Game of Survival [HARRY POTTER and SHADOWHUNTERS]

She and Jace were finally watching Project Runway when his phone rang.

He practically somersaulted over the armchair, running to where his phone was on the dining table. "Clary." Kavya didn't bother pretending that she wasn't eavesdropping as she made her way to him. "Clary, are you alright?"

She liked Clary well enough, but the girl simply had got to stop interrupting Kaye and let her enjoy her shows in peace.

They spoke for a bit, Jace's voice becoming significantly colder when he realized it was not Clary on the other line, but her boyfriend, Rattus P. Rattus.

Kaye did not want to touch that complicated brother-sister/boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with dragon-hide gloves and a thirty-foot broom.

Jace leaped to his feet, the phone clenched in his hand. "Alec! Magnus!" The pair appeared quick, so quick that it was obvious that they had been eavesdropping as well. Although, considering the looks of horror on their face, they had clearly been doing a better job at it than her. "We have to go." He rattled off an unfamiliar address and both of them nodded.

Magnus nodded, and turned to Kavya. "We have to go. You can order in food for dinner and-"

"Are you leaving me here alone?" She was sick of being left out of things.

"Yes. You'll be safer here."

She bit her lip. "But what if someone tried to break in? I'm only thirteen, we haven't done much of any self-defense in school." That was a lie. She may have been manipulating Magnus but she didn't care. "Besides, if they're focused on healing Maia, that means that there isn't any danger near them. I'll be safer with you than without."

Magnus' eyes narrowed, as though he knew exactly what she was trying to do. It was working. "Alright, fine. Get your stuff and we'll leave."

It didn't require a genius to know that he meant for her to grab her wand.

When they had made it to the farmhouse, Jace opened the door to Clary perched on the coffee table, knife in hand.

"What. Do you think you're doing?" Jace sounded angry.

"We had an incident. I took care of it."

"Really." Jace's voice dripped sarcasm. "Do you even know how to use that knife, Clarissa? Without poking a hole in yourself or any innocent bystanders?"

"I didn't hurt anyone," Clary said between her teeth.

"She stabbed the couch," said Maia in a dull voice, her eyes falling shut. Her cheeks were still flushed red with fever and rage, but the rest of her face was alarmingly pale.

"I think she's getting worse," Rattus stated.

Magnus cleared his throat. When he didn't move, Kaye's father said, "Get out of the way, mundane," in a tone of immense annoyance. He flung his cloak back as he stalked across the room to where Maia lay on the couch. "I take it you're my patient?" he inquired, gazing down at her through glitter-crusted lashes.

Maia stared up at him with unfocused eyes.

"I'm Magnus Bane," he went on in a soothing tone, stretching out his ringed hands. Blue sparks had begun to dance between them like bioluminescence dancing in water. "I'm the warlock who's here to cure you. Didn't they tell you I was coming?"

"I know who you are, but....." Maia looked dazed. "You look so ... so ... shiny ...

Kaye laughed at that, she liked the girl already. "You should have seen him last year at New Years. He looked like a mirrorball."

Alec made a noise that sounded very much like a laugh stifled by a cough as Magnus's thin hands wove a shimmering blue curtain of magic around the werewolf girl.

Jace wasn't laughing. "Where," he asked, "is Luke?"

"He's outside," Cinderella's rat, Gus said. "He was moving the truck off the lawn."

"Funny," Jace said. He didn't sound amused. "I didn't see him when we were coming up the stairs."

"Did you see his pickup?"

"I saw it," Alec said. "It was in the driveway. The lights were off."

Something was wrong.

At that, even Magnus, intent on Maia, looked up. Through the net of enchantment he had woven around himself and the werewolf girl, his features seemed blurred and indistinct, as if he were looking at them through water. "I don't like it," he said, his voice sounding hollow and far away. "Not after a Drevak attack. They roam in packs."

Jace's hand was already reaching for one of his seraph blades. "I'll go check on him. Alec, you stay here, keep the house secure."

Kaye jumped down from where she was leaning on the table. "I'm coming with you."

"Absolutely not," Magnus ordered.

"No, you're not." Jace agreed, heading for the door. "I will pin you down if I have to, Kaye."

Her dad nodded, and she huffed, plopping down onto a spare chair. "Fine."

As it turned out, Squeaky, Clary, and Jace, all decided to go for Luke. Kaye got bored within the first five minutes and looked at Alec, who was staring at her father, too preoccupied to pay her any attention, as she left the house.

