Hey everyone! Yes, this is FINALLY being updated! After a lot of changes. The prologue and first chapter have both been edited and re-uploaded. If you don't want to reread them, all you really have to know is that everyone has been race-bent; that means Clary, Simon, Joscelin, Luke, Izzy, Alec, and Jace are no longer white. They're now of Middle Eastern descent. Also, Alec is no longer a girl in this verse, but non-binary.

I finally have a much stronger grasp of this world and the plot, so hopefully the next update will come faster than this one did! I hope you all enjoy it :D

(Also, the name of this fic will probably change in the near future, so don't be alarmed if the notification for the next chapter has a different title!)

Chapter Two
The White Rose

She woke up because her chest was vibrating.

Clary blinked groggily, her dream of ruby swords and golden wings dissipating like incense in the harsh glare of sunlight, leaving behind only the faint scent of copper and ozone. Her back ached. When had her bed become so hard, and why was it so bright—?

She bolted upright, slapped awake by a jolt of adrenalin. Last night—the performance, the girl in the dress, Jace, monster, wings—

Wings that were gone now. Clary flexed her shoulders tentatively, feeling stupid, but no living rivers of light sprang from her spine. Could she have dreamed them? Or maybe they'd been a hallucination, a side-effect of whatever had turned Simon into the Hulk…? That could be possible. It even sounded likely—far more likely than…

Than the idea that I actually flew.

She ignored the soft pang of regret that played her ribcage like a xylophone, tried not to remember how amazing it had felt to fly above the night-lit city with Simon in her arms.

It wasn't real. It couldn't have been real.

What absolutely was real was that Simon was lying next to her, deeply asleep, his dreams rising from his naked skin in soft eddies of brown sugar and violets. They were on the rooftop of some random building, and judging from the position of the sun, it was mid-afternoon.

Dad is going to kill me.

Her phone stopped vibrating, which reminded her that it had been vibrating in the first place; she swore viciously and yanked it out of her pocket. Too late; it went still in her hand.

And Luke will hide the body.

She swiped past the screensaver (the sweet curve of a naked hipbone; Simon's) and winced. Twenty-seven missed calls, and so many texts she was a little surprised her phone hadn't given up and burst into flames.

They must be going out of their minds, she thought, guilt pooling like venom in her stomach as she pressed her father's contact and raised the phone to her ear, listening to it ring. And I don't blame them one little bit… Nothing like this had ever happened before; she'd never given her dad and Luke any reason to worry, never stayed out late or gone drinking or…anything, really. Why would she, when she had Simon? She'd never needed anything else but her best friend-turned-boyfriend and her family.

No wonder they were freaking out.

Her phone rang and rang. Apprehension began to gather at the back of Clary's throat, barely noticeable at first, but soon it was like breathing in smoke, burning and burning. Her dad always picked up after the first ring.

And he called just a second ago… Could he be mad at her? No, of course he was furious with her, but he wouldn't be so petty as to not answer her call. He wouldn't do that.

The call clicked to voicemail, and Clary swallowed. "Dad, it's me. I'm so sorry for not coming home—some weird stuff happened last night, but we're both safe and we'll be home soon." She made her voice calm and authoritative, as if she were talking to Simon. "Call me back when you get this." She paused. "I love you," she added, more softly.

Stomach churning, she hung up and stared at the screen of her phone, expecting to see it light up with her dad's returned call any second.

It didn't.

After a few minutes, she put the phone away, trying to ignore the growing sense of unease, and nuzzled the back of Simon's neck. "Dearling? I think you should wake up now."

A shot of lemon-citrus melted through the sleepy violets-and-sugar smell of Simon's dreams, and as she stroked her palm over his side he stirred under her hand. "Clary…?"

His skin was oily. Clary frowned and raised her hand, tilting it so the slickness on her fingers gleamed in the sunlight. What the…?

She wiped it off on the ground.

"Um, Clary?" Simon rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky, his eyes gone wide. "Where the hell are we?"

"On a rooftop somewhere. I think we made a run while we were high." A Parkour run, she meant, because going for a jog didn't usually end at the top of an apartment block. "How are you feeling?"

"High… Oh, shit." He sat up quickly. "You—you had wings, and that guy in the alley—"

"I feel confident in saying those were all hallucinations," Clary said firmly. "Those people at Pandemonium must have drugged us."

"Aerosol drugs," Simon mumbled. He put his head in his hands. "Yeah, I remember you saying that last night. Before the wings." He rubbed his forehead. "Okay, but if you tell me I did a run skyclad, I'm going back to sleep."

But since he hadn't gone running naked—Clary distinctly remembered taking off his clothes the night before—but then again, she remembered flying, so—it was an easy thing to gather his clothes from where they'd been scattered across the rooftop.

He was pulling on his shirt when Clary's phone rang again.

This time Clary grabbed it instantly, swiping the screen to answer the call and slapping it against her ear. "Dad? I'm so sorry, Simon and I'll be home soon—"

"No!" her dad said sharply, and Clary froze, because that single syllable was imbued with so much intensity and fear— "Don't come home, don't you dare come home. You and Simon have to—"

A woman's scream pierced the background; Clary heard Luke's voice in the distance shout "Elaine!" Elaine was Simon's mother.

"Dad, what's going on?" Clary demanded, and saw Simon's gaze snap to her, alerted by the brittle panic in her voice. "Where are you? Was that Simon's mom?"

"What about my mom?" Simon asked, but Clary barely heard him.

