I'm sorry for the long wait :( I was on vacation and then when I got back, I had three papers assigned and one is due today and I didn't do it so...
Anyway, have fun with this chapter :)
I was familiar with the feeling of a portal, but I had been unprepared to be flying through space. So instead of landing gracefully on my feet, I collided hard with the ground. Well, Clary's body to be exact. I smelt her strawberry shampoo and I could feel her hair brush over my skin. My forehead hit hers, our knees colliding. I felt an elbow collide painfully with my ribs.
"Ouch," I said in her ear. It hadn't really hurt bad. I'd had much, much worse and taken it silently. I just didn't want to have dead silence. Now that would be awkward. "You elbowed me."
"Well, you landed on me," she hissed, slightly breathlessly. Her tone reminded me to pull my weight off of her. I raised myself up to my elbows, looking down at her. Her face was flushed and she looked up at me with narrowed eyes. As if this was my fault, I though indignantly.
Even as I felt my temper rise ever so slightly, I was hit with the sudden realization that I did not want to move from my position on top of her. I could feel my body against hers, and my mind rejected the idea of moving.
"Well, you didn't leave me much choice, did you? Not after you decided to leap merrily through that portal like you were jumping the F train. You're just lucky it didn't dump us out in the East River," I snapped.
"You didn't have to some after me," she said indignantly.
"Yes, I did," I argued, thinking of how badly injured she could be if I had left her alone. She was easy prey for any Downworlder or demon that saw her wandering around. The thought of her injured or worse was like a shot to the chest. "You're far too inexperienced to protect yourself in a hostile situation without me."
I saw her eyes soften a fraction, but not enough to make a difference in her mindset. "That's sweet. Maybe I'll forgive you."
"Forgive me?" I said, thrown off. "For what?"
"For telling me to shut up," she said, her chin up in the air.
"I did not…" I trailed off when I realized that I had. "Well, I did, but you were—"
"Never mind," she sighed.
She rolled her head to the side a little and I found it a little odd that we were both completely comfortable with the current situation. Just as I thought that, she stiffened under me. I was about to move off of her, thinking she'd become uncomfortable, when she spoke.
"I know where we are."
"What?"
"This is Luke's house," she said. She sat up, pushing me to the side. I rolled gracefully to my feet and held out a hand to help her up. She ignored my help and stood up on her own. I dropped my hand, feeling more rejected than I probably should.
I looked around, seeing that we were in front of a small, gray row house. I read the lettering on the swinging sign in front of the house out loud. "Garroway books. Fine Used, New, and Out-of-print. Closed Saturdays." I eyed the mail, untouched on the porch, and the heavy padlock on the front door. "He lives in a bookstore?"
"He lives behind the store," she corrected. "Jace, how did we get here?"
"Through the portal," I told her, although I thought she could have figure that out at least. I fiddled around with the padlock, trying to figure out if I could break into it. "It takes you to whatever place you're thinking of."
"But I wasn't thinking of here," she argued. "I wasn't thinking of anywhere."
"You must have been," I responded absently. "So, since we're here anyway…"
"Yeah?" Clary asked with a sigh. I knew she wanted to know more about the portal, but I didn't feel up to explaining everything about them. She could ask Hodge later if she wanted to know.
"What do you want to do?" I asked, waiting for her reply and hoping it would be the same as what I was thinking.
"Leave, I guess," she said bitterly. Well that wasn't what I'd been thinking. "Luke told me not to come here."
I shook my head in disbelief. Now she started doing what she was told? "And you just accept that?"
I saw her wrap her arms around her body, as though she wanted some sense of security. I felt the overwhelming urge to put my arms around her and hold her to me, to feel her body against mine.
"Do I have a choice?" she asked, her voice almost a whisper. I wanted to scoff, but choked it back.
"We always have choices. If I were you, I'd be pretty curious about Luke right now. Do you have keys to the house?" I asked as an afterthought. I didn't really need them, but they'd be easier than doing an unlocking rune multiple times to undo the stupid padlock.
"No, but sometimes he leaves the back door unlocked." I saw a flicker of her natural curiosity flare back up in her eyes as she pointed to a small alley, separating Luke's home from the one beside it. I eyed the place warily. It'd be pretty hard to explain why two teenagers were breaking into his house if it turned out he was just sitting there drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper.
"You sure he isn't home?"
"Well, his truck's gone, the store's closed, and all the lights are off. I'd say probably not."
I felt my lips twitch up into a smile and felt the urge to call her a smartass. I almost did, but figured she'd take it the wrong way.
