The Hotel Dumort.

It was a run down, should-have-been condemned, eye sore. The windows and doors were boarded up, there was a ten-foot chain-link fence around the place with a thick padlock holding the only gate shut tight. I couldn't understand why anyone would use it as their base of operations, unless they were ten-year-old's playing spy.

The Vampires, or Night Children, used the place as their hangout. They came in through the basement, which was connected to the underground tunnels dating back to the Prohibition, which also happened to open up in an old warehouse a few streets over. We did not enter the Hotel Dumort via the tunnels from the Prohibition.

No, that would have been too easy.

As Simon would have said, they would have expected that.

We entered the Hotel Dumort by cutting through the chain-link fence in the back alley, hidden behind a dumpster. It reeked, to say the least. To say the most, I was not dressed for crawling through trash laden alleyways, crawling under and through a fence and then sneaking into a derelict hotel for wanna-be vampires. I doubt I would have been prepared for that no matter what I was wearing.

But all of Jace and Alec's detective skills had led us to the Hotel Dummort, with conformation that the Vampires had dragged Simon in with them. And as much as they didn't care, they could hardly return without me. Hodge was already pissed I had wandered away from the set, I could only imagine how mad he would be after learning about the evening's excursion (which would include leaving me on my own again and ditching the body guards, not once, but twice) and clearly Alec was thinking the same thing.

"Okay, can we just find him and get out of here?" Alec's hands had been clenched at his side since we left Magnus' gallery. "Hodge is already pissed." Apparently, Alec had been in contact with their agent throughout the night.

"Hodge is always pissed about something," Izzy replied off-handedly, looking around the dusty and mildew-stricken building. "How exactly has this thing been spared from demolition?"

"Somebody owns the property," Jace answered. "And if they own it, and it's boarded up, I guess the City can't touch it." He shrugged, toeing part of the banister of the grand staircase in the front lobby, it moaned as it shifted under his touch.

"It's still a safety issue," Izzy frowned at the creaking staircase, which was just creaking for the sake of creaking. Defiantly a bad sign, creaking before we started up the stairs. It should have been a sign that we needed to go back, we should have stopped while we were ahead.

But there were a few problems with that…

1) We didn't have Simon.

2)We were almost sure Simon was there.

3)All of us, except Alec, had a lovely sense of adventure.

4) Honestly, it could have just been the wind causing the wood to creak.

"It's probably just the wind," I forged ahead, determined not to be scared. My best friend needed me, and he would do the same for me. "Come on, let's find Simon."

"I can't believe were doing this," Alec sighed, taking the rear of the line as the others trailed after me.

"Come on Alec, just pretend you're Jem Carstairs. This is right up his alley," Jace joked from right behind me. "A daring rescue of some helpless Mundane."

"This isn't a movie set, Jace," Alec snapped. "This is stupid, and dangerous."

"You don't have to come," Izzy offered. I could hear her exasperation at her brother. For all his complaining, about basically everything, Alec was generally the last one to stop doing something. It was like he was just trying to point out everything wrong, so that he could gloat over the fact that he told them it would happen.

"And face Hodge without the three of you with me? No thanks," Alec answered, earning a chuckle from Jace.

"Told you, Izzy."

"Shut up," I heard her smack Jace on the shoulder. "He always say that."

"I don't always say that!"

"Told you," Jace remarked smugly.

"I give up," Alec sighed.

We climbed the stairs as close to the edge as we could. The wooden stairs were already creaking, so we weren't concerned with the noise. We were more concerned with the stairs falling out from under us, a good concern in my opinion. I used the rail to keep myself against the wall, the going was slow.

For some reason, the whole of the hotel was empty except for the very top floor. The building was so old there was not an elevator. We slowly climbed all the way up the building to where the Vampires hung out, checking each creaking, sagging floor as we went.

"Can we be finished now?" Alec pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as we reached the final landing of the stairwell. "It's almost dawn, we've literally been out all night; again." He pointed a glare at me, as if it was my fault.

