Next chapter! A lot of you guys keep saying you're not sure where this story is going, and I guess that's kind of a good thing? Haha. Don't worry, it gets revealed soon enough!

When Clary walked into her lecture room for her first class on Monday morning, there was an elaborate and obviously expensive bouquet of flowers on her desk. There were a couple of wolf whistles and wiggles of eyebrows from a scattering of students, and wide smiles from the rest. She rolled her eyes automatically as she looked at the bouquet, gorgeous and colourful, a mixture of roses and Peruvian lilies, in bright pinks, purples, oranges and yellow, shaking her head a little. Her cheeks pinked as she slid the glass vase to one side so that she could put her folders down on the desk.

"You still haven't told us if he's hot, Miss!" One of her students called from the left, and Clary resisted the urge to pull the fingers playfully, like she would have if it was one of her friends, but she restrained herself, since they were her students and she was meant to be setting a good example. She knew that they were teasing, she got on well with all her students, and she could feel the joyful buzz from all of them, lightly pulsing in her mind.

"Of course he's hot," Ruby Singh, a dark skinned, dark haired mutant with the ability of super speed, stated knowingly. "You can tell that just from the things that he gets her."

"That seem's a little shallow," another student responded, Marcus Dawes, a human, said with a shrug. "He could be some old guy—her sugar daddy—for all we know." He didn't actually think that, Clary knew that Marcus was just trying to get a rise out of Ruby given how often he flirted with the girl, and she quickly clapped her hands together to draw their attention.

"Okay, well, it might surprise you all, but we're actually here to learn, not discuss my love life!" There was a groan from her students and Clary grinned as she nodded over to where her TA, Tessa Gray, was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest and watching the proceedings with a grin.

Don't you start, Clary sent out to her TA telepathically, the girl used to Clary's voice inside her head after the years they had worked together.

Hey, I'm just as curious as the rest of them, Tessa responded, her words just a little too loud in Clary's head, given it wasn't too often that they communicated that way, and Tessa wasn't one hundred percent skilled at it yet. Clary purposefully just gave her an innocent smile and handed over the worksheets that they were going to need for todays lesson. As she turned back to her whiteboard, picking up a marker and uncapping it, she couldn't help but glance over at the bouquet of flowers once more.

Jace had learnt a long time ago, when he was first trying to woo her, that the usual things he would gift to his lovers weren't going to work. She sent back the silver necklace, along with the ruby necklace, and the diamond one. He had obviously decided that necklaces just weren't her thing, and tried gold rings, emerald bracelets and even an expensive anklet. Clary was pretty sure it was his right hand man, Alexander Lightwood, that had eventually suggest he try to go for something not so flashy, because a few weeks after she had stubbornly returned the last piece of jewellery, a bouquet of purple calla lillies had been delivered to her home. It had still taken a couple more months before she had finally relented and let him take her out on a date, but the flowers were the first gift that she hadn't sent back, and he made a point to send her a bouquet at least once a week, sometimes more if he was feeling particularly friendly. She only accepted the ring from him after they started seeing each other, and that was only because of how important it was to him.

The agreement that the pair of them had was a little strange, especially given the morals that Clary had which differed from Jace's almost astronomically. Over the time that she had worked for, she had to admit, that things weren't quite as black and white as she had always been brought up to believe, but sometimes she still felt squeamish or nervous when she heard of things that he did, or business deals he was carrying out.

Jace himself wasn't exactly a bad guy.

He just most definitely wasn't a good guy.

After working with Jace for the past year and a half, Clary had learnt quite a few things that weren't public knowledge about Jace. Jace had gone into a sort of private security business, which she was pretty sure had been because his mother had been killed right in front of him by a man who wanted the diamond necklace she was wearing. Jace had been thirteen, and he had been scared, and he hadn't known what to do when faced with the robber and his gun. Afterwards, he had held his mothers hand while she bled out as they waited for the police to come. His father blamed him, saying that he wasn't a man, saying that he should have stepped between his mother and the robber. He said with Jace's powers, flinging a gun far away from the robbers hand would have been the easiest thing in the world. Stephen Herondale had died only a couple of months later, drinking himself into a stupor almost every night until one day he fell from the balcony on the third floor of their upstate New York house.

It had officially been ruled a suicide, but there was plenty of doubt in peoples mind, many believing that Jace had something to do with the death.

Jace had hardened his heart and sworn that no one else would die because he was too weak.

For some people, that might have prompted them to go into the police force, or law enforcement, but Jace wasn't stupid enough to think that that was the kind of life he would want. His father was a District Attorney, and he had been a nasty man for as long as Jace could remember, abusive toward both him and his mother when she had been alive. That alone had been enough to build in a deep sense of distrust in the authorities. Following the rules laid out by other people, being told who it was that he had to protect, whether they were good or the scum of the earth. He didn't want to become wrapped up in sentimentality, so he focused on the two things that his father had always taught him about; money and using his powers.

