Sнadow Girl ▹ Jace Wayland (editing)

14.

A hot breeze picked up as we stalked towards the building. Me and jace led the way while clary trailed behind. The all too quiet atmosphere kept me on edge, holding onto the seraph blade in my pocket with a iron like grip.

"Stay out of the light." Jace instructed clary pulling her along by her sleeve. "They might be watching from the windows. And dont look up."

Though just as the words fell from his mouth her eyes wandered upwards. I knew from the look on her face she'd seen something, but jace hurried us along before i had the chance to ask.

We slipped around the corner into what probably use to be a service lane for deliveries. Though now the narrow lane was just choked with garbage, a whole range of things like mouldy cardboard boxes, shredded plastic and empty glass bottles. Though the worse of all were the animal bones littered across the floor like fallen leaves.

"Bones," Jace confirmed flatly. "Dog bones, cat bones. Don't look to closely; going through a vampire's trash is rarely a pretty picture."

"Well at least we know we came to the right place." I announce grimly.

"Oh were in the right place." He says. "Now we just have to figure out how to get inside."

I examine my surroundings and my earlier theory becomes more and more likely.

"Service lane?" I ask him.

"Service lane." He confirms. "So there must be a way in somewhere around here."

"I bet the doors are in the ground. Probably buried under all this garbage." Clary adds in.

"That's what i was thinking" Jace said with a sigh. "I guess we better move the trash. We can start with the dumpster."

He pointed it out rather unenthusiastically. He gave me a pointed look as if to break the bad news, that i'd be doing alot of the work given clary's mundane like co-ordination.

"You'd both rather be face a ravening horde of demons, wouldn't you?" Clary states noticing our discomfort.

"Atleast they wouldn't be crawling with maggots." He exclaims.

"Im not so sure about that one." I reply.

"True, we once tracked down a demon in the sewers underneath central station—" He explains mostly to clary.

"Don't" Clary raised a hand in warning. "I'm not in the mood right now."

"That's got to be the first time a girl's ever said that to me." Jace mused.

"That's cause that make a point of avoiding you so they never have to." I sassed back.

He chuckled at my words, the sound rung through the air and the world fell silent for a second almost scared to deny anyone of such a lovely sound. With a bright grin in my direction he leaped down to inspect the best way to deal with the dumpster.

"We'll tip it." He decided.

"That'll make too much noise." Clary argued. "We should push it."

"Now, look—" Jace started before a unfamiliar voice interrupted him.

"Do you really think you should be doing that?" The voice asked.