It was probably, possibly, mostly my fault. But it wasn't all my fault, Jace had something to do with it; very little, but it was still partially his fault. It was also partially Izzy's for letting Simon hang out with Vampires at that stupid party. And Magnus Bane's because his bouncer kicked the Vampires out of that stupid party early.

See, not completely my fault. Just possibly, probably, mostly my fault.

And if they had been out all night, that was hardly my fault anyway. I like sleep, I could sleep for days and keep going. Before I met Jace and the Lightwoods, I wasn't big on all-nighters. I was barely good with staying up past two in the morning. But with Jace I was up until three or four on the regular, and up again by seven to be on set on time.

"Alec, we are aware that it is almost dawn, please stop reminding us of our bad decisions while we're making them," Jace commented sourly, pressing his back against the wall beside the door frame. "And focus, this is a low-life gang, but it's still a gang."

"We are three highly-trained, black-belt martial artists in multiple disciplines," Izzy arched her brow at Jace, "I doubt a bunch of emo-goths pretending to be Count Dracula are going to be much of a threat."

I heard someone else coming up the stairs. Several people coming up the stairs, talking loudly. I hit Alec in the shoulder to get his attention, and pointed down the stairwell.

"Listen," I hissed before Alec could complain that I had hit him, pointing down below us again.

"I can't believe Raphael and Camille are still going at it," one of them commented. "You would think we didn't have more serious problems to deal with."

"Besides what? Those Werewolves creeping in on our turf?" the other laughed miserably.

"More like the Circle," the first answered. "I'm not stupid, no matter what Raphael says, I can tell something's going on."

"Raphael can handle it."

"Camille handled it before," I heard the edge in the guy's voice. He was angry about Raphael, who wasn't even in charge of things. "Camille had deals with people, she worked with the Warlocks and everyone else to make sure the Circle didn't kill too many of us."

"Raphael is the one who slipped us under the FBI's notice," the second commented. They were getting closer, and barely sounded winded. Maybe that was why they frequented the top floor, to exhaust anyone trying to reach them. "If it wasn't for him, the fuzz would be all over us."

"You put too much faith in him. He's too young."

"And Camille has been here too long," the first one appeared momentarily over the rail of the stairs, spitting toward the floor way below us. "Do you hear something?"

"Your fat ass waddling up the stairs," the second snapped angrily. "Quit trying to change the subject."

"I'm serious," the guy's head appeared over the rail again.

"Get back," I jumped back, pulling Alec and Jace back with me. Alec grabbed his sister as a moved. We had all leaned over to hear the conversation.

"There's someone else on the stairs."

"You're being paranoid," the second scoffed. "This place is a disaster waiting to happen, no one but us would even consider coming within a hundred feet of here."

"I'm serious," the sound of a gun being loaded echoed up the to us.

"Shit," Jace mouthed.

"They have a gun," Alec glared at me again.

"I was too," the second Vampire responded.

"It's not her fault, Alec," Izzy hissed, in my opinion it was entirely too loud. The whole stairwell echoed impossibly easily. And those Vampires were still climbing steadily toward us.

"I can hear something," the first said again. They were close, probably just a single floor below us, or just about to reach it.

"We need to move," I backed through the door, pulling at Izzy's wrist as I did so. "Come on."

Izzy nodded, tapping Jace on the shoulder and indicating that we were moving. Jace and Alec shared a brief glance and nodded. Jace moved first, taking the lead from me while Alec stayed in the stairwell. Once we had gone a little way away from the door, Jace stopped and motioned to Alec.

He ran after us.

We ducked into a small room just as the two Vampires came out of the stairwell. They stood in the hall for a few minutes looking around.

"See, I told you were paranoid," one of them shoved the other aside roughly. "There's nothing here."

"Maybe it was that new guy," the other conceded, tucking his handgun in the waist of his jeans. "Come on, they're waiting for us," he started down the hall.

"They do have Simon," I breathed.

"They just have a new guy," Alec protested.

"It's Simon," Izzy was leaning around the door frame, looking after the boys.

"How do you know?" Jace leaned around behind her. "Oh."

"Oh what?" I asked.

"It is Simon," I leaned around behind Jace and Izzy, looking down the hall.

It was Simon, being dragged down the hall by four of the Vampires.