With his birthday only days away and Clarissa being unable to go and do anything without at least two people of Aldertree's choice, she had even less freedom and Jonathan would need her help with the next part of his mission.
Clarissa warned him about Aldertree knowing about their portals, well warned was a slight understatement. She spent nearly an hour yelling and berating him through their ring and ended up giving him a headache. But she wasn't wrong. He took a risk, much like she usually did, and didn't think it through, like Clarissa usually did, but this time it didn't pay off.
A portal got him within walking distance of the Institute, and a mild glamour got him to the rear entrance of the Institute, but he wouldn't be able to stay for too long. Aldertree had the Institute running well, and everyone knew everyone, or could at least recognize everyone; he would be recognized as an outsiders if he kept this glamour for too long.
The second that the next Shadowhunter walked outside, he had him in a sleeper hold and dragged him around to a darker corner. A quick study of his features, and Jonathan was able to do a crude recreation of his features with a glamour. Clarissa could definitely do better, but as long as no one stared too hard at him, it would do its job, he would just have to spend as little time as possible in the Institute.
Jonathan crouched down and crushed his victim's throat before leaving the body behind a large bush. He just needed enough time to get in and out of the Institute before anyone found the body.
I have about ten minutes before the body is found. Where are you? Jonathan asked just as he was about to go in through the back door.
I'm in Izzy's room. Alec is here too. Jace is supposed to be here in about five minutes.
Jonathan made his way through the Institute, smiling at people that nodded at him on his way, but otherwise, he kept his head down.
Izzy answered the door, still in her pyjamas.
"Aldertree needs to talk to Clary," he said.
"Again?" Izzy sighed.
"It's ok Izzy, I'll be back soon." Clarissa hopped off the bed and followed obediently behind Jonathan; his glamour was decent, but only if you weren't expecting a glamour.
They kept their heads down and avoided everyone in the halls until they were safely outside of the Institute and portaled back to the manor.
Helen was banging on the door calling for Alec.
"Hey, have you seen –" Izzy started as she opened the door.
"Someone killed Elijah, we just found his body out back," Helen interrupted.
"What do you mean?" Izzy cut in. "We just saw him like ten minutes ago. Aldertree sent him to get Clary."
Helen shook her head slowly. "No, he didn't." The realization slowly washed over her. "I was just with Aldertree and he didn't send anyone for her. Did she leave with Elijah?"
"Yeah," Alec nodded. "If Aldertree didn't send her, then why would he come to get her?"
"Damn it!" Helen exclaimed. "On her last mission, Jonathan mentioned that his birthday was coming up and that he would only spend it with Clary. That partially why Aldertree kept people around her all the time."
"Raziel!" Izzy stood and started looking for her gear.
"No one's going anywhere," Helen said. "Aldertree's limiting in/out privileges until he figures out what happened. Now that we know that it was probably Jonathan and that Clary's with him, the Council's going to extend the kill order to her too. You can't risk associating with them."
"So what? We're supposed to just leave her?"
"For now, yes. Jonathan probably won't hurt her, so it'd be in everyone's best interest to wait until the council comes to a decision," Helen said. "Just stay in the Institute for the next few days, or at least until we know what we're dealing with."
Alec nodded and shut the door.
"You aren't actually planning on not doing anything, right?" Jace said.
"She's crazy if she actually thinks that we're staying here," Izzy said. "But we need to figure out a plan, because they have a head start and could be anywhere."
Knowing that it was too late to be able to do anything, they decided that it would be better to sleep on it and figure out what to do later.
Jace woke up the next day feeling anything but rested. They'd already wasted the night and by know Clary and Jonathan could literally be anywhere, making it even harder to find them. If he'd had it his way, they would've been out all of last night tracking them. Jonathan and Clary might've had a head start, but they couldn't have avoided an entire team of people tracking them; New York was big, but it wasn't big enough for that.
He had wanted to start making their plans as soon as they'd woken up in that morning, but they'd been forced to wait until after Izzy's team's training, which had been changed from later in the week to that morning. It was almost like Aldertree knew what they wanted to do and was trying to inconvenience them. Jace shook his head, trying to make his thought go away. He knew that Aldertree wasn't in charge of the schedules and that it was probably just a coincidence, but since Aldertree was the one that wouldn't let them look for Clary, blaming him for this just seemed appropriate.
