Alec was not dead.

He was trudging along in the general direction of the clump of buildings, a little way behind Ted; it was beginning to get dark, but they were much nearer to the buildings now than they had been when they'd first started. They hadn't wanted to risk apparating again, so they were walking. Ted hadn't slowed – Alec wondered if he was using magic, or if his surprising stamina came from his lycanthropy. Alec had re-applied his Marks, adding a standard Speed rune over the faint scar left by Clary's stele, so he kept up well, despite his lack of sleep.

When he wasn't scowling sullenly into the distance, he watched Ted. The other boy was tall and lanky; skinny, Alec thought, made to look bigger than he actually was by his peculiar billowy robes. And he moved like Alec moved, like Jace and Isabelle moved – with the grace of a Shadowhunter. Or the agility of a Downworlder.

"You're very quiet," Ted observed after a while, breaking their long silence and turning around to look at Alec, walking backwards to do it.

Alec blinked, unsure about how to respond to this odd statement. "I'm just... thinking," he said eventually, which was mostly true. Then he added, partly to make up for his silence and partly out of genuine curiosity, "So, this" – he gestured at Ted – "this is your usual look?"

Ted looked mildly surprised, but recovered quickly, falling back so he was beside Alec instead of walking backwards to face him. "Yeah," he said, and paused. "Nice, isn't it? I switch it up sometimes, of course, if I get bored. Or just to take the piss. But this is my default, so to speak."

Alec nodded slowly. "Why?" he asked after a moment.

Ted laughed. "Mostly so I don't confuse people by changing every day," he said, tilting his head. "Also because it gets kind of hard to keep coming up with new looks."

"No, I mean why this look," Alec amended. "Brown-blond hair and gray eyes and everything. Just because?"

"Oh, that. Nah..." Ted looked away, into the distance. "My dad looked like this, apparently, when he was alive. Just with more wrinkles and scars, but I figure I could do without those for now."

Alec flinched. "Oh. Sorry. To have brought it up, I mean – I didn't know..."

"'S alright." Ted smiled. "My mom's dead too, but I have it better than a lot of people. I have a godfather, my adopted family is great..." He trailed off for a while. Alec thought he wasn't going to say anything else, but then Ted suddenly looked up again. "My father was a werewolf," he said quietly. "I got the metamorphmagus part from my mother."

"Really?" Alec stopped, hesitant. "Wait. So... you were born a werewolf?"

Ted laughed humorlessly. "No," he said, and his tone of voice told Alec not to pry further.

As they walked on in silence, Alec suddenly realized that Ted reminded him of Jace. It wasn't just because they were both orphaned – there was something else about him... He had the same confidence – arrogance – the same guarded calm, though Ted's shield was less carefully polished, less impenetrable. And Ted's gray eyes carried the same hints of fear and vulnerability that Alec saw so rarely in Jace's tawny ones. Alec had come to realize, over the past few months, that everyone was afraid of something; that people like Jace and Ted only disguised it better. He found himself staring, and then blinked as Ted abruptly turned to look at him.

But Ted didn't seem to notice that Alec had been staring. He wore a thoughtful expression. "Have you ever wanted to be just like your parents, Alec?" he asked.

Alec was taken aback. "Um," he said, "sure, I guess. My parents are... pretty cool people."

Ted nodded, but he didn't say anything; there was another long silence, and Alec was just beginning to think about what an erratic conversationalist his new friend was when he spoke again.

"No, I wasn't born a werewolf... or at least, I don't think I was. Not completely." Ted's tone was eerily bitter, and very clearly heartbroken. Alec fought to suppress a shiver. Ted stared straight ahead, his expression contemplative and neutral. "A few months ago – at the end of my final school year – I began to think, almost obsess over my father's lycanthropy. I knew it was irrational. I knew there was something wrong. But I couldn't stop.

"I thought it was only a phase, so I continued with life; did my N.E.W.T's, and won Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup, and graduated and all of that."

Alec didn't understand half of what Ted was saying, but something about the way Ted spoke stopped him from interrupting. "Still, things grew worse. I had screaming nightmares... and then one night, the night of the full moon, I was sleepwalking. I woke up in the middle of nowhere, and there was a werewolf leaning over me.

"I don't remember very much. Pain – a lot of pain, obviously. And a lot of running. Blood; not my blood, but the blood of other creatures. Thankfully, I don't think there were any human beings around." Alec flinched. "Then, nothing – and then I woke up not far from where we are, now." Ted slowed momentarily, looking at his surroundings with glazed eyes, and Alec couldn't tell if it was bitter regret or something else. He quickly looked away.

"I kept it a secret. How could I tell anyone? I didn't know what to do. That whole month, I was a wreck... I pretended to be ill. And then I found that doorway to New York. I was drawn to it, for some reason. It was far from home, and the police station was abandoned, and there was something about it..."

Alec bit his lip. "It's the haunt of the New York werewolf pack," he said softly.

He didn't see Ted's reaction – Ted's face was shrouded in shadow, lit very dimly in the dusk – but he heard his answer, though he said it almost in a whisper.

"I chose that place to hide. To phase. And, well... the rest you know."

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Alec thought of Simon, Simon before he went back to the Hotel Dumont; how he hadn't been a vampire that night in the Seelie Court, how the lure had eventually taken him for the Night Children. He began to say it wasn't entirely Ted's fault, that he couldn't have fought, but what came out of his mouth was entirely different.

"Ted... does anyone else know about your secret?"

At last, Ted turned to look at Alec again. He shook his head. "Nobody but you."

Alec closed his eyes for a moment. "If it makes you feel any better," he said finally – and his voice, too, was no more than a murmur – "I know what it's like, to keep a secret from people you love, because you're scared, or ashamed."

For a moment, Ted looked as though he was going to ask something, hesitating. But then he glanced up, and stopped walking. "Look," he said.

Alec looked. They had reached the edge of the clump of buildings; in front of them stood a ramshackle house that looked as though it might grow sideways, with sinister-looking wildflowers and vines growing all over the garden, and broomsticks seeming to hang off the creepers that grew on the walls. There was a crooked sign that had been driven into the ground, letters carved crudely into the wood: "AIRHAVEN AVIATION." Beneath that, "FAMILY BROOMSTICKS AND BALLOONS."

The ghost of a smile lit up Ted's face, and his eyes glinted in the half-light. "Want to go ask for directions?"