SERENDIPITY

CHAPTER 2: NEON RUST

'Sweet golden rose, don't ever rust
Be ever so delicate, when lending your trust'

- Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Neon Rust

"What are you doing here?" He seethed. The moon casted a faint glow on the man, his hair a golden halo, and she took time she didn't have to really look at him. At first, the romantic in her saw nothing but perfection; The golden hair curling wildly at the ends, the fit body of an athlete, the impossibly golden eyes, he didn't have a single visible imperfection - but things were starting to look a bit different. Shadowed by bags that made her think he hadn't slept in a while, his eyes looked harder, like nothing could deter him from whatever the hell he was doing.

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" Clary retorted. He was the last person she'd expected to see and she obviously wasn't very happy about it.

"Frankly, that's none of your busines-"

"'That's none of your business.'" she mimicked as he had done just a few hours ago.

He sighed then said, his golden eyes serious, "Listen, if you want to act like a five year old then fine but right now, little girl, I suggest you keep your voice down." Clary was seeing red. Who was he to tell her what she should and shouldn't do? Even though she knew what he was saying was probably smart she was too stubborn to let him get away with treating her like that.

Completely ignoring what he said, she snapped, "My name is not little girl!" causing Aline to stir beside the two.

She was beginning to wake up.

"Oh, look what you've done now-" The golden boy didn't get time to finish his sentence because red and blue lights were suddenly flashing across his face and across the room, the sound of thundering footsteps echoed and filled the silence like a casual reminder that they were, in fact, breaking and entering. Clary didn't want to spend the rest of her night in a jail cell and apparently the boy in front of her was having the same thought process because as the sound of hurried footsteps got louder he did a quiet run up and jumped - right out of the window.

Deciding not to check if his body was splattered across the ground, Clary dived under Aline's bed, knocking all her forgotten junk out of the way just as the door opened and a slim ray of light dispersed on the bedroom floor. Black combat boots stood still in the middle of the room - waiting, listing.

"There's no one up here!" A deep, low voice called.

"I could have sworn I heard something," the voice that replied was female and Clary assumed it was Aline's mother. "Sorry for the trouble, Officer Hartley, and thank you."

"No problem, ma'am. But if it makes you feel safer we've got the team watching the building."

Looks like I'm not getting out of here anytime soon, Clary thought miserably.

Her body begin to grow stiff - arms crossed over her chest like a mummy with her feet squashed near her body in an attempt to take up less space - and she momentarily wished that she had jumped with the boy except looking back he probably would have landed gracefully whilst she would've plummeted face first into the tarmac. Ouch. And to make the situation worse, Clary suspected that Isabelle bolted as soon as the police came even though it was her idea to come her in the first place. But Clary knew she was being unreasonable - if she had lost Jonathan the way Isabelle lost Max, she would be doing everything in her power to bring him to justice. Max had been murdered in an alleyway behind Pandemonium, a club popular for fights and drugs, and his body wasn't found until the next morning. Imagining Jonathan in the same situation almost brought tears to her eyes. Jonathan and Clary may not have been the best of siblings but she had already lost two family members to death and she didn't need to lose a third. But the wasn't exactly true. Jocelyn wasn't dead. At least not in Clary's opinion or the opinions of many others. Everybody just suspected she was because they weren't able to find her. They gave up on her.

Jocelyn was kind, honest and patient - she would never try to hurt anybody and therefore nobody wanted to hurt her. She had no reason to leave, to abandon her family, to leave her children motherless. What made it worse was that Valentine committed suicide a few days after her disappearance - or so she thought. Because according to the man she met earlier that night, her father was alive and kicking. This, however, led Clary to the depressing realization that both her parents had abandoned her for no obvious reason and if this was true then she wasn't sure if she really wanted them to come back for her at all.

Clary rolled over in a quiet sigh, her shoulder hitting the underneath of Aline's bed and the red-haired girl knew that if she didn't try and escape the messy hell that was Aline's room now, she would forever be left there to rot. Please don't let me die here, she prayed to any God that was listening. She sighed again. Louder this time, as if wanting to alert someone, anyone, of her current predicament but as the minutes ticked by she began to give up on the hope of any help possibly coming-

Her prayers were answered in the blaring sound of Bon Jovi's 'Livin' on a Prayer' as Aline groaned reminding Clary of where she was. Clumsily, she fumbled with her phone, sliding the answer button.

"Clary!" Isabelle all but shrieked into the phone. She continued, "What's taking so long? You know, we have to be in school in, like, four hours? It takes a lot longer than four hours to look this good, Clare!"

"Oh, sorry for the inconvenience, Izzy. I was just having a cup of tea with my good friend Aline! Maybe you could come up and share some makeup tips?" Sarcasm was rolling off her tongue in waves so great Chandler Bing would be proud. Clary could feel Isabelle's eye roll.

"No, but, seriously, what's taking you so long? This isn't exactly mission impossible," Isabelle replied.

Clary whispered careful not to wake Aline, "It kind of is when a) You have no idea what this magical book looks like and b) Aline's room looks like a freaking war zone."

Isabelle let out a sigh.

"Alright then."

Clary was confused.

"Just 'alright then'? Where's the 'try harder' or the 'I don't hang out with quitters'?" It wasn't like Isabelle to give up so easily. Even though Clary had only met her 6 weeks ago when she joined Heatherwood High after 5 years of being homeschooled, she did know that Isabelle didn't go down without a fight. It was one of the many things Clary loved about the raven-haired beauty.

