Disclaimer: It would be nice, but sadly no. These guys all belong to Cassandra Clare, who depressingly isn't me.

The rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully. Alec, Isabelle, Clary, and Jace were all a little on edge as they waited to see if Sophie or Tessa showed signs of anything strange. However, nothing happened. Jem and Tessa had gone out a little while afternoon and come back several hours later carrying Will.

Jace had adopted a slight 'I told you so' attitude when he had gotten a good look at the pallor of Will's face, and the way his eyes twitched below the lids. "I called it," he had muttered to Clary. "Opium den." He had been proved unequivocally correct when Will said it straight out at the breakfast table the next morning.

The day was subdued after that. It was rainy and gray outside the windows. Sophie passed in and out of the kitchen with steaming plates of food. Her face was pinched, and she kept on frowning at Jace in particular. Jace met each glare with a pleasant smile. His entire demeanor was light and completely irreverent. To look at him, Jace didn't seem to have a care in the world. Jessamine was slumped tiredly over her tea. Charlotte looked weary and a little bit sick from being awake in the library all night. Henry ate scrambled eggs with one hand while reading the paper with the other. Clary had nothing else to do but sketch. Alec and Isabelle had managed to find a deck of playing cards somewhere, and were playing what looked like twenty-one while using peanuts to bet.

Will described what he had seen and how it could be useful, and Charlotte mused that it would probably be a good plan to tell Woolsey Scott, the head of the Praetor Lupus.

"I'm sure it will be alright Charlotte," Henry said. "Scott doesn't seem the type to get tangled up with Mortmain's sort."

"Perhaps you should be there when I speak with him," said Charlotte. "Nominally you are the head of the Institute-"

"Oh no," Henry said with something akin to horror. "Darling you'll be quite all right without me. You're such a genius where the negotiations are concerned, and I'm simply not. And besides, the invention I'm working on now could shatter that whole clockwork army into pieces if I get my formulas right."

Will regarded Henry from under his eye lids. "Nothing ever disturbs your circles does it Henry?"

Henry blinked. "What?"

Jem opened his mouth to answer but Jace beat him to it. "Archamedies," he said, sounding slightly board. "He was drawing a mathematical diagram in the sand when his city was attacked by Romans. He was so focused that he didn't see the soldier coming up behind him. His very last words were 'Do not disturb my circles.' Of course, he was like, eighty years old by then so his mental function might not have been you know, all there."

"And he was probably never married either," Will said. He gave Jace a slight smile, and tried to smile at Jem as well, but Jem avoided his eyes. Will's face shut down and then he got up and walked out of the room after Charlotte.

"Oh bother," Jessamine said. "Is this going to be one of those days where we all stalk out in a fury? Because I simply haven't got the energy for it." She put her head down on top of her arms which were crossed on the table.

Isabelle looked at her with distaste. Clary had deemed Isabelle's issues with Jessamine to be a case of similar personalities clashing. "Are you sure you can't dredge up the energy to leave? I could pay you for it."

"I would chip into that!" Jace volunteered. He examined Alec's cards. "Alec you should fold," he told him. "There is a five out of six chance that the next card up is going to be over six which based off your current score of eighteen would mean you bust. Isabelle has 15. She wins no matter what,"

Alec looked at him in confusion.

"What?" Jace asked. "Just because I kick ass in battle doesn't mean I can't count cards." He took in Clary's confused expression. "I needed a way to supplement my allowance."

"So you learned how to hustle people at a poker game," Clary inferred. "That makes perfect sense."

Jace grinned. "I thought so. I'll teach you how some time."

"Don't bother," Clary told him, sipping her water. "Luke beat you there eight years ago."

Jace looked like someone had just told him that he had one the lottery several times in a row. "Awesome!" he said. "We are so hitting up Vegas after we get home!"

"You're both under twenty-one which happens to be the legal gambling age," Alec told them both after taking Jace's advice about the game.

Jace shrugged. "That's what fake ID's are for."

"Um..." Henry said. That made Jace, Alec, Clary, and Isabelle aware that Jessamine, Tessa, Will, and Jem were all staring at them. "Can someone please explain to me what I've done wrong?" Henry asked.

Tessa brought her eyes away from the small group and back to Henry. "Nothing dreadful Henry. It's just- I think Charlotte wanted you to come with her."

"Then why didn't she say so?" Henry asked mournfully. All of his happiness about inventions and scrambled eggs seamed to vanish. Clary thought that maybe he would have been happier just drawing circles in the sand like Archimedes.

"Women never say what they think," Will said sagely.

Bridget's voice floated towards them;

"I fear you are poisoned my own pretty boy,

I fear you are poisoned my comfort and joy.

'O yes I am poisoned; mother make my bed soon,

There's a pain in my heart and I mean to lie down."

"I swear that women had a previous career as a death hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials," Will said.

"I think I would feel better if she didn't sing about poison right after we've eaten," Jace mused. "it gives me the urge to go and look up more healing runes than I could ever need to know."

Will looked over at Tessa. "Shouldn't you be off putting on your gear? Haven't you got training with the lunatic Lightwoods today?"

Clary could see Isabelle clenching her fists to prevent herself from bursting out with a retort to defend her ancestors.

"Yes, this morning," Tessa said. "But I needn't change clothes. We're just practicing knife throwing."

"How fortunate that I am a crack hand at knife throwing," Will said, getting to his feet and holding out his arm for her. "it'll drive Gideon and Gabriel absolutely mad if I watch the training, and I could do with a bit of madness this morning."

