AUTHOR'S NOTE: Your reviews for last chapter were, as always, lovely and much appreciated! Thank you for writing them, and enjoy this chapter.


CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning, I woke up with dread heavy in my stomach. In less than twelve hours, one of my worst fears was going to be coming true.

Not even bothering with breakfast or to say good morning to anyone at the Institute, I headed straight for my new art studio and let my painting absorb me as much as I could. Every time I lost my focus my hand start trembling, and it was hard to keep my strokes smooth as I painted canvas after canvas.

First it was my mother over, and then her and Luke, and then Izzy, Jace, and Alec all together, and then all over again. I was aware that I was being obsessive, which I usually tried to clamp down, but today I found the repetition soothing in a way I desperately needed.

The sunlight that streamed in the room had crossed it fully, and I knew it was sometime past noon. I heard a soft knock on the open door and jumped.

Pushing my hair back behind my shoulders for the millionth time, I saw Jace lounging against the door frame. "Hey, Red," he said softly. "Don't you think you're small enough already? Come eat — I saved some Thai for you and endured Izzy's cooking instead."

My stomach tightened in a queasy mix of hunger and nerves as I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. I was almost positive I had at least a couple of paint streaks on my face, and I watched Jace run his eyes across my face, looking almost amused. "I don't know if I can," I said, glancing down at my hands, which had started to shake again.

"That's okay, come downstairs anyway," he said, but it wasn't in his normal tone of expecting people to immediately do what he said. "At least to see Alec — he looks almost as grumpy as you do."

I sighed but set my palette and brush on the easel's tray. I'd have to come back and clean my brushes properly later, but Jace was right — me fainting from hunger wasn't going to do any good.

Jace smiled, like he was happy I was coming, and held out his hand to me. I felt a thrill just thinking of his touch. "I've got paint on my hands," I protested, holding them up so he could see the streaks of partly dried paint across my palms and the back of my fingers.

"An occupational hazard I'm happy to embrace," he said, and I finally gave in and reached for his hand. He released it almost immediately, and I took a step backward, hurt. But he just held his hand out to me again, blue and green streaks across his palms now, too.

"There, now we match," he said, chuckling. "Come on, Red."

I took his hand again, and this time he clasped it tightly in his.

I caught Izzy's smile as she looked up when I walked downstairs with Jace. Alec was sitting on the couch from her, looking just as unhappy as Jace had said he was.

"— don't see what's wrong with the one I have," he was saying to his sister.

"Alec, it was too tight last year. You and Jace are going shopping, and that's final."

Alec opened his mouth again, but Izzy held up her hand. "You know I'm right. I'll go get Mom to back me up if you won't listen to me."

"They're just here for Clary," Alec said sourly, clearly trying a different tack. "Sorry, Clary," he added to me.

"It's fine," I said miserably, because he was right. The Institute was being — I didn't think that "invaded" was the right word, but something close — because of me.

"And we are going to present a united front," Izzy said. "The Lightwoods run this Institute, and we're going to show them that Mom and Dad do it perfectly. This is the first time some of the Council will have seen them since… you know."

Since Maryse and Robert had been banished to New York, no longer allowed to live in Idris or even stay in the city for more than a couple of days.

I dropped my eyes as the silence between Izzy and Alec stretched. Even Jace didn't interrupt. He might be another son of the Lightwoods in all but name, but he didn't carry the same inherited burden that Izzy and Alec did.

"Fine, I'll get a new suit," Alec said resignedly. "But I won't be happy about it."

Izzy sighed. "No one asked you to be."

Jace rose from the couch, squeezing my hand briefly before letting go. I watched him walk away, into the kitchen, regretfully. I couldn't seem to stop my eyes from tracking him every time we were in the same room.

I wondered how obvious I was to everyone else. To him.

He came back out with a plate of pad thai and handed it to me. "Eat," he said firmly. "If you faint, I want it to be due to my beauty, not hunger."

I was too anxious to laugh, but a faint smile still crossed my face, and I picked up the fork.

Jace turned to Alec, who still looked unhappy. "I believe we have a shopping excursion to fulfill, brother," he said. "Hopefully we can manage it in fewer than the six hours Izzy required."

Alec looked horrified. "Six?" he repeated faintly.

Izzy and Jace both laughed. "One," Jace promised. "As long as you cooperate."

Judging by both Alec's expression and his utter lack of interest in his own clothing, I wasn't sure how likely that was.

Jace clapped him on the shoulder and turned him to face the hallway toward the elevator. "Yes, and we're going now, before you try to run off. You'll be almost as pretty as me by the time we're done." He paused, as if considering his words. "Well, maybe."