"Then lead the way." I scanned the area as we came up to a chain-link fence. There was no movement from any direction. The fence seemed to be surrounding a small yard, weeds overrunning anything else's growth.
"Up and over," I said. I began to climb the fence easily, hopping over the edge and dropping down.
My feet hit something soft, and I jumped back as whatever I'd landed on cried out. I saw a shape break from the bushes in front of me. It was clearly a human shape, although any kind of Eidolon demon would be capable of mimicking that.
I could feel my heart beat speed up. I was ready for a fight.
I sprung to my feet, racing after the shadow. I gripped the collar of a shirt and yanked back on it, throwing the shape—now definable as a teenage boy, around my age, maybe a few years younger—to the ground. I jumped down onto him, pinning him to the grassy earth. His arms were up over his face, hiding it from view.
"Got him!" I shouted, pleased. I saw Clary rushing over from the fence and reached down to pull the boy's arms from his face. "Come on, let's see your face—"
"Get the hell off me, you pretentious asshole!" The boy shoved at me, trying to push me off of him. I shifted my weight, allowing him to sit up halfway.
"Simon?" Clary cried suddenly. I groaned mentally.
"Oh, God," I sighed. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd got a hold of something interesting."
"Clary?" I sighed, standing up and releasing the mundane boy. He scrambled up ungracefully, fixing his crooked glasses.
I looked at him critically while Clary made her way over. I caught sight of a rib right up the side of the jeans she'd borrowed from Isabelle and rolled my eyes in my head, amazed that she'd missed all the action, yet still managed to ruin her clothing.
"Where the hell have you been?" the boy snapped. I glared at him as Clary visibly flinched. She didn't respond and he scoffed, turning around and dropping himself down onto the back steps. Clary looked after him for a second before following. I rolled my eyes and went passed them, throwing my legs over the railing and leaning back against a beam.
"But what were you doing hiding in Luke's bushes?" Clary asked, ignoring the mundane's question still. It almost made me grin. I saw Clary reach up to brush her hand through his hair, knocking leaves and twigs from it. The boy looked angry, and I wanted to hit him, knowing that if she were running her fingers through my hair, I'd be a lot more appreciative.
"That's the part I don't get," Clary finished, shaking her head. Finally, the mundane snapped, jerking away from her.
"All right, that's enough. I can fix my own hair, Fray." My eyebrows shot up when I realized why she'd snapped at me when I'd called her that. That was her little boy-toy's nickname for her.
I caught her eyes flicker to me out of the corner of my eye, seeing her look at my hands where I was filing my nails with my stele. I almost grinned. Even when she was talking to the mundane, she was still looking at me. She turned back to Simon then.
"I mean, did Luke know you were there?" she asked, completely ignorant to the fact that he was clearly pissed with her.
"Of course he didn't know I was there," the boy said, almost growling at her. "I've never asked him, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random teenagers lurking in his shrubbery."
Then maybe you shouldn't have been doing it, mundie, I though irritably. Everything this boy did or said seemed to grate against my nerves.
"You're not random; he knows you," Clary pointed out. She was either oblivious to her obvious anger, or she was ignoring it. "The main thing is that you're alright."
She tripped even me up on that one. Why wouldn't the fool be okay? She was the one who'd been attacked by a demon, almost died, found out she was a completely different race than she'd thought, had her mother go missing, and been abandoned by this Luke.
"That I'm alright?" the boy cried, letting out a sharp laugh. I scowled, disliking the harsh sound about as much as I disliked the source of it. "Clary, do you have any idea what I've been through this past couple of days?"
"Not near as much as her, mundie. Suck it up, princess," I muttered under my breath.
"The last time I saw you, you were running out of Java Jones like a bat out of hell, and then you just…disappeared. You never picked up your cell—"
Probably because she smashed it on the pavement when she got a frantic call from her now-missing mother.
"then your home phone was disconnected—then Luke told me you were off staying with some relatives upstate when I know you don't have any other relatives. I thought I'd done something to piss you off."
The moron thought that she'd had her house phone disconnected because he'd made her angry? Mundanes…
"What could you possibly have done?" she asked softly, reaching for his hand. He looked away, yanking it from her. She looked hurt, biting her lip. Again, I wanted to knock the moron out.
"I don't know," he said lamely. "Something." I chuckled. Something so bad that she disconnected her home phone? Seriously, this kid was stupid.