Once the two had left the room, clary looked at Jace. "Now what do we do?"

Jace spread jam over another piece of toast. "Now Clary," he said. "Now we wait for the yelling to begin and be sure to clear the hallways if any bloodthirsty Lightwoods come running with sharp objects."

Tessa was surprised when Will started leading her away from the training room once hey had left the dinning room. "Will?" she asked in confusion. "Will where are we going? The training room is in the other direction."

"We are investigating," Will said with a crooked grin.

"What do you mean 'investigating'?" Tessa asked, feeling more alarmed by the minute.

Will lead her down the hall that Tessa recognized as the one where most of the bedrooms were located. He pushed open the door to Jace's room and turned back to Tessa. "Honestly Tessa. All of that reading and you've never taken a look at Sherlock Holmes? What do you think investigate means? We are going to snoop into other people's private business for the good of ourselves and others."

Tessa sighed. "Oh for God's sake Will why? Jace and the others are a mystery but they will be away from here soon enough and we have plenty to worry about, so just let them be."

"Tessa we still don't know why they're here in the first place!" Will said. "We don't know how they know each other! We don't even know their last names!" There was a sort of manic glint in his eye that told Tessa it would be quite impossible to convince him to leave. "Don't tell me you're not curious Tess," Will cajoled. "We'll be out of here quickly. I just want a look at some of their things."

Tessa surveyed the room. "If you want a look at how they live then perhaps we ought to have chosen a different room," she observed. "This one looks as though it could belong to a monk."

It was true. This room looked like every other room in the Institute. At a first glance it could have looked as though it had been uninhabited for months. The floors and walls were spotless, and every surface was bare. The bed was made with the way you would expect a bed in a hospital to look. The sheets and bedding were all pulled flat and devoid of wrinkles, and the pillows were plumped and residing in clean white cases.

Will was undeterred and moved to open the closet doors. The only clothes hanging there were the one set of extras that Will had leant him, and the strange set of clothes Jace had been wearing when he and the others had arrived.. On a shelf in the closet was one bag. Will pulled the bag off the shelf, but the objects in it were as impersonal as the rest of the room. It contained a set of gear and a rather large selection of deadly weapons. "Nothing," he muttered, closing the bag and putting the bag back on the shelf.

Tessa had sat down on the edge of the bed. "It can't be normal for any boy to have a room this bare," she said. "It feels so cold and... impersonal. Like a hospital, or- or-"

"A soldiers barracks," Will filled in. "Jace did hint that he had a difficult childhood. Perhaps living like this was a part of it. Living like a soldier."

"Jace also said that he had been living with Alec and Isabelle since he was ten," Tessa pointed out. "Wouldn't this sort of habit have faded after nearly eight years?"

Will shrugged. "Well people do say that the habits we learn when we're young are the ones that are the hardest to break. I'll tell you one thing though," he said. "The one universal hiding place is below a bed." He reached under the bed and drew out a small wooden box.

Tessa sat on the floor across from him to look at the box. It was made out of polished cherry wood, and was held shut by a simple clasp. On the front was a small, barely distinguishable pattern of flying birds. "isn't that?" Tessa sated to ask.

"My family symbol," Will said in a serious tone. "Why would Jace have a box with the Herondale crest on it?"

Tessa felt the inexplicable urge to comfort him despite how awfully he had acted recently. She laid her hand lightly on top of his. "It may just be a pattern of flying birds," she told him. "It may not have anything to do with your family at all."

Will didn't look very comforted and proceeded to open the box. There were only a few objects inside. One was an old, but obviously still sharp dagger with a carved hilt. The next was a tightly bound stack of letters in handwriting Will thought was strangely similar to his own. Their was also one letter that was separate form the others, and looked like it was on more recent paper. Below that was a yellowing piece of paper which looked as though it hade been recently unfolded and then meticulously refolded. At nearly the very bottom was a book that was immediately familiar to both Will and Tessa. It was a copy of A Tale of two Cities. It looked old and well worn. After that had been removed, a small metallic object clattered into the bottom of the box. Tessa reached forwards and fished it out.

Then the box was empty. Tessa looked around. Spread out on the floor were the only personal objects that Jace seemed to own. Tessa thought that it was sad that everything a person found important could fit into one small box.

"What was that?" Will asked about the object in Tessa's hand.

She looked down at it. It was a silver ring, the kind Will and Jem both wore, and the same one Jace had put on Clary's hand when they had seen Starkweather. Tessa studied it more carefully and gasped. Around the side was a small engraved pattern of birds in flight.

Will looked at the ring with some shock and immediately slipped his own ring over his finger and held it next to the ring in Tessa's hand. The patterns matched. "Well I guess that explains the box," Will said in a hallow voice.

"He couldn't be related to you could he?" Tessa asked. "It would explain the Herondale seal."

He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. "I don't have relatives from America Tess." he said with restrained patients. "That would have been something to mention when they showed up. Don't you think?" He didn't wait for her to answer. Instead he instructed; "Look in the front of the book. Sometimes people write their full names there."

Tessa flipped open the book. There was writing on the page, but most of it was faded and illegible. Tessa squinted and just managed to make out six words in handwriting that was nearly identical to Will's. She squinted to make it out. It said:

With hope at last,

-Will Herondale

A/N: What did you guys think? I thought a good way for Will and Tessa to find out more would be the box of things that Jace had from Stephen Herondale. Any way let me know! If it wasn't good I can re-write it. Review for me!