"Clary, in the saved places on your Google Maps app there's a place listed as 'dry cleaning'. You take Simon and you go there as fast as you can, you don't stop for anything—" There was a crashing noise, and Joscelin grunted as if in pain. "When you get there, tell them your name is Morgenstern and your mother didn't repent. Tell them she's after the Seal. Okay? Do you have all that?"

"Dry cleaning? My mother? Dad, what are you talking about, what's going on?"

"I love you, angel." Her dad's voice was thick; she thought he might be close to tears, and the thought made her want to scream, no no this is all wrong what's happening you have to be okay! "I love you so much. You're the best thing I've ever done." His deep, shuddering breath knifed down Clary's spine. "Don't come home."

The disconnect tone whined in Clary's ear.

"Dad? Dad, wait! Dad!"

"Clary, you're screaming." Simon's voice was gentle, but his fear was a haze of tea tree and hot milk, sick and tangy in her nose. It set her skin to prickling, sparks and nitro-glycerine. "What's happened?"

Clary stared at her phone. She had no name for what she felt, didn't know if it was shock or fear or anger or some hybrid born of all three. "We have to get home," she heard herself say, because there was no other decision she could make. "Right now."

)0(

Apartment buildings in New York tended to cluster together; some of them even stretched entire blocks. It didn't take two Parkour kids long to find their way down to ground level, switching between fire escapes and drainpipes and balconies as required, and once they hit the street there was a subway station and a train and every tick-tick-tick of the clock was a grenade in Clary's chest.

Please please please, let dad and Luke and Mrs Lewis be okay…

Beside her on the train, Simon stood still and quiet, clutching a pole for balance. His other arm was around Clary's waist, holding her tight. He knew only as much as she did, but it was too much, and not enough. With her ear pressed to his chest, Clary could hear his heart pounding like one of Eric's drum solos.

It took them maybe twenty minutes from the end of Joscelin's call to reach home. They hadn't been as far away as Clary had feared, but she was still terrified it was too far as she bolted from the subway with Simon right behind her. Thank all the gods she hadn't worn high heels last night; her soles slammed hard against the pavement, beating like her heart, and she almost, almost flew—

(What she wouldn't have given for wings, now, right now, to reach home even faster—)

Home was a big brownstone that had once been grand, but had in recent years been divided into apartments and gone a little drab; the paint on the door was peeling, and some of the windows begged for a proper scrubbing. Clary's dad said that the ivy growing across the brick was bad for it and would weaken the structure, but it was so pretty that he still came out in autumn to sit on the sidewalk and paint the rioting colours, all sunset and flames—

(He will do it again, he's fine, he will paint for years and years and years yet—)

But she barely saw any of it, when she finally reached the gate; not the dirty windows or the ivy just beginning to turn red. Only the front door, which had been ripped off its hinges and lay discarded next to the porch, and let loose the stench of blood from inside the house.

It was a thick copper-and-iron stench that touched the back of her throat like a finger, like fire, searing through her every cell and leaving crimson lightning in its wake. Not dead menstrual blood, not the few live drops scattered from a sliced finger in the kitchen or a knee scraped in a Parkour roll—this was overwhelming and terrible, drowning out the smell of home.

"Call the cops!" she yelled at Simon over her shoulder. She should have called 911 the second her dad hung up on her, but she didn't, and now— "And an ambulance. And stay here."

She used what they jokingly called her Alpha Tone to make it stick, that particular pitch and inflection that made Simon's eyes glaze over and his knees go weak; she saw him lock in place a few feet down the pavement before she pushed open the gate and walked up to the house.

Every step carried the tang of her father's blood deep into her lungs. It was like walking into a fog that only she could see; she could almost feel the scent against her skin, pressing on her like something tangible, and in response something glittering and razor-edged rose up in her, something that flowed cold and terrible as mercury through her veins. Without conscious thought her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl, because the dirty skylight made the old foyer dim and dark but not enough so to hide the bloodstains soaking into the carpeted stairs; her dad's blood, and Luke's, but the smell of it was not enough to distract her from the myriad other scents that hadn't been here when she left last night—the smell of people, people like her and her dad and Luke and Simon (and Jace and Alec, her mind added in a whisper), people who smelled real in a way that people on the street never did. There'd been men here, males like her father and Luke—four, five, six of them, each one's scent overlaid with something else, a sick perfume that drew a soft hiss of rage from between Clary's teeth. She hated it, that smell, she wanted to track down its source and tear it apart with her bare hands—she almost did, turned away from the stairs for a half-breath fully intending to follow it out the door and wherever it led, before she caught herself. But it was hard to focus on anything else, suddenly; it screamed intruder, that scent, screamed threat and thief, scraping the same unreasoning fury as that girl at the club last night—

Only worse, because whoever it was had hurt her dad and Luke and she would kill them, she would kill the intruder a thousand times for every drop of Joscelin and Luke's blood they'd spilled—

By the time she reached the landing she had every scent memorised; the six males (sage violet white tea cucumber birch clove) and that one other, the one who was like her and Mrs Lewis, who was female and wrong; thick, cloying rose-scent and marzipan and salt. That one had hung back while her males did the work, had stood here and watched while they ripped apart the door of Joscelin's apartment. Bits of wood and splinters were scattered across the landing; Clary's foot nudged the brass doorknob as she moved closer to her home, stepping lightly, silently.

The smell of blood was even stronger here.

She paused in the doorway, resting a hand on the door frame and straining to hear—anything. Any sign that the people who had done this were still here. Her dad's voice, or Luke's. But all she could hear was her own breathing, her own furious heartbeat.