"You're my best friend. I wasn't mad at you," she said, sounding surprised. I saw the harsh glare Simon shot to the ground and shook my head at his ignorance. As much as he seemed to have a crush on Clary, he seemed to be treating her pretty harshly right now. You'd think he would be kinder.
"Yeah, well, you clearly couldn't be bothered to call me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wanna-be goth you probably met at Pandemonium, after I spent the past three days wondering if you were dead."
I gritted my teeth and looked up quickly, fighting the urge to stick one of my blades through his chest. Where did this mundane get off insulting me? Or treating Clary like that. She could have been dead, for all he knew, with what she'd gone through. Apparantly he didn't know Clary as well as he thought he did if he thought she would just 'shack up' with some guy she found at a club. I'd only known her for a couple days and I already knew she wasn't like that.
"I was not shacking up," Clary said indignantly, looking offended.
"And my hair is naturally blonde," I added, glaring cruelly at him when Clary looked away. "Just for the record."
"So what have you been doing these past three days, then? Do you really have a great-aunt Matilda who contracted avian flu and needed to be nursed back to health?" I gave the boy a flat look, wondering if he was still in the third grade.
"Did Luke actually say that?" Clary asked, her brows up at her hairline in disbelief.
"No. He just said you had gone to visit a sick relative, and that your phone probably just didn't work out in the country. Not that I believed him."
I wondered suddenly what he would have told the boy if Clary had never returned, if she had been killed by the Ravener in her home. Then I shuddered at the thought of the lively girl lying dead on the floor, her eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. I shook my head to clear the image away. Some things didn't need to be thought about and that was one of them.
"After he shooed me off his front porch, I went around the side of the house and looked in the back window. Watched him packing up a green duffle bag like he was going away for the weekend. That was when I decided to stick around and keep an eye on things." I scoffed quietly. Who did the boy think he was, a detective?
"Why?" Clary asked, sounded confused. "Because he was packing a bag?"
"He was packing it full of weapons," he said grimly. That got my attention. My head swung over to face them. If this guy was packing weapons, he could very well be a part of the Shadow World.
"Knives, a couple daggers, even a sword," he listed. "Funny thing is, some of the weapons looked like they were glowing. Now are you going to say I was imagining it?" That sold it. Luke was a member of the Shadow World. Glowing weapons would most likely mean a seraph blade, although it could be something else. Chances were, Luke was a Shadowhunter.
"No," Clary said, and for a minute I was startled, thinking I had spoken out loud before I realized that she was talking to the mundane. "I'm not going to say that." She turned to me and I looked back at her, trying to discern how she would react if I spoke my thoughts. "I'm going to tell him the truth," she said, her jaw set. I sighed.
"I know," I said. I was clearly not going to be able to change her mind. We could always take the mundane to the Silent Brothers later to have his memory wiped of the Shadow World.
"Are you going to try to stop me?" Her chin was up defiantly and I knew she wouldn't let me if I did try, even if I told her that it would be better if the boy was ignorant.
I looked away, back at my stele.
"My oath to the Covenant binds me. No such oath binds you," I admitted reluctantly.
I felt her eyes leave me as she turned back to the mundane. "All right. Here's what you have to know," she began.
"This guy, Jace, he's a Shadowhunter and he…"
I tuned out, not really needing or wanting to hear this whole story retold. For a while, I watched Clary as she explained the Shadow World to her friend, her hands waving wildly as she tried to describe the Ravener demon that had tried to kill her.
Her bright eyes were glowing while she talked about the fight with the Forsaken, and I realized that she enjoyed talking about the Shadow World. I felt a rush of pleasure at the thought. She liked it, the adventure, the people, the magic, the new revelations, the danger. I could see it in her eyes as they sparkled while she spoke. She may be in a bad position now, confused and scared, her mother missing, but it was like she had been bored with her life, and now she had something more.
I looked away when her eyes flickered to me, and I heard my name.
"…and Jace followed me through, because he said I could've gotten killed on my own and…"
I tuned out again with a hidden smile. When I heard her clear her throat, I turned to look at them again, thinking she was trying to get my attention. She wasn't though, and I watched her as she looked warily at the mundane. "So, any questions?"
The boy put his hand up like and I felt the overwhelming urge to throw something at it, thinking he was reaching out to touch Clary. Then I shook myself when I realized how stupid that was.
"Oh, I've got questions. Several." I sighed. It was going to be dark by the time we got back to the Institute, and that wasn't good. Demons came out when the sun went down, and I knew I could fight them off, but I wasn't sure if I could fight them off and properly protect Clary.
