Alec knew that they were hidden underneath a spell of invisibility and yet he could not help but feel vulnerable as Magnus and he stepped out of the portal the warlock had created onto the side street where Simon had been killed. Years of ingrained training in which he did not have such luxuries had left their mark on him so despite logically knowing that no one would be able to pierce through Magnus' spell, on an instinctual level he still felt as if they could be discovered any minute now.

Being so near the New York Institute did not help either; the chance that a Shadowhunter would come across them was the highest around here. So, his eyes constantly darted around, targeting the dark and hidden corners while his muscles were tensed up, ready to spur into action at any minute.

Behind them, the unmoving form of Simon's golem floated in the air, tugged along by Magnus' magic. It was disconcerting to see Simon's lifeless body – his pale skin, the blood-soaked shirt, the unmoving eye – like this while simultaneously knowing that it was not real, and that the real Simon was staying behind in Magnus' mansion. Even after years as Shadowhunters, dead bodies were still a sight Alec could not get used to – would never get used to.

"I think this is the spot," Alec said. Even under the dim lights of the surrounding city he could clearly make out the dark spot on the concrete where Simon's blood had seeped into the ground. When the approached, a few rats scurried away, taking cover in the storm drains or underneath the derelict dumpsters.

Alec scowled in disgust. He had always hated rats, except for that one rat Izzy had kept as her pet for a few days before their mother had force her to set it free again. Mr. Snoozlenose had been an alright rat, Alec had to admit.

Silently, he watched as Magnus directed the floating golem towards the spot and let it sink down until it laid on the street. No longer being suspended in the air but instead laying on the ground added more reality to it, made it feel more present, more real. A floating corpse was surreal, difficult to process and easier to dismiss, but now that the scene before them looked like a real crime – which victim was someone they knew – just drove home the point that it truly had happened, that someone had really tried to and succeeded in killing their friend.

Alec hated to admit it, even only to himself, but if Camille had not been here at the right moment, then they would not be looking at a facsimile of Simon's dead body, but at the real corpse of their friend. Just the thought of it made him want to punch the wall next to him with his fist.

"How can you be so collected?" Alec wanted to know. "You're bond with Simon runs much deeper. If I had been you, I'd have lost it. I'd have burned down the whole Institute." Despite his year-long denial about his feelings for Jace, Alec was a very self-aware person and so he knew to what low depths he would sink to if anything was to happen to the people he held dear.

"Oh, believe me, I'm furious," Magnus replied, his lips pressed into a thin line. "If I had any less control of myself and my magic, half of Manhattan wouldn't stand anymore. If Jocelyn was anyone else, I'd have brought her to justice the moment I learned of her deeds." He took a deep breath. "But I can't. There's Valentine to think of, the Clave and Clary…revenge, like everything else doesn't exist in a vacuum."

Magnus looked at Alec and only his year-long training as Shadowhunter kept him from flinching back in fear, for Magnus' expression was not that of the helpful, compassionate, and eccentric magician Alec had come to known. No, right now, his cat eyes were on full display, filled with insatiable wrath and hunger, his mockery of a grin having no humanity at all. "Believe me, when the time comes, I'll have my due. As I always have. As I always will."

A split-second later and Magnus expression was as serene and contemplative as it had been just a moment ago; as nothing had happened. Alec swallowed. It was easy to forget how much experience, how much power the warlock possessed. He was the oldest being Alec knew and he had the luxury of planning decades if not centuries ahead.

Alec knew of course, at the back of his mind, but it was easy to dismiss when he had his head lying in Magnus' lap, the other man running his fingers through his hair or when Magnus cuddled with Chairman Meow. Suddenly Alec was glad that Magnus was on their side.

"How should we proceed?" Alec wanted to know. "We run into the risk of Mundane authorities discovering him if we just let him lie here. No one at the Institute will immediately notice something amiss."

