Authors Note: Thanks to everyone who has alerted this, but I would appreciate it if you would review it too. Reader input is very important; I'm worried I'm not making Jace sarcastic enough. To all those who have reviewed, thank you SO much for your support :) It's good to know I'm doing OK so far writing Jace.

Thump-thump-thump.

Without opening his eyes, Jace reached over to his bedside table, grabbed a book, Paradise Lost, he thought (he had numerous prejudices against the poor, undeserving book), and flung it at the door.

Satisfied, he resumed trying to go to sleep. He had woken around an hour ago, an old, reoccurring dream to blame. His very pleasant dream of a certain girl was interrupted by a visit from Jace's long dead father. While Jace's father was no longer among the living, his dream-father had yet to realize it was dead. Michael Wayland frequented Jace's dreams, instructing and disciplining by replaying old lessons. This lesson had been very relevant to the position Jace presently found himself in: the Clary Situation. The dream reminded him just how deeply someone could be hurt if he was stupid enough to fall in love, something Jace was horrified to admit he had forgotten, however briefly1, in his dream of Clary.

At least the hour he had spent lying awake has been good for something. He had devised Operation Clary Is Just A Girl, which he planned to implement immediately. Looking back, he didn't know why he had thought his options were so bleak last night. It was simple: ignore the pull at all costs.

Thump-thump.

"Shit," Jace cursed and rolled over, fixing half-opened eyes his alarm clock. 5:52 AM. He had been planning on sleeping in today, to at least 7 before he got started on those damn carpets.

THUMP-THUMP.

He swung his eyes to the door. His only thought was that that had better not be Alec; his partner was seriously wearing on Jace's already short patience. He lifted himself from the bed and started for the door. He opened it with one smooth, ruthless but graceful motion, intent on giving a blistering lecture to whomever disturbed his--well, not sleep, but who would know that he wasn't really asleep?

He looked out into the hallway to see…nobody. Automatically and most resignedly, he dropped his eyes to see Church mwurp-ing up at him.

Jace remembered the day Isabelle brought Church home. A Warlock had been giving kittens away in front of…what else? A church. Oh, how clever you are, Isabelle. The blue Persian had been the last of the litter and Isabelle had always been a sucker, at least compared to Jace's own more stony, sometimes callous, nature. Alec had moped about it for weeks; he had wanted a puppy. Jace had been endlessly amused by the cat's homely, smashed face.

As Church grew older, though, it swiftly became apparent that he wasn't just a normal cat, which they all should have expected, as Isabelle got him from a Warlock. Jace wasn't all too sure about the Clave's stance on experimental animal breeding, but no one in the family was in a hurry to oust Church; the cat had his uses.

Right now, however, Jace couldn't remember any of the previously redeeming traits that the cat possessed.

"Church, it is HODGE who feeds you. I don't even know where he keeps the food, you wretched cat. And I don't even know why he bothers with feeding you; Isabelle was the one who brought you home in the first place. You are her damn responsibility, so go depend on her!"

Jace thought about adding a DAMN IT! to the end of his sentence, but then he would have to make sure his door was kept shut forever after; Church liked dealing out his vengeance in steaming hot, coiled piles, while Jace liked his room just the way it was. He had way too little in the way of possessions to go and piss off Church. That cat was the one thing in the Institute, aside from Mayrse, whom Jace didn't care to cross. Nonetheless, it was a sight to see: Jace walking eggshells to keep that damn cat happy.

Jace's 'blistering lecture' didn't have the desired effect on the contrary feline. Church rubbed himself across Jace's blue-striped-pajama clad legs and mwurp-ed again. Jace knew his plans of going back to sleep were over. Jace close the door to his room and padded down to the kitchen to see what he could scrounge up for Church.

Jace opened the fridge and scanned the contents: cartons of leftover Chinese, some bowls of untouched Isabelle-food, and a few Styrofoam boxes of full of food from Taki's, most notably one with spaghetti in it; Jace had a soft spot for pasta, spaghetti in particular. Jace made a mental note to snag it before Alec or Hodge could beat him to it, though he didn't think he would have to worry about it until Isabelle decided that she needed them all as guinea pigs for some of new, insane recipe of hers. Jace shook his head. Sometimes he almost believed that she was trying to give them food-poisoning so she could throw a party in the Institute; the only thing that kept him from really being suspicious was the fact that Mayrse and Robert would tar and feather her if she did.

He grabbed a bowl full of…something that Isabelle had made a few days ago and spooned some out onto a plate for Church. When Jace sat the plate on the ground in front of Church, the cat took one sniff of the stuff and scrunched up his already smashed face. He took a step back and eyed Jace reproachfully. Jace felt a slow, satisfied grin spread across his face. He bet the cat would never come to him for food again. "Later, Church."

Jace headed back to his room to change into some Shadowhunting clothes. When he opened his eyes after he pulled the shirt over his head, Jace's spotted the mound of filthy clothes he had peeled from his body last night; he suspected the pile smelled awful. He could see the splotches of both Clary's blood and demon ichor. It looked like Jace would lose one more set of clothes in the fight against evil. How sad. If his clothes were in such bad shape, Jace could only imagine the state of Clary's things. He had a brief mental image of her wearing a sheet wrapped around her body toga-style; very pleasant….