Joscelin had always been something of a paranoid father. Clary had grown up knowing there were a dozen guns concealed around their home, and twice that many knives––her dad had given her a fake lipstick that twisted open into a vicious dagger for her twelfth birthday, then spent the next six months teaching her how to use it; every birthday since then had come with a new blade, until yesterday. No matter where you were in the apartment, there was always something sharp hidden within easy reach. She and Simon used to spend sleepovers coming up with the most outlandish explanations they could think of for Joscelin's fears; he was on the run from the Yakuza, he was ex-KGB, his family were European royalty and if they ever found him, they would drag him back to Europe to marry some inbred duchess with too many corgis…

They'd never believed any of it, but now, as Clary drew the Beretta M9 from where it was taped to the underside of the hall table, she remembered what Joscelin had said to her on the phone: 'Your mother didn't repent.' She remembered the stink of other that was all over the apartment, and wondered if the thing Joscelin had been afraid of all these years—the reason he'd enrolled Clary in Krav Maga, the reason he'd insisted she learn Parkour, the reason he'd taken her and Simon to the gun ranges every weekend for the last four years—was because her mother wasn't dead at all.

Braced for anything—for a monster, for a mother, for them to be the same thing—Clary searched the apartment room by room, thumbing off the Beretta's safety as she went. It was as if a hurricane had blown through; chairs were overturned and broken, paintings fallen from the walls. One of the bookcases had been knocked over, its contents scattered across the floor. The mirror in the hallway was broken, the frame empty, vicious silver shards rained down to puddle beneath it. More telling still was the miasma of fear and desperation, panic and pain and rage that seemed embedded in the walls, a cocktail that at any other time would have made Clary retch, but now only made her feel colder; stagnant water and cigarette stink, valerian and pepper and yew flowers. And blood, always blood, not quite overpowering enough to drown out the rose-marzipan-salt scent that whispered enemy in a language older and purer than words.

She found Mrs Lewis in the kitchen. She was lying on the floor, surrounded by a slick red lake that pooled around her body like a demonic aura; the stench of it was unbelievable, rust-raw and thick as smog. Clary didn't blink, felt nothing at the sight, just checked the corners of the room for hidden invaders and continued on until she'd cleared the entire apartment, until it was clear that there was no one else here. No strange males with blood on their hands. No Luke. No Joscelin. No rose-stinking stranger.

Only when she was sure it was safe did she hit the safety on her gun and go back to the kitchen. The stink of all that blood should have made her choke, should have had her retching and fighting not to throw up, but her gag reflex had gone out like a light and she felt nothing. She paused in the doorway and found herself staring at Mrs Lewis dispassionately, cataloguing her injuries as coolly as a coroner; something sharp had slashed deeply and repeatedly at the woman's chest, at least four or five neat-edged strikes criss-crossing the chest and torso. There might have been more, but Mrs Lewis' dress was soaked in crimson and it was difficult to evaluate the damage. They might have been from a knife—

(Wings of living light and metal, sweeping down like guillotines—)

Clary blinked, and realised that she was just standing here in the doorway while her boyfriend's mother bled to death on the floor.

She expected sudden panic to burst within her at the realisation; it didn't. She set the gun on the kitchen counter and found aluminium foil, tape and scissors, quickly and deftly but without any desperate need for haste driving her. Even when she knelt down beside Mrs Lewis and started cutting and folding the foil the way Luke had shown her, making sure each patch was at least two inches wider than the cuts she used them on, she felt no fear. No panic or desperation. Only a cool indifference. She did what she had to because it had to be done, but it couldn't touch her, didn't faze her, not even when she had to push her fingers into one of the wounds to establish how large it was; the slick, wet slide of blood and flesh didn't unnerve her, and the terrible smell didn't bother her. Mrs Lewis' blood was soaking into Clary's jeans and she didn't care. Her dad and Luke were gone, missing, their blood splattered on walls and drying on the stairs outside, but that, too, was suddenly distant and far away. There was only the indifferent calm, and while part of her realized that this was bizarre, the rest shrugged and got on with what needed to be done.

She was on the second-last patch when Mrs Lewis stirred. "Clary…?"

"There's an ambulance on the way," Clary said without looking at her; her blood-sticky fingers deftly folded and re-folded the foil. Simon would have called, because Clary had told him to. "I've patched most of your injuries already."

"Don' deserve it…" Mrs Lewis mumbled, slurring a little. "Tried to keep them safe… Couldn't. 'm sorry, sweetheart."

"Please don't talk," Clary said calmly, but Mrs Lewis continued to do just that as Clary finished the patch and started taping it down.

"You…have to…go…" Mrs Lewis coughed, and the motion jerked a heart-wrenching cry from her throat.

"No one is going anywhere until the ambulance gets here," Clary said. Her hands had already started on the last patch, without needing any input from her.

"…go," Mrs Lewis said again, more forcefully. "She'll be…back. Kill you if…she finds you. Go!"

Clary's hands paused. The cool haze parted briefly. "My mother?" she whispered, despite herself.

Mrs Lewis suddenly grabbed Clary's jacket, and Clary almost snarled, only biting back the sound when she saw just how weak Mrs Lewis' fist was. Her usually sepia skin was pale with blood loss. "She will take Simon," the woman forced out, through teeth gritted against what had to be unspeakable agony, "if she finds you. Don't you let her touch my boy, Clary. Don't you dare."

