"Okay." Isabelle sat on the bed next to her daughter, smoothing her hair down. "What story do you want to hear tonight?"

"I dunno."

Isabelle laughed, smiling down at Alexia. "Well how are we going to have story time without a story?"

"Make one up!" Alexia said, playing with the bracelet around her wrist. The silver glittered in the light as she twisted it.

Isabelle nodded. "Okay." She said, and began the telling of a story that was anything but make believe.

"Once upon a time, there was a boy and girl. The girl was a strong warrior, with a duty to protect mun—or, um, people. And the boy was a creature of the night—but he wasn't like the others. He was special. Unlike the other evil, nasty creatures, he could walk in the sun. He wasn't evil at all. He was one of the good guys. The boy and girl fell madly in love. And they had a baby girl. Their daughter was the prettiest baby that had ever existed. Almost everybody loved her." Alexia's eyes had began to droop.

"But some evil people wanted to hurt the baby."

"Wha happened?" Alexia said, barely even whispering. Her eyes were completely shut by this point. It wasn't until she heard the soft snores did Isabelle finished the story.

"The girl took her baby and ran far, far away to where no one would ever hurt them. Five years later, they came back. What happened to them? Well, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?" Isabelle leaned down and kissed her daughters forehead, wishing she knew what was in store.

Isabelle padded to her room, pausing to take a deep breath and then pushing the door open. The person who sat up from the couch was not at all who she thought it would be. "Clary?" Isabelle said, shock filtering through her system. She had thought she would find Simon, most likely sprawled across her bed in a position that could only be comfortable to him. Alexia did that so often it was crazy. She had planned to tell him everything, but that would obviously have to wait. Clary smiled at her, giving her a tiny wave."Hey."

"What are you doing here?" Isabelle still couldn't get the shocked look off her face.

"Well, I wanted to talk to you. You know, catch up. Dinner obviously wasn't a good time to do that."

Oh, yeah. Isabelle knew that. As soon as she had sat down, Mayrse had started lecturing her. It seemed Isabelle would never be able to escape those, even though she was now a mother herself. "Yeah, it really wasn't."

"Well, um, first off." Clary's walked up and wrapped her arms around Isabelle. The girl may be tiny, but she could hug like no one else. Isabelle hugged her back, admitting that she had missed her.

She had missed everyone.