She had left her jacket in the kitchen, and the cold air sheeting off the East River cut through her thin shirt the moment she stepped out onto the dark porch. "Guys?" she called. "Guys!"

The truck was pulled up in the driveway, one of the doors hanging open. The roof light was on, shedding a faint glow. The truck was idling. She smelled the exhaust as she approached. The key was still in the ignition

"Guys-" She broke off as something caught her eye. It was a flicker of movement, across the street, down by the cement rock-strewn bank of the East River. There was something about the movement - an angle as a gesture caught the light, something too quick, too elongated to be human...

She spotted Jace, running toward the movement, followed by Clary and the cheese-muncher. Kaye ran after him, over the asphalt of Kent Street and onto the scrubby grass that bordered the waterfront.

She kept running until she came in clear sight of the lapping water, the crumpled figure of a man.

It was Luke- Kaye presumed, though the two dark, humped shapes crouching over him blocked his face from her view. He was on his back, close to the water.

"Israfiel!" Jace cried, raising his seraph blade, and there was a sudden hot burst of light as it blazed up. He leaped forward, sweeping his weapon at the nearest of the demons. In the light of the seraph blade, the demon's appearance was unpleasantly visible: dead-white, scaled skin, a black hole for a mouth, bulging, toadlike eyes, and arms that ended in tentacles where hands should have been. It lashed out now with those tentacles, whipping them toward him with incredible speed.

But Jace was faster. There was a nasty snick sort of noise as Israfiel sheared through the demon's wrist and its tentacled appendage flew through the air. The tentacle tip came to rest at Kavya's feet, still twitching. It was gray-white, tipped with blood-red suckers. Inside each sucker was a cluster of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

"Kavya?" Jace's voice was a shout. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Admitting she had risked her life because she was bored seemed like a disastrous idea, so she kept her mouth shut.

She kicked at the spasming clot of tentacles, sending it rolling across the dirty grass. When she looked up, she saw that Jace had knocked the injured demon down and they were tumbling together across the rocks at the river's edge. The glow of Jace's seraph blade sent elegant arcs of light shattering across the water as he writhed and twisted to avoid the creature's remaining tentacles - not to mention the black blood spraying from its severed wrist.

She heard Clary shout, "Kavya, watch out!" and turned to see the second demon lunging straight at her.

There was no time to reach for the wand in her pocket, no time to remember and shout out any spells. She threw her hands out and the demon struck her, knocking her backward. She went down with a cry, hitting her shoulder painfully against the uneven ground. Slick tentacles rasped against her skin. One braceleted her arm, squeezing painfully; the other whipped forward, wrapping her throat.

She grabbed frantically at her neck, trying to pull the lashing, flexible limb away from her windpipe. Already her lungs were aching. She kicked and twisted-

And suddenly the pressure was gone; the thing was off her. She sucked in a whistling breath and rolled to her knees. The demon was in a half crouch, staring at her with black, pupil-less eyes.

She pulled her wand out - a fourteen-inch blackthorn with Thunderbird feather core - and pointed it toward the beast. "INCENDIO!" she cried, staggering to her feet, the wand outstretched and pointed at the Raum demon.

Fire slowly enveloped the demon and it roared, skittering backward, tentacles waving. The flames consumed it and it gave a low screeching moan before vanishing, not a smidge of ash to mark its place.

The second Raum demon's mouth was open and it was making a distressed, hooting noise, like a monstrous owl. Abruptly, it turned and, with tentacles waving, dashed toward the bank and leaped into the river. A gush of blackish water splashed upward, and then the demon was gone, vanishing beneath the river's surface without even a telltale spray of bubbles to mark its place.

She turned to face Jace, who was at Clary's side, panting, even as they both stared at her in shock.

Shit. She was in so much trouble.

>>>

Magnus was waiting for them on the front porch when Simon and Jace carried Luke, slumped between them, up the stairs.

He eyed Kaye as she followed them, and when she opened her mouth to justify herself, he shook his head. He was so beyond pissed.

"What the hell are you?" Jace spat, turning to her, the moment they set Luke down on the sofa where Maia had been lying.

Magnus stepped in front of Kavya as she flinched, blue fire shimmering between his hands. "I'd watch my tone with her, if I were you."

Jace simply turned to him. "What the hell is she?"