He paced the length of Alec's room, waiting for Izzy. Her training should have ended almost twenty minutes ago. In any other situation he would've thought that she was deliberately being late just to piss him off, but he knew that she wanted Clary back just as much as he did.
"We can't just wait around planning and doing nothing, Alec," Jace said. He was tired of waiting for Izzy. She could catch up once she got there.
"We can, and we will," Alec said. "We've already pushed our luck enough since Aldertree took over, and he made his orders very clear: Clary isn't a high priority and he isn't authorizing any search teams. We probably only have one shot at this, and we aren't going to waste it if we don't have good information."
"C'mon Alec," Jace started. He sighed dramatically once he heard Izzy at the door. "Finally," he said under his breath.
"The law is hard, but it is the law," Alec quoted.
"What'd I miss?" She asked.
"Jace wants us to break the rules to go find Clary with no plans. I think we're better of waiting until we know where she is. Jonathan hasn't been to subtle about where he's been since he left so he'll probably do the same thing with her too."
"But this isn't a law. Aldertree's making this shit up as he goes," Jace said. "And we don't know that Jonathan will keep up the same patterns. Back me up here Iz."
Izzy ran her finger across the underside of her lip, a habit that she developed from constantly wearing lipstick. "Jace does kinda have a point Alec."
"You don't get to agree with him, Izzy," Alec said.
"I'm not exactly agreeing." A sly look came across her face. "But we are allowed to do whatever we want between missions, as long as we're back in time for our shift. Nothing's stopping us from doing a little exploring. You know, making friends with some people who can ask questions for us."
"If we get caught –"
"Caught how?" Jace asked. "As long as we're back for our shifts, Aldertree will never know. Besides, even if we did get caught, there's no proof that we're looking for Clary."
"And since when has Aldertree ever needed proof for anything? If he even suspects that we're looking for Clary, then he'll punish us before asking any questions."
"Then we won't give him any reason to suspect us."
Alec debated his options for a minute, but he'd already decided. Once Jace set his mind on something, there was no stopping him. The only thing that Alec could do was to go along with it to try to minimize the damage. And Alec wanted to find Clary too, just without risking punishment. "If we do this, we can't just go about it without a plan."
Jace groaned.
"I'm serious Jace. I'm supposed to be studying under Aldertree so I can't just leave whenever I want. We need to figure out why Jonathan took her and where they would go."
"That's gonna take too long," Jace complained. "And we don't exactly have all the time in the world for this."
"Well how were you going to look for her? Just picking a city at random and hoping to run into her? Jonathan's smart, he wouldn't make it that easy for us." Alec racked his fingers across Izzy's bedframe.
"I doubt she'd make it easy for us to find her too," Izzy pointed out. She batted his hand off her bed. "Don't scratch the wood," she added absently.
"What do you mean?" Jace asked harshly. "She wouldn't just completely betray us like that."
"I never said that she's betraying us. I don't think she'd do that; but she's finally getting the chance to be with her brother again." Izzy sat back on her bed. "Look me in the eyes and tell me that if it came down to the Clave or me and Alec that you would choose the Clave without a second thought."
Jace was silent.
"Exactly."
The silence stressed out awkwardly long as they all thought about the position that Clary was in. "But that doesn't mean that she's helping him." Jace finally said.
Izzy and Alec stayed silent. It wasn't something that they wanted to think about. If it came down to each other or the Clave, they knew exactly who they'd choose, and they knew that Jace knew it too. But every time that Clary had had the chance to leave, she kept coming back, and that had to mean something.
"So what, you think that she won't want to come back once we find her?" Jace asked incredulously.
"Don't worry, she'll come back," Alec said reassuringly. She has to come back, he thought. "But right now, we just need to focus on finding her. We can start tomorrow after training."
"Does Father know that I'm back," Clarissa asked.
"No, but that won't matter. He hasn't been as interested in what you're doing at the Institute since we got The Cup and The Sword," he explained. "If we do this right, then Father won't even notice."
Clarissa draped herself across Jonathan's bed. "So, what's your plan?"
"That depends on how long before you have to go back."
"Well, I'm already in hot water after that stunt you pulled last week and Aldertree isn't dumb. They'll all figure out that I'm with you. So I can't just go back, we'll have to get Alec, Izzy, or Jace to find me so I can go back with one of them."