The ice shattered as if under a battering ram, and under it there was only fire, enraged and blazing. Clary did not need Mrs Lewis to say any more to know that the she referred to was the one who smelled like roses and salt, who had left her stink all over Clary's territory, who had hurt and taken her father and almost-father. The she that was going to die screaming when Clary got her hands on her.

"I'll keep him safe." It was not a promise; it was a statement. "She won't touch him."

Simon's mom sighed. "You're a good girl."

Her fingers slid limply from their grasp on Clary's jacket, and her eyes fell closed.

She was still breathing as Clary numbly finished the last patch and taped it into place, but she didn't stir, not even when Clary got up and collected the gun from the counter. Mrs Lewis' breathing was harsh and quick, which could be a sign of a sucking chest wound, but Clary had done all she could; she had to go. Even without Mrs Lewis' warning, Clary would not have been willing to linger; the roses-marzipan-salt woman, the one whose stink was all over the apartment, had taken Joscelin and Luke and almost killed Mrs Lewis, and she might come back.

If the Rose really was Clary's mother, there was a very good chance she would come back and take her daughter as she'd taken her ex-husband.

Without looking back at the woman who'd baked her birthday cake just yesterday, Clary quickly left the kitchen and threw together a go-bag. The same people who'd torn apart her home had wrecked her room, but not so badly that she couldn't find what she wanted; clothes and toiletries and pepper spray, the knife taped to the back of her headboard and the one hidden in her menstrual supplies. Beneath the false bottom of a drawer she recovered her passport, a roll of emergency cash, and a disposable cell phone. She shoved it all in a bag, changed quickly into fresh clothes, and was looking for the first aid kit in the studio when she heard a noise behind her.

She whirled, bringing the Beretta up two-handed—and froze in complete confusion as the intruder put zir hands in the air.

It was the enby from last night, Alec, and once again zir strange scent jumped out at Clary, impossibly soothing and impossibly strange. It defied definition, and Clary could no more figure out zir gender in the bright light of day than she'd been able to in the dim club the night before; ze was as androgynous physically as ze was scent-wise. Pretty, almost beautiful, actually, with dark messy hair and the same richly coloured skin as Clary's own. Ze was taller than her, everyone was taller than Clary, but ze couldn't have been much older; eighteen or nineteen, maybe, early twenties at the very most. In daylight zir eyes were a startling blue, bright as jewels.

"Sorry!" Alec said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Who are you?" Clary demanded. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm the Sundancer norea. My name is Alexandre—you can call me Alec." Ze frowned at the Beretta. "Do you think you could put the gun away, Syre? I'm not going to hurt you."

"Why," Clary repeated through gritted teeth, "are you here, Alec?"

Alec hesitated. "Well, you didn't show up at the Haven this morning," ze said apologetically. "And Izzy said that you weren't manifested yet, even though Jace said you damn well were—sorry, Syre, his words, not mine—anyway, she, Izzy, sent me to come find you and escort you to the Haven."

Jace. Just the thought of her golden boy set a burning hunger alight in her belly, made her insides clench tight. Mine. But Clary pushed the desire away, focussing on the more important parts of Alec's message. "I'm not going anywhere with you," she said coldly.

Alec blinked. "But—Syre, you're in the Sundancer canton. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to explain to the Sundancer lilitare what you're doing here."

"Look, if you don't want me in your stupid club then I won't go back there, all right?" Clary snapped.

"That's not what I meant." Alec rolled zir eyes as if pleading for patience from some Heavenly power. "I'm sorry, I'm not doing this right. This canton is Sundancer territory, Syre. You shouldn't be here."

"I live here!"

Alec blinked again, confused. "What?"

"I live here. I've lived here my whole life, and I'm not going to go live in, in Moscow or something just because you say so!"

"Moscow belongs to the Firebirds," Alec said, even more puzzled. "Why would you go there? Are they your kin?"

She didn't have time for this. "Look, I'm going to say this one more time, because you don't seem to be getting it: I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know you, I'm not listening to you, and I am definitely not going anywhere with you. Now get out of my way."

Alec didn't move, but the scent of snow and lavender began to fill the room, the same soothing, reassuring aroma that had put Simon into a drugged serenity last night. Clary fired a warning shot without hesitation.

"Try and drug me, and I will shoot you," she said coldly.

She expected Alec to scoff, but the enby grew pale. "Syre, please," ze said, even as ze stepped to one side to let Clary pass. "I'm trying to help you."

"I don't need your help!" Clary snapped. She kept the gun up and her gaze on Alec, carefully walking past zir. The drug in the air had dissipated; Clary had no idea how Alec had produced it, since she hadn't seen an aerosol can anywhere, but she was wary of Alec trying to use it again.

When she judged herself at a safe distance, she thumbed on the safety, turned, and fled the apartment.

)0(

She emerged in the sunlight serenaded by approaching police sirens, made a split-second decision, and didn't stop. Instead she grabbed Simon's wrist as she ran past, pulling him along with her.

He didn't fight her, didn't even question her. He just started running.

)0(

The moment they were out of sight of the house, Clary led Simon up onto the rooftops, leaping from a dumpster to catch a fire escape and swinging herself up onto the sky-road. She focussed on the rush of feeling her own body's power and grace, the sweet burn of physical exertion, the thrill of being young and strong and capable of what she wanted. She translated vectors and distances into jumps and rolls, vaults and flips, and thought of nothing but the pound of concrete and metal under her feet and the wind snatching at her hair.

But nobody could run forever, and Clary didn't try. When she could no longer hear the ambulance sirens, she stopped, and gestured for Simon to stop too.

