.

"What are you talking about?" I ask her with a raised eyebrow.

"You and Jace," she tells me in a duh voice. I know that Jonathan can hear us from the palate that he is laying on, but he is adamantly pretending to be engrossed in what Magnus is saying about how sparkles can accent eyes if they are used the right way. I imagine that he would rather listen to Magnus talk about sparkles for the rest of the trip than listen to me and Isabelle talk about boys. Poor guy. "You guys are back together, right?"

I shake my head, frowning slightly. "No, we aren't."

"Damn," she mutters. "That means that the bet's still on." She says this quietly under her breath and I have a feeling that I am not supposed to be able to hear what she is saying. I see her cast Magnus a dirty look before looking back at me. "For the sake of my last fifty dollars for the month, get with him soon."

"I'm sorry if my relationships with people are stopping you from monetary gain," I say, unsure of whether or not I should feel offended.

"Well then make it up to me," she says, ignoring my sarcasm as she pats me on the shoulder.

"How do you know if I even like him?" I demand.

"The way that you two were lip locking yesterday doesn't exactly suggest anything else," she says; her tone is almost singsong. "Are you denying an attraction to Herondale?"

I am silent for a moment as I contemplate her words. I hear the sound of a door closing and turn around to see Jace slowly making his way down the hallway. He has a look of determination on his face, as though he was willing himself to not feel the pain that he was in. "Jonathan, help your friend," I snap at him. My brother turns around and looks at me for a moment, his expression blank, before he realizes what I am talking about. He obediently jumps to his feet and jogs toward the hallway. My eyes follow him and see Jace cast me an exasperated look, as though he is telling me that he is perfectly fine and could have made it. I am unable to fight off a smile as I turn to look back at Isabelle, who is looking at me with raised eyebrows, clearly expecting an answer.

"No," I say after a moment. "I don't deny it."

Look at that last line. Does anyone know what that is? It's progress, people! I hope that you all liked the chapter, though I am sorry for the delay of getting it up. School started up again today and the weekend was filled with busyness, so I had no chance at all to write. It's a longish chapter, so hopefully that makes up for something. Lemme know what you thought of it on your way out!