"Do you actually expect them to be able to find you? Their tracking skills leave much to be desired." Jonathan rolled his eyes, none of their skills were up to par. The Clave had gotten lax, and while it made their job slightly easier, in this case, their uselessness was a large inconvenience.
"They're going to try. And if we find them, they'll just think it was they're good tracking skills. The issue would be convincing Aldertree that it wasn't my choice to leave."
"Your job was simple: gain their trust. If you did that properly then that wouldn't be an issue." He snapped.
"It wasn't exactly the simplest thing to do when you keep appearing to make them question everything," Clarissa bit back. "And you called me impulsive," she muttered under her breath, though he could still hear her clearly.
"I thought you were done complaining about that."
"I am. I'm just pointing out that we both messed up." She said. "So don't be surprised if I can't stay at the Institute for as long as we initially thought."
"I think that staying here for a few days before letting the Lightwoods just happen to find us would be alright," Jonathan said. "We're just tracking for now. I have a name that should bring us closer to the mirror."
"How close?" Clarissa asked.
"It should get us to the Archives, the only place where we can find The Mirror's location."
"We can't be the only ones looking for it, Jonathan. We have The Cup and Father just stole The Sword; they have to be looking for The Mirror too."
"They are. But they think their leak is somewhere in France. All we need to do is find Jordan Grandwell," Jonathan states plainly. "He's the only person that knows the location of the Archives so he's probably somewhere in Idris under heavy protection."
"No, he wouldn't be in Idris, not after what you pulled in France, that's too obvious. They'll have to know that you're looking for him now."
"I did what I had to do to get the information," Jonathan roughly ran his fingers through his hair. "But if he won't be in Idris then where is he, since you know so much."
"Come on, Jonathan," she teased. "The most important and well protected mundane city? The religious focus of the western society?"
"Little sister, you are a genius." Jonathan glanced outside and then at the clock. "Father should be back soon, but he never stays long. How about we take the horses out for a bit."
Clarissa darted across the hall to her room to change into something more suitable for a long ride and grabbed a couple combat knives just in case. They were well off the property and into the forest when Valentine had returned to the manor. She could tell that the horses were enjoying some proper terrain and time out of the stables.
She ran her fingers through her horse's mane and laughed quietly to herself. Jonathan shot her a questioning look.
"Remember when you taught me how to ride a horse?" She asked.
"You mean when you decided that you couldn't handle a bit of pain, ignored what I told you, and then nearly broke your arm when you fell off," he said dryly. "Of course I remember that."
"Apparently you don't remember it properly," she laughed breathily. "Because I distinctly remember you not actually telling me how to do anything and then being annoyed when I fell. And it was only a sprain."
They settled into a comfortable banter.
"I think you might've forgotten which one of us has the perfect memory, because that is not how it happened." Jonathan leaned forward with his horse as they jumped over a particular large fallen tree. "I was correcting you whenever you made a mistake. It wasn't my fault that you decided to ignore what I said and ended up falling."
"If you insist," she said dramatically. "How much longer do you think father will be home for?"
Jonathan shrugged, "maybe another hour or two. He'll definitely be gone before sunrise."
"We have lots of time then." Clarissa adjusted herself in her saddle. "Race you to Lake Lyn!" She shouted as she pushed her horse into a gallop.
They both took alternate paths to the Lake, both having to constantly weave and work around particularly dense parts of the forest, occasionally spotting the other through the thick branches. Jonathan pushed his horse hard; Clarissa might have gotten a second's advantage by calling out the race before he'd had the chance to prepare himself, but he wasn't going to let that be the reason that he lost.
The woods were unpredictable, with quick reactions required from both the horse and rider. They wouldn't have been able to do any of this if they hadn't spent years training their horses for this type of terrain. Thick logs, low hanging branches, and large patches of thick mud forced them to make a lot of detours, sometimes forcing them to go in the complete opposite direction from where they wanted, just so they could avoid the obstacles.
Clarissa could see the clearing coming up through the trees and pushed her horse one last time as they approached, but before she could reach the edge, Jonathan broke through the treeline in an area where he was closer to the lake. Knowing that it would be impossible to recover that distance, she slowed Cinnamon all the way back down to a walk. She dismounted and walked the final distance herself, knowing she'd pushed her horse to her limits and that she needed time to rest.
