Ready to hide

I'm happy for you, I mean it.

"Are you all ready?" Blake asked as he tossed his full backpack around his shoulder. I looked at Alec, who looked pretty ready, and nodded. Today we all continued to search together. The lake was not the only place where the nightchildren were. We hope to find more traces that could tell us more about the gang.

Celine also comes with us today because she was free and didn't have to work. I suggested her to stay here, but she said that she was only pregnant and not sick. She said that she told Elliott yesterday and that he was very happy and I was happy about that too. I knew Elliott wouldn't let her down.

Together we left the apartment and got into the car. At a shopping mall, another place of the gang should have been there. It was a good thing that they changed their location so often, because it gave us more places to look for.

The five of us squeezed into the car. Blake and Alec were in the front, as always, and the rest were in the back. Alec drove the car and I briefly considered arguing with Blake about who should sit in the front, but it would probably have been pointless.

"What do you expect? A list of gang members' names?" Celine asked amused. At first I thought so too, because what could we find that would actually help us?

"Well, we found a surname. Possibly one of the most important." Blake replied. He was right there, even if we didn't know exactly which Nolan it was. It would be stupid not to look.

"Whatever." Celine replied, staring out the window. "I'm so hungry, man. These hormones will make me fat." Celine murmured desperately. I noticed that Celine ate more, but I couldn't blame her. I think that was the case with almost every pregnancy.

"Hormones? Are you pregnant or what?" Blake joked, since he didn't know about it yet. Alec didn't know about Celine's luck either. I wanted to tell him, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to. I could see Blake looking in the rearview mirror to look at Celine and when she just grinned, Alec turned to us in shock.

"Wait, really now?" Alec asked surprised and shocked. Celine nodded slowly and his jaw dropped. None of us had expected that, not even Celine. "Magnus! Why didn't you tell me?" he asked me reproachfully. I raised my arms innocently and laughed.

"Is Magnus pregnant or am I?" asked Celine. Alec was still looking between us in shock. Elliott just grinned too, because it was all pretty interesting. "I've only known it myself for two days. Magnus found out for himself and Elliott is the father, so it was important to me to tell him first." Celine explained. Alec seemed to have to understand all of this and turned back to the front. Yes, it was all crazy.

"Who would have thought that little Elliott would become a father before us?" Blake asked Alec with a laugh. I also had to smile. I don't think either of them would have thought that.

We drove for a while until we finally got there. We parked the car in the abandoned parking lot where some old broken cars were. They didn't seem to have been touched in ages, just like this huge mall that went bankrupt many years ago. The windows were broken and the walls were sprayed with graphitis.

Such buildings were mostly destroyed by young people. I often had calls like this at work because it was property damage. Most of the time you can't stop this anyway. They are also often used by homeless people because they wanted a roof over their heads.

"I can't imagine anyone could live here." I said dreamily while inquiring about all of this. We came closer to the building.

"Most of the gangs have always had bad living conditions anyway, so that didn't really make much difference to them. At least it wasn't raining in here." Alec explained to me. If you looked at it all that made sense. I would probably consider myself lucky if I didn't have my own house. Maybe I was just too spoiled.

Together we entered the building. It was cool inside and a little damp. It echoed as everything was old and abandoned. Inside, everything was sprayed and destroyed. There were splinters on the floor. There was a lot around. That could create problems for us.

"How are we going to find out if things are from the gang when there are a lot of things around anyway?" Celine asked in confusion. I was wondering exactly the same thing, because we could hardly assign it. Alec sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know, just look for something striking." he answered. I just nodded. It could be difficult, but it would be stupid not to try. Who knows, maybe we can find more of this Nolan and finally find out which Nolan it was. We all looked around, everywhere. We had a lot to search.

"Alec, come here!" called Elliott from a corner. Alec turned and hurried to Elliott as Blake, Celine and I went the other way. I thought it would be good to split up anyway, because maybe we found something faster.

Blake, Celine and I then decided to go upstairs so Elliott and Alec could continue to look down there. Fortunately, this mall had no more than two floors. There were a lot of shops here, but some of them were locked so we couldn't get in. Breaking it wasn't that easy either, so we assumed that this gang wasn't in there anyway.

"A child, then?" Blake asked after a while, being silent. I could see that Celine immediately grabbed her belly and stroked it. I think it was just mother instincts. She smiled broadly.

"Yes, I mean, of course it's not easy at all at this time, but I'm still looking forward to it." she answered. Blake nodded, also with a smile. He smiled at Celine as if he himself was glad that she had this child. I wondered if it was because he wanted children with Claire.

"I'm happy for you, I mean it." he said, which surprised Celine and me rather. It almost seemed like this Blake was different from three years ago. As if he was slowly but surely trusting us. Celine nodded and we went on, after all, we didn't have forever.

"What are you doing here, Shadowhunters?" we suddenly heard a female person say behind us. The three of us immediately turned around and saw a teenager standing here. She was not old, at most seventeen. She had a pocket knife in her hand and looked pretty arrogant with it.