Jace lay still on his bed; normally, he slept kind of like a cat, lightly, and when- or where-ever necessary, but for the past two days he was having trouble getting even the smallest amount of sleep. Of course, no one knew he wasn't sleeping well. He had been faithfully pretending he was asleep, just in case he was needed. Weakness wasn't something Jace Wayland personally believed in and he certainly wasn't going to let Hodge or Isabelle worry over him.

Jace shuddered. Isabelle would probably try to make him soup. He'd rather fight a Greater Demon than eat anything, including (or maybe specifically) soup, made by his adoptive sister, though he did have a great time making fun of her awesomely bad attempts at cooking.

Jace supposed Isabelle's cooking wasn't all evil: it gave him a rock-hard excuse to eat out. Hodge usually tied to scare Jace and Isabelle away from take-out by telling them it would ruin their figure's, which was something he knew they were both particular about, but that philosophy went right out the window when Hodge found out Isabelle was making them something to eat. His sister should really stick to killing things… she was really good at that.

Jace thought about his best friends for a moment. They both, like Jace, were ready for Clary to wake up, but unlike Jace, they wanted her out of the Institute as soon as she told Hodge everything she knew. Though Alec had let the thing about Clary go, Jace still caught a lot of sulking looks and brooding glances. Jace was just trying to avoid Isabelle altogether; when she wasn't checking on Clary, she was driving him insane.

Clary….The past few days of forcing himself to stay away from the infirmary had been excruciating for Jace. He almost couldn't wait to find out how well Operation Clary is Just a Girl would work whenever Clary decided to wake up. Not.

It had to be around two in the afternoon and Jace wondered why either Alec or Isabelle hasn't barged through his door and demanded that he got up. He imagined Isabelle pouting in the infirmary and manicuring her nails, while he envisioned Alec harassing Hodge about something. Maybe a book, but you never knew with Alec. He could be just hovering in a corner like an overgrown bat, breathing poor Hodge's neck.

Not inclined to rescue his tutor from his possible predicament, Jace stretched out, arching his body like a cat. He was going to try not to let boredom and the anticipation of Clary's awakening drive him utterly around the bend today.

Jace threw on a t-shirt and some jeans and walked barefoot, he didn't really like shoes, to the music room. The music would soothe him and keep him away from the infirmary.

As soon as he walked through the door, he felt calmer. He had always liked making music, even when it was compulsory and not voluntary. He strode silently past the harp in the center of the floor and settled himself in front of his favorite instrument. He opened the lid and slid onto the stool that sat in front of the piano. He didn't bother with breaking out the sheets of music; he knew all of the stuff in the Institute by heart, and a few other pieces besides.

He sat for a moment with his arced fingers lifted in the air before bringing them down onto the keys, drowning himself in the sound of Etude in E Major.

When he was young, his father would tutor his endlessly in many things, music included. He could remember getting his fingers rapped with a cane more than once for missing a note while playing the piano. Jace reflected for a moment that his father, who never had need of a cane, probably kept the thing solely to disciple Jace with it.

Jace's decade of merciless tutoring paid off though. When he moved to the Institute, he could play the piano, not to mention several other instruments, flawlessly while Alec was still learning his notes. And he wasn't even going to get started on how much more advanced he was than his older adoptive brother when he relocated to the Institute, and even now. The differences had made Jace feel even more out of place, insecure, and at the same time weirdly, fiercely proud; he had hoped his father would have been proud, too.

One day not too long after coming to live in New York, Alec had sneaked up on Jace while he was playing the piano, causing Jace to hit a wrong key. For a moment, all Jace could do was brace himself for a hard rap across his knuckles.

The rap never came, because his father was dead. Jace had been confused: sad and oddly…liberated. Ignoring Alec, Jace had continued playing the same song, but what he was playing bore little resemblance to what he had been playing before. He added his own flourishes and embellishment until he was called away to dinner by Mayrse. It was one of his favorite memories. Looking back, Jace figured he had probably scared poor sensitive Alec to death, wildly banging on the keys like he did, but he also knew that when he first moved in the whole Lightwood family was slightly cautious of him. They didn't really know how to react to him, Jace supposed.

A shiver ran up Jace's neck; someone was watching him. Thinking maybe his reminiscing about times past had somehow brought Alec here to bother him, Jace turned swiftly around. Go back and bother Hodge, he thought. However, the words stuck in his throat. Alec would have knocked (he had stopped sneaking up on Jace a long time ago because he didn't like Jace's reflexes: he got a fist to the gut several times) by now and Isabelle would have barged in, picked up the cymbals, and banged them behind his head.

Jace searched the shadows of the large room. He couldn't see a damned thing. "Alec? Is that you?"

Jace was hugely surprised when he heard a voice say, "It's not Alec. It's me. Clary." She stepped into the room. She looked…tired. How could anyone be tired after sleeping for three days? Maybe she just felt like crap. Yeah, Jace conceded to himself, that was probably it. But damn, she was pretty. He didn't know why Isabelle thought a girl had to layer on makeup and stuff herself into clothes half her size to look good. Clary was doing just fine, and she was dead to the world for three whole days.

He dragged his hands off the keys, enjoying the discordant sound, and stood up. "Our very own Sleeping Beauty. Who finally kissed you awake?" Isabelle would eat poison before doing that, and he knew Alec would do just the equivalent: eat Isabelle's cooking.

"Nobody. I woke up alone." What? Jace momentarily thought about wringing Isabelle's skinny neck. She was probably away doing something dumb when Clary woke up, like painting her nails. Or cooking. God save them.

"Was there anyone with you?"

"Isabelle, but she went off to get someone—Hodge, I think. She told me to wait, but—"

Aha, Jace thought. That's why Clary was sneaking up on people in strange places. She didn't listen. He should have known. She was lucky she didn't offend Church on her way here; she would never have made it otherwise.