"How'd you beat me?" She asked as Jonathan dismounted. "I could've sworn that I was ahead of you in that last stretch."
"You really thought that you were going to win that?" He asked incredulously. "I've always been a better rider."
They settled into the sandy shore far enough from the poisonous waters of the lake as their horses grazed the open fields behind them.
Jonathan took a deep breath as he stared up at the clear sky, enjoying the unpolluted air and the calmness from the surrounding forest. "It's going to be different," he said. "When we take over, we aren't going to be able to just do stuff like this. At least not for a while."
"What do you mean?" Clarissa dug her elbows into the sand to prop herself up.
"We're out here in the open with nothing more than a few knives and steles, granted, no one ever comes to the lake so it's relatively safe, but that's beside the point." He picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle out from between his fingers. "The whole world is going to be incredibly unstable once we take over and it could be years, maybe even a decade, before it calms down enough for us to take breaks like this. The Shadowhunters that've been brainwashed by the Clave aren't going to react well to change, but we can always fix that." He glanced over at Clarissa, but she had her arm draped over her face. He knew that she'd been so focused on completing their mission that she hadn't given much thought to what happens after. "Not to mention the mundanes that live in blissful ignorance; once they find out that we exist, there's no telling how they'll react. That won't be happening for a few years, not until we get our world back under control, but it'll be a while before we get things working how they should be."
"I never thought about that," Clarissa said softly. "Any of that."
She lowered herself back into the sand, suddenly aware of how coarse and sharp it was. She was suddenly aware of how relaxed she'd gotten in her short amount of time away from the Institute. She hadn't been paying any attention to anything outside of her immediate surroundings. There could've been any number of Shadowhunters waiting in the forest to kill them and she wouldn't have known.
Jonathan spoke as if he knew exactly what she was thinking of. "Don't worry, we're completely alone and there hasn't been anyone even remotely close to us since we got to Idris."
Clarissa closed her eyes and took a deep breath, relishing the calmness of the empty air around them, trying to block everything else, trusting Jonathan to stay aware of their surroundings. And he was right; she didn't know when she'd be able to just mentally check out like this again. She dug her fingers into the sand, sighing at the feeling of the cold sand against her hot skin.
She wasn't sure when she had fallen asleep, but she woke up to Jonathan shifting beside her. "Father will be gone by now and we can get some sleep in an actual bed."
"If we're going to break into The Vatican, we can't afford for anything to go wrong," Jonathan started. "And what we need isn't going to be accessible to the public."
"We could spend the day as tourist," Clarissa suggested. "But if anyone see's through my glamour, the whole mission is toast."
"Then make it a good glamour."
She hadn't forgotten their conversation from last night. She had always known that what they were doing was serious, it was just a fact that she'd always grown up with. Even since Jonathan decided that he didn't wanted Father to be in charge and that they'd do a better job together, it had always just been another mission. Now that had a firm grasp on what they were doing, how they were going to literally change everything about the world, suddenly it all became so much more serious.
"One day of re-con should be enough, right?" Clarissa asked. "Vatican City isn't that big."
"More than enough." Jonathan strapped on some sheaths and threw on some mundane clothes on top.
Jonathan pulled his shirt off over his head so Clarissa could draw her glamour rune as close to his heart as possible, just above their twinning rune.
She watched his hair fade from his normal silver hair to a dark brown and adding almost two inches of length. His eyes transitioned unto a dark, muddy brown. His nose grew slightly in size, his pale pink lip darkened and shrunk while the space between his eyes seemed to grow. He even seemed to lose a couple inches of height, making him just under six feet tall. Overall, he was unrecognizably average and perfectly mundane.
Jonathan turned to the mirror and reached up to touch his face. Even though he knew how his features normally were, it was hard, even for him, to convince his brain that what he was touching wasn't real. "This might be your best work yet."
Clarissa beamed.
She set to drawing her own glamour. Her hair changed into an obviously bleached blond with outgrown brown roots showing. She gave herself the illusion of an extra couple inches, bringing her just under the average height for an American woman. Her skin darkened from her normal pale to a natural looking tan. She also rearranged her features enough to make herself unrecognizable. She completed the look with a pair of oversized sunglasses.
She turned to smile at Jonathan in the mirror. They would look like every other tourist couple that wanted to explore Vatican City.
"Perfect," Jonathan said.