He did, and watched her. He still asked no questions, but he didn't need to speak to tell her he was afraid; the scent rising from his skin was near enough to that which Joscelin and Luke and Mrs Lewis had left in Clary's apartment to sicken her.

"Down," Clary said finally—in the Alpha Voice, firm and clear and brooking no disobedience whatsoever—and Simon dropped for her. He went down on his knees there on the rooftop without hesitation, and the curve of his spine was sacred calligraphy, the peace that swept over his face as he knelt at her face a benison.

Gently, she slid her fingers into his hair and drew him closer until his cheek pressed against her thigh. Even before she touched him, the sour tang of his fear had melted into something sweeter and calmer, and now the scents of coconut and vanilla wafted up to her, a perfume she wished he could always wear.

"Your mom was at my place," she said quietly. She stroked his hair, over and over, anchoring him here and now and with her. "With my dad and Luke. Someone attacked them; that's when dad called and told me not to come home. But we went back anyway, didn't we?"

Simon hummed in agreement, almost sleepily. He'd dropped down deep, deeper than she'd meant for him to go, but maybe that was best; it would be easier for him to hear what she had to say through the haze of subspace.

"Dad and Luke were gone," she told Simon. "Your mom was there. She was very badly hurt, but I gave her first-aid. She's probably going to be in hospital for a while, but I think she's going to be okay." The police cars and ambulance had been almost on the doorstep when she and Simon left, she thought coolly. They would find Mrs Lewis very quickly.

The horror of it all still did not touch her. She kept waiting and waiting for it, but it hadn't yet come.

"Your mom said that she tried to protect my dads, but couldn't. And that whoever it was would kill me and take you if she found us. That's why we left."

Simon nodded, slowly, against her leg. Clary kept petting him.

"One of those people from Pandemonium was there. Alec. Did you see zem come in after me?"

This time Simon shook his head.

Clary considered that. She had not scented Alec in the apartment when she'd entered it, so ze must have come in after her. The brownstone had a back door that led to a small, scrubby garden; maybe Alec had come in that way. She filed it away to think about later; it didn't seem very important right now.

There were other things she had to think about later.

"Dad said there's a saved location in my phone that we should go to. So we're going to head to your house, pack you a bag, and go wherever it is my dad wanted us to go." It was not a question, or a suggestion. This was what they would do. "We're going to go very quickly, because it sounds like whoever attacked our parents is looking for us too. Do you understand?"

Simon nodded again.

Despite everything, Clary found herself smiling. Simon's faith in her was more soothing than any drug, as if simply by virtue of believing her to be capable of handling anything, he made her so. His faith in her… It was humbling that he gave her this, that he chose to give her this. Humbling—and empowering. Simon's adoration, his worship, worked alchemy as it roared through her veins, transmuting her mortal blood to godly ichor. When he knelt at her feet, he made her into a goddess.

"I love you so much," she told him softly. "You're so, so good for me, Si. God, I'm so proud of you." He hadn't faltered once all morning, had trusted her without question, without hesitation. He'd had every right to balk or freak out, but he hadn't, because she'd needed him not to.

He deserved so much more than he was likely to get today.

She breathed in his blissful pleasure at having pleased, felt it in the way he relaxed against her leg. The scent made her ache as she drew it deep into her lungs, a warm molten heat pooling low in her stomach. She wanted so badly to kiss him breathless. His lips would be soft and slack if she kissed him now, unresisting, too deep in the subspace to even beg…

But there was no time for that. No time, and yet as she coaxed him back to reality she went slowly. She'd long ago learned that taking him out of a drop too quickly left him shaken and sick, uneasy in his skin and mind, sometimes for days, and not even the unrelenting pressure of knowing they needed to be moving was enough to make Clary subject him to that. Instead she kept petting him, making sure she was always touching his hair or his cheek as she kept up a continuous stream of heart-felt praise. At home she would have wrapped him in blankets and cuddled him until he felt solid again, made him sandwiches or pancakes and bullied him into drinking a fruit smoothie. Here she only had what was in her go-bag to work with, but she fed him bits of energy bar and squares of milk chocolate until he blinked up at her with clear eyes.

"You ready to get up?" she asked gently, and he nodded.

She helped him to his feet and hugged him, still murmuring, stroking her palm down his spine over and over. His arms came up around her, and for a long minute they stayed like that. She let him breathe, felt him shift and settle inside himself, felt him cast his anchor between the white arcs of her ribcage.

Where it hooked and caught, as it always had—and always would.

"Good boy," Clary said again—meaning it, always meaning it. "Are you ready?"

He nodded. "Yes," he said quietly.

She pulled away a little to kiss him softly, cupping his face in her hands. "Good. Then let's go."

)0(

They travelled most of the way to Simon's house by rooftop. Like Clary's family, Simon and his mom lived in an old converted brownstone; unlike Joscelin and Luke, Mrs Lewis owned her building, renting out the other five apartments to other families. More than once she had offered to put up Clary's family in one of those very apartments, rent free. Joscelin had always smiled and politely but firmly declined, without explanation; Elaine channelled her disappointment by feeding them, bringing baked goods and pot roasts and hearty lasagnes to the Fray household at least twice a week. Clary had never understood the dynamic between Simon's mom and her dads, but she was grateful for the food. Nobody cooked like Mrs Lewis.

