My nerves were catching up to me. With only half a week left until the kidnapping, I'd become unusually skittish and ten times as snappy. Izzy, Simon, Magnus, and Alec had—rather intelligently—had distanced themselves from me. But Jace had automatically stuck himself to my side, more so than before. No matter how many times I threw a rather harsh insult at him, he'd quietly take it. I didn't mass the ounce of hurt in his eyes, but somehow, it didn't seem directed toward me, or something I'd said. It was more toward himself. Or so it seemed.

But I didn't have the energy to focus on it. I didn't sleep at night, and waster what little energy I did have either researching to see if anyone else had been through what I was going through or trying and failing to train myself to fight.

I was scared.

"Clare?" It was Simon, gingerly, at my shoulder. I considered giving him a silencing glare, but he hadn't deserved it yet, so I just turned back to my locker. "Umm, are you going to sit with us at lunch today?"

I didn't want to, but at the same time I did. My friends had no idea what was happening to me, so they didn't in one bit deserve the treatment I was giving them. Maybe they could be what I needed. So I took one look at Jace, nodded at Simon, and followed the both of them into the cafeteria.

"Clary!" I didn't have to look to know it was Magnus—but I wouldn't have had time to look anyway. The teenager crashed into me with crushing impact, but I managed to stand on my feet. I relished in his warmth for only a few moments before it started to feel a bit too much like chains, restraining me.

My breathing picked up and Jace seemed to notice immediately. He placed light pressure on Magnus' shoulder, prying him off, freeing me. But I couldn't get enough air into my lungs.

Sensing this, Jace led me to an empty spot at the table. I didn't snap at him. I didn't have the breath. The others tried not to state, but soon, being themselves, launched into a conversation I didn't follow. Jace was an ever-present wait, not ever more than inches away. I held on to him without touching him, caught his whispered words, even when it seemed he wasn't even whispering them.

"So Clary," Izzy piped up. Her smiling face told me she hadn't quite noticed the fact that I was still in a god-awful mood. "You in?"

I let the blankness on my features tell her what I wouldn't say—I hadn't been listening. Alec filled in for her. "Movies next Friday after school?" Jace immediately tensed. But he couldn't know, could he? Jace was smart—there was a chance he'd been able to figure out the pattern of the kidnappings from the two weeks I'd known him.

"I can't," I answered, my voice hoarse, throat dry.

"Why?" Izzy pouted.

"Church trip…" I answered, closing my eyes and praying she would leave it at that.

Izzy did. Simon did not. "Church trip? Since when do you go to church?"

"I don't. I just used to. Now I just go with my friends," I repeated the same answer I'd told everyone for the last many years.

"Sounds like a lie," Simon said, grinning, unaware of just what he was implying. "If you want to skip out just to hang out with Jace, just tell us."

I scowled. I wish that was all I was doing. "Fine," Simon said. "I won't bother you about it. Just tell us where you're going in case you get kidnapped."

I flinched, but Jace appeared about to spring from the table, and drag me along with him. "I don't know where I'm going," I ground out through my teeth.

Simon snorted, and looked around at the others, who hadn't failed to notice my increasingly worsening mood. "Well, that sounds awfully sketchy."

Simon started to cackle at his own joke, and the sound suddenly set me off. Before I knew what I was doing, I launched up and out of my seat, pinning the now silenced Simon with a deadly glare. "I don't know, okay? I just don't!" It was a terribly hideous excuse, but I didn't care as I whirled around and out of the room. I had known this was a terrible idea.

I knew Jace was following me before I managed to make it out of the lunch room. "Stop following me!" I shouted over my shoulder while noticing that, surprisingly, tears had begun to choke up my voice. "Leave me alone!"

I whirled around just in time to see Jace striding purposefully towards me. There was something unmistakably sad in his eyes. Jace got this look when he was dreading the thing that came next. I narrowed my eyes, in full preparation to interrogate Jace to the fullest of my being, but the words never came out of my mouth.

Jace pressed me up against the lockers at the same time his lips met mine in a collision of color and sounds and feelings. It was like fireworks as the paralysis wore off but the shock didn't and I kissed him back. But Jace's lips were hard in a way that was not passionate, but rather unfeeling. He was cold.

That's when I felt Jace's tongue pressing roughly against my mouth. I didn't think, and soon I parted my lips, but instead of Jace, I felt some kind of…pill?

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

I immediately threw Jace off of me with more strength than I knew I possessed. I doubled over, trying to choke it up, to spit it out, but it was already dissolving. I momentarily panicked until the fury set in. So I stood and waited for the drug to start working. And in that time, I gave Jace—who now looked and if he might be sick—the most brutal stare of absolute hate that I could muster. He flinched and looked away, but by that time, my vision was blurring and I didn't feel it when I hit the ground. I didn't see it when Jace lunged forward to keep my head from cracking.

0.o.O.o.0

When I woke up—what I assumed to be the next morning—my limbs were bound in chains, I had no idea where I was, and Jace was nowhere to be found.