Alec grunted something uncomplimentary, but Jace just turned and smiled over at Izzy and me beatifically. "Goodbye, ladies," he said, but when I glanced up long enough to meet his golden eyes, his attention was only on me.

After he and Alec left I reluctantly started on the bowl, but I could barely taste the noodles. I clenched my hand more tightly around my fork, and I could already feel that irrepressible urge to draw or paint rise up in me again and tried to stop my fork from shaking in my fingers.

I could feel Izzy watching me as I ate mechanically, but she didn't say anything. When I finally pushed away my plate, unable to eat any more, Izzy took it from me without a word and took it to the kitchen. By the time I'd unfrozen my body long enough to stand, she was beside me again.

"Come on up to my room," she said. "I'm looking especially pretty today, so I want you to draw me again."

That startled a smile out of me, and I nodded and followed her up the stairs and grabbed my sketchpad and pencils from my room before continuing on to her room.

Izzy's bedroom was an explosion of pink and black and so many assorted clothing items that it took me a moment to see her bed and desk under all the fabric and shoes. Her vanity, though, was meticulously organized, with makeup and brushes and hair accessories neatly arranged in little drawers and containers across the surface, and the mirror was spotless.

She shoved the clothes piled on her bed to the floor and stretched out on it lazily. "Come on," she said with a smile, patting the other side of the bed. "I'm going to paint my nails, and you're going to draw me."

I nodded, my anxiety already making words hard to form, and pulled my sketchpad into my lap as I sat down cross-legged across from her. I watched Izzy lean over to pick a handful of nail polish bottles off of her nightstand and hold them up to the light, examining them carefully.

Then I was lost to myself, in the feel of my hand around my pencils, the scratch and drag against the thick pressed paper, the brushing sound the pages made as I finished each drawing and turned to the next sheet of my sketchpad. My fear was a distant thing in this moment, just an annoyance, as I drew Izzy painting her nails, then examining a giant box of jewelry before deciding on a necklace and a pair of earrings, and then kneeling to excavate a hair straightener, curling iron, hair dryer, and about half a dozen hairbrushes from one of the piles of clothes underneath her vanity table.

I heard Jace and Alec come back while I was working on a drawing of Izzy in the store at the mall, holding up the dress she'd eventually picked out. Jace was arguing with his parabatai about something downstairs, but it didn't sound too serious. My hand stilled for the first time since sitting down, and I wondered if Jace would come upstairs to see us.

"Nope," Izzy said from her seat at her vanity, where she was now meticulously curling her hair.

I turned to her in surprise. "What?"

"You're not seeing him again until you're all dressed up."

"I wasn't…" I stammered, but I glanced up at Izzy's reflection in the mirror long enough to see her knowing smirk that so resembled her adoptive brother's.

Blushing, I ducked my head and returned to my drawing.

An hour later, Izzy turned to me, her hair in effortless waves, her makeup flawless. "Okay, it's time!" She stepped into her closet and pulled out my dress. It looked more revealing than I'd remembered.

I took a deep breath before setting down my sketch pad and pencils and took it from her. I trudged into the bathroom, staring at my unhappy reflection in the mirror as I slowly tugged on the dress. It was tight. I hadn't remembered that from the store, but then I'd probably been too tired by that point to do much besides accept Izzy's choice.

There was a smudge of blue on my cheekbone, and I scrubbed it off before staring down at my arms, their white silver scars barely visible against my pale skin. Jace, Izzy, and Alec managed to make their rune scars look like they'd earned them, like they deserved to have them after years of combat and training.

I was acutely aware that I'd never done anything but practice in the training room, that I hadn't grown up learning how to fight, that ten-year-old Shadowhunter children were probably more dangerous than I was.

There was a sharp knock on the door, and I jumped. "Clary, did you fall in?" Izzy called out.

"Coming," I said, twisting around to zip up the back and opening the door.

"Excellent, now come sit your perky ass down in this chair," she said imperiously, pointing toward her vanity bench. There were different colors of eye shadow and blush set out now — tiny eyeshadow compacts in variations on yellow ochre, something between burnt and raw sienna, and pale venetian red, though I was sure those weren't the commercial names of them. Autumn colors. I'd never thought of my face as a canvas before, but I had a feeling that it was about to become one.

"Izzy…" I protested weakly. "You got me into this dress. Don't you think you've done enough?"

"Nope," she said, popping the p. "Now get over here, or I'll carry you over myself."

Sometimes it was really no fun being small.

I endured my makeover, scowling at my reflection in the mirror until Izzy made me close my eyes to put on eye liner and mascara (a deep earth red/burnt umber mix, both of them), followed by burnt sienna on my eyelids and a red-heavy brown pink on my lips. Finally I was allowed to look at myself again, and I was relieved to see that I still looked like myself, just… more.

