CHAPTER 4
Oh my word, I am SO SORRY. I promised this chapter in two days, and it's been… FIVE! :O I am so sorry! But the next chapter will be about… Five days… Because swimming training is completely overboard because now that I have done my individual events, I am in the team relay on Sunday for State! It's open age category, so we have all kinds of ages swimming, including one twelve year old on our team! (She is pretty amazing though).
Thank you for the support, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. More at the bottom!
ELLA POV
"We have to tell Camille and Magnus about this," I said. Always the voice of reason, that's me.
Izzy was driving like a lunatic through the unusually quiet streets of New York City. The Brooklyn Bridge was visible ahead of us, shrouded in fog, blurred slightly by the heavy downpour running off the wind screen. I was typing a message to Camille on my phone in the bumpy car. Did I say that Izzy was driving like a lunatic? If I did, it needs repeating.
Plz research Cecily Verlac, thanx. –E xox. I ended the message to observe the outside and inside of the car, fidgeting on the plush black leather seats. By Triton, I'd slept on mattresses less comfortable than this car. The 'bum warmers', as Izzy so delicately put it, were on the hottest setting, and I swear you could fry eggs on the seats. Outside was obviously pretty cold, because the windows were fogging up from condensation because of the temperature difference inside and outside of the orange car. Izzy smoothly swung into the overtaking lane to get past a shivering truckie driving a truck that was advertising Victoria's Secret. I imagined the truckie in Victoria's Secret lingerie and laughed out loud. Clary gave me a strange look from her position in shotgun, and I gave her a one-shouldered shrug as a response, nodding my head in the direction of the truck. She smiled slightly before looking out of her window. I looked forwards once again, leaning past Izzy in the driving seat to look out of the front of the car, focusing especially on the slightly blurred amber lights of the oncoming traffic.
The wind screen wipers on our car were going at a mile a minute, desperately trying to clear the driver's sight in the pouring rain. Colourful umbrellas with rivulets of water running off the edges bobbed along the wide sidewalk of the streets, ranging from red to black and polka dots to stripes. I saw an unfortunate woman wearing a black pencil skirt, white blouse and black blazer lower her umbrella to duck under an alcove in front of a Starbucks store and get soaked by a leak sprining in the gutter above her head. She flinched and rushed into the store to presumably get dry. Although most New Yorkers were hiding from the rain and oncoming night in the comfort of their warm, dry homes, a surprisingly high number were still out and about during the overcast night. Shops were beginning the close, café doors swinging open at irregular intervals to let customers in or out, the warm interior inviting as opposed to the rain outside. The nightclubs were opening up, pounding music audible from inside the vehicles, the neon signs flashing above the doors. The patter of raindrops on marble café tables and the painted metal on the hoods of cars was almost as deafening as the music from the clubs had been a few streets over as Izzy pulled over in the neat concrete driveway lined by recently pruned rosebushes in front of our house, a spacious red brick Brooklyn household on a friendly residential street near the main road. The windows were closed; the creamy blinds flung shut to retain heat. We were drenched from head to toe within seconds of being out of the sports car, even with the door a mere five metres from the dripping Lamborghini. The clear chirp of the car alarm being set by the press of a button was all that broke the steady rhythm of raindrops beating down in the dark night time of New York City. All of the activity in the distance made me think how accurate the nickname 'the city that never sleeps' really was.
Clary wrapped her black trench coat more tightly around her, probably wishing she had chosen a coat that came with a hood. Her slender silhouette was illuminated almost eerily by the neon streetlamps, the yellow lighting casting shadows on her throat and almost sharpening her already angular facial features. Her long scarlet hair was straight, hanging down almost to her butt with the weight of the rain. I watched as she rearranged her unruly hair in frustration, pushing the hair that was plastered to her heart-shaped face out of her eyes and into the mess that she called hair. The grey fabric of the coat darkened until it was nearly black and stretched to twice its original size to accommodate the water, weighing her tiny frame down as she produced the house key from a thankfully dry inner pocket, fumbling slightly as she forced it into the slippery keyhole. For a moment the dark colour scheme reminded me of Sebastian, especially the midnight black of Clary's drenched coat, the way his black locks fell in his eyes and swept around his head in an unlikely halo. Thoughts of Sebastian filled my mind in a swarm, reminding me of the suspicions Izzy had of Cecily, and doubt filled me – could we really trust Sebastian? I hastily rid myself of the thoughts; I had other things to think about, I reminded myself in vain as the thoughts just coming.
