She's My Parabatai

Chapter 16

"Clary!" Izzy and Jace were calling my name and running after me.

I only stopped because I realized I didn't actually know where I was going. Where would Hodge's things be stored?

Izzy caught her breath as she caught up to me. "Where are you going?!"

"I actually don't know," I admitted. "Where would Hodge's stuff be at?"

"Why do you need Hodge's stuff?" Jace questioned. So he hadn't looked at the report. Only Izzy had been peering over my shoulder.

"The basement, come on!" Izzy exclaimed. She seemed to be catching on to my train of thought.

Reaching the door of the basement the three of us descended down the steps into the darkness. Izzy found a light switch and light illuminated the room.

Boxes, boxes and more boxes were cluttering the basement. "How are we ever going to find it in here?" I sighed beginning to shift through boxes. Luckily, I found they were labeled.

"What are we even doing here? Someone care to explain?" Jace wondered. I ignored him, scanning the rows and rows of boxes.

"Clary! Over here!" Izzy called from the other side of the basement. I ran over to her to see that she was standing in front of a few boxes labeled 'HODGE STARKWEATHER.'

I opened the boxes and began going through the contents rapidly. Where was it?

Then, my fingers closed around something leather and I smiled pulling out the leather-bound notebook.

"What?!" I yelled as I flipped through it. The notebook was empty. Most of the pages had been torn out. The only ones left inside were blank. I sighed, dropping the notebook back into the box. "We were so close."

"I still don't understand what's going on," Jace announced.

"The report said that the only reason Hodge was attacked by vampire was because he was trying to protect a mundane family," I told him. "The family, they were raising a shadowhunter baby."

"I still don't see what this has to do with anything."

"After he was turned, he told the institute that he had known about the child for a while, he was watching over it making sure it was safe," I explained. "All the information about the child was in his notebook. When the Institute shunned him he told them the baby was dead and that was the end of the report."

"So you wanted to find information about this baby why...? It doesn't matter if the baby is dead." Jace wasn't getting it.

"Hodge wanted this notebook; that's why the deal he made with us was to get his belongings. Obviously there's something he didn't want the Institute- or anybody- to know in that notebook," I said. But it didn't matter now, there was nothing inside anyway.

"And he's dead...what if he died because of what was inside of the notebook?" Jace asked.

"Wow, why didn't I think of that?" I said sarcastically. That was the first thing I thought when I read the report.

"Clary!" Izzy exclaimed and I glanced at her. She was holding the notebook open to a ripped page.

"Wait." I grabbed the note that was still in my jeans pocket. It fit the ripped page perfectly. "The note came from this notebook. Or at least the paper."

"And probably the rune too," Jace pointed out. "Magnus did say that the rune was much older than the text. That notebook's at least 15 years old."

"So...the killer stole whatever was in the notebook and then used that ripped page to write the note," I concluded.

"It makes sense because we already know the killer's a shadowhunter," Izzy said. "They had to be one to get in here uninvited and hide the fangs in Sebastian's room anyhow, even if you don't look at the rest of the evidence."