The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones *Jace Wayland*

Get Away From Me

It was day when I was walking to go see Sam, I turned a corner to be met by Alec who greeted me, "Ryder, can I talk to you?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to leave here," I stood there with a blank expression as he continued, "You almost got us killed."

"I'm really sorry, Jace -" he interrupted me.

"Jace thinks he needs to save the world, but you don't need to encourage him to do it," he sounded more jealous then anything.

"Isn't that what you guys do?"

"Yes, us, what we do. We're a team, you're dead weight...a mundane."

"I'm not a mundane," I insisted, "And if you were half as brave as you pretend to be, you'd admit..."

"What?"

"You'd admit that you're in love with Jace and that's what this is really about..." my voice was quiet but I instantly regretted it even as I was saying it.

"If you ever say anything like that again..." he pushed me against the wall choking me, "I will kill you."

I watched him walk away as I was holding my throat trying to catch air, I carried on walking to where Sam was staying trying not to think about Alec but failing miserably. I felt terrible for Alec, not being able to love the person in the way you want to. I tried to let my mind wonder as I went.

Sam was staying in the room I had slept that first night we got here, the hospital room, I walked down to his bed and sat down on a chair that was set beside it.

I stayed there a while until he woke, his eyes opened and he looked over at me, "Get the hell away from me."

I couldn't speak, my words were stuck in the back of my throat, "Are you deaf? Go away." My heart dropped as I stood, I could feel his eyes burning into my back as I walked away. He's been angry with me before, but never to this point...

As I was walking down the hall I heard what sounded like a piano playing, I turned into the library to see Jace at the piano playing with his eyes closed, the image took my mind off of Alec and Sam all at once.

He was playing a song and switched to a different one, in the middle he just gave up and banged on it a couple times.

"Hey, whats wrong?" I asked leaning on the piano, "It sounded great...you play it with so much passion."

"That's the problem...I play it with too much emotion, it's supposed to be played with a simple representation of notes, no interpretation," he said playing the music in front of him.

"Music is meant to have emotion...that was Bach, wasn't it?" I asked sitting next to him on the bench.

"Demons react to certain frequencies when two tones cross, it drives them crazy. See, Bach discovered this and put it into a system...using a mathematical progression of tonal combinations, it allows us to expose demons. How did you know that was Bach?"

"I took a music history class junior year, he was one of my favorites. He was a Shadowhunter?" I asked noticing a painting of Bach on the wall beside us revealing his runes.

"Yes."

"So Bach is to demons what garlic is to vampires...except you can run out of garlic, you can't really run out of music," I mumbled seeing Jace nod out of the corner of my eye.

I glanced over at what looked like a safe between the steps that led down from the door to the library, Jace stood and I followed him over to it.