Clary successful unlocked the door and swung the heavy wood open until it smacked into the wall behind it, making me flinch slightly and ridding me of those suffocating thoughts. She started shedding her dripping coat and soaking leather knee-high boots, revealing the thick brown leggings, grey tank top and socks and fluffy fleece that she had worn underneath the trench coat. She threw the soaking materials inside the organised, heated coat room on the right hand side of the open door. I quickly slipped inside the narrow hallway to escape from the rain, narrowly missing Camille's favourite vase in the process. Isabelle followed me, but she bumped into the dark rosewood table that held the precariously balanced blue-and-white painted Italian-style blown glass curved vase, which fell almost as if in slow motion towards the wet, polished hardwood floor, before shattering almost artistically into a million pieces across the floor, sending tiny chips of colourful reflected light dancing across the creamy walls and floor, the rays only disrupted by the slight dent in the wall that Clary had caused when she flung the door handle into it. Oh well, I thought. I'd never really liked that particular vase of Camille's anyway.
"Isabelle! I liked that vase!" At least someone did.
Camille's exasperated voice sounded from the end of the narrow hallway, her green eyes, much like Clary's, revealing nothing about her emotions. She turned back to us, taking in our attire. "Hey! Jackets off! I don't want you ruining the floors like you ruined that wall with the door! They're mahogany, you know!" Well, Camille always had been very observational. Of course she noticed the dent in the wall. I smiled slightly at the familiarity Camille always brought, shrugging of my heavy, damp fluffy parka, before kicking of my sodden dark blue converses and following the now bare-footed Isabelle inside the kitchen at the end of the hallway.
The smell of food was intoxicating and strangely soothing, even at this time on a Saturday. Dark circles lay under Clary and Izzy's eyes, their eyelids drooping with exhaustion but snapping open at the sight of Camille's food – Camille was an amazing cook. The steel and wooden island was covered with an expensive-looking white intricate lace tablecloth and full, practically overflowing exotic dishes of food ranging from grilled prawns and calamari to fried bok choy, pristine papers and profiles littered on every available space in between the dishes. The striking contrast of the pale skin and dark eyes of Sebastian Verlac stared up at us from the corner of one page, the paper and the information printed and written on it catching my attention. It read:
Name: Sebastian Jonah Verlac
Age: 17 years 3 months
Parents: unknown. Adoptive: Sarah Koch, Daniel Koch
Sibling(s): Cecily Sophia Verlac
Address: unknown
School: St Xavier's, NYC
Birthplace: Calais, France
Underneath the description were some hand-written notes by Camille, based on the information she had gathered on the school database and from us.
Friends: see Jordan Kyle, Jace Herondale, Alec Maciejowski, Jonathan Morgenstern, Simon Lewis. Human(?). No known connection to Calypsaï/Eulysae.
The notes went on and on like this, profiles of Jace, Jordan, Alec, Si and Jon also printed and scrawled across, including images of unfamiliar adults who were most likely the adopted parents stapled to the respective sheets, also filled with information. The only profile missing from the collection was Cecily's.
I turned to Camille. "Where is Cecily's profile?" I asked. Camille looked at me and frowned at the sheets, drumming her manicured fingernails on the counter. She always did this when she was nervous or concerned about something, and I guess the obvious lack of information on Cecily merited those emotions.