"I can hide him under a glamour," Magnus replied. He snipped with his fingers; colourful sparks of magic came into existence and floated down onto the golem and sank into its skin. Alec could still see it, so he assumed that Magnus' spell only prevented Mundanes from stumbling upon the golem. "As who should discover him? From where would you come if you were walking home from my apartment?"

Understanding flooded through Alec. "This corner isn't really on my way, but no one would question it if I came upon Simon's body here."

"Then it shall fall to you to make that discovery," Magnus said. "Do you think you can be convincing enough? Especially for your siblings? After all, they know you the best and are most likely to find something amiss."

"I pretended to be interested in women for years and no one noticed," Alec joked. "I can convince them that I'm really mourning for Simon." He paused for a moment. "I'm known for being closed-off and stand-offish. It'll help to sell it."

Magnus placed his hand on Alec's shoulders. "I know the timing isn't the greatest, but can I say how proud I am of you? When we first met you would have never joked like this. You'd have died of mortification." Alec blushed and he turned his head sidewards so that Magnus would not see it.

"I'm many things now that I haven't been before," he murmured. "I sometimes feel like I lived more in the short time ever since that night in Pandemonium than I have in the twenty-three years before." When he thought about it, it felt like the life he had before had been veiled by an unexplainable blurriness that he hadn't been able to notice until it had been lifted. Alec could remember nearly every single day since Pandemonium but the years before that felt like a blur to him.

It was not as if his life had been bad or unimportant – how could it be with Izzy, Max and Jace in it? – but more that it had been enframed by routines, duties and tasks; a heteronomous life directed not by himself but by the expectations of others. He did not really regret it, but he felt a certain sense of melancholia when he thought about everything that could have been different if he had been braver earlier.

"I know that feeling," Magnus replied. "Some years it's as if I experience every single moment with a clarity that I can't really put into words, and then there are decades that are just a blur, where I could barely tell you where I've been during them. As my good friend Albert Einstein once said: 'Time is relative.'"

Alec raised an eyebrow. "I never know if you're making this stuff up or not. You also claimed to have slept with Michelangelo, but I know from Simon that you were in China at the time."

"Simon is the most terrible wingman I can think of," Magnus murmured in fake-disgruntlement. "Never knows when to keep his mouth shut."

Alec huffed in amusement. "Luckily for you, I don't care if you inspired Michelangelo or not." He took a breath. "I guess I'll make my way back to the Institute now with him." He tilted his head towards the still form of the golem.

"We're so stupid," Magnus exclaimed. "Why did we even lay him down here if you can just take him and carry him to the Institute? Why did I even glamour it?" And because the situation was not absurd enough, he started to giggle. "Why easy if we can complicate it?"

Alec could not help it, but he started to laugh, too. Maybe it was the stress or the stark reminder of how easily all of their lives could be sniffed out, but somehow the thought of their overcomplicated planning made him lose his cool.

"I think it can be excused," Alec said once he had his breathing back under control. "Besides, the glamour wasn't useless. The mundanes would probably call the police if they saw a dead body float over the ground."

He grouched down and slid his arms underneath the golem. Picking the facsimile of Simon up felt weird because for all intents and purposes it did indeed feel like a real dead body. The coldness, the dampness, the rigidity – it was all there and it made the hair on Alec's skin stand up. Despite death being a constant companion of every Shadowhunter Alec had never been that close to a dead body. Something his parents had always shielded them from. Alec could barely imagine how horrible it must be if it wasn't a fake body he was holding but the body of someone real – of someone he loved.

He swallowed. "I have this," he told Magnus with more confidence in his voice than he was actually feeling. Magnus just nodded.

"I'll best go back to make sure that those three vampires haven't killed each other…a second time," he spoke. Alec opened his mouth to say something – he didn't know what, maybe something about Camille and her connection to Magnus and how insecure it made him feel, how she knew parts of Magnus that Alec didn't, how she was so powerful and he was not – but he closed it again and just nodded instead.

With a wave of his hand a portal opened in front of Magnus and with one last gaze back to Alec the Warlock stepped through it, closing the purple doorway behind him. Now Alec was standing alone in the alley, in his arms the fake-corpse of one of his friends.

