Chapter 5: Trust No One

Jocelyn's POV

*flashback to 15 years ago*

I remember a time when I would look into my lover's eyes and see nothing but light. Now…now Valentine scares me more than the demons we dedicate our lives to killing. I barely even recognize him anymore. The man I loved, the man I married, the man I had two children with…he's gone.

As I sit in our manor, staring at the book collection we inherited from our parents, the only clear thought I have is 'run'. But how can I run? My three year old and two year old kids are too young to understand what is going on. My parents are under Valentine's spell, like everyone else who thinks that he is a gift to the shadowhunter world. But they don't see the man he becomes behind closed doors. They don't know the true meanings behind the plans he has so 'kindly' shared with them. They don't see what he's made me become.

Nobody could ever understand.

It wasn't long after we'd been married before things started to get weird. I began to have problems with my memory. At the end of every day I noticed that I was missing a couple hours. I would look back and not remember what happened for two hours in the morning or for thirty minutes after dinner. There was no pattern to the memory losses, other than they were happening every day.

I remember the moment I realized I needed help..that the memory problems had gone on for too long. So, I told Valentine that I was going to run errands and instead saw a warlock. He told me many things were wrong in my life, but the biggest problem was that something had entered my household and was interfering with my mind.

I left that meeting more confused than before and continued on with my life trying to understand. More time passed, and the memory problems worsened. The longest period of blackout time I had was two months long. When I came out of it my husband told me I was pregnant with our second child.

It was then that I started journaling, but not in a way that anyone could understand. No, I started drawing out coded messages for myself that only I would be able to decipher. Over time I realized that I'd left myself messages during the times I was blacked out. These drawings are what opened my eyes to what was truly going on in my house, in my family.

During my longest black out, I left myself a message that would alter my life forever. It was Valentine's true plans laid out for me to see, but the worst part was the warning I'd left myself.

The warning was this: "You think you are against Valentine, but you're wrong. In the times you think you've lost, you are actually becoming your true self. Queen of demons."

Clary's POV

"Let's go little sis." Jon yelled from the living room. I looked at my reflection in the mirror for the tenth time in the past five minutes. Inspired by the Lightwood siblings' attire, I was wearing all black.

"Coming!" I pinned back the stray curls that are always wild and ran to the front door. Jon was standing against the wall impatient and also wearing all black. For as long as I can remember, Jon has always worn at least one black item in every one of his outfits.

"There you are. I was beginning to think you were having cold feet or something."

"You know I'm just as intrigued by the Lightwood siblings as you are. I was just fixing my hair."

"For the blonde one?" He asked, squinting at me with his protective brother eyes.

The thought of Jace made me excited. "No, Jon. I just didn't want to look like the female version of Tarzan."

Before the Lightwood siblings left late last night, Izzy scribbled down the address to their institute. As my brother and I reached the address written on the crumpled piece of paper, I began to wonder if she'd written down the wrong address on accident.

"This can't be the right place." Jon said, doing a small spin to see if there were any buildings around here that might resemble whatever an 'institute' is supposed to look like.

The building in front of use looked decades old, and like it had been abandoned for a long time. There was a tall chain linked fence with holes here and there circling the lot. I looked down at the paper to make sure we were at the right place, and we were. Why would they take us to some broken down church in the middle of the Manhattan? This doesn't make any sense. Unless…

"Jonathan. Do you think this could be one of those thingies they were talking about?"

"Thingies?"

"Yeah you know that thing…I can't remember what they called it, but they said it was keeping us from seeing things sometimes."

"Oh yeah. I think it was called a glamour," Jon looked back at the building and cocked his head to the side, "so what? we just need to think extra hard or maybe we have to get closer to it?"

"No clue. Let's try that." I crumpled the paper back up and shoved it in the front pocket of my jeans.

Jon walked ahead, opening one of the holes in the dinky old fence and holding it open for me. I shimmied through and followed him up to the front of the building. I watched as Jon tried to open one of the front doors. They didn't budge a bit. He placed his hand on the front door. He closed his eyes, trying to break the glamour I guess, but nothing happened.

I studied the doors to see if there were any weak spots we could mess with to get them open. There wasn't much we could use to our advantage, but there was something odd on one of the doors. There was a symbol burned into top right corner of the front door.

"Jon look."

His eyes followed where my hand was pointing. I watched as he focused on the symbol and a small amount of familiarity came over him. "Why do I feel like I've seen that before?" He asked.

Just as I was about to answer, someone spoke from behind us.

