Fire to Water

All the Blood That's Shed on Earth

It did not seem like a very good idea to get close to the sketchbook. It had given Ty a panic attack and Dru was relatively certain it had made Kit cry.

Either way, it didn't seem like something she wanted very close to her body.

On that note, she probably shouldn't have exposed the consul to it. But he'd been unaffected, same as she was. He'd just shrugged and said Jace might know, and thanked her for coming all the way across the country to help, and she had smiled and held the book as far away from her as she could.

Jace should be safe, though (probably). He had all that extra angel blood. It should make it harder for him to get possessed, but then again, maybe he had already seen it. She had thought it was just an illusion that she'd seen Jace-but-wrong, before she'd fallen into Faerie, but maybe he was already under its influence.

Dru stopped in the middle of the hallway.

By the angel. What if it was a possession rune? Or a spell, or whatever— how did she know that they were the first to see it?

For that matter, how would she tell if someone was under its influence?

She couldn't trust anyone in the institute. She couldn't even trust Ty and Kit, because she'd watched them see the runes and react to them (it?) and maybe she should take this to Magnus Bane.

But no, he was busy. Alec had said he was working on Clary's disappearance too

And Jace was practically half-angel. He would be safe.

"Jace!" This was probably exceedingly unprofessional but she was not here for an actual job, just an early study year and she was filling in for the people who had to actually do the job because they had been incapacitated by the paper. She pounded on the door. "Jace!" She was very good at bothering people until they gave in. It was the sort of thing one got good at when one was the second-youngest in a family of seven (technically five, or six counting Emma). "JACE!"

Jace snatched the door open. "What." He looked like he had slept in a wind tunnel, the way that Emma called stylishly rumpled and Cristina had taken one look at and said By the Angel, where did you put your hairbrush.

"I think," Dru said, still holding the sketchbook as far from her as she could without dropping it, "that we've found something. Can you look at this?" She was trying to be polite. She was trying very hard to be polite, even though she had found the boys bleeding from no wounds and clearly a bit out of it and she'd made some quip about them kissing to cut the tension because they had seemed so blank. Like puppets of the page she held in her hands.

Jace immediately took the paper and his eyes caught and held the runes. He didn't move for a very long time until he began shaking.

Then Jace was— not Jace.

But not not-Jace like the Jace she had thought she had seen near Central Park. He was not Jace like the boys in the room had been not Kit and not Ty. An empty doll. A hollow puppet.

Then he began to bleed.

It was not like Kit and Ty's identical wounds, although it was on his chest. It was higher, and further to the right— a sharper puncture, and Kit and Ty had been not-stabbed with something with a wider edge, like a katana, but this was just a standard stab wound.

There was also a great deal more blood, which gleamed with flecks of gold.

Dru put her hands over the runes and took the paper away.

"I can't make head or tail of it, sorry," he said. "It looks like a demon language."

"Thanks," Dru said, and painted a smile on her face. "By the way, were you stabbed recently?" Her voice held steady, and Jace looked at her, surprise and worry flickering on his face.

"What are you—" he put his hand to his chest and found the blood. "I'm sorry. I need— some time."

He shut the door in her face and Dru slowly put the sketchbook down, far away from her, and slumped against the wall.

Kit and Ty had had normal blood, red blood, but Jace's was not, so clearly it was not the same blood. It was not some sort of strange straight-boys-only blood-marking rune (which, really, why would Clary make that) but that left a lot of very disturbing options.

Dru briefly regretted her fascination with horror. Yes, it was campy and funny with all the magic things the mundanes got wrong, but it got lodged in her mind like a splinter until all she could think of was increasingly terrifying consequences.

It was probably time to involve someone who actually knew things about magic.

Dru knew several people who fit that description, of which there was:

Kieran, who was Mark and Cristina's boyfriend and would tell Mark who'd tell Julian exactly what she was up to, and getting to him meant an inevitability long walk through Faerie, which was always a bad idea,

Magnus, who was out of town for a while which probably meant at the Spiral Labyrinth, which was good for him but sucked for her,

Malcolm, who was very dead, which sucked for him but was good for her because he was an evil weasely bastard anyway,

Tessa, whom Dru could make Kit talk to if she needed, but she was in England,

Mark and Helen's aunt, who she had met exactly once and was almost certain would not help,

Hypatia Vex, who was also probably a no because they all had unsubtly conned her not all that long ago and seemed the type to hold a grudge,

Gwyn ap Nudd, who was Diana's boyfriend and would not help because he would tell Diana where she was but also probably did not know this magic, or

Several people she could make Kit introduce her to at the shadow market, who probably knew dark magic and might know whatever it was that the paper was.

In the meantime, she should probably go make sure nobody was inexplicably bleeding in the library.

By the Angel, she'd come to New York to get away from babysitting, and now here she was doing it voluntarily.

But on the other hand: inexplicable bleeding.