"None of your business."

"It's the Clave's business," Alec retorted. "Are you some kind of demon? A witch?"

Magnus flicked his wrist, and all of their feet were pinned down in place. "I will only talk about this once, so you better listen, and listen well. She is a witch, but not of the world you are familiar with. Her species live relatively similar to the way Shadowhunter and Downworlders do with each other and mundanes, but they can never know about each other. If you mention anything about her, to anyone outside this room, there will be a war. One with devastating consequences you are all too young to understand. So you have three options. Either you swear on your Angel that you will never utter a breath about my daughter's origins to those outside this room, I remove the event from your memory, or," the blue fire in his hands shone brighter, "I kill you where you stand and blame it on the demons. Hurry up and decide so I can figure out if saving your friend is worth my time and effort."

They all agreed to keep the secret, and one by one, they swore by the Angel. For el rato, the vampire for whom the Angel held no weight, Magnus just promised to find his family and kill them all, if he dared to betray them.

Magnus then began work on Luke. He had entirely ignored Kavya which was worse than if he yelled.

"Will he be all right?" Clary demanded, hovering around the couch.

"He'll be fine. Raum poison is a little more complex than a Drevak sting, but nothing I can't handle." Magnus motioned her away. "At least not if you get back and let me work."

It only took a few minutes for him to get to his feet. The blue light of his magic was gone. Luke's eyes were still closed but the ugly grayish tint had gone from his skin, and his breathing was deep and regular.

"He's all right!" Clary exclaimed, and Alec, Jace, and Simon came hurrying over to have a look.

"So he'll live?" Ratty said, as Magnus sank down onto the armrest of the nearest chair. He looked exhausted, drawn, and bluish. "You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Magnus said. "I'm the High Warlock of Brooklyn; I know what I'm doing." His eyes moved to Jace, who had just said something to Alec in a voice too low for any of the rest of them to hear. "Which reminds me," Magnus went on, sounding stiff-and Kavya had never heard him sound stiff before- "that I'm not exactly sure what it is you think you're doing, calling on me every time one of you has so much as an ingrown toenail that needs clipping. As High Warlock, my time is valuable. There are plenty of lesser warlocks who'd be happy to do a job for you at a greatly reduced rate."

Clary blinked at him in surprise. "You're charging us? But Luke is a friend!"

Magnus took a thin blue cigarette out of his shirt pocket. "Not a friend of mine," he said. "I met him only on the few occasions when your mother brought him along when your memory spells were being refreshed." He passed his hand across the cigarette's tip and it lit with a multicolored flame. "Did you think I was helping you out of the goodness of my heart? Or am I just the only warlock you happen to know?"

"No," Jace said now, "but you are the only warlock we know who happens to be dating a friend of ours."

Kavya gagged. She would almost rather Magnus be dating Clary, who was barely older than her, than the insufferable Shadowhunter.

For a moment everyone stared at him - Kaye in disgust, Alec in sheer horror, Magnus in astonished anger, and Clary and Simon in surprise. It was Alec who spoke first, his voice shaking. "Why would you say something like that?"

Jace looked baffled. "Something like what?"

"That I'm dating - that we're - it's not true," Alec said, his voice rising and dropping several octaves as he fought to control it.

Jace looked at him steadily. "I didn't say he was dating you," he said, "but funny that you knew just what I meant, isn't it?"

"We're not dating," Alec said again.

"Oh?" Magnus said. "So you're just that friendly with everybody, is that it?"

"Magnus." Alec stared imploringly at the warlock. Magnus, however, it seemed, had had enough. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in silence, regarding the scene before him with slitted eyes.

If Kaye could convince Magnus to let Alec back in the apartment, she knew Bubbles would be grateful for a little - or rather, large - snack.

Alec turned to Jace. "You don't-" he began. "I mean, you couldn't possibly think-"

Jace was shaking his head in puzzlement. "What I don't get is you going to all these lengths to hide your relationship with Magnus from me when it's not as if I would mind if you did tell me about it."

If he meant his words to be reassuring, it was clear that they weren't. Alec went a pale gray color, and said nothing. Jace turned to Magnus. "Help me convince him," he said, "that I really don't care."

"Oh," Magnus said quietly, "I think he believes you about that."

"Then I don't..."

Oh. Alec was in love with Jace. Bubbles would love Kaye forever if she gave her two snacks.

Clary interrupted him, "Jace, that's enough. Let it alone."

