GENESIS: A RIGHT TO STAND (Book One) • SHADOWHUNTERS

SHADOWHUNTERS

Spencer shut the door with a soft click. Looking around, she saw a few tall concrete pillars, electrical cables scattered across the ground and shelves to her left and right. They were littered with paint cans, paint brushes, extensions cords, all things you'd find in a maintenance room. Spencer quickly ducked behind the shelf on her right, peeking through the space between two of them.

    She squinted, eyes struggling to adapt to the dim room. The guy she'd bumped into was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his companion. Izzy was, though, and the blue-haired boy, his back to Spencer.

    "...if I come here often?" Izzy was saying.  She covered her giggle with a hand and the boy, obviously seeing something Spencer could not, tensed. Spencer herself could feel the air change, now becoming fraught with danger.

    "You—" the boy began, but Izzy struck him quickly that even Spencer flinched. He stumbled back, and now Izzy had a whip—a shining, golden whip—in her hand. It wrapped around the boy's ankles, and he slammed into the ground. Izzy laughed, a cruel, satisfied sound that did not suit her pretty face at all.

    "He's all yours, boys," she said.

    A dark chuckle sounded from the other side of Spencer's hiding place as Jace slunk forward.  Another figure moved with him from the left-hand shelf—that could only be his friend.

    Spencer watched in silence as they each took hold of the blue-haired boy, dragged him to one of the pillars, and secured his hands around the column behind him.

"What took you two so long?" Izzy asked, flipping her hair back over her shoulder.

The dark-haired boy replied, "Jace got a little distracted." His contempt was clear in his voice.

"Oh?" Izzy said. "Another faerie catch your eye?"

Jace stepped around the column. Izzy and the other boy—Spencer could see now that they were almost definitely siblings—stood to the side, watching."Faeries catch my eye in the same way a coin attracts a crow. Nice and shiny to begin with, but their quality starts to dull once it's been passed around a few times." At Izzy's pointed glare, he said, "Although, they do manage to surprise me still. But it wasn't a faerie anyway."

"Then what—?"

"We can continue this later," Izzy's brother said, interrupting her. "We have more important things to worry about." He motioned to their prisoner, who was straining to break free.

"Right you are, Alec," Jace said, turning to the blue-haired boy. "So, are there any others with you?"

The boy glared at him. "Any other what?"

"Come on, now." Jace pushed up his sleeve, and Spencer briefly glimpsed a dark, twining mark on his arm. "You know what I am."

The blue-haired boy hissed, "Shadowhunter."

"Got you," Jace replied, his satisfaction evident.

Spencer, recalling the hidden blades Jace had concealed inside his jacket sleeves, looked around for a weapon of her own. The only thing she could come up with was a flat-headed screwdriver: she picked it up and rotated it in her hand. Just in case, she thought.

A quiet scraping noise behind her made Spencer look over her shoulder, but she saw no one. She continued to stare hard into the shadows by the door, and distantly heard Isabelle laugh, and a snappy answer from one of the boys. Spencer turned back to the scene before her.

"So, you still haven't told me if there are any more of your kind with you," Jace said. Alec and Izzy still only watched—it was clear that Jace was their leader.