"Honestly, it wasn't a very well thought out plan. I should've gone in instead of you," she paused, "after all, I do know that room better than you."

"Oh, and why's that?"

"Let's just say a lot happened before I met you." Her voice turned distant and dark as if she was reliving a time she'd rather forget about. "Anyway, you can leave now. I'll come back after school with Simon or something."

Simon was the newest member of their small but slowly growing squad of five (The three of them included). He was tall and lanky with deep brown hair that almost seemed to be hazelnut with the right lighting and the same colour eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses. Simon was also a total nerd. He was obsessed with manga and anime, infatuated by comics, enthralled by an array of MMORPG games and completely bewitched by the masterpiece that was Game Of Thrones. No one in their group, not even Clary who could sometimes be the biggest geek ever, truly understood Simon and his fanboyish ways but they all loved him just the same. He also had the biggest crush on Isabelle, not that he would ever tell her.

"There's only one slight problem with that, Iz. The police have got to place surrounded."

"Oh, yeah. They left ages ago - you know what the cops are like here."

"Alright," Clary said with a sigh, "I'll be out in 5 minutes."

"Try not to wake the princess on your way out, I don't really feel like taking a trip downtown with you."

Clary chuckled at the thought before saying her goodbye and hanging up.

Clary crawled her way out slowly as quietly as she could and stood up tall twisting her body, relishing in the way her joints popped and cracked. She stared down at the princess. Her black, greasy hair fanning out across the pillow, legs tangled in her bedsheets while her arms crossed over her chest held loosely onto a book. Wait. A book? It was more of a binder than a book but Clary immediately knew it was the one. It was bright, neon purple with three large magazine letters stuck wonkily on the cover - H,A,C. Black lipstick kisses stamped the book's entirety making it look like some kind of remade Burn Book. Except this book would change everything, she thought. Treating it like a game of operation, she carefully lifted Aline's arm letting it flop of the bed. She did the same with the other. God, this is easy, she thought. But Clary spoke too soon because as she reached to retrieve the book Aline rolled to the side, the book underneath her.

Goddamn it, she thought.

Clary spent the next ten minutes in various yoga positions in an attempt to get the book but only succeed when she unceremoniously tugged it out from underneath her. Surprisingly, the princess hadn't woken and as soon as the deed was done Clary hightailed out of there, swinging herself into Isabelle's Porsche, the book tucked under her large hoodie.

"So…" Isabelle started impatiently - an impatient Izzy was never a happy Izzy.

Clary repeated, "So…"

"Is there a reason you stayed there for an extra 10 minutes or do you just like to keep me waiting?"

"Well, I was going to give you that magical book I slaved away to find," Clary said as she pulled out the bright book, "but since you don't want it…"

"No! I was just kidding! Give it here," Isabelle said with a nervous chuckle before turning on the car lights. She took a moment to take it all in, a wide, creepy smile stretching the length of her face.

"Okay, let's take a look." Isabelle flipped to a random page and they were both rendered speechless.

The page was laminated and had the title 'Officer James Hartley'. A scarily long list of everything and anything that Officer Hartley had ever done as well as a lot of personal information was displayed. Both girls knew that if the book somehow got out Hartley would be in a lot of trouble.

Isabelle flipped to another page. And another. And another. Going back and forth at a dizzying speed and as she flipped the secrets just got worse, the binder was filled with dirty lies and devastating betrayals that continued to surprise Clary. Her thoughts were a whirlwind of questions that would never be answered (Why would she cheat on her husband? How could he abuse his son? How did she get away with such a terrible murder?) and bile rose up Isabelle's throat as she read some of the things her closest friends had done and got away with.

Isabelle reached a page titled 'Robert Lightwood' before slamming it closed, her breathing heavy and hard.

"How about I hold onto this for a bit?" She breathed.

Clary nodded slowly.

"Okay then."

Clary arrived home 15 minutes later, her movements robotic as she made her way to the front door. Who would make such a terrible book, she thought. The book seemed to be filled with information of everyone in the small town of Heatherwood so that lead Clary to thinking it must've been stolen from some sort of government official. No. The book was too personal for that. So it must've been made by someone living in town. But who knew enough about everyone to create a book like that? Heatherwood was a town where everyone knew everyone's business but some of the things mentioned were things that the average person just couldn't know. So was the creator someone everyone trusted with that kind of information or was it someone who was somehow entitled to know?

Clary groaned. All that thinking was making her head hurt. After the night she just had, Clary just wanted to sleep, sleep and sleep some more. Except she had less than 4 hours till school. Goddamn it, she thought for the second time that night. Huffing out a sigh she opened her front door only to be grabbed and turned around to greet the same person she'd met now three times that night.

"Are you a stalker or Houdini?" she asked.

"Neither, I just want to help-"

"Help?" she interrupted, "You've done nothing but appear out of thin air and give me problems with no solutions."

Jace began once again, "But-"

"Please just," she sighed, "just leave me alone."

With that, she turned her back and shut the door on him, hoping sleep would take her away from her problems - if only for a few hours.

Why was Jace at Aline's house? Who created the book? What does HAC stand for? Are Clary's parents really alive?

I know, I know, this chapter is really short but hopefully chapter 3, which will be up on Monday or next Wednesday, will be about 3-5k words.

Thanks for reading and please review!

- Lee