"Let what alone?" Luke inquired. She whirled around to find him sitting up on the couch, wincing a little with pain but looking otherwise healthy enough.

"Luke!" Clary darted to the side of the sofa as though she considered hugging him, saw the way he was holding his shoulder, and decided against it. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Not really." Luke passed a hand across his face. "The last thing I remember was going out to the truck. Something hit my shoulder and jerked me sideways. I remember the most incredible pain-Anyway, I must have passed out after that. The next thing I knew I was listening to five people shouting. What was all that about, anyway?"

"Nothing," chorused Kavya, Clary, ratty, Alec, Magnus, and Jace, in surprising and probably never-to-be-repeated unison.

Despite his obvious exhaustion, Luke's eyebrows shot up. But "I see," all he said.

They all went to bed soon after, and the number of wards Magnus placed around her room and bed made it clear that she was not going to be getting up any time soon.

>>>

It took half an hour for Clary to get out of the shower. A period of time in which Magnus promised - or rather, threatened - to send Kavya to Hogwarts the moment she did something so reckless again. And without Bubbles.

They were currently lurking outside the bathroom, with Magnus clutching a towel in one hand and his dented glittery hair in the other.

"Why does it take girls so long to shower?" he demanded, the moment Clary opened the door. "Mortal girls, Shadowhunters, witches, female warlocks, you're all the same. I'm not getting any younger waiting out here."

Clary stepped aside to let him pass. "How old are you, anyway?" she asked curiously.

Magnus winked at her. "I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly."

Kavya rolled her eyes.

Magnus made a shooing motion. "Now move your petite behind. I need to get in there; my hair is a wreck."

She rolled her eyes again and darted into the spare bathroom, taking forty minutes to shower, simply to prove a point.

"Wasn't Magnus around? Why didn't he go with you?" Luke asked, the moment she stepped into the living room, fluffing her hair with a white towel.

Damn. They were still on that. She should have taken a longer shower.

"I was healing Maia, that's why," Her dad said, from where he was flopped on a chair, smelling strongly of grapefruit. His hair was wrapped in a towel and he was dressed in a blue satin tracksuit with silver stripes down the side. "Where is the gratitude?"

"I am grateful." Luke looked as if he were both angry and trying not to laugh at the same time. "It's just that if anything had happened to Clary-"

"You would have died if I'd gone out there with them," Magnus said, flopping down into a chair. "And my own daughter had gone out with them." He levied a harsh glare at her to tell her that she wasn't entirely forgiven just yet. "They handled the demons just fine on their own, didn't you?"

She was saved from having to reply by the front door banging open. Jace came in, followed by Alec who was carrying a white box. Magnus hastily pulled the towel off his head and dropped it behind the armchair. Without the gel and glitter, his hair was dark and straight, halfway to his shoulders.

"Everyone in a good mood, I see," Jace observed. "Keeping up morale?"

Maia rubbed at her eyes. "Crap," she muttered. "I hate crying in front of Shadowhunters." Kaye hadn't noticed she had been weeping.

"So go cry in another room," Jace said, his voice devoid of warmth. "We certainly don't need you sniveling in here while we're talking, do we?"

"Jace," Luke began warningly, but Maia had already gotten to her feet and stalked out of the room through the kitchen door.

Clary turned on Jace. "Talking? We weren't talking."

"But we will be," Jace said, flopping down onto the piano bench and stretching out his long legs. "Magnus wants to shout at me, don't you, Magnus?"

"Don't worry, he's not that great at it," Kaye offered.

"Yes," Magnus said, ignoring her and tearing his eyes away from Alec long enough to scowl. "Where the hell were you? I thought I was clear with you that you were to stay in the house."

"I thought he didn't have a choice," Clary said. "I thought he had to stay where you are. You know, because of magic."

"Normally, yes," Magnus said crossly, "but last night, after everything I did, my magic was depleted."

"Depleted?"

"Yes." Magnus looked angrier than ever. "Even the High Warlock of Brooklyn doesn't have inexhaustible resources. I'm only human. Well," he amended, "half-human, anyway."

"But you must have known your resources were depleted," Luke said, not unkindly, "didn't you?"

"Yes, and I made the little bastard swear to stay in the house." Magnus glared at Jace.

He picked up Maia's untouched mug of coffee and took a sip. He made a face. "Sugar."

