Chapter One: A Day in the Life of Alec Lightwood
Alec stretched his arms over his head, arching his back into the stretch. The rising sun glittered through his window, and as he blinked its light out of his eyes, the cold black face of his computer glared steadily back at him. Crap. He was supposed to be writing. The only problem? He hadn't been able to come up with any good ideas since his parents' divorce, and if he didn't get back to work, the deadline would hit him across the face.
He groaned, swung himself out of bed, and stumbled down the hall to the kitchen. He couldn't function until he'd had some coffee, which resulted in him watching boredly as it poured into his mug. He figured he could waste the day designing characters… he did have an entire sketchbook to fill.
Content with this plan, Alec went back to his room, got out his art supplies, and returned to the kitchen table, where he sat and flipped to the first page of his sketchbook. The white paper taunted him. He was about to resort to blind scribbling when his phone rang. Was it just him, or was the ringtone ten times louder this morning? He looked at the caller, expecting his manager, and was surprised to find a picture of his little sister, Isabelle, laughing up at him from the screen.
"Hey," he said, answering.
"Aaaleeeeccc," she sang into the receiver. "Guess what daaayyyyy it is?"
"The beginning of the apocalypse?" Alec asked irritably, holding the phone away from his ear. When Izzy sighed, he brought the device closer. "No? Then what is it?"
"It's Tuesday!" Isabelle announced, as though that was the best thing in the world.
"So?" Alec was exceptionally confused. "Is there something happening today?"
"No," Izzy said, somewhat more abashed. "But there can be. Whaddaya say we meet Jace for breakfast or something?"
Alec glanced forlornly down at his blank sketchbook. Unfortunately, no amazing drawings had magically appeared in the time it had taken to talk to his sister.
"I don't see why not," he relented. She squealed in glee.
"The usual spot, then, in fifteen minutes! I love you, big brother!" She hung up. Alec put his book away and went to change out of his pajamas, putting on a black sweater and gray jeans. He paused to look in the mirror before he left, wondering if it was worth the brain activity it would take to brush his black hair out of his face. Izzy would want to see his eyes; she'd always insisted Alec had a rare and beautiful shade of blue eyes that he should be proud of. Alec didn't care much. It wasn't like the color of his eyes affected the quality of his vision. If he could see, why should he give a damn about letting other people see his eyes?
On the drive to the café, he half-listened to the angry-sounding Gerard Way singing on the radio. He saw Jace getting out of his car a few yards away, meeting Isabelle, who stood outside. Alec joined his siblings and they entered the shop. Izzy chatted familiarly with the redheaded girl behind the register, continuing their conversation even when she turned to make their coffees. Alec realized he'd already had a cup of coffee this morning, but brushed it off. It wasn't like it would kill him.
Two more people entered the cafe behind them: a pretty white-haired woman with a bluish tint to her skin, and a shortish man with equally white hair and almost greenish skin. They were bickering about something that sounded music-related. Alec shook his head, annoyed at the way the light from the windows made them look like warlocks or something. He watched Izzy and the redhead barista exchange phone numbers when she handed over their coffees, and rolled his eyes. Trust Isabelle Lightwood to make a new friend at nine in the morning at a coffee shop. Hell, she'd probably befriend a vampire if she got the chance. She came and sat down across from him, next to Jace, whom she handed the slip of paper with the redhead's number to. He grinned thankfully.
"So, Alec, how's your book coming?" Izzy asked casually. Alec wanted to slam his head against the table.
"Not well," he said. "I have a sort of plot idea, but I can't come up with any characters for it."
"New character block?" She frowned sympathetically. "You aren't ever going to write a sequel to All the Locked Doors? Everyone wants that. You can't just leave Killian and Mala hanging like you did at the end."
"Yes, I can. I'm the author, Iz," he said in a lower voice. "I don't want to break their world with a sequel. I want to write something different."
"But Alec," she complained professionally. "All the Locked Doors."
"What about it?"
"It's, like, one of the best books to exist in the world," his sister insisted. "I don't know where you got inspiration for it, but it's epic. And I'm not just saying that. You do remember when it was released, right?"
Alec thought back to it. All the Locked Doors was his third book, a stand-alone novel about two men, one from the human world and one from the High Kingdom (which was his name for the realm of the angels), who meet by accident and embark on a forbidden quest to bring equality to both their worlds. He wondered how much thought Izzy and Jace had put into the fact that the main character was gay. He hoped they wouldn't connect that to his own haphazardly hidden sexuality. He remembered how much the people had liked it, how much they'd asked for a sequel. He remembered lying on his bed and grinning as Magnus Bane songs blasted through his house and heart and soul. He remembered wondering if it was normal to be so well-liked, so famous (he shuddered at the word) and still be obsessed with famous musicians like Magnus Bane.
"Yes, of course. But I don't know if I can write a sequel to All the Locked Doors, Iz, I don't. I'm trying something new. Maybe a post-apocalyptic, hidden-magic style this time."
"Ooh, forbidden magic," Izzy grinned, sipping her drink. "What if the main character is called to fight the bad guys and realizes that one of them has magic too? What if they realize they'll both be executed if they go back, so they trade and each go back as a prisoner to the other's base or whatever, and can't stop thinking about—"
"Isabelle, I don't know if I want to write a love story," Alec said shortly.