If only his old self from a few years ago could see where he was now.

Setting one foot in front of the other, Alec slowly made his way towards the Institute. Despite it being barely a two-minutes-walk it felt more like two hours until he stood in front of the gothic church. Dread and anticipation churned inside his stomach, making him feel as if he was about to throw up. He was about to cause unimaginable pain to everyone else – especially Clary – all so they could keep a tactical advantage over Valentine.

For the greater good. It was something his mother would do.

It'll be alright, he repeated that sentence in his head over and over again as he made his way up the stairs. The portal doors opened for him and he stepped inside, the Shadowhunters keeping guard this night already awaiting him, their gazes solemn and stern. Nearly all of the Shadowhunters in the New York Institute knew Simon, if only from sight, and even if they thought that he shouldn't be here – that he didn't belong – they were not as stone cold that they would not feel sorry for his loss and what that meant to his friends.

"I found him outside," Alec said, his voice hoarse. He had feared that he would not be able to play it convincingly, but he need not have to: The raw emotions he felt did it for him. "Please, get my siblings and Clary. I'll bring him down to the morgue." One of the Shadowhunters nodded.

Alec did not stay to see if his orders were followed. He descended into the basement of the Institute where along with storage facilities and detention cells their morgue was situated. It was an eerie and creepy room that always gave Alec the chills the few times he had been down there. The basement levels of the Institute were already cold, but the morgue felt even colder, as if the temperature was sinking into your very bones.

The neon light plunged the whole room in an uncomfortable garish cold white light, making everything look even more clean and impersonal. The stainless-steel shelves behind which their dead were kept were a cold reminder of the horrible truth that laid behind them. And right in the middle a single operation table underneath a single neon light.

Alec put Simon's golem down on the table. Underneath the neon light it looked even more real that it made Alec swallow in discomfort. Nothing could be heard but the low humming of electricity. It felt like the quiet before the storm. Alec could hear his friends rushing down the stairs outside.

It'll be alright, he told himself. It'll be alright.

The door opened and Izzy, Jace and Clary spilled into the room. There was a moment of confusion when they looked around and saw only Alec standing there, but this confusion was soon replaced when they saw the form laying on the obduction table:

Grim acceptance from Jace.

Silent sadness from Izzy.

Utter, heart-wrenching horror from Clary.

Some moments withstood the currents of time like hardened rocks in the middle of a fast-paced river. For every being it was something different – sometimes even inconsequential things like a particular interesting looking bug they had seen on a school trip when they had been eight or some random message their mother had sent them last summer – but they were all the same in the sense that they stayed unblurred and unfaded in memory while everything else slowly slipped away.

Clary remembered well the first time she and Simon had met. It felt like an eternity ago, countless ages and changes between the innocent children they had been and the people they were now, but she could still recall how bright the sun had shined on that day, could still hear the birds chirping in the nearby trees, could still feel the sand of the sandpit she was playing in trickling through her fingers. She still saw the colours of the dress she wore that day in front of her inner eyes – strawberry red with yellow trims – and could still summon the feeling of unadulterated joy when she had spun around and made it flutter in the wind, as if she could just take off and fly into the sky.

She remembered the grief and rage when the kindergarten's bully whose name had long slipped from her mind for he was not worth remembering had trampled her intricate sand castle just for the sadistic joy he got from seeing others in pain. She remembered that awkward new boy with glasses too big and legs too gangly and long for his body launching himself at the bully at her defence. In the end, he did not quite succeed but the distraction was all that Clary needed to throw a handful of sand into the bully's face, making him flee in howling rage.

It did not quite fit: The pale figure of Simon lying on the operation table, skin so white that it was nearly translucent, the veins that still had some blood in them like lilac vines covering his body, his shirt blood-soaked, the red liquid pooling around the wound. And then the Simon her memory had conjured up, so full of life, spark and the trademark smile that first pulled up the corner of his lips and then turned into a wide grin.