He bent to scoop them up but paused when he reached down to grab them off the floor, and not because he was bothered by the smell. He was remembering something. A flash of something golden that he had just glimpsed on his hell-bent course dash up the stairs in Clary's building; a small golden plaque lettered with 'Madame Dorothea, Seer and Prophetess'. Looks like Jace had some digging to do. He didn't mind. The carpets could rot for all Jace cared, and it might shed some light on why Clary had been attacked and her mother kidnapped. He left his room and walked toward the infirmary, intending to grab Clary's clothes and burn them with his before he left the Institute to do a background check on Madame Dorothea. He would thoroughly enjoy leaving Clary without anything to wear.

Alas, when he got to the infirmary, he didn't see Clary breezing about clad in nothing but a thin, white sheet, but he knew there would be no way she could possibly be awake yet. Still, Jace tried not to be disappointed. Well, he comforted himself, you can't always get what you want. Besides, Jace wasn't at all sure he would be able to leave the infirmary if he entered it and that wouldn't bode well at all for Operation Clary Is Just A Girl. He was going to have to come up with an acronym for that.

Instead, he was almost flattened by Isabelle outside the infirmary door, on her way, probably, to whip up a small disaster that she would call breakfast in the kitchen.

"God, Jace. Lurk much?"

Jace shot a smile, the type of smile one might give to a sweet but slow child, at his adoptive sister. "I wasn't lurking, Isabelle. I was coming to get Clary's clothes. They probably need to be burned," he said slowly, sounding out the obvious.

"Oh, good. I didn't want to touch them."She retreated back into the long room that was the infirmary and came back seconds later with a pillowcase stuffed with clothes. Smelly, bloody clothes. "I can't wait till she wakes up!" Isabelle exclaimed, "She'll finally be able to take a shower. I don't know how much longer I can take it. She's filthy and I keep having to squelch my urge to beautify."

Jace rolled his eyes. Isabelle's considerable…charm was certainly unique. "Stop complaining, Isabelle. It doesn't become you. Are you going to be staying with Clary until she wakes up?"

Isabelle gave him a miserable glare and shoved the bundle into his arms. "Yes," she answered. "Hodge healed her but he said it would take a while for her body to recuperate; something about her being overly exhausted and not having any Marks to help her body deal with that and the demon poisoning. He said it might take a week! I can't take a week, Jace!"

Jace thought she could go on whining to him for a week, which he certainly couldn't take, so when she paused to draw in a breath, Jace interrupted with, "Just tell me when she wakes up, okay? I've got to take care of these and then I'm going out for a little while. I'll see you later," and strode off before Isabelle could babble any more. She must be starved for attention, Jace thought, having been shut away in the infirmary with Clary for such a long hour.

Free, Jace made his way down to the furnace and tossed his and Clary's clothes in. The dancing flames he glimpsed before he closed the hatch reminded him of Clary's hair, only he thought the flames were somehow less brilliant.

He walked back to his room and grabbed his jacket, and then left the Institute, his feet pointed toward Taki's, a favorite source of both food and information. It was only a few blocks away so Jace didn't bother with a cab. He, personally, was a devout pedestrian, while Isabelle and Alec tended to grumble if they had to walk too far.

Once there, Jace said hi to Clancy and stepped through the door. He was usually very welcome here, which was saying something; there were a lot of places in the city that had no love for Jace Wayland. There were some places where Jace knew the clientele, and probably the proprietors, too, would take a shot at killing him and tossing his dead body into a dumpster…or a pot, depending on which place it was, if they could, but most of them had seen Jace in action and all of them valued their lives. It was a good thing they all knew better; Jace could definitely take care of himself. Always generous, Jace allowed that he being Nephilim might add, in however small a way, to his untouchability, though it certainly wouldn't save him when he got into a sticky situation. No, that was all on Jace, and he liked his situations sticky.

Taki's proved to be a goldmine of benign information. After a talk with the cook, Jace knew that Madame Dorothea, Seer and Prophetess, was not a real half-demon witch at all, but a mundie Hedgewitch. The most valuable thing he got from his visit was a free milkshake from Kaelie, the pretty Downworlder waitress who made no effort to hide the appreciative heat in her eyes whenever she came by to check on him. Sorry, Kaelie, thought Jace. He just wasn't feeling an entanglement at the moment.

After he had finished his shake, which was orange flavored, Jace thanked the cook and Kaelie and left. He couldn't suppress a sigh when he stepped out into the mid-morning air. He was back where he started on the Clary-mystery front, which wasn't anywhere at all. He really couldn't wait until she got up.

Knowing Hodge would probably kill him for leaving without cleaning the foyer first, Jace began the walk back to Institute resigned to wasting his formidable demon fighting abilities on scrubbing Mayrse's carpets for the rest of the day and, unfortunately, probably the next too. Jace assuaged himself by thinking the scrubbing would at least keep him busy and away from the infirmary for at least a day.