"Okay, shoot," she sighed, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. The boy pointed at me and I barely kept myself from scowling at him.
"Now, he's a—what do you call people like him again?"
"He's a Shadowhunter," she responded. Like you are, I added silently, looking at her and hoping she would tell him that she was one too. But she didn't, and I was disappointed that she hadn't accepted it yet.
"A demon hunter," I added, biting back the bitterness that surged up. "I kill demons. It's not that complicated, really."
I slipped my stele back into my coat pocket, tipping my head back to rest it against the beam I sat against.
"For real?" I almost turned around and snapped at him. No, we're lying. She just spent about an hour telling you all this just to laugh and say 'gotcha'.
"For real," Clary confirmed, sounding slightly amused.
"And there are vampires too? Werewolves, warlocks, all that stuff?"
"So I hear," Clary said, sounded concerned suddenly that he would call her crazy and run off.
"And you kill them too?" Simon asked, his question louder as he directed it to me. I didn't look back, staring at my nails instead.
"Only when they've been naughty."
There was silence for a minute and I half hoped that he would do something stupid, call her a lunatic and run off. Then I felt bad, knowing that it would destroy her. She'd already lost her mother, and this Luke. She didn't need to lose her friend too. But I wanted him gone, badly. He had no business here. Clary was a Shadowhunter, she belonged. This mundane didn't. Finally, he spoke.
"That is so awesome." I turned quickly to look at him.
"Awesome?"
The boy nodded vigorously. "Totally. It's like dungeons and dragons, but real."
My brows furrowed as I looked at him. What the hell? "It's like what?"
"It's a game," Clary said, her cheeks turning pink. "People pretend to be wizards and elves, and they kill monsters and stuff." I looked at her, completely confused.
Why would they pretend to be wizards and elves if they didn't believe in them? And what kind of game was this? Did they dress up and spar, like actors? The mundane looked at me with a grin.
"You've never heard of dungeons and dragons?"
"I've heard of dungeons," I said in confusion. "Also dragons, although they're mostly extinct." He looked at me in disappointment.
"You've never killed a dragon?" Well, I had, but it was just a Draki demon. I was about to say that when Clary spoke, sounding cross.
"He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in a fur bikini either. Lay off, Simon." I looked at her in confusion, but she wasn't looking at either of us, glaring down at the grass instead.
"Real elves are about eight inches tall. Also, they bite," I said, still trying to see why Clary was acting oddly.
"But vampires are hot, right?" the mundane asked. "I mean, some of the vampires are babes, aren't they?" Clary looked at him incredulously.
I thought about it, thinking back on all the vampires I'd ever seen. They were all fairly attractive once they were turned. Their looks drew their pray in. But they were so pale, and skinny.
"Some of them, maybe," I finally decided. The newer ones tended to look more human.
"Awesome," the mundane said with a grin. I frowned before slipping off the railing and walking over to them.
"So are we going to search the house or not?" I asked, looking to Clary for an answer. Instead, the mundane responded.
"I'm game," he said, scrambling ungracefully to his feet while Clary stood slowly, watching me for my reaction. "What are we looking for?"
"We? I don't remember inviting you along," I said, looking at him with false sincerity. I was being nasty, I knew, but I didn't like this boy. He was a mundane. He didn't need to be around. He didn't belong with us.
"Jace," Clary hissed, looking at me in annoyance. I almost snapped at her, started yelling and telling her that he didn't belong here. That he had nothing to do with the world she was in now, that she needed to leave him behind. I wanted to. I wanted to yell at her until she understood. I wanted to yell at the mundane, make him go away and leave Clary and I alone. But I didn't.
I forced my lips to turn up in a half-smile. "Just joking." I wasn't, I wanted him gone so badly it hurt. I stepped to the side to allow them to get to the door. "Shall we?" Clary smiled ever so slightly and stepped up to the door, fumbling in the dark.
I could see much more clearly than she could. I had burned a rune into my arm before we left that allowed me to see better in the dark. She finally turned the knob and the mundane followed her in. I followed more slowly, taking one last look back to make sure than nobody had seen us go inside. I closed the door behind me as I stepped in, to see Clary looking up at me in disappointment.
"It's locked." I pulled my stele out, stepping past the boy and standing beside Clary.
"Allow me, mundanes." I put my hand on her arm and pushed her gently to the side. She stepped back willingly, giving me space to work. I heard Clary's friend speak up, probably thinking he was speaking quietly.