Clary and Simon entered through the back of the building, shimmying down a drainpipe and onto one of the flowering balconies that grew out of the back wall. Clary listened for the sound of police sirens as Simon unlocked the balcony door with his key, but she could hear nothing. Maybe they were just too far away for the sound to carry, but she thought it more likely that the cops had turned the sirens off now that they were at the scene. By now some rookie would be setting up police tape around the bloodstains and broken door, and forensics teams would have been called. Hopefully Simon's mom had already been whisked away to the sterile safety of a hospital.

Maybe they should have stayed to talk to the cops, but Clary didn't think she'd made a mistake there. They didn't know who was looking for them, didn't know if the Rose might have eyes in law enforcement. If she did, talking to the police would be like stepping into a spotlight; there would be a paper trail, and because Clary and Simon were minors without any other relatives to take care of them, they would probably get dumped in a group home for someone else to deal with. They would be sitting ducks. No, better to stay off the radar entirely until they knew what was going on.

It wasn't as if telling the police what the attackers smelled like would help their investigation any.

Once they were inside the apartment, Clary made Simon wait while she did a quick sweep, looking—and smelling—for signs that strangers had been here. But there was no blood-scent here, no rose-stink, and nothing was out of place. It seemed that the Rose had either not found or not reached Simon's home yet.

She sent Simon to pack a go-bag while she paced from room to room, watching the windows and listening for a sound at the door. Clary did not often visit Simon's home, because his mother's scent was embedded in the walls. Now she realised that what bothered her about it—made her snappish and short-tempered, as if a smell could itch—was a lesser version of what had made her ready to kill the girl in white the night before. The same something, but weaker, not so intense. Diluted.

Which led her to considering some of the things she'd set aside to think about later. Primarily the particular realisation which she had missed in the chaos last night but that had leapt out at her upon seeing Alec in the light of day, which was: Alec and zir friends looked like Clary and Joscelin.

It should have been impossible. Clary had never seen anyone else who looked quite like her—Simon and his mom came close, but the bones in their faces were subtly different, their skin not quite the right shade. Luke came closer still, so close he and Joscelin might have been cousins instead of lovers—but Luke was paler than Clary and her dad too, darker than Simon but not dark enough. Clary had never stopped to think about it; she had accepted her father's explanation that their family was a hodgepodge mess of ethnicities, and that was why they didn't fit neatly into any category. This was New York; she didn't know anyone who defined themselves as more than an American, who didn't have parents and grandparents and great-grandparents from all over the place. She was hardly the only teenager unable to stick an easy label on their heritage.

But these strangers… The shape of their faces, the shade of their skins, their lithe builds and the liquid grace with which they moved—they were like her. They even smelled like her, like real people—like Clary's dads and Simon and, to a lesser extent, his mother.

Like whoever had attacked Mrs Lewis and taken Luke and Joscelin.

Clary had known she was different for most of her life. No one else had a sense of smell like hers; Simon's research on the topic suggested that humans were physically incapable of smelling the things she could. Other girls had friends who were also girls, because they didn't have instincts that screamed that all other females were threats to be driven off with violence. Other girls had started menstruating by seventeen. And other (straight) girls might love their boyfriends, but they could appreciate the looks of more than one male, couldn't they? Whereas no male but Simon, no matter how objectively handsome, had ever sparked a flicker of sexual interest in Clary; no actor, no supermodel, no hot barista at the local Starbucks. Only Simon.

And, now, Jace. Gods and goddesses, just thinking about her golden boy made molten gold pool between her legs, hot and liquid. The memory of his scent… She had to swallow hard, remembering, her mouth suddenly dry. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe in the smell of him until it was nested in her lungs. She wanted to kiss him until he couldn't breathe; she wanted to bite him, bite until his skin gave under her teeth and flooded her mouth with his taste—

With effort, she dragged her thoughts away from fantasy and back to reality.

The point was—the point was, Clary knew full well she wasn't normal. But she also knew that most people weren't, when you got right down to it, and so she'd never worried about it much.

But now there were people like her. People who looked like her, moved her like her, smelled like her. More of them had kidnapped her dads and hurt Mrs Lewis. Clary wasn't a freak of nature; she was part of a group. A group that probably included her dad and Luke and Simon and Mrs Lewis too, because they all looked and smelled varying degrees of right. And some parts of that group were now looking for her and Simon.

Her dad had known. The guns, the Parkour, the martial arts, the home-schooling—he'd known, and he'd tried to prepare her.

He'd lied to her, but he'd tried to prepare her.

She thought about that for a little while.

He had also, it seemed, prepared some kind of safe-house or bolt-hole for just this situation. Clary pulled out her phone to look at the address. She almost never used the map application on her phone, because she and Simon both had an excellent sense of direction, but there was the address, hidden in plain sight amidst the handful of other saved locations: dry cleaning. It was an address in East Flatbush, and Clary knew a moment of relief; a part of her had been afraid that she might have had to get herself and Simon out of the state, maybe even out of the country…

The thought struck her like a lightning bolt: maybe her dads had gotten away. Maybe, when Clary had Simon reached this place, Joscelin and Luke would be there waiting for them.

No. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe. No, she couldn't think about that. She couldn't hope for that. It was so vanishingly unlikely—gods, forget everything else, her dads would never have left Mrs Lewis behind if they'd escaped!

Unless they had no choice, a voice whispered in Clary's mind.