I didn't see a pretty girl, exactly, but with the makeup bringing color to my pale features and the bold black lines of my dress, I had a… presence that I had never had before. On a night like tonight, when I wished I could disappear but knew that I wouldn't be able to, I thought maybe I looked a little braver. Maybe some of that would bleed through into my thoughts.

But probably not.

I glanced up when Izzy slid her fingers through my hair consideringly, careful not to touch my skin. "We need something formal. What do you think? French twist? Chignon?"

"There's no point in putting it up, Izzy," I said absently, visualizing drawing all the Shadowhunters that were probably already milling about in the ballroom. Maybe if I thought of them as just subjects for my art they would seem less intimidating. "Jace will just pull it back down."

In the mirror I could see Isabelle looking like she was going to say something. Then she closed her mouth and opened it again, clearly changing what she was going to say.

"Then I'll waterfall braid the top of it, and if he tries to pull that out I'll slap him." I smiled at the mental image and almost wished she would.

I was amazed at how nimbly she could braid, managing my unruly curls like they were nothing. She had just tied off the strands at the back of my head with a tiny clear band when my phone vibrated, and I saw Simon's name flash up from the pile of my clothes Izzy had discarded on the bed. I'd forgotten to call him earlier.

Izzy stepped back so that I could stand up and disappeared into her closet, mumbling something about shoes.

"Simon," I said when I picked up the phone. "Are you coming to save me?" I was only kind of joking.

I heard him chuckle. "What have you gotten yourself into now, Fray?"

"A dress!"

Simon made a concerned sound. "That does sound dire. What's the occasion?"

"There's a big formal event I have to go tonight. It's… important." I didn't want to try to sanitize the reason for the party in a way that Jace and the others would approve of, so I didn't give any further details. "And people are going to talk to me," I added, my throat tightening. I knew that tonight was more important than me and my weird hangups, but that was all I could focus on right now.

"And there's no way out of it?" He sounded serious this time.

"No," I whispered, fiddling with the makeup brushes on Izzy's table. I tried to sound nonchalant. "I'm keep trying to tell myself it'll be okay. Jace said he and Izzy and Alec would watch out for me." I couldn't explain to Simon that I was basically going to be interrogated.

Simon made a hmm-ing noise. "They seem like good people. You know I'll never really think anyone deserves you—" I smiled "— But I think they might be pretty close. And I think they'd probably do it even without the way Jace feels."

My brow furrowed, though of course Simon couldn't see it. "What do you mean, the way Jace feels? About what?"

Simon chuckled and imitated a high-pitched voice. "'What do you think Clary would like?' 'How do I get Clary to trust me?' 'Do you think Clary will ever let me touch her?'"

"He said those things?" I said, shocked. I couldn't imagine him ever being insecure about anything, least of all me.

"Come on, Fray." He sounded exasperated, as if I was being deliberately obtuse. "I know you're not really a girly girl, but you have to know what –"

I heard something falling to the floor, and then Isabelle was stepping out of her giant closet, her feet now encased in glossy six-inch black pumps and another pair, not much shorter, in her hand.

"Ready? Ooh, is that Simon?" She held out her hand expectantly.

"Um, yeah," I said as I handed my phone over.

"Simon, hi!" she said cheerfully into the phone. "Clary says bye, and I also wanted to see when you were planning on asking me out."

I stared at her in amazement, and there was a brief pause before a smile broke out on Izzy's face.

"That's what I thought. Text me the address. Ciao!"

She ended the call and handed my phone back to me triumphantly. "I am efficient, what can I say?" She set the heels she was carrying at my feet. "These are my heels from a couple years ago; lucky you for being just the right size." Groaning, I bent down and pulled the shoes on.

When I rose off the seat four inches farther from the floor than I'd started, I almost immediately stumbled and had to catch the wall to remain upright. It didn't help that my dress was too tight around my thighs to be much help maintaining my balance. I felt like a newly born colt.

I could hear Izzy giggle from behind me, and if I hadn't been so busy trying to stay vertical, I would have turned to glare at her.

If this stupid party didn't kill me, my outfit might.


Izzy sent me on ahead, deciding at the last minute that her hair looked too flat and needed more curls, and I took the chance to make my escape before she thought of something else I needed to attach to my body. After taking a deep breath to enjoy the hair product-free air when I stepped into the hallway, I began walking toward the ballroom stiffly, trying very hard not to slip in my shiny heels.

There was a padded bench outside the entrance to the ballroom, and I sat down heavily on it as soon as I reached it, as if I had walked miles instead of just down a few hallways.

