Jace sat at Clary's bed side in the dark bedroom of the Lightwood mansion. He listened silently to her steady breathing. His fingertips tracked up and down her still hand that lay closest to him. She looked so peaceful, like she was sleeping after a hard training session. He could only wish. His heart twisted in his chest every time he thought of the horrors she could be experiencing in her nightmares.

He had been reduced to a walking corpse when he saw her on the floor earlier that afternoon. Once he had regained the strength in his legs he had drifted across the room as if in a trance to Clary's side. With extreme gentleness he had bent down and lifted her into his barely steady arms, trying to ignore her resemblance to a rag doll. He acknowledged no one. He just glided to the door and down the hall until he reached his room where he placed her tenderly upon his antique bed.

No one had been in to see him since. For that he was grateful. He knew the moment one of them walked in his emotions would spill over. The tears balancing precariously on his lower lids would tremble in small rivets down his face as his breath left in gusts of wind. He wouldn't let them see him like that, weak, vulnerable and, although he dare not admit it, hopeless.

The fingers teasing along Clary's pale hand began to shiver. Jace's breath hitched. He wanted to be strong but right now the most important thing to him was hurting and he could have stopped it. His eyes swung toward the small red bottle on the small side table. One dosage of the serum that started it all lie pooled at the bottom. If only she had remember. If only he had been here.

"I'm so sorry," he apologized in a broken whisper.

"This was not your fault son."

Jace's head snapped around at the sound of his adoptive father's voice. Robert stood in the doorway with one hand in his pocket. The older man began to walk slowly across the room, understanding how close Jace was to breaking. It hurt him to see his son weighed down by so much guilt. He crouched down beside Jace and placed his hand on the boy's knee.

"This is simply an unfortunate event in which everyone could take the blame. Isabelle could have remembered. Maryse could have refused the interview. Even I could have refused the interview. We all could have attempted to prevent this in some way. But Jace, what's done is done. It's happened now we have to find a way to fix it," Robert said in attempted to rationalize with Jace, "Magnus should be here any minute. Why don't you come downstairs and we'll find a way to get your girl back."

Jace said nothing, he was torn. He wanted to stay with Clary but he'd be no closer to finding a way to save her if he did. So with great reluctance and will he rose from his seat, ignoring the cracking of his dormant joints, and moved toward the door.

Maryse and Isabelle paced anxiously as they waited for Magnus and Alec in the living room. They were also anxious to see if Robert could convince the shell that was once Jace to emerge from the room into which he had retreated. Both had not seen him since the moment in the training room where he had picked her up with such care and grief before carrying her away that it broke their hearts.

The sound of a door closing softly had their heads turning toward the wooden staircase with apprehensive hope. When two pairs of feet came into view at the top, breaths they didn't know they were holding left them in a large huff. Though they did not move, even though their limbs twitched to do so, they just let father and son descend in silence. Only when they reached the foot of the stairs did Jace disconnect himself from where he had been, under his father's arm, and look at them desolate eyes.

A small sob escaped Maryse and she could not contain herself anymore. She threw herself across the room and reefed her son into her arms. He was unresponsive to her touch even as she whispered words of encouragement to him promising it would be ok. But she could not take it to heart, she'd no idea what it must feel like to lose someone again after having lost them repeatedly in such a short space of time and only getting them back for brief moments at a time.

She released Jace and guided him to a couch which Isabelle then seated herself on the opposite end of. Maryse remained standing with her husband waiting for the warlock and her son to arrive. One could cut the tension in the room with a knife, no one spoke, no one moved.

But when the knock on the door they had been waiting for sounded the relief heaved through the room in a great sigh. Robert scurried to open the door. The oak panel swung back to reveal the colourful warlock and their colourless son. Silently Robert ushered them into the lounge where they seated themself on the loveseat in the far corner of the room.

Maryse was the first one to speak, "Thank you for coming so quickly and on such short notice."

"Of course," Magnus nodded.

"What do you suggest we do?" asked Isabelle quietly.

"We have to start hunting for Jonathan. In order to keep Clary in comatose state he must go into a trance as I have said previously. This is the only chance we're going get to catch him off guard. He won't let her wake up now, not after he's lost a week of control. The hardest part will be finding him," Magnus explained with wisdom and authority.

"And we do that how?" again it was Isabelle who asked.

"We use Jace and Clary as bait."