Part 2
"Jace, come on. It's been three hours. You've got to go to sleep sometime." Alec stood at the end of Jace's bed, pitying his parabatai. Jace had been waiting up for hours, sitting by the phone and anxiously awaiting a call from the Clave that would probably never come. It had been two months since Clary had gone missing from Luke and Jocelyn's house, and Jace was slowly losing hope that he would ever find his love.
"Alec, I can't. What if the second I go to sleep, they call me about Clary? I can't just let her down like that. You would do the same for Magnus, wouldn't you?" Alec nodded, and Jace knew that there wasn't much his brother wouldn't do for the glitter covered warlock that was his boyfriend. He had seen the way they looked at each other; he recognized it as the same gazes he used to exchange with Clary, those that signified unconditional love and commitment. "I'm actually going over to his apartment now. He wants me to stay the night so that we can set off to look for that book of his first thing in the morning."
Sensing an opportunity to lighten his mood, Jace elbowed Alec in the arm. "Sounds like it's going to be a long night, eh? I have a feeling neither of us will be getting much sleep-" He cried out in pain as Alec crushed his toes beneath steel toed black hiking boots. Immediately, Jace yanked his feet onto the bed, curling them beneath him. He picked up his cell phone off the nightstand and shoved it into the pocket of his dark wash denim jeans. "I'm going to Taki's for some coffee. Have fun at Magnus's…" Jace trailed off with a wink, easily sidestepping Alec's fist as it swung past his face. He was blushing a deep scarlet red.
"Yeah. See you later, I guess." he mumbled.
Twenty minutes later, Jace was sitting in a booth in the old diner, staring at his phone on the table. The screen hadn't changed; there were still no new messages, no missed calls from the Clave. He was beginning to grow restless. Were they ever going to call? Was there still hope that Clary could be found? His chest felt like an empty cavity, something that had once been full and happy, but was now drained of all of the things that gave it life. Clary was his other half; without her, he was nowhere near his usual self. He had become withdrawn from the others in his life, only allowing Alec and occasionally Isabelle to speak to him outside of meetings. He had spent countless hours in his room trying to track Clary, using anything that had been of significance to her: his favourite blue sweater of hers, her stele, her sketchpad.
That was how Jace knew she hadn't left voluntarily. Clary never went anywhere without her art supplies, of that much he was certain. Even when she had come after him to Venice, she had brought her box of pencils to draw. Jace found himself smiling at the thought of his girlfriend doing what she loved. He liked to picture her that way; smiling under a tree, in his arms, sketching out the landscape ahead.
"What can I get you?" It was Kaelie, the fey waitress that worked his table at the restaurant. She had her blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail, a butterfly barrette pinning back her short bangs. She wore a black short sleeved t-shirt underneath her orange Taki's apron, and black skinny jeans. Jace supposed she was attractive, after all he had slept with her once, but now all he could think of was Clary, and how beautiful she had been the last time he had seen her, glowing with his child inside of her.
Snapping out of his thoughts and back into reality, he glanced down at the menu. "I'll just have a coffee, I guess." Kaelie gave him a sympathetic glance. "You look so lonely. Something wrong?"
He nodded, and Kaelie glanced around the store. Sensing what she was thinking, Jace moved over. "There's no one else here. Take a break." She smiled gratefully and scooted into the booth beside Jace. Her blue eyes stared over at him, perplexed. "What's going on? I never see you this…down."
Jace shook his head. "It's Clary. She's been missing for the past two months, and no one has even heard of her being anywhere. It's painful to not know where she is. To make things worse, she's…" He sighed. No matter how nice Kaelie was, he didn't really want to tell her everything about his personal life. It was really Clary's choice who she told about the baby, but then again, Clary really wasn't here. "It just hurts so much, you know? Like there's a part of me missing. There's a hole in my chest where someone tore out my heart, and-"
Just like that, Kaelie was kissing him. Not gentle and comforting, but fiercely, the movement of her mouth on his filled with passion. Jace thought back to the time they had hooked up, back at her place in Manhattan. He had been young then, still confused about his life, only sure of his looks and what they could do for him. He chuckled inwardly, thinking of how stupid he had been. Kaelie pulled him closer to her, deepening the kiss. Jace thought of Clary, the way her lips moved with his and not against them, the way her body seemed to fit with his, the way everything was so natural with her. This was nothing like that. This kiss seemed forced, like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Guilt flooded through his body. Clary was out there somewhere, probably waiting for help that might never come, and here he was, essentially cheating on her in a diner with some fairy girl from his past.
Jace pushed Kaelie off of him, and she slipped off the edge of the booth onto the linoleum floor. "What the-" She was cut off by the ring of a phone. It was Jace's cell, buzzing against the cold table. His face lit up; was it the Clave calling to say they had found Clary? He snatched up the phone and looked down at the screen. His heart sunk, it was a number he had never seen before. Something with an area code from just off of the highway, he recognized it from when he had to call one of Magnus's friends who had a cottage out there. He was about to cancel the call, but something inside of him was begging to answer it. Eh… he thought. What harm can it do anyways? He flipped open the cell phone and pressed it to his ear. "Hello?"
"Jace! Oh my god!" His heart skipped several beats, nearly stopping altogether. "Clary?" There was a hysterical sobbing laughter-like noise on the other end. "Jace, please help me. He's got me here. I don't know how much time I have before he comes back. But I need you."
Jace still couldn't believe he was talking to her. After almost eight weeks of silence, she had just called him up on the phone. "Where are you?" he asked, the shock evident in his shaking voice. "Off the highway. Oh god, Jace hurry. He's coming. He's-" There was a sound on the other end that sounded like shattering glass, and then silence. Not even a dial tone, just silence, as if the other line had poofed out of existence.
He sat there for a moment, taking in what he had just heard. Then he shoved his phone into his pocket and dashed out the door. "Hey!" Kaelie called. "Where are you going?" But he didn't hear her. He was already down the block, running in the direction of the highway as fast as he could.