She's My Parabatai

Chapter 11

I wasn't surprised when Alec knocked on the door of Magnus Bane's loft. I guess a part of me knew this was where Alec was taking us, and also where he had been disappearing to.

"Alexander!" The High Warlock of Brooklyn exclaimed as he opened the door. His expression changed when he noticed the other four of us. "And you brought friends."

"Sorry Magnus but we needed somewhere where we could talk without being overhead," Alec said.

"This isn't the wayward home for Shadowhunters," Magnus sighed but stepped aside and let us in.

Jace mumbled something to his Parabatai but Alec brushed him off.

Magnus stopped us before we stopped on the carpet. "Shoes off, the five of you have so much blood and gore on you the least you can do is not to get it on my carpet," he demanded. "And don't sit down, anywhere."

I pulled the heels off my aching feet and sighed in relief. It felt good to have them off.

The warlock began to walk out of the room. "I know better than to get involved in shadowhunter business," he said. "I'll be feeding my cat." With that he was out of the room.

"Whats going on?" Sebastian asked.

Jace opened his mouth to explain but I cut him off. Sebastian was my brother, I should be the one to do this even if it was Jace's plan. "We devised a plan to make you think that we thought you killed the vampire. None of us ever thought you were the murderer."

"What?" He said in disbelief. "Why would you do that?" I looked at Jace, now it was his turn to speak.

"To throw the actual murderer off, to make him think that we had already caught you and weren't looking for him any longer," Jace explained.

"So you don't have any actual idea who the murderer is do you?" Sebastian asked. I could tell he was still angry but he was hiding it. I gave him a stern look, now was not the time to accuse Jace.

"How about one of the Ascended?" Jace asked.

Sebastian sighed. "We've already cleared them all, and besides they were all training with me at the Institute before you called, they couldn't have killed Javier."

"Clary," Izzy said to me. "What Javier said..."

"The note!" I exclaimed.

"What note?" Jace asked.

"Javier told us there was a note with the body, that he hid it. If we did a favor for him he would give us the note," I explained. I had completely forgotten. But it didn't matter now, Javier was dead.

"What was the favor?" Jace questioned. Did it really matter now?

"He wanted us to get his stuff from the Institute," Izzy explained. "He used to be a shadowhunter, Hodge Starkweather."

"Hodge?" Alec questioned having heard the name before. Izzy nodded.

"It doesn't matter anymore," I said. "Hodge, Javier, whoever is dead. We're not getting that note."

"Sure we are," Jace said with confidence. "We just have to find out where he lived, it's probably there somewhere."

"How do we know he hid the note at his place? He could have hidden it anywhere."

"We have to start somewhere." Jace shrugged.

"Guys, we're all ignoring a very obvious question here: why was Javier killed?" Sebastian pointed out.