1Clary looked at herself in the mirror, and winced slightly at the sight. She had accepted a supposedly 'reproduction medieval' dress as the least-worst option, though she was pretty certain that emerald green fake satin hadn't been that big in the middle ages. The dress had lots of shiny gold lacing, and came down to mid calf level. At 10, she probably would have loved it; at 45, she was less keen.
She was more grateful than ever that Jace had a job to do with a group of werewolves from Maia's pack, and had left early this morning. He'd promised her – with a grin on his face – that he would try to finish in time to make it over to the conference centre and "join in the fun". She didn't often hope that reports of demon activity were true, but right now, she was hoping at the least for something that would keep him busy for a few hours.
The buzzer rang, and Izzy and Simon came up. If anything, Simon looked even more ridiculous than Clary, in a scarlet fake suede jerkin with a puffy white shirt underneath, and what appeared to be beige jodhpurs.
Izzy followed him in through the door. She was dressed in full gear, with her hair twisted up and stuck through with a seraph blade, as she used to wear it in the old days. Her whip was, of course, coiled around her wrist, and she had more blades in her high boots and at her waist.
"You can't . . ." Clary didn't know quite what to say
"No, look at the glamour, Clary" Izzy was outrageously entertained by all this, Clary realised. She looked again, at the glamour, this time, rather than straight through it. Izzy had carefully tweaked her appearance, so to any mundane observer, she would seem to be wearing bikers' leathers, customized with silver studs and painted swirls. Her blades were disguised as fake plastic daggers, and her whip, as usual, as a coiled snake bracelet.
"You look great " Clary wished that she had had the sense to think of something similar, rather than being stuck in this ridiculous dress. Izzy laughed. "Actually, you don't look as bad as you probably think you do" she said "The green suits you, at least. You look better than Simon, anyway; the last time I saw him in such a silly outfit, he'd been dressed by a lovestruck 13 year old vampire."
"Fantastic" Clary said sarcastically. "I'll try to remember that." She sighed "I guess we'd better get on, then, and get this over with. I think I might just glamour myself invisible until we get safely away from anywhere where someone I know might recognize me. "
They met Theo outside the convention centre. As they got near, Clary felt much less conspicuous. Compared to the fans wearing full Star Wars stormtrooper outfits, or Lord of the Rings elf costumes, she was positively under-dressed.
As they went in, Izzy nudged her, and pointed "Look, I'm not the only one playing this game" she muttered, in an undertone. Looking in the direction she indicated, Clary saw a faerie girl, glamoured up to look like one of the 'elves', busy chatting up a Mundane boy wearing plastic Spock ears and a Star Trek outfit, and two vampires surrounded by a gaggle of girls in Lolita dresses.
The actual signing session was much like the one at BEA, though playing 'guess the source of the costume' provided them with some entertainment. After they'd finished their slot, Theo came over and with great ceremony announced that he had set up a 'really exciting meeting'. Clary sighed, inwardly. She'd been hoping for a cold beer, not more meetings, but he waved away all attempts at protest and insisted that he had an opportunity they couldn't miss.
He led them away from the main part of the Convention, through a run of corridors, leading to a more luxuriously carpeted area of the conference centre lined with meeting rooms. Obviously, this was where the serious deals got done. Despite herself, Clary was impressed; perhaps Theo really had come up with something good this time.
He pushed the door to a final room open, and ushered the three of them inside. The room was large, and contained a conference table at one end, surrounded by substantial black leather chairs. Four men in grey suits were sitting on the far side of the table. It also contained a heavy, unmistakable, stench of demon.
The three of them reacted instantly, years of training and fighting together kicking in. Simon shoved the door closed, and they moved into a line, feet apart, poised. Izzy's glamour dropped away as if it had never existed, and the whip flicked off her wrist and was in her hand almost without any visible movement. Simon, next to her, pulled the seraph blade from her hair, and named it: "Gabriel". Clary thanked all her lucky stars that she was, at least, wearing her gear boots; they had gone better than anything else she owned with the cod-medieval dress Theo had lent her. She drew the seraph blade that lived in the sheath fitted to the left boot. Short, but it would have to do. She also named it: "Ithuriel"
"Nephilim" spat the largest of the 'men'.
Theo, of course, had no idea what was going on. It was becoming clearer to him with every moment that passed, however, that this meeting between his prized authors and the new heads of the publishing company was not going as well as he had hoped.
