Chapter 2

"Do you ever think of looking up your true heritage? Now that we know who your real father is and all, do you ever want to know who you ancestors were?" Clary was perched on the foot-board of her bed, cell phone pressed to her ear, her feet dangling just inches from the floor. It wasn't hard getting used to Luke's house itself - she and Simon had often spent free time here – but it was different to think that she would be livingthere.

Shifting the phone to her other ear, Clary let herself fall back onto her bed. She had been thinking since Jace returned about his father, his grandmother – the Inquisitor – who died on Valentine's boat. Really, she had thought of his heritage in general. After all that they had found out, she was still curious. All that they were truly sure of was that his grandmother was the old Inquisitor. Stephen Herondale was her son, and Jace's father. Stephen had been married to Luke's sister, Amatis, but Valentine had forced them to divorce. A new wife was brought forth for him – Céline Monteclaire. Oh, and Jace was raised by Valentine when his mother, Céline, died – he and Sebastian kept secret from each other.

Jace sighed at the other end of the line. "I've never put that much thought into it, really," he said. "I just know what I've been told."

"Where do you think we could find anything?"

"The Institute's library should have some family trees and records. Stuff like that. We could try there."

"Okay. I'll be there in a few minutes. See you," Clary took the phone from her ear and ended the call. She pulled her unruly red hair into a ponytail, stepped into a pair of shoes, and made her way downstairs. Jocelyn appeared around the corner as Clary reached the bottom.

"Going somewhere, Clary?" She had a box of noodles in one hand, a wooden spoon in the other.

"I was going to call Simon to see if he could take me to the Institute," Clary said, reaching for her jacket on the back of the couch. Jocelyn's smiling expression changed to one of disdain. "...to do some training." Clary added, trying to please her mother.

Jocelyn sighed. "I'm making spaghetti for supper. Hurry and call Simon, but you'd better be back before your food's cold." And with that, she retreated into the kitchen.

Clary turned and dialed Simon's number as she stepped outside; he picked up after the third ring.

"What's up?"Simon asked. Clary could hear his band-mates talking and laughing in the background, but no sounds from their instruments; she assumed that they were just about to begin practice or had just ended.

"I was hoping you could take me to the Institute," she said, "but if you're busy, I–"

"No, it's fine. We just finished. I was going to take Kirk home and–"

"I'm good, bro! I can walk!" Clary heard Kirk shout. His voice echoed in Eric's garage, where the band normally practices.

"Okay, then," Simon shouted back, then directed his next line at Clary. "I can come pick you up in a few; I've got my things packed up, so it shouldn't take me long." She heard what must have been Simon opening the garage door and stepping outside; the opening of his car door a few seconds later.

"That's great," she said. "I'll be waiting outside. See you in a bit" When Simon replied with a "See you," Clary hung up and sat on the steps to the house, waiting. A sudden sharp pain in her forehead made her squeeze her eyes shut and take a deep breath. It subsided after a moment, and Clary leaned back against the steps, wondering what had overcome her. When it came again, it was worse, and she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, trying to massage her temples, but nothing could relax the pain. Her ears rang, and she opened her eyes to look around for Simon, but he wasn't there yet – of course he wasn't - she had just hung up.

The next thing Clary knew was that everything was black, but she didn't remember closing her eyes. Images flashed across her vision – a carriage with Pandemonium Club written on the side and a circle made of two snakes biting each other's tails, humans that weren't humans, their skin falling away to reveal metal underneath it. There were two boys who looked about her age, one was strikingly handsome with black hair down to his collar and bright blue eyes, the other looked slightly frail, his hair was a startling silver-white, the irises of his slanted eyes the same color. The next image was of a girl with pretty brown hair, wearing a dress of beautiful gold silk and a necklace with a peculiar angel pendant. Clary saw the boy with silver hair again, he was coughing, and blood spattered his hand when he covered his mouth. She saw the same boy with a box of a fine silvery powder, and then the image changed to the same boy lying on a bed, his skin as pale as paper and his cheeks frighteningly hollow. He seemed to be unconscious. The scene zoomed out so Clary could see a chair beside the bed, in it was seated the handsome dark haired boy, looking despaired and bedraggled, blood staining his hands as if he's just come from a battle. He reminded her of Alec, if only for his hair. He shifted and blurred, and when the image cleared, he was no longer in the bedside chair, but replaced with the girl with the angel necklace. Her figure was nearly transparent, as if she wasn't really there, just a figment of the frail boy's imagination.

Clary felt herself thrown forward then, through the wall of the room just beside the window, out into a courtyard. She looked back toward the building: an old church as majestic as the Institute in New York, though she had a feeling that this definitely was not New York. She turned back around in time to see gates open and a carriage roll through toward the church. In the driver's seat was a Silent Brother, Clary knew from the parchment colored robes. Another carriage rolled through the gates, pulled by horses that didn't quite look like horses. Another shifting to the image and Clary saw a mechanical person roll out of the second carriage, one arm ending in a crossbow with which it used to aim and shoot the Silent Brother out of the driver's seat of the first carriage. Clary gasped inwardly and saw more metal humans appear from the second carriage. Real people poured down the steps of the church - which Clary assumed was an Institute; the real people she assumed were Shadowhunters. She turned her attention then to the first carriage, where a sickly-looking girl in a tattered white dress and blonde hair shorn close to her head sat leaning against a wheel, arms covering her head. Obviously trying to protect her, a man with reddish hair stood in front of the girl, battling one of the gruesome metal people. Clary saw the boy who had coughed blood fighting a metal creature, and further off, the Angel-Necklace girl fighting as well. There was a rather tiny brunette woman fending off another, and two boys – one taller and lanky with dark hair, and one more husky and slightly shorter with dirty blonde hair – fighting together against yet another metal monster. They looked alike, Clary thought. Maybe they were brothers.

The scene blurred again and cleared to show the Angel-Necklace girl being picked up by one of the metal people and shoved into the second carriage, a figure in a black cloak with the hood up following her. The second carriage pulled away from the Institute as the boy Clary compared to Alec arrived at the top of the stairs. He threw a sword-cane to the frail, silver haired boy – who caught it and resumed fighting - and then ran down the stairs to help. Clary saw the machine person defeated and the boy using the sword-cane run out the gates of the Institute after the carriage that left. His remarkable eyes - silver! What had caused it? - were slanted, Clary noted; the boy was Asian. She saw the girl that was by the first carriage in the arms of "Alec," blood bubbling at her mouth as she breathed, until she breathed no longer. The Asian boy ran back through the gates and collapsed at the foot of the stairs. The scene flickered back to the room with the boy in bed and the other in the chair, and then it was black again.

Out of the darkness came a light, and Clary saw herself and Jace in the New York Institute library, his hand on top of hers, drawing a rune. This was a rune that Clary had never seen before – it seemed to be a waved line from her view, but as the vision took her closer, she saw that there were spiral swirls at either end, on one end more compact than the other. As she watched herself draw, the rune's swirls became a semicircle above the line, and below the line were more lines in the same waved pattern as the first. It was by far the most intricate rune she had ever seen. When the rune was finished, Jace began to glow; brighter even than he had glowed when Clary had pushed Glorious through his chest, and then he and 'Vision Clary' were gone.