No. No. It might, might be true, but she had to act as though it wasn't. Otherwise—

Abruptly her thoughts derailed, shuddered to a stop and then snapped down to a single, razor-sharp point. That scent…

In her pacing, she had come closer to Mrs Lewis' room than she ever had before. Normally Clary avoided it, because Mrs Lewis' natural scent, however objectively pleasant, made something in Clary bare its teeth and raise its hackles—and naturally that scent was more concentrated in Mrs' Lewis bedroom than anywhere else in Simon's home. It still was, but now that she was standing by the room's door Clary could smell something else almost hidden beneath it—something sweet and rich and familiar…

Barely aware of what she was doing, Clary opened the door and walked into the room, following the scent.

"I think I'm done, but you might want to—Clary?"

For the first time she could remember, Clary ignored Simon as she knelt down beside his mother's bed. Without hesitation she then lay down on her stomach and started pulling out the shoe boxes, books and other junk that had been stashed under the bed, discarding them on the carpet.

"What are you doing?" Simon asked from behind her. "Clary?"

"Hang on," she said distractedly. "There's something…"

She'd wriggled half-under the wrought-iron frame before she found the source of the scent, and then she had to squirm back out before she could examine it. Simon sat on the edge of the bed, watching curiously.

"I think it's for you," Clary said. She found herself holding a plain white box, long but narrow. It might have been a shoebox at one point, the kind meant for knee-high boots. Simon's name was written neatly on the lid in his mom's handwriting, and the whole thing just exhaled that incredible perfume. Clary itched to open it, but instead she gestured Simon down to sit on the floor next to her and put the box in his lap.

Inside the box was another box—and immediately Clary knew why it had smelled so familiar, because the inner box looked just like the one Joscelin had given her yesterday, the elaborately engraved wooden box that had held her new necklace. This one was much larger, resting very snugly inside its shoebox shell, but it was made of the same wood and covered in the same intricate carvings as Clary's.

And it smelled just the same.

She and Simon shared a confused glance, and then, at Clary's nod, Simon lifted the second lid.

This time they both gasped.

Nestled on a bed of red silk were a pair of honest-to-Kore vambraces, forearm-sleeves of shining metal like something out of Dragon Age. They were shaped like six-winged angels, the sleeves formed out of the curved, sweeping wings, and the angels themselves each clasped what looked like a black opal in their hands, the gems polished smooth and nearly the size of eggs. They were lined with silk and leather, but Clary couldn't see any clasps or buckles, any way to open them and put them on. They were just solid metal.

"What the…" Simon whispered, stunned. "Are those real?"

"They look brand new." The vambraces gleamed like polished platinum, with no scratches or dents, and Clary didn't think anyone put jewels on armour except in fantasy novels. Which meant these weren't old historical pieces, but made recently, maybe for a movie set or Live Action Role-Playing. But Simon wasn't a LARPer, so why would his mom have a pair of these in a box with his name on it? They wouldn't have made any sense as a gift, however beautiful they were. "Did your mom ever mention these?"

"No. I'd have told you. They're gorgeous." Simon picked them up for a closer look, lifting them out of the box. "They must be worth a fortune…"

Suddenly the metal vambraces rippled like quicksilver. Simon yelped and tried to drop them, but the wings—the angels' wings opened, all twelve of them, and beat as if they were going to fly; but they didn't. Instead they leapt to Simon's forearms as if magnetised and snapped tight, the wings wrapping around his arms like platinum ribbons, fluttering and shimmering.

In less time than it took to tell it they were solid again, seamless and beautiful and impossible.

"What the fuck?" Simon shook his arms, his eyes all whites. "What the—what just—Clary!" He kept shaking his arms, but the vambraces didn't budge. The exquisitely rendered feathers didn't so much as twitch. "Get them off me!"

"I don't think they're going to come off," Clary said, recovering from her surprise—at least enough to speak. "Simon, hush, okay, they're not hurting you, are they?"

He stopped trying to shake them off, but he stared at them, trembling violently. "N-no…but…"

"They had your name on them," Clary pointed out reasonably. A little warily, she reached out and brushed her finger along one wing, half-expecting the vambrace to leave Simon and latch onto her. But it stayed simple, solid metal, not feathery in the least. "Obviously they're meant for you."

Simon looked up and stared at her, wide-eyed. "They—you saw that, right? They moved on their own!"

"Mm." Clary bent her head closer to examine the closer vambrace. "Maybe it's some new military thing. Coded to your DNA?"

"Like… Like fingerprint-locked guns?" Simon asked hesitantly.

"Why not? They're building invisibility cloaks and prosthetic arms that can feel touch now. This isn't that much weirder. Just prettier." She straightened up. The vambraces didn't look like they had tech in them, but it wasn't as though Clary was an expert. For all she knew, those opals were just well-disguised computer chips or something. "Better question is: why the hell does your mom have something like this under her bed?"

Simon shrugged helplessly, but her imperturbation was smoothing away his panic faster than any reassurances could have done. For the final touch Clary curved her hand around the back of his neck, her thumb stroking circles over his pulse, and he shivered and relaxed into it.

She didn't wonder aloud why the military would want to make vambraces, which were hardly part of modern body armour. She didn't want Simon to be afraid of what the things on his arms might be able to do. She hadn't seen anything that looked like it might fire a bullet or even a laser when she'd looked, but again, it wasn't as if she knew what to look for. They were just going to have to hope that Simon didn't accidentally set them off—or better yet, that there wasn't anything to set off.

First more people that looked like her and Simon. Now Joscelin and Mrs Lewis both having strange objects in almost identical boxes. What were the chances it wasn't all part of the same mystery?

What were dad and Mrs. Lewis involved in?