So he moved from New York to Los Angeles and opened his own company, where after several years, he and his men became one of the most trusted associates for many corrupt lawyers and police officers, drug dealers, gang members and other crooked businessmen. He didn't care if they were human or mutant, he wasn't like some people, and that was another one of the things that worked in his favor. It wasn't just security that he provided, it was well known that his company had carried out assassinations as well, although they weren't just guns for hire. The ones who were killed were never good people, always mixed up in dirty business.

Jace had first searched Clary out when he had discovered someone in his inner circle was selling secrets. It wasn't his personal operation that was being leaked, but details from some of their clients being given to their competitors. Clary didn't advertise her qualities, and it wasn't as though with his connections he couldn't find another telepath, a corrupt one. Admittedly, there weren't too many in New York, but they still weren't hard to find if you knew where to look. But Clary's extent of control and just how powerful she was—that wasn't common. Some telepaths could read peoples minds, but they couldn't search for specific information. Some telepaths could pick up on fleeting thoughts, but not actually grasp full sentences. Some could even stop people in their path, but they couldn't control their movements and plant ideas in their mind from hundreds of miles away.

Clary could.

Sometimes it scared her just how powerful she was, and she had been living with this mutation, these powers, her whole life. She wasn't too sure how she would have dealt with it, all the noises, all the voices, all the emotions, if she hadn't had her parents get her the help she needed when her mutation had first become present.

She didn't show off about her powers, and she got through life just like everyone else, with hard work and determination. Of course, reading minds was something she did on a daily basis, but most things were just surface thoughts, because she couldn't help that all the time. She didn't show off, and even though quite a few people knew that she was a telepath, they didn't know quite how powerful she really was.

Jace had.

Jace had sought her out and asked for her help. Clary had been uncertain, especially when he seemed to know so much about her and she had never met him before in her life. He had held out his hand to her, giving her the physical contact that some telepaths needed to read minds even though he had known that she didn't need it. But she had seen it for what it was—an invitation, a show of trust. She had taken his hand, and delved into his mind, searching out his intentions with her. He wanted her help, he wanted to use her mutation, but he didn't want to abuse it, he wanted to work with her.

She had to admit, she caught flashes of other things that he did in his line of work—guns, bloody bodies, angry swearing, stacks of cash—and that had scared her. Clary had told Jace that she needed to think about it, and even though he had been disappointed, he had nodded, given her his number and told her to call him when she made her decision. He hadn't come back, he hadn't called her, he hadn't pushed her before she was ready, waiting until she had called him and agreed that she would help. It was more out of curiosity than anything else.

And about six months later, they were sleeping together, something like a friends with benefits arrangement.

It was now a year after that, and they were still sleeping together, and it definitely wasn't a casual thing. Jace didn't play well with others, and Clary didn't have to be a telepath to know how possessive he was.

Not that Clary minded though.

You planning on rejoining us? Tessa's voice was loud between her ears and Clary blinked as she realized that all of the worksheets had been handed out and she was meant to have written up the lesson plan on the board, but she had just been standing there for the past few minutes with the uncapped marker. Thinking about the mystery man?

"Right," Clary cleared her throat, pointedly ignoring Tessa's voice. "So Tessa's given you out worksheets with six pages. We're going to start with the second page," there was rustling as her students flicked through the papers and she let her mind refocus on the work at hand.

Okay.

So, I had my movie/TV show/song recommendations all written up, but then Wednesday happened, and I kind of wanted to say something and it didn't seem right to put them in here along with this.

So...I'm going to start this with; I don't understand. I can't comprehend. I have absolutely no idea what the people and the families of those involved in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida are going through. I can't even imagine what...What they're feeling or how they're doing.

I just...I don't even know how to put what I personally feel into words, and then I think about how shit and selfish that is, because I'm halfway around the world, and yet there are people who were there, people who were in that school, and they've been incredibly brave by doing interviews or getting out there via social media about what they went through, and what needs to happen. I watched an interview with one boy who put it well, "We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, get over your politics and get something done."

Yes.

Where I live, the last time we had a mass shooting—which is defined where four or more people selected indiscriminately, not including the perpetrator, are killed—was in 1997. In my life time, there have only been three. From what I understand, there have been eight school shootings this year alone in the US. I just—I can't even understand that.

I don't usually put things up about national/international events, but there were kids my baby brothers age...There were fourteen year olds who were killed. How do we live in a world where someone can do that? I was absolutely bawling my eyes out when I was reading the updates and watching the videos that kids had posted and I just...I don't understand.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry.

To anyone who is directly or indirectly affected.

To anyone who lives in the US and this is a constant fear for you.

Because that's really all I can say xx