The Mortal Instruments world belongs to Cassandra Clare.
Chapter VII
"Thirty three, thirty four, and thirty five! Break," I let my arms drop from the exercise machine, one that was supposed to work on my back and upper arms. My entire body was so uncomfortable that I couldn't tell at this point if that's what it actually did.
"not bad for day five," Lysander said, he had been training with me most days while June had been out running errands. Today, we were at the local gym working out, "That's good enough for today I think,"
"You know, you always say that but we end up doing something else an hour later," I muttered while wiping the sweat off my forehead with one of the gyms complementary towels.
"Hey, that's June not me! I only worked you out for three hours a day!" Lysander said defending his honor.
"Well she makes me run with for another two hours every night on that nightmare of a hill. Maybe if she saw the torture you put me through with these machines she'd go easier on me…"
Lysander laughed, "I wouldn't count on it, according to her standards she'd think I was going too easy on you."
"Ugh, what's she even up to in the mornings?" I said trying to sound nonchalant, so far all my prying for information had been fruitless.
"Looking out for downworlders, I think today she's looking for vamps. A couple attacks happened out in town that looked suspicious; severe blood loss and clouded memories of a strange person," He said while zipping up his jacket.
"Sounds like the same side affects of alcohol consumption, minus the extreme bloodloss… say do you guys ever come across any fairies?" I finally said. I had meant for it to come out nonchalant but when I said it outloud sounded very out of place in our conversation.
"Fairies? None that I know of," Lysander responded while glancing at his watch, "we should head home right now and pick up dinner on the way. Unless you'd want to do a couple more reps?"
I rolled my eyes,"yeah! no."
We began out cool down jog to a pho place and then changed out route home.
"Ugh, about time, I was about to resort to eating bark," Micah said while walking in through the porch door that was attached to the kitchen.
"There's energy bars in the cabnet you could have eaten," Lysander pointed out while handing him a box of pho.
"Yeah maybe if we ran out of bark and earth worms," he replied. Lysander sighed and sat down at the table next to me with his foam box of pho. He delicately picked up the newspaper and flipped to the sports section.
"So what was life like in the day of the Shadowhunters? Mow down any naughty werewolves?" He asked while slurping up a noodle.
"We worked out some and got food," Lysander said.
"Some? I can't feel my legs!" I exclaimed.
"Remind me again why you're still here?" Micah asked while pointing at me with a chopstick. Irritated I decided to ignore the remark.
"I have two months of my high school career left, might as well take advantage of all of my tax funded education right?" I shrugged nonchalantly, Micah looked at me suspiciously while Lysander still was blocked from view because of the paper. The truth was I wanted to buy as much times as possible. I had pleaded to Lysander and June to let me stay saying that I wanted graduate but I kept my real motive secret, I really wanted to find out what happened to Ebony.
I knew that school was the only reason that would allow me to remain in Greaton. June was still not thrilled about the whole idea of allowing me to stay for educational reasons, no matter how insincere. She at first was against it saying that school was unnecessary for Shadowhunters, since you couldn't kill demons with calculus. Eventually she came around with Lysander's persuasion. He had said that not all Shadowhunter jobs necessarily included fighting and some skills might come in handy from school. I thought his reasoning was bullshit but if it bought me time I wasn't going to complain. No matter how much I hated math class.
"Weird that the Clave isn't dragging her to an institute, don't they need everyone who can get a mark carved into themselves no matter how incompetent?"
"Apparently not," I said smiling through gritted teeth. Finally placing down his paper, Lysander began simultaneously digging into his food and joining our conversation.
"We talked to them and they allowed you to stay with us indefinitely until further notice, so we'll need to find you a place to sleep other than the living room."
"We could clean out the shed?" Micah suggested, "or we can clean out the extra room in the tunnels, I don't think it's actually as haunted as legend says."
"Then again graduating high school is so overrated..." I mumbled under my breath.
"He's kidding, you could just room with Micah,"
"You're kidding?" Micah asked.
"Um, I can stay in the living room it's totally cool. That couch is actually more comfortable then my old bed," I reassured.
"See! she's fine with the couch."
"Micah, you have a loft bed and we have a spare mattress to put under it. One plus one means you guys will be roommates. And see, that was an example of math being used in an everyday Shadowhunter situation."