A Leap in Time ~ An Infernal Devices Fic

London, 1878

London-1878

Will Herondale was scowling as he pulled a seraph blade out of his coat and held it before him, leading the Shadowhunting trio along a harsh wooded path, gradually going upwards. "Who decided you could come along?" he asked the girl beside him with a glare.

    "You did," a Miss Theresa Gray replied promptly, plucking at phantom skirts as the trio began to scale the hill before realizing she was in the unfamiliar tunic and trousers of shadowhunting gear. "Out of the kindness of your hearts and generosity you asked me along."

    "That, Will," a slender, white haired boy beside them put in, looking amused. "Is another way of saying she snuck into the carriage."

    "Ah," Will said, glowering down at his sensor. "And how exactly did you do that? Shape shift yourself into a bug, did you?"

    Tessa shot him a rather annoyed and bewildered look. "You know that's not how it works."

    "He does," explained Jem congenially, putting an arm out for Tessa to grab as her foot slipped on a wet patch of leaves. "He's in a rather bad temper today. It's not just you."

    "How do you know it isn't just her?" Will began fiercely, plucking at the buttons on his coat, clambering up the hill ahead of both Jem and Tessa. "Personally, I think that Tessa is-"

    He cut off, staring wildly ahead. "Something moved."

    Jem's eyes moved up quickly, scanning the woody terrain. "Where? I didn't see anything."

    Will whispered to his blade, and it glowed blue. "If you would cease and desist goggling at Tessa then you would've," he said, but without the usual bite, his eyes trained on the forest. "There. Up ahead." He gestured with his blade.

    It was an average morning for London, the sky a dark almost-downcast, the air fresh with the scent of barely falling rain. Charlotte had been set two weeks to find Mortmain, two simple weeks, and every lead was viable. Charlotte herself was besought, running this way and that, rather hopelessly in Will's opinion, trying to get everything, and really getting nothing, done all at once. So it was that when a note was left on the door of the Institute, bright the morning of the last week, Charlotte herself didn't even fully read the note. The moment she saw the name of Mortmain was mentioned in its phrases she left it in the hands of the others, with commands to follow up. Jem and Will had eagerly offered their services, seeing that being around Charlotte these days was a bit depressing. Or at least, that was Will's thinking. He couldn't say for Jem. So they had set out, Cyril taking them as far as possible in the carriage.

    The note was, in short, a confidence, from an anonymous witness, claiming that there lived, in the countrysides of the outskirts of London, a warlock by the name of Echius. The note itself was in a rather disgusting scrawl, smeared with what looked like grease, and worded like a foreigner or an illiterate, so at first they paid it no heed. Upon brief investigation, however, the parabatai set had quickly found that there was no such warlock registered under that name in the Clave, which, if he truly existed as the source claimed, would be in direct violation of the Accords. In Will's opinion, it was what one would call a wild goose chase, but that didn't stop him from going. Beside killing demons, arresting rogue downworlders was second best in his opinion, and if this little trek meant a chance to arrest an illiterate fool meddling in an already incredibly tedious investigation, he thought it completely worth it.

    It hadn't been raining when he and Jem left the institute in the carriage, driven dutiously by Cyril, who Will was still, though he wouldn't admit it, vaguely uncomfortable around. There was just something about being around the lookalike of a man you watched die, that was extremely disconcerting. Regardless, he assumed he was kind enough, even to the extreme of being courteous to Will himself.