"Alexander Gideon Lightwood, you would be insane not to. You underestimate your talents. I remember reading All the Locked Doors, and the romantic subplot was perfect. You have natural gifts in the writing world, mister. Don't let them go to waste."
"Yes, your majesty," he smirked, taking a long sip of his coffee, relishing its bitter, uninterrupted taste. Most people didn't like coffee without changing some aspect of it. Alec knew better than anyone what it was like to feel pulled in all directions, so he felt like he owed it to coffee to not act like his fellow humans. No matter how dark and bitter coffee was, he accepted it that way. Wow, that was pathetic. An acceptance speech for coffee, Alec thought, glad for not the first time that telepathy was impossible.
"This is all well and good, but did you see the last episode of—" Jace said passionately to Izzy, and the two got talking about some show Alec didn't watch. He looked out the window in the general direction of the park, wanting to go out and paint, to do something besides develop characters and write nonsensical short stories to 'spark creativity.' His eyes caught on a tall man across the street, who seemed to be looking right at him. Wanting to escape, he finished off his coffee, said a hasty goodbye to his siblings, and exited the shop. He pulled his earbuds out of his pocket and plugged them in, hitting shuffle on a random playlist of Magnus Bane songs. The first one that came up was called Enough is Enough, and it was one of the first Bane songs Alec had listened to and subsequently fallen in love with. As the smooth voice and braided instruments twisted through his ears, he found himself heading back to his apartment to get a canvas and paints.
Alec set up his easel on a flat hilltop. The distance beckoned: green grass wet with dew that shone like glitter in the morning sun, blue and purple mountains far off, penetrating the loosely dispersed clouds. It was breathtaking. He took a picture on his phone, but after inspecting it, he deleted it. It was impossible to capture moments.
Alicante Bridge always sliced right through the perfect painting, making it impossible to capture the entire range… unless Alec wanted to keep lugging his easel back and forth between the two flat hilltops. Which he didn't. So he contented himself with half the full image. He figured he was doing it more justice this way: letting it continue to exist, unencumbered, nowhere except here. This was part of the reason Alec didn't want to write a sequel to All the Locked Doors. It existed there, in that perfect microcosm, and he didn't want to re-enter that world for fear of tainting it as dull as the clothes he wore.
He thought again of why he chose to live like a person instead of like the rich author he was. He could afford to live someplace grand, in a massive house he could spend years living in and not notice several rooms. He figured it was because he didn't like drawing attention to himself, why the name on his books was Alexander Lightwood and the name he gave his peers, which he rarely did, was always nothing more than Alec.
He painted until the sun was high enough in the sky that the image had lost its magic, had turned mundane. He wished he wasn't the only person who ever came to admire the view from the hilltop here, wished to have someone who would honor the memory if and when Alec had to uproot and move to start somewhere else. He meticulously put his paints and brushes away and sat down, wiping his hands on his jeans. He wished he had some silver glitter to toss against the wet paint; that would surely capture the glinting droplets of the dew on the grass.
He looked to the side and saw a man standing on the hilltop opposite him. The man was standing, tense, looking out at the world with a desperate air about him, looking like he was trying to inhale the scenery as though it was the last thing he would ever see. He glanced at Alec, and the sunlight glinted off his eyes in a way it really shouldn't be doing. The blue woman and the green man from the coffee shop came up behind the stranger, and the green man handed him a cup. The man took it and raised it to his lips, and then his hand began to shake and he dropped it. The lid came off and coffee burst onto the ground and onto the trio's feet. The colorful couple flinched back.
The man remained unmoving.
When Alec arrived home with his almost-finished painting, he went straight to his blank sketchbook. He took a charcoal stick and began to sketch, mind only half there. He drew in silhouette, as he couldn't pin down features, but when he was done he'd drawn a sort of creature, relatively human shaped, with a crown of spikes for hair, a ball of flame hovering above one hand, and glinting cat eyes, staring ominously up at him from the paper.
He flipped the page and drew a deeper sketch of the same silhouette, this time only the waist and up. This time the cat eyes surfaced from his sketch lines again, as did the spiky hair and the hand summoning fire. His earbuds lobbed Magnus Bane lyrics at him. It took him barely a second to identify the song: Are You Here?
All these lights and all these colors
It's the kind of thing that makes me wonder
If we don't belong, then why are we here?
I step onto the stage blinking tears and
Stardust from my eyes
All this gloom and all this darkness
It's the kind of thing that keeps me harnessed
When it all burns down, why is it so beautiful?
Alec swayed to the music. He flipped another page and drew only the cat eyes, wide and fearful, tears and glitter spilling from them. Then he stopped and looked at all three of the drawings slowly, critically. He found nothing really wrong with them. They weren't comic material, no, but they captured the essence of something like a dreamcatcher.
"That's it!" Alec exclaimed, a new story idea crashing into his head like a tsunami. He needed a hero and he needed a villain, otherwise there would be no story to tell. But as he looked down at the cat-eyed man, whom he'd internally dubbed Dreamcatcher, he wondered if perhaps one character could be both. It would be a step away from his usual writing style, but he knew it was better than nothing. He opened his computer, created a new document, and began to write.