"He's a piece of work, isn't he? How do you stand him?" I was about to make a nasty comment when Clary responded softly.
"He saved my life." She sounded defensive even as her voice was low. Simon made a sound of irritation and I went back to the lock, drawing a quick rune into the soft wood. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, cutting off Simon's response.
"Here we go," I said, walking through and hearing the others follow me. I looked around and saw a typical, cozy bookstore. Shelves were labeled across the room, and boxes were stacked everywhere. I guessed that he was in between a shipment.
"The apartment's through here," Clary said, brushing past me to head towards it. As she did, I turned my head to face her and caught a strange gleam on the far wall. I narrowed my eyes, unable to make out what it was from here.
I grabbed her arm, holding her back. "Wait."
She immediately stopped moving, turning to look back at me, her brows going up in question.
"Is something wrong?"
"I don't know," I said before slipping away from her and squeezing between two tall stacks of books. I looked closely at the objects and froze. "What the hell?" I said under my breath, whistling quietly. I jumped up onto a boz, getting a closer look.
"Clary, you might want to come over here and see this," I called.
"It's so dark," she said, her voice small as I turned and saw her moving slowly through the dark room towards me. I watched her for a second before pulling my witchlight stone from my pocket and closing my fingers around it. I held it up over my head and saw Clary's head snap up to look at me, eyes wide.
I saw the mundane boy turn his head away, blinking. "Ouch," he complained. I laughed lightly at his pain and saw him glare at me.
"Witchlight," I explained, seeing Clary's curious glance at it.
"Wonderful," Simon muttered as Clary began to make her way through the boxes until she had reached me.
"Look at that," I said when she'd reached me, pointing to the manacles I'd found handing on the wall. She stared at them in confusion for a moment before her lips parted in a small 'o', her eyes widening.
"Are those—"
"Manacles," the mundane cut her off. I looked at him sharply and he sneered at me before looking back at Clary. It was pathetic, how he always seemed to plead for her attention. "That's, ah…"
"Don't say 'kinky'," Clary snapped, glaring at him. I turned back to look at the manacles to hide my grin. "This is Luke we're talking about."
I reached up and ran a finger along the inside rim of one of the manacles, feeling dried flakes that seemed to be rust chip off. But I knew it wasn't rust. "Blood," I stated, eyes skimming the rest of the scene before me. "And look." I rubbed the dried blood off on my pants and pointed to the next clue of a struggle. The chains, where they disappeared into the wall, had been pulled on hard enough that the plaster had been cracked and it was bumped out with the force. "Someone tried to yank these things out of the wall. Tried pretty hard, from the looks of it." I chewed my lower lip, wondering if maybe Luke wasn't the one truly responsible for the phone call from earlier.
It looked like there had been a serious struggle here. If he had been being tortured, they may have forced him to say the things he did to Clary. Or maybe it was the other way and Luke had been the one to chain someone up.
"Do you think Luke is alright?" Clary asked, her voice small and worried.
"I think we better find out," I answered, leaping down from the box. Clary was chewing viciously at her bottom lip as I had been seconds ago. Her eyes were wide and concerned as she looked up at the manacles one more time before leading Simon and I back into the apartment part of the building.
The living room was cluttered, books overfilling the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Clary looked around carefully, looking for anything unusual—the same thing I was doing. I saw the mundane veer off through an entryway and secretly hoped that he would be eaten by a demon. My hopes were dashed when he called out to us, stepping into the doorway.
"I think he's still around. The percolator's still on and there's coffee here. Still hot." Clary stepped up to him and peered into the kitchen.
I walked over as she stepped through, Simon turning and following her. I stepped through into the hallway she'd disappeared into, ignoring the mundane, who remained in the kitchen. I saw Clary exit one room and step across the hallway into another, not noticing me.
I poked my head in as she paused, looking around the room sadly. Then she kneeled down beside the bed and I thought for a second that she was praying before she bent over and pulled a bag from under the bed, opening it and shifting through it. I saw her pull out a bottle of shampoo and figure it was hers. I stepped away, content that she wasn't getting eaten by a Ravener
The door I opened next led to an office that was decorated with artifacts from all over the world. I looked around curiously before moving over to the desk, seeing a green duffel resting on it. It must have been the bag the mundane saw Luke packing. It was filled to the brim with weapons. I looked through the weapons, noting the ones that no mundane would have access to. There was a seraph blade thrown inside, probably what Simon had seen glowing. He had unique weapons as well, some that hardly anybody used.