"I should have warned her about your habit about never doing what you're told." Still standing by the piano, Jace narrowed his eyes, trying to see Clary better. Her hair was wet, darkened to titian, her skin shone bright in clean, a beacon in the darkness, but he couldn't see her eyes in the darkness shadowing them. He could see, however, what she was wearing: jeans that had to have been at least a foot too long when not rolled up like she had them, and a low-low cut red spaghetti-strapped tank-top that hugged her body to perfection. Though Jace like the shirt, he didn't think the look was for her: she looked like a little girl playing dress up in her older, sluttier sister's clothes. Which meant, of course, the clothes came from Isabelle.

"Are those Isabelle's clothes? They look ridiculous on you." Belatedly, Jace wondered if she would be offended. Then he reminded himself that he did not care, and that in fact, it was the perfect thing to say. Operation Clary is Just a Girl takes its first steps into action.

"I could point out that you burned my clothes." The defamatory note in her voice when she said 'you' made Jace want to grin and pat himself on the back.

"It was purely precautionary," he said as he shut the piano lid. "Come on, I'll take you to Hodge."

Jace walked over to the door where Clary was standing looking very uncertain. He felt a surge of compassion; waking up in a strange place only to find that Isabelle Lightwood was your caretaker would be awful, Jace mused. Ever the gentleman, he motioned for her to precede him through the door, where she waited for him to follow.

After closing the music room door, Jace turned on his heel and began walking in the direction of the library, where Hodge usually was at this time of the day. Out of the corner of his eye, he observed Clary as she observed the Institute; the long corridor filled with empty rooms. The sculptures carved into the ceiling high above them.

"Why does this place have so many bedrooms? I thought it was a research institute."

He couldn't believe she had grown up a mundie. What type of Shadowhunter would let their kid grow up not knowing what the Institute was? He wondered what Clary's parents were running from.

"This is the residential wing. We're pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here." Jeez, he sounded like a tour guide.

"But most of these rooms are empty." Well, at least she was astute, Jace thought. She could definitely see the obvious.

"People come and go. Nobody stays for long. Usually it's just us—Alec, Isabelle, Max, their parents—and me and Hodge."

"Max?" Jace couldn't wait for Max to get back to the Institute. Most people said they didn't like kids, but Jace loved having Max around.

"You met the beauteous Isabelle? Alec is her elder brother. Max is the youngest, but he's overseas with his parents."

"On vacation?"

"Not exactly." How to explain this? "You can think of them as—as foreign diplomats, and of this as an embassy, of sorts. Right now they're in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very delicate peace negotiations. They brought Max with them because he's so young." There, that was a solid, mundane-understandable analogy.

"Shadowhunter home country? What's it called?"

Jace thought about his peoples beautiful homeland. "Idris," was all he said. It would be impossible for him to describe it properly to someone who had never been there.

"I've never heard of it."

Jace's only thought was well, duh. It's not like the Clave advertises its secret home country. Jace could just envision the tourism commercials; Visit Idris today! Blue skies and rolling green fields make the perfect backdrop for the Ward Towers of this completely Demon and Downworlder free country! Book your flight and tour now! Poor Clary. Jace couldn't imagine growing up as a mundane.

"You wouldn't have. Mundanes don't know about it. There are wardings—protective spells—up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you'd simply find yourself transported instantly from one border to the next. You'd never know what happened."

"So it's not on any maps?" She asked. He was enjoying watching her face as she tried to wrap her limited mundie brain around what he was telling her.

"Not mundie ones. For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France."

"But there isn't anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland." A game show bell dinged in Jace's head. Ten points for Clary! The girl knew her trivia.

"Precisely."

"I take it you've been there. To Idris, I mean."

A rush of bittersweet, but mostly bitter, memories flooded through his mind: the manor, him, and his father. "I grew up there." Suddenly, Jace wasn't having so much fun anymore; time for a change of subject before the conversation got too personal. Aside from superficial stuff, Jace didn't like talking about himself. "Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world. We have to be everywhere, because demonic activity is everywhere. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always 'home'."

"Like Mecca or Jerusalem. So most of you are brought up there, and then you grow up—," It didn't look like the girl could take a hint.

"We're sent where we're needed," he interrupted. "And there are a few, like Isabelle and Alec, who grow up away from the home country because that's where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, with Hodge's training—," He caught sight of the heavy wooden doors of the library. They made it. He was saved. "This is the library." As he got closer, he spied Church, curled up right in front of them like a sentry.

Not wanting to put his face anywhere near the cat, who was still sore from the breakfast Jace had fed him a few days before, he petted the cat with his foot, ready to jerk it back if the cat chose to try and claw him. "Hey, Church." Jace watched as the cat closed its eyes and arched up in to his foot; maybe now the vindictive feline would forgive him.

"Wait. Alec and Isabelle and Max—they're the only Shadowhunters your age that you know, that you spend time with?" Jace, who thought that the conversation was over, was further irritated by her comment. He needed no one's pity.

He lifted his foot away from Church and bit out a 'yes'.

"That must get kind of lonely."

Jace, done with talking about his emotional needs, opened the door to the library and went inside, not bothering to hold it open for her. She could follow. "I have everything I need."

If someone had asked Jace a week before if he had everything he needed, they would have received a traditional Jace-fashion comment along the lines of, "I have everything but a bag of chips and a tall, blonde bikini model because the store was out of both when I went shopping. Now go get bent." He really thought he did have everything that he wanted.

Now, if someone asked him the same question, he wouldn't be able to answer, because now he knew two things. One, that something was indeed missing from his life, and two, he would never allow himself to have what was missing.