She's My Parabatai

Chapter 6

Jace and I stood silent for a few moments, both letting our recent revelation wash over us. I had a feeling that whatever we were supposed to be distracted from was a lot worse than a vampire being killed.

Jace was the one who broke the silence, noticing my box of art supplies. He walked over to it and picked up the first thing in the box: an old sketch pad of mine. "What's this?" He asked as he opened it. That sketch book was a couple years old, filled with drawings of shadowhunter life in Idris: the glass city of Alicante, what the hills looked like from the Mogenstern Manor, Lake Lynn, and more. It was a reminder of the life that I could never call my own again.

"Just drawing stuff," I told him.

"I recognize this style," Jace noted. He glanced at me. "You drew the picture in Izzy's room didn't you?"

I nodded. I knew what picture he was talking about. I had drawn my Parabatai dozens of pictures over the years but the one on the wall was the one she wanted the most: a self portrait of myself. Izzy said it was better than a picture, she saw me in it, my art, my style, what made me Clary, she had said.

Jace set the sketch pad back in the box and looked at me. "I didn't know you were an artist."

"There's a lot of things you don't know about me," I told him. Maybe if he had taken two seconds to get to know me I wouldn't be practically a stranger to him.

Before Jace could say anything, there was a meow at the door. You read that right: meow.

We looked towards the door to notice a plump gray cat sitting there.

"Church," Jace said making his way over to the cat. So this was the infamous Church. "What is it? Is Alec back?" He reached out to pet the cat but Church hissed and he drew his hand away. Church turned and started walking down the hall. "We better follow him."

I followed after Jace and the cat. Church led the way through the corridors of the Institute that I was just starting to learn my way around. He stopped in the entry way because there stood Max, Alec and Izzy.

Max was showing Izzy the book he got at the bookstore. I swear the gray car glared at the nine year old as he slinked away.

"I wasn't sure if Church was going to find you or not," Alec stated. Izzy, realizing that we were here, looked away from he book and to me.

"Church likes me, of course he found me," Jace said. Considering the cat had just hissed at him, I wasn't so sure that was true. And didn't he just say this morning that Church didn't like anybody?

"Church hates you," Izzy pointed out. "And us. And everybody on this Earth." 

Max ran off to show his parents the book he had got, leaving the four of us. "Did you find anything?" Alec questioned as soon as the kid was out of earshot.

"Not here," Jace mumbled and the group of us made our way into Izzy's room once again. Our rooms happened to be the closest to the front of the Institute.

I wanted to wait to tell Sebastian but be wasn't going to be done training for another hour or so. I figured I could just fill him in later.

"The vampire fangs weren't in any of the Ascendeds' rooms," Jace told the siblings. "But we did find them."

"Where?" Alec questioned.

"In Sebastian's room. Hidden under a loose panel in the floor," he explained and the Lightwoods gasped.

"Sebastian didn't do it," I told them.

Jace nodded. "It's too easy for Sebastian to have done it. It's what anybody would suspect."