"Where were you all night, anyway?" Kavya's dad asked, his voice sour. "With Alec?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk," Jace said. "When I got back, I bumped into this sad bastard mooning around the porch." He pointed at Alec.

Magnus brightened. "Were you there all night?" he asked Alec.

"No," Alec said. "I went home and then came back. I'm wearing different clothes, aren't I? Look."

Everyone looked. Alec was wearing a dark sweater and jeans, which was exactly what he'd been wearing the day before. Kavya decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. "What's in the box?" she asked.

"Oh. Ah." Alec looked at the box as if he'd forgotten it. "Doughnuts, actually." He opened the box and set it down on the coffee table. "Does anyone want one?"

Everyone, as it turned out, wanted a doughnut. "There's one thing I don't get," Luke said, kicking his blanket the rest of the way off and sitting up against the back of the couch.

"Just one thing? You're way ahead of the rest of us," said Jace.

"The two of you went out after me when I didn't come back to the house," Luke said, looking from Clary to Jace.

"Four of us," Clary said. "Simon and Kavya came with."

Luke looked pained. "Fine. The four of you. There were two demons, but Clary says you only killed one of them. So what happened?"

"I would have killed mine, but it ran off," Jace said. "Otherwise-"

"But why would it do that?" Alec inquired. "Two of them, four of you-maybe it felt outnumbered?"

"No offense to anyone involved, but the only one among you who seems formidable is Jace," Magnus said. "An untrained Shadowhunter, a young girl, and a scared vampire..."

"Hey!" Kavya protested. "At least I killed mine!"

"I think it might have been me," Clary said. "I think maybe I scared Jace's off."

Magnus blinked. "Didn't I just say-"

"I don't mean I scared it off because I'm so terrifying," Clary said. "I think it was this." She raised her hand, turning it so that they could see the Mark on her inner arm.

There was a sudden quiet. Jace looked at her steadily, then away; Alec blinked, and Luke looked astounded. "I've never seen that Mark before," he said finally. "Has anyone else?"

"No," Magnus said. "But I don't like it." He turned to Kavya. "Go upstairs."

She gaped at him. "Are you kidding me? I was a part of this! I killed a demon. I deserve to be here."

The look he gave her ensured her that, no, she did not. "Go upstairs or I'll portal you home."

She huffed, grabbing an extra donut before making her way to one of Luke's spare rooms, muttering about how unfair this all was.

Kaye was drawn out of her lamentations by a doorbell. Which prompted her to realize that while her father told her she had to go upstairs, he never said anything about her listening to their conversation from there.

"Do you want me to get it?" That was Clary.

"No." Luke stood up with only a short grunt of pain. "I'm fine. It's probably someone wondering why the bookstore's shut."

He crossed the room and threw the door open. Kavya moved to get a better view of the entrance and saw his shoulders going stiff with surprise. There was a bark of a familiar, stridently angry female voice, and a moment later Isabelle and someone who looked like her but older pushed past Luke and strode into the room, followed by a gray, menacing figure. Behind them was a tall and burly man, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with a thick black beard.

Magnus's head went up with a snap. Jace paled markedly, but showed no other emotion. And Alec - Alec stared from his sister, to his mother, to his father, and then looked at Magnus. He took a step forward, placing himself between his parents and everyone else in the room.

The woman who looked like Isabelle did a double take. "Alec, what on earth are you doing here? I thought I made it clear that-"

"Mother." Alec's voice as he interrupted the woman who Kavya assumed was his mother was firm, implacable, and not unkind. "Father. There's something I have to tell you." He smiled at them. "I'm seeing someone."

The man looked at his son with some exasperation. "Alec," he said. "This is hardly the time."

"Yes, it is. This is important. You see, I'm not just seeing anyone." Words seemed to be pouring out of Alec in a torrent, while his mother looked on in confusion. Isabelle and Magnus were staring at him with expressions of nearly identical astonishment. "I'm seeing a Downworlder. In fact, I'm seeing a war-"

Magnus's fingers moved, quick as a flash of light, in Alec's direction. There was a faint shimmer in the air around Alec - his eyes rolled up - and he dropped to the floor, felled like a tree.

Kavya groaned, unable to conceal her disappointment with her father. His taste in partners, it seemed, only got worse as time went on.

The noise alerted Magnus to Kavya's presence and she yelped as a blue portal appeared an inch from her and something pushed her through it and into her bedroom.