"That's the weird thing - I couldn't find any information on her anywhere on the Internet, in the phone book, the lists of e-mail users - not even during hacking. It's like she doesn't exist – she didn't go to school or university, she doesn't have a bank account, at least not under her own name. Why do you ask?" Clary's already creamy skin paled considerably, and Izzy had a grim look on her face. We looked to each other, then back at Camille.
We told her everything.
Everything about the boys, the events in Idris, our suspicions of Cecily. Camille's frown deepened as the conversation and evidence against Cecily went on, and her mouth set into a grim line. After we had finished, she was silent for a minute, processing our words. She fiddled with her hands nervously, shifting her weight from foot to foot, while absorbing the information provided. To be fair, we had kind of overloaded her with information, but due to previous experience it was usually best, when collecting evidence, to not miss even the tiniest detail, because that tiny, seemingly insignificant piece of information could hold the key to the whole investigation. The whole explanation had taken about twenty minutes, and throughout the whole thing Cam had sat patiently, taken a few notes on a blank sheet of paper and on Sebastian's, Jace's and Alec's when they were mentioned, and clearly absorbed the details of the stay in Idris, looking at Clary disapprovingly at the mention of her drinking at Metropolis and the near miss with Jace in the water at the cliffs.
Then she spoke.
"I don't think her name is really Cecily."
JACE POV – 11:00am Sunday
Sunlight streamed in through the huge windows of the guest bedroom. It shone into my eyes, currently squeezed shut against the nearly blinding morning light. The memories of the previous night's events came flooding back into my half-asleep brain. Cecily acting strangely around Isabelle after their hand shake and her insistence of the girls staying, seeing a girl with a purple and green shimmering fish's tail in the reef, seeing Clary at the cliffs with Ella and Izzy, and finally seeing Izzy's flashy orange Lamborghini racing through the winding streets of Idris outside the beach house at night, heading for the City, the skyline of New York visible against the rolling dark storm clouds brewing behind it, warning of a nasty storm that would not be fun to be caught in.
I sat up in the comfortable white mattress to stretch cat-style, last night's green Hollister button up shirt riding up to show my tanned, toned abdomen, if I do say so myself. My now dry board shorts were slightly crumpled and sticking to my thighs, having made the bed sheets stiff with salt and dried seawater from my expedition in Alicante Cove last night. My hair probably looked like I had walked through a hedge backwards after falling onto the bed minutes after our adventure in the salty water near the cliffs of Alicante Cove, when I hadn't even dried myself off. Thinking about messy hair reminded me of a 'Teenager Post' I'd seen a while back on Tumblr that was something along the lines of:
"I swear my pillow could be my stylist. Every morning I wake up with a new hairstyle!"
Story of my life. Ah, how I love Tumblr.
A muffled thud and a loud shout from downstairs in the previously quiet beach house brought me back from Jace Land.
"FUCKING LAMP!" Sebastian yelled from the kitchen along with a stream of profanity that I would rather not repeat. I leapt out the warm, comfy confines of my bed, flinging the white door of the guest bedroom open with a bang and racing down the carpeted staircase to where the noise had come from. I ran into the kitchen and saw Seb sprawled over the cold marble floor, clutching his head with both hands, his eyes squeezed shut. Around him were pieces of broken fuchsia pink glass, also scattered across the island and in his hair and clothes, making him sparkle like a disco ball. One of the hanging lamps Cecily had stylishly put above the island was smashed, the bulb now free of its glass casing, hanging from the ceiling by a wire, and flickering dimly. Sebastian glared up at it as if it attacked him.
I looked at the drama queen lying on the floor with an eyebrow raised. He turned to me with a scowl on his face. He grimaced, sat up, and looked at me with a melodramatic sigh, clearly waiting for me to come over and make a fuss of him while pulling him up and calling the ambulance. Like that would happen. Ah, yes, Sebastian. I thought. You can't forget the sigh if you are in Drama Queen mode. That just wouldn't do, would it? Sebastian seems to understand my need for an explanation, so he starts whining about what happened.