He stepped forwards, and spoke, calmingly. "Mr Johnson" he started "May I introduce my authors . . ."
"Get back" Izzy spoke urgently. "Theo, they're demons"
"Ms Lightwood . . ." Theo was clearly trying to bring a note of sanity back into the situation "I know a lot of people don't like large publishing corporations, but . . ."
"No, Theo, you don't understand. They're Eidolon demons. They eat people" Izzy sounded exasperated now.
"On that note" The demon that Theo had addressed as Mr Johnson rose, and looked at the other two suited figures "Perhaps we might . . ." and he started to move out from behind the table.
The three Shadowhunters moved together, their line blocking the door.
'Mr Johnson', who Clary decided must be the leader of the demon group, spoke again, in a rather amused tone "Well, well, so what now?"
"Now" said Izzy "We do what we always do. We kill you." As she spoke, the three Shadowhunters moved together, Izzy and Clary closing in towards the demons. Simon, Clary saw from the corner of her eye, had the presence of mind to kick over one of the heavy chairs, and push Theo into a corner, with the chair in front of him. "Get down" he shouted, as Theo tried to push back.
Izzy used one of the chairs to step lightly up onto the table, and using her whip, tried to herd the demons back into a corner of the room. She slashed down at the slowest, slicing across its arm, as the four transformed, gaining savage claws and teeth.
Simon hung slightly back – if there had been only three opponents, they could have engaged one each, but with four it was best for two of them to close in, and one watch for any unexpected moves. He knew he was the slowest of the three of them; although he trained every day, as they all did, he spent too much time in meetings these days.
As Izzy slashed with her whip, Clary went in quickly at the other side of the group. One demon raked at her cheek with its claws, but she managed to stab straight into its side, and it screamed, pulling back, and setting the demon nearest him off balance. Taking advantage of this, she kicked, hard. The demons were fast, but they were hampered by the table, and getting in each other's way.
Realising this, one demon broke away from the group, and tried to circle out from behind the table. Seeing that he had a clear opening, Simon flicked his seraph blade, and hit it straight in the heart; he might not be as quick as he had been at 17, but he was a much better shot. The demon hissed, writhed, and then dissolved, leaving a cloud of dust. One down; three to go. Simon darted in to grab the dagger. As he bent down to retrieve it, one of the remaining demons tried to push him to the floor. Clary spun round and stabbed at it, cursing the shortness of the blade; she made a mental note to consider knee length gear boots in the future that would conceal a more usefully sized weapon.
Izzy shifted her whip to her left hand, using her right hand to pull one of the blades from her belt. She leapt down from the table, naming it as she jumped, and closed in on the central demon.
With all three Shadowhunters engaged, the remaining demon saw his opportunity. Only Simon saw what was happening; he shouted as the demon moved to tear into Izzy from behind. She couldn't turn, fully occupied with the first demon that she was fighting.
Before Simon was able to react, he was amazed to see that Theo, watching the fight from the corner, had also realised what was happening. The agent stood up, slightly shakily, picked up the heavy chair that he had been using for shelter, and ungracefully but perfectly effectively, hit the demon very hard over the head from behind. It fell to the floor, heavily. Clearly pleased by the success of his action, Theo hit it again.
By this point, both Izzy and Clary had managed to get in killing blows to their demons, which also vanished with clouds of stinking dust. Seeing the final demon laying on the floor, Izzy finished it off with a blade to its heart.
As the final cloud of dust settled, the door started to open. Realising that this could be an awkward situation to explain, Simon shot across to it, hoping to fend off whoever was trying to come in. As he reached it, Clary was surprised to see his face change, relaxing. The door opened fully, and Jace came into the room.
He looked around him, amused. "I was coming along to laugh at you all in your costumes, but I got caught up on the way, and by the time I got here, you'd finished the signing session. Someone said you were down here in a meeting room - I was rather expecting to come help celebrate a hot publishing deal, not clean up a war zone"
Theo, now slumped on a chair, moaned gently, perhaps at the words 'hot publishing deal'. Jace noticed him, and went over. "You must be Theo." He held out his hand: "Jace Herondale, Clary's husband. We've spoken on the phone, nice to meet you in person."
For some reason, Jace's civil introduction seemed to be the last straw for Theo. He put his head in his hands, muffling his voice, but Clary could distinguish some of his words:
"