I heard soft footsteps behind me and smelled strawberry shampoo as they approached me. Clary. She reached out a hesitant hand and ran her finger over the circular, razor-sharp disk curiously.
"It's a chakram," I said, looking up at her. "A Sikh weapon. You whirl it around your index finger before releasing it. They're rare and hard to use." I thought of the time Hodge had suggested I train with them. It was the only weapon I had never been able to master. "Strange that Luke would have one. They used to be Hodge's weapon of choice, back in the day. Or so he tells me." Clary smiled a little, nostalgically.
"Luke collects stuff," she said, gesturing to the shelves of figures and statues I'd seen when I entered. "Art objects. You know, pretty things." Her voice was soft and I was more focused on how she sounded than what she was saying.
I shook myself out of the slight daze I had been in and shifted some of the weapons gingerly to the side. Some clothing spilled out and I frowned when it revealed a picture frame. I picked it up, peering into the smiling faces of Clary, an older version of her that I assumed was her mother, and a man who was probably Luke. It had a giant crack across it.
"I think this is yours, by the way," I said, handing her the framed picture. She took it gingerly.
"That is mine," she said, sounding surprised.
"It's cracked," I said obviously. She continued to stare down at it.
"I know. I did that—I smashed it. When I threw it at the Ravener demon." She looked up at me, just as I realized what that meant. "That means Luke's been back to the apartment since the attack. Maybe even today—"
"He must have been the last person to go through the portal," I finished. "That's why it took us here. You weren't thinking of anything, so it sent us to the last place it had been." Clary's face twisted as though she'd just eaten a lemon.
"Nice of Dorothea to tell us he was there."
"He probably paid her off to be quiet," I said. It was a harsh realization. That meant that he was most likely not on our side. If he was paying her to hide him, then he could very well be a criminal. "Either that or she trusts him more than she trusts us. Which means he might not be—"
"Guys!" I saw Clary jump as the mundane rushed into the office. I was tempted to throw the chakram at him. "Someone's coming!" The photo fell back into the bag as Clary looked up at him.
"Is it Luke?" The boy stuck his head back out to look at the hallway. I scoffed. He wasn't even smart enough to check who it was first.
"It is. But he's not by himself—there are two men with him."
"Men?" I wouldn't be so sure. It could be a number of things from demons to fellow Shadowhunters there to arrest him. I sped through the room and peered out around the corner. I saw three men, two in long robes, Accord robes.
"Dammit," I cursed. "Warlocks."
"Warlocks? But—"
I shook my head, cutting her off and backing away. "Is there some way out of here? A back door?"
I glanced at Clary to see her shake her head, looking terrified. She was frozen in her spot and I looked around hopelessly for somewhere to go. If it had been just me, I would have stood and fought. But I couldn't fight two warlocks and a probably traitorous Shadowhunter all at once and protect Clary and her ignorant friend as well. Then I saw the room divider that I'd overlooked earlier.
"There. Get behind that. Now," I ordered, rushing after them as they scrambled towards it.
I barely had time to duck behind it before the door swung open. I crouched beside Clary, feeling her hair tickle my nose. I swiped a hand in front of my face to clear the strands away. It would most definitely be a bad time to sneeze. Three male voices floated through the room but the screen muffled it slightly. Thinking quickly, I pulled my stele from my pocket once again and drew the tip across the surface of the screen, the thin surface easy to burn into. I slid it in a square and watched as the inside turned clear.
Clary made a tiny sound of surprise, leaning towards it to look in it. I watched her for a second, seeing how her eyes gleamed in wonder, her lips parted ever so slightly. She looked at me quickly, pulling away from it with a panicked look. She thought that we would be revealed. I mouthed words at her, hoping she could read lips.
They can't see us through it, but we can see them. She nodded and leaned back towards it, peering in the edge. Clary seemed to tense as someone stepped into the room. All I could see was legs. I could hear better now that the pane was there.
"Yes, feel free to look around. Nice of you to show an interest," a man said, his voice gruff with bitterness. I heard a chuckle in response and tapped the corner of the window, forcing it to move out more. I could see more clearly now, three men standing around the room, one looking ragged and torn up as he looked at the others with thinly veiled contempt.
The two being glared at were wearing dark red robes, Accord robes that had been worn strictly by the warlocks at the last Accords. Luke was dealing with warlocks?
As the men turned, I caught sight of one of their faces and froze, my muscles tightening. Everything in me screamed for me to jump out with a blade in hand and run them through with it. I recognized them, even from all those years ago.
Hope you liked it :)
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-Cassidy