"That's because you probably have." Jace stood behind us leaning against one of the old pillars in front of the cathedral, his arms crossed over his chest. "You two came earlier than we expected."

My brother's arm flew out in front of me, similar to how a mother's arm swings out over her child when braking aggressively in the car. Jace had startled both of us, but after we realized it was him my brother relaxed, and I couldn't help but feel nervous.

A good nervous.

"Why did you bring us to this crappy warehouse?" Jon asked.

Jace smiled as he walked closer to us. "Lesson one. When something is glamoured you have to focus past whatever you're seeing. Look at the building again, but this time calm your thoughts and strip the warehouse away piece by piece."

I looked at my brother before attempting to follow Jace's instructions. I thought he was just messing with us for a second, but then something amazing happened. The front doors faded into nothing, the floor following soon after and suddenly I was seeing a different picture before me.

We were standing inside the building; the front corridor was huge. My brother seemed to be unraveling everything at the same time as I was.

"Congrats. You are both beginner shadowhunters now." Jace walked past us, "Follow me."

As we followed Jace through various hallways, something caught my eye. It was small, fluffy and grey. I walked off not thinking about getting lost, curious at what the fluffy grey thing could be.

As it came fully into my view, I realized it was a small, yet very fat cat. He had grey fur, an extremely fluffy tail and bright yellow eyes. As soon as he noticed me he stood up and walked to my feet. I'd always had a special place in my heart for cats.

The little guy did figure eights between my legs, rubbing his head all over my shins. I bent down and scratched behind his ears.

"Hi there little fluff ball. I seem to have gotten myself lost. You wouldn't happen to know where everyone went would you?" The cute little cat cocked his head at me, meowed and started to walk down the hallway. You could call me crazy, but I think he's taking me where I need to be.

Ten minutes and a lot of creepy hallways later, I was standing outside of a large doorway. The cat meowed at me and I thanked him with a generous rub on the head. I could hear several voices coming from the room on the other side and was almost positive that one of them belonged to a concerned brother of mine.

I picked up the little fluff ball and entered the room. All of the voices stopped talking and placed their attention on me. Amazement filled me as I marveled at one of the largest libraries I'd ever seen. There were so many books in here it would probably take my whole life to even make a dent in reading them. All of the Lightwood siblings were staring at me, my concerned brother was to their left next to an older man with darkish, almost greying hair.

"Sorry I'm late I got distracted." I scratched the little fluff ball's cheek and walked closer to the group.

Alec looked at me obviously confused, but I wasn't sure why. "How are you holding that cat right now?"

"Yeah, Clary he doesn't let anybody hold him." Izzy said.

I shrugged at all of the surprised faces looking back at me. "I don't know he must just like me I guess."

"You must be Clarissa," the old man looked at me curiously, almost holding a look a familiarity in his eyes, "come join us."

"Call me Clary. You are?"

"Hodge Starkweather. You look just like your mother Clary."

I always thought my looks were so far below my mother's beauty. "You knew her?"

"Yes. I was close friends with both of your parents when we all lived in Idris."

"Idris?" Jon asked.

Hodge told us all about the main home for shadowhunters, for us. From the way he talked about it, it sounded like one of the most beautiful and serene places on earth. I hoped I could go visit it at some point in my life. He went over what the lives of the Nephilium were like and explained the Clave and downworlders to us.

The more my brother and I learned of our people, the more I began to wonder why this life was kept secret for both of us. I was tempted to ask Hodge if he had any idea why my parents have "lost all of the memories" of their lives as shadowhunters, but something in my gut is keeping me from mentioning it.

"Your father was one of my best friends before he disappeared along with your mother and both of you."

Jon looked over at me just as I turned to look at him. This man doesn't seem vile enough to be best friends with a man like our father. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or if this man is more dangerous than he seems.

"What do you mean disappeared?" Jon asked.

Hodge shifted, uncomfortable. "Valentine was in charge of a new movement that wasn't widely accepted by shadowhunters."

"Does this have something to do with a Circle?" I asked, the memory of the night we ran passed through my head.

Hodge nodded. "What do you know of it?" The Lightwood siblings had all sat off to the side. Each of them stayed silent as we spoke with Hodge.

Jonathan explained how our father had gone crazy at some point and how he talked of things from the shadow world, but none of it ever made any sense. I could tell that he didn't really trust this Hodge guy either because of the details he was leaving out. Jon didn't mention the demon that told father the Circle was reforming, only that father had talked about circles often.