"I was reaching over the island to try to get a fork from the draw on the other side. Then this damned lamp decides to hit me in the face. I mean, look at the thing. It looks suspicious. Look at it!" He wildly gesticulated with one hand that he had removed from his head at the flickering lamp, and I watched him with concern, wondering if he hit his head harder than I thought.
"Did you apologise to the lamp?" I asked with a straight face, and it was a struggle, let me tell you.
Sebastian frowned. "I will only apologise to the lamp when it apologises to me. I need an apology from Cecily too – if she hadn't hung the damn thing there, this would never have happened!" I couldn't help it – I laughed, clutching my stomach while doubling over. He sounded like a petulant child. However, this wounded his large ego, because he tried to stand up and protest, then flailed wildly and fell back on his ass. I laughed even harder.
Cecily walked in wearing black cotton sweat pants and a loose yellow tank top, watching us with amusement. "Got the giggles, Herondale?" She asked me. I tried to shake my head, but with all the laughter it looked more like a nod. She burst out laughing at me. Sebastian frowned at us.
"You're laughing when there's an injured man over here?" He said with disdain. He pointed to the tiny scratch on his forehead, unintentionally drawing attention to the sparkly glass in his hair, and Cecily and I just laughed harder.
ISABELLE POV – 11:00pm Saturday
"But, why would she say she was called Cecily then?" I asked, confused. "It's not like we would recognise her anyway." I finished. Sure, Cecily was pretty, but I'm good at remembering names – just not faces. And Cecily is an uncommon name.
Camille shook her head. "You wouldn't recognise her. But I would." Three heads swung around the stare at Camille after this revelation – mine, Clary's and Ella's. Camille, seeing confusion, seemed to decide that explaining would be in her best interests. Damn right! I thought in shock. She could have said this earlier!
"The thing with Calypsaï and Eulysae is that they only fight for favour and rights – mainly because they're so similar. The only difference is their hierarchy and realms of power. The Calypsaï are ruled by a monarchy split into two kingdoms, while the Eulysae are a democracy of seven sections. There have been many arguments and brawls between the two species, even over topics as trivial as whether a monarchy, dictatorship or democracy is better for the people. Their realms of power have caused a lot of trouble; while the sea is the Calypsaï realm of power and it covers around 60% of the Earth, the Eulysae have all the sky in the atmosphere, which covers the whole Earth and is 14 kilometres thick, from the Earth's crust to the edge of the atmosphere. Many of our race have argued that it is unfair, but the hard truth about it is that life is unfair – and we just have to accept that.
"If Calypsaï or Eulysae are unhappy with their position – as a Calypsaï or a Eulysae – they do have the legacy of asking a Higher Power – the Spirits of Triton, Atlanta or Odysseus – if they may change from one race to the other."
"Hang on – Odysseus? What does he have to do with it?" I asked, confused.
"It's complicated. Most Greek figures, God or hero, have a Roman name. Like Athena is Minerva, Zeus is Jupiter, and Heracles is Hercules. Odysseus is Ulysses, and the word 'Eulysae' is derived from that, but with a variation in the spelling. Just as the Calypsaï are the saviours of Calypso when she was exiled, the Eulysae saved Ulysses from Calypso's clutches – as her lover – to return to his wife, Penelope, who in the meantime had had many proposals as her husband was 'dead'. Depending on your source, Ulysses was with Calypso for 3, 5 or 7 years, but both the Eulysae and the Calypsaï believe he was there for seven years. Our two races were practically created to be rivals.
"Back to what I was saying, I knew a young Calypsaï named Lycia Leccrev in the kingdom. Think about that name for a minute." Camille looked at us expectantly. Lycia Leccrev? Who is she? I heard a gasp from Clary and I swung around the face her.
