Exile of the Clave

Exile of the Clave - Chapter 5

Sera sighed impatiently. If Mark Blackthorn is alive, he's a goddamn ghost, she thought to herself paradoxically.

She had started making cautious phone calls almost immediately after she had Portaled back from Prague, stepping from the early hours of the morning in Europe to the early hours of the afternoon of North America in a second. This was Hell. Portal-lag was officially her own personal version of Hell.

It was one thing for Andrej to give her a name and say this guy lived somewhere near Los Angeles, but she hadn't really appreciated how hard it might be to find him. Shadowhunters were pretty good at staying off the Mundane grid, and it wasn't like she could just waltz into the Los Angeles Institute and ask. Or can I? She contemplated fabricating a false identity and taking a stab at it, but something in Andrej's words made her pause. Your Clave may have tried to forget him, he had said. Sounds like Mark Blackthorn was a touchy issue with the Clave. Big surprise. In her honest opinion, the Clave needed to find some chill.

It wasn't until she was making faces in the mirror of her washroom as she peeled away the prosthetics with one hand while juggling her phone in the other that she finally had a spark of inspiration, wracking her Mnemosyne-enhanced memory. A warlock in Ojai had been close friends with the Blackthorn's tutor years ago at the L.A.Institute. Maybe it would be worth asking her? What was her name...? Ophelia? Ophelia Moore.

Excited, Sera scrolled through her contacts until she found the entry. The phone rang three times before a lilting voice answered, "Hello?"

"Ophelia Moore?"

"Speaking," the warlock answered.

"I'm so sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I was really hoping you could help me track down an old Shadowhunter friend of mine. I can make it worth your while." Sera nervously scratched at the bits of dried glue on the tips of her ears.

"Do you have something of theirs to use as a focus for the tracking spell?" Ophelia sounded bored. Business as usual.

"No, but I was hoping you actually might just know the person I'm looking for. Mark Blackthorn?" She held her breath.

On the other end of the line, Ophelia went silent for a moment before her voice ventured hesitantly, "You mean Julian Blackthorn?"

"No."

"Tiberius?"

"No."

"Octavian?"

"No! How many Blackthorn Shadowhunters are there in your area?" Sera was aghast.

"Well..." Ophelia trailed off thoughtfully. But then her voice hardened, "If Mark Blackthorn was truly a friend of yours, you would have known about his family."

Well, shit.

"Alright, I don't know him. But I do know that he was raised in the Los Angeles Institute until the Wild Hunt claimed him during the Dark War. After that, there's nothing to find. Your friend Diana worked there as a tutor, surely you know something?"

"There's nothing else to know," Ophelia replied coldly. "As you said, Mark Blackthorn was claimed by the Hunt."

Sera nodded to herself. The warlock knew something. Time to blow some smoke. Initiate bullshit mode.

"I have it on good authority," she said as her fingers brushed her throat unconsciously, "That he's alive and living in hiding near you. If you're worried about spilling Clave secrets, don't be. I already know. I don't mean him any harm, but he might have valuable information about an investigation I'm working on. Just give me an address, and I will completely leave your name out of my report. No one needs to know we ever spoke." Sera could almost see the warlock teetering on the edge of telling her, so she added, "The Clave appreciates your loyalty."