"I see. Well, the Circle was your father's movement. He created it when we were teenagers, and being as admired as your father was, the movement had been supported for a while. As we got older and became adults, Valentine changed. Not many people knew why your father changed, but he sure did become a totally different person. His movement also changed, but he would only tell a few select members of the Circle's new objectives."

Hodge searched our eyes for any sign of recognition of the things he was telling us about. I guess he doesn't trust us either. "So, what happened with the Circle? You speak of it like it was something bad."

"It was. You see, the last time anyone saw your parents was after they slaughtered almost every shadowhunter that went against them at the signing of the Ninth accords. We call it the uprising."

"They just walked in and killed a bunch of people?" Jon asked, the disbelief clear in his voice.

"They entered the signing with less than ten shadowhunters to back them up. The rest of the shadowhunters and all of the downworlders in the room fought against them." Hodge paused, like he was remembering something painful. "The odd part was that as your parents passed through the room, the downworlders suddenly began to switch sides. It was like your parent's presence compelled the downworlders to join them."

"Like a vampire's subjugate?" Jace asked. Interesting that it's the first time he was learning of this like Jon and I.

"I'm not sure why, but they did act like subjugates to Valentine and Jocelyn. The point is, that your parents figured something out. Whatever their new objectives were or are for the Circle is way beyond what shadowhunters have ever seen in our history. If I knew better, I'd say they were dabbling in some sort of dark magic or ancient dark runes."

"So, you're telling me that my parents can somehow control downworlders? What does that even mean?" I asked, crossing my arms as I tried to imagine my sweet mother murdering hundreds of innocent people. That can't be right.

"Nobody ever got a chance to figure it out or question them. That same night they took both of you and disappeared without a trace. Many people were questioned under the mortal sword. None of their close friends or your family had any clue where you all went."

"Our family?" Jon looked at me wide eyed. Our mother had always told us that we had no other family.

"Yes, both sets of your grandparents live in Idris."

My hands found their way to my hair as I tried to process the fact that I had grandparents that were alive, and that my own parents were murderers. Jon looked paler than usual, also as shocked as I was.

We spent the next few hours talking to Hodge about our parents and what life is like in Idris. Sadly, we both had shifts tonight at the club, so we had to wrap our talk up and head out earlier than either of us wanted. Before we left, we set up a time to come back tomorrow to begin training with the Lightwoods and learn about possibly getting our first runes soon.

We were already a couple blocks away from the institute and so far, had been walking in silence.

"Clary, what's that?" Jon pointed to the alley on my right. I looked where he was gesturing but didn't see much of anything other than a dark shady area with a few dumpsters. The smell of rotting trash surrounded the alley, probably from somewhere near the dumpsters. A bad feeling formed in my gut as my brother walked further into the alley.

"Jon," I said as I followed cautiously after him, "I don't think this is a good ide-"

I screamed as loud as I could as my mind began to see through the glamour before me. There were two ugly maggot looking demons cornering my brother against a building behind him. Without thinking I pulled my knife out of my boot and threw it as hard as I could. It sunk into the head of the demon to the right of my brother, leaving one left to kill.

"Don't rid of me yet human. I have a message for you." The thing spoke, its long black teeth making me slightly nauseous.

Jon moved quickly on his feet, pinning the demon to the ground with his blade. "Better get it out fast demon. I'm not known for having good patience."

"You sound just like your father."

Jon tightened his dagger to the demon's throat. He was practically fuming with anger after that thing just compared him to our shit father.

"You have three seconds. Three. Two. On-"

"Okay okay. Whether you realize it yet or not, you are just like your father and your mother. In time you will wise up and join the winning side. Many shadowhunters aligned with the Clave are blind to what they're actually following."

"Is that all?" Jon spoke.

The nasty thing looked him deep in the eyes and I could be wrong, but I think it smiled at him. "They can't be trusted."

"Who can't be trusted?" I yelled but received a mix of laughter and coughing in response.

Jon ripped through the demon with his blade, cutting him off from laughing anymore. He rose up and met my eyes. I knew exactly what he was thinking just by the look on his face.

Well shit.

Author Note:

Okay we finally got to hear some about the circle! I have some good plans for what Valentine is going to do with it! So, Valentine and Jocelyn can control downworlders somehow? Interesting. Very interesting. You'll find out in either chapter 6 or chapter 7 how they are controlling downworlders!

Thank you guys for reading and have the BEST late Wednesday ever broskis.