"Go find a long-sleeve shirt," she said finally. "Or a jacket. We'll cover them up."

"Okay…" Obediently, if gingerly, Simon started to get up—

And they both froze as they heard the front door open.

"Search it all." A woman's voice, cool and smooth as ice, glass, stone, reached Clary's ear. Instinct made Clary draw a breath, scenting through her mouth like a tiger, and some part of her was unsurprised to taste the stench of roses in her throat, faint but already growing stronger. Under and around it, the scents of the same males that had been at Clary's apartment. "Every inch. I want to know everywhere they could have gone."

Silently, Clary reached under her jacket. Her pulse thudded strong and steady against the inside of her wrist as heavy, adult footsteps sounded throughout the apartment, and as she drew out the Beretta she thumbed off the safety.

It all fell into place in her mind: there was no way to the roof from this room. The balcony opened onto the apartment's sitting room, but the front door was closer. Therefore, she had to get herself and Simon to that door.

Any second now, one of the Rose's males was going to appear in the doorway. But he would not be expecting a teenage markswoman.

"Stick to me like glue," she whisper-ordered, and Simon nodded, going calm, going relaxed, slipping into the easy headspace of obedience like an otter into a river.

Quickly, she touched her fingertips to his cheek, wordless praise—and when a man (violets, he smelled like violets and ashes and dry, barren earth) stepped into the doorway, she shot the stranger in the chest.

She and Simon were up before he'd even fallen, the tearing crack of the gunshot (iron-graphite-nitro-glycerine scent like a slap to the brain) still bursting through the apartment as they burst through the doorway over the falling corpse. Simon had his pack and she had hers and there, two adult males, another coming out of Simon's bedroom, two from the kitchen, a swirl of sage and birch and tea and clove in her nose and mouth and turning towards her, a tall woman in white leather with a toxic spill of poison-white hair—

The Rose—

Her scent burst like a bomb in Clary's lungs and it all went red and terrible and senseless; she forgot the door, forgot the escape or the gun in her hand; it all washed away under the tsunami of mindless rage that broke upon her shore. Her lips pulled back and she snarled like an animal, seeing only the woman's dark eyes, knowing only her scent (roses and salt) feeling it beat against her like fists: foe rival enemy threat-threat-threat!

DESTROY.

Growls and snarls sounded around her, and they were far away, impossibly distant; dimly she heard Simon snarl back, felt his bag brush hers as he turned back-to-back with her, covering her. Clary felt a stab of pride through the crimson haze.

The woman held up her hand, quieting her males; her eyes were calm, but her hand trembled slightly. She was wearing something out of Skyrim; it was armour, plates of white leather and silvery metal overlapping like dragon scales to form a light, flexible tunic, decorated with golden scrollwork angels at the shoulders, forearms, and waist. Below the tunic were matching white trousers, similarly made up of leather and metal, and snowy combat boots with engraved silver buckles. Even her fingertips were covered by long gloves with metal scales tracing out her tendons, but the lower half of her face was hidden behind a scarf the same colour as the snow-melt hair tumbling down her back, the cloth so soaked in perfume it almost drowned out the woman's rose-scent. Only her eyes and brow were visible; eyes that were the same rich brown as Clary's, set in a face the same colour as Clary's own.

"Clarissa," the woman said. She did not remove the scarf. "I was hoping—"

Clary shot her.

Shot at her, rather; in her hand-shaking fury, the shot went wide and chaos erupted, the Rose's three-four-five males roaring and attacking all at once, drawing knives and swords of ruby-red crystal—

Clary spun and snatched at Simon and oh, turning her back on the woman was like tearing her heart out but she did it, did it for Simon, pulled him close and saw his face twisted, pupils blown black and his fingers curled into useless, vicious claws—

She glimpsed, for an instant, the metal coat-rack by the door twisting like taffy, the mirror on the wall cracking and crunching as its silver frame warped like a Salvador Dali painting, coins left on the table crumpling in on themselves like paper in a fire—

On her finger, the ring Simon had given her twisted, tightened—

"Close your eyes!" a familiar voice shouted, and without thinking Clary ducked, pulling Simon down with her in time to see a dozen smooth pebbles tossed down on the floor around them—

And shut her eyes just as light detonated through the space, blinding even through her eyelids.

Male voices cried out, and Clary breathed in the stink of shock and pain—

She jumped when a hand gripped hers, swung the gun up, but she scented Alec before her eyes were open and didn't pull the trigger. "Come on!" Alec said urgently, but Clary pulled her hand free and grabbed Simon's, first, only then following as Alec ran between the stunned and blinded men, more pebbles clutched in zir hand.

"Stop them!" the woman shouted from behind them. "Stop them—Clarissa!"

Clary didn't turn around, didn't look back, breathed shallow breaths to keep the scent of roses from fogging her brain. She saw Alec take something from zir belt, a little vial of something red, and smash it against the front door frame; caught the smell of blood, coppery and real, right, it smelled like the Rose and Simon's mom and most of all like the girl at Pandemonium but it didn't bring the fury back. Beside her Simon made a sound in the back of his throat, confused, shocked, hungry, and then Alec stepped aside, ushering them through, "Go, I'll follow, go," and Clary ran through the door without pause, Simon's hand tight in hers—

And ran out, not into the corridor of Simon's building, but into sunlight and grass, trees and sky and the wind on her face. She ran through the doorway and was suddenly outside, and Simon was beside her but the apartment was gone, the building was gone, and when Clary spun around to look, she saw no door, no Rose, and no Alec.

They were alone.