But what really broke Clary was not the view of her best friend's lifeless body lying underneath the cold neon-light in a cathedral made by people who saw him and all the other mundanes as nothing but sheep to be coddled and protected, but the sight of his glasses. Somehow when Alec had brought Simon down here they must have fallen off his face and were now carelessly lying next to his head on the table. One of the lenses had broken, countless cracks permeating the glass like an intricate spiderweb.

Barely, Clary could make out her reflection on the lens' surface, torn and distorted by the rips as if she was looking through onto another version of herself who looked as jaded and broken as she was feeling right now. Slowly, Clary stepped forward. Jace tried to grip her arm but Clary wrenched herself from him.

"Don't!" she snapped at the blonde Shadowhunter who let go of her immediately. Slowly, Clary moved forward and carefully – as if she was handling an invaluable treasure and not some broken glasses – she took the frame and placed it back on Simon's face. Her hands were oddly calm, not shaking at all. In this moment, it was of uttermost significance that Simon got his glasses back, despite the fact that he would never see through them again.

Somehow, this laser-like focus on this single, small task had kept Clary from truly comprehending the situation, but now that she looked down on Simon's unmoving face it came all crashing down on her. A sob tore through her throat and then she sank down on her knees, one hand gripping the edge of the operation table, the other in front of her mouth as if it could keep the torrent of grief and shock inside her from breaking out.

There was one split-second where Clary thought it might work, that she could keep it together and not break apart at the seams, but it was just an illusion that shattered as fast as Simon's glasses.

At first the tears came slowly – almost gently – but then as if a dam had burst, they started running down her cheeks in a constant stream. The sobs that she had tried to keep inside were now bursting from her throat. And even though Clary knew that the others were not judging her for her grief, she hated herself a little bit for being the only one on the floor crying while everyone else kept their cool and composure.

For a split-second she believed that she saw something on Alec's face through the veil of tears – regret, maybe or grief as deep as hers – but then it was gone and Clary realised that she must have imagined it.

"Oh my God." Clary turned her head to see her mother standing at the entrance of the morgue, her eyes widened in horror and hand clasped before her mouth in horror. She stepped towards Clary and gently coaxed her daughter form the floor. When Clary was standing again, she clutched her mother as hard as she could and buried her head in her mother's chest.

"What happened?" her mother asked, her voice thick with grief. Clary turned her head to look at Alec in order to see what he would reply. He opened his mouth and for a short moment he hesitated before he started to speak: "I was returning back to the Institute when I came upon him." He took a breath as if just telling them invoked the horrible memories again. "He was already dead for quite a while. Already cold. Someone stabbed him from behind. I don't know anything more."

"Was it Valentine?" Clary wanted to know.

"I don't know," Alec repeated, more reserved.

"It could have been a robbery gone wrong," Jace suggested, his voice dull and without the usual mirth and sarcasm Clary was so used to from the blonde Shadowhunter.

Clary shook her head in denial. "We're in New York. Robberies here happen with guns not knives. Besides, you don't rob people by stabbing them from behind." By now the tears came silently and the sobs had ceased completely. "Was anything missing from his body?"

"I don't know," Alec repeated again. "I haven't looked closely. His wallet is still there but his phone isn't."

"It wasn't a robbery or another mundane crime," Clary stated resolutely. She did not know how but she just knew that she was right. Her best friend had known warlocks, vampires and werewolves far longer than her, had travelled through time – he was not meant to die in some back alley, done in by some stranger looking for a quick buck. Simon was meant for more than this. "It was Valentine."

"You might be right," Izzy said, "but before we do anything more, we need to take a pause. Process. And grief. Believe me Clary, we Shadowhunters have experience with this; you want to take the time to work through your emotions before you start making battle plans."

Clary wanted to refuse, wanted to demand that they planned now how to get revenge for Simon, but her mother's hand clamping down on her shoulder stopped her.

"She's right, Clary," she said. "Get a grip on your emotion and then get your revenge."

Still tear-streaked, Clary grinned savagely. Valentine would not live long enough to regret what he had done.