I could hear voices on the other side of the wall, laughter and glassware clinking and people talking, and generally sounding relaxed. Happy. They'd probably been looking forward to this, like this was actually a party. Feeling comfortable talking to people in big groups was something I literally couldn't imagine.

Just like that, my heart rate was speeding up, and I shut my eyes, wrapping my arms around my waist and rocking back and forth a little.

"Hey, Red."

I hadn't noticed Jace walk up, but now he was staring down at me calmly, as if I wasn't having an anxiety attack right in front of him. His crisp black suit fit his lean frame perfectly, the blue-gray of his tie complementing the gold of his eyes and hair. He looked stunning.

He held out his hand, and I numbly took it. I didn't care how I felt right now; I wanted to touch him.

He tugged me to my feet and then stepped back to look at me, releasing my hand. The look he gave me made me blush to the roots of my hair. He had never tried to hide that flick of his eyes up and down my body that he did every time he saw me, but this time his gaze lingered.

Then a grin broke out over his face.

"Looking good, Red," he said. He reached out a hand gently to touch the thin braid that wrapped the crown of my head. I shuddered at the fingertip-light pressure against my scalp, though he wasn't even touching my skin. "I like your hair," he said in a low voice.

His hand fell to the loose locks falling past my shoulders, and he gently tugged on a strand, wrapping the curls around his finger slowly, like we had all the time in the world. I inhaled in surprise, and I was sure he noticed, if the amused smile he gave me when I dared to glance up at him wasn't something I was making up.

"You don't even know, do you?" he asked me softly, but it almost sounded like he was talking to himself, too. "What you —"

"Hit on Clary on your own time, Jace," Izzy said from behind me, striding toward us in her sleeveless black sheath dress and six-inch stilettos. "We have a party we need to look stunning for."

I blushed and dropped my eyes to the floor, and Jace stepped back from me smoothly, as if he'd never been close enough that his dress shoes on the floor had touched mine.

"One day you'll give me an actual challenge, Izzy," he said mournfully.

His sister ignored him, opening the ballroom door and peeking inside. "Mom's already there. I know she's going to make sure I'm introduced to everyone." She looked back at us and rolled her eyes. "I'll see you two soon. No canoodling!"

While I blinked at the unfamiliar word, Izzy visibly squared her shoulders and stepped into the ballroom, not bothering to stop the heavy door as it slammed shut behind her.

Jace offered me his arm, and then suddenly what I was about to do was real.

There were dozens of people in there. They were going to be looking at me. Fuck, they were here for me. I staggered backward from Jace until I was pressed against the cool stone wall. Barely aware of what I was doing, I slid down against the wall until my butt hit the floor, and buried my face in my hands.

This was why I didn't show my artwork. Why I never wanted to be more than a 100-level teaching assistant at Parsons who could help students with their technique without talking to them or even looking at them. Why I absolutely, positively, could not walk into that ballroom.

I slowly became aware of Jace speaking. I opened my eyes to see his worried expression. He was kneeling down in front of me on the floor. He was going to get wrinkles in his perfectly pressed suit before he even made it through the doors.

"Clary," he said softly. He held out his hands, and numbly I took them — not because I wanted to get up, but because I selfishly couldn't bring myself to turn down the chance to touch him if he was offering it.

But he didn't try to get me to stand up. He just held my hands softly in his, his thumbs making small circles around my wrists. I wasn't sure if he was attempting to be soothing of if this was part of a deliberate effort to distract me, but either way it was both invigorating and relaxing in a way that helped me shift my attention away from my terror a little.

"I can't do this, Jace," I whimpered once I could speak through my ragged breaths.

He squeezed my hands. "Remember that ridiculous party at Magnus's? There were twice as many people there packed into less space. No one's going to touch you here. I won't let them. And you made it through that, remember? You walked through that huge crowd so that we could talk to Magnus."

I wasn't likely to forget that anytime soon. "But that was to find my mom."

Jace was still drawing circles on my wrist. "I think they're all connected. Valentine wants your mom to help him find the Mortal Cup, or maybe to get her to use it with him."

"She would never!" I said, momentarily distracted from my panic.

"I know, but that might be the link. He wants her to. Maybe she even knows where it is already. So if you can help the Clave tonight, they might — unintentionally, granted — be able to help you find your mom."

He didn't say anything else, letting me process this. I focused on the thought, the memories of my mother. This was for her. She'd done so much for me, her weird, withdrawn daughter, for the past sixteen years.

It was time to repay her kindness and love with this pathetically simple task.

"Stay with me?" I asked Jace, and his hands tightened in mine as he helped pull me to my feet. I tottered for a minute before I regained my balance.

He didn't hesitate. "Always."