"It's an anagram, isn't it? Lycia Leccrev is an anagram of Cecily Verlac." Clary said triumphantly. I should have known…
Camille smiled. "Yes, that's what I thought. Lycia requested an audience with Valentine Tritos and Stephen Atlantis in the shrine for Triton, Atlanta and Ulysses about twenty years ago, and I never saw her again afterwards. I don't know if she is really related to Sebastian, because he seems innocent so far, but keep your eyes peeled, okay? You never know who – or what – is watching."
JACE POV – 11:30am Sunday
Cecily decided to humour Sebastian and his 'fatal injury', and washed the cut with soap and water, then put a Disney Princess band-aid on it without letting him look at the design. He looked pretty content, spending the indulged time glowering at the shattered lamp. I moved towards the stove and turned it on, greasing a pan and letting the smell of my omelette waft through the kitchen. Cecily stood next to me and prepared a large amount of eggs, bacon and pancakes for the rest of us.
Girls, girls, girls I just can't say no,
Never see them coming I just watch them go
Girls, girls, girls I just can't say no,
Never see them coming I just wa-wa-wa-wa-watch them go,
Take control, making me sweat girl run that show,
It's them girls, girls, girls I just can't say no,
Houston, I think we got a problem…
My ringtone blared out of my phone. Sebastian actually suggested the song, and I went with it. I picked up the vibrating cell phone and brought it to my ear.
"Helloooo?" I asked, drawing out the 'o'.
"Jace, I need you home. Now. My brother is coming from Los Angeles and I need to meet him. His name is Lucian Graymark and he is bringing his partner along too. He'll be at my house in four hours, so get moving." Amatis's strong voice rang clearly through the phone's speaker, conveying urgency and importance. I'd never met Lucian or his partner, but apparently they were friendly and welcoming. According to Amatis, anyway.
"Okay. I'll be there in about three hours. Do I come alone?" I asked, hoping I could bring Seb or Alec to endure this meeting with me.
"Oh, yes. Jace, I need you to bring a girl, preferably one you are interested, and please, no whores in my household. Someone I can respect, okay? Let me know when you have found one." With that, Amatis Graymark, for the first time in my life, hung up on me.
11:45am Sunday
After Amatis's call, I was driving down the main high street in Idris, heading back to New York. I mentally ran through the girls I was prepared to take – and instantly, Clary's fiery hair and petite frame popped up in my mind. I did have her number, but would she want to come with me to some lunch with my family? I knew that it was very unlikely that Amatis would disapprove of her, but we would have to see. I dialled Clary's number into the hands free in my Porsche Carrera, and then I waited for her to pick up while the dial tone rang through the car. After three rings, Clary's sleepy voice echoed in the car.
"Hello? This is Clary." She said with a yawn.
"Hi Clary, it's Jace." I said nervously into the car's microphone.
"Oh, hi, Jace! How can I help you?" She said, seeming more awake now. Yeah, I sometimes have that effect on people…
"I'm great, Clary. But I do need a favour… You see, my adoptive mother Amatis needs me to bring a nice girl to lunch because I am meeting Amatis's brother and his partner for the first time. Are you up for it?" I asked hopefully.
"Sure, Jace! When do I need to be there…? And what is your address?"
"Oh, don't worry about my address. I'll come and pick you up about 2pm, does that sound okay? It's Brooklyn, right?"
"Yep. So, 2pm. Cool. What do I need to wear?"
"Something flattering but not… slutty. Amatis says she does not want whores in her house, and I know you're not one, but just to be sure…?"
She laughed; a sweet sound that I would love to hear more of. "Got it. Thanks Jace, see you then."
"Bye." I hung up, and continued the long journey back to New York.
So yeah, once again, my apologies. This was kind of a filler chapter, but you DID learn quite a bit about the kingdoms and the origins, hopefully. I will be feeding you little bits and pieces about the supernatural community throughout the story, and hopefully by the end you will have a better understanding of how I imagined it.
Thank you to these people especially:
GirlWithASoul for the review and following. Sorry about any confusion, by the way!
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Mortalinstrumentsgurl1 for her review and for sticking with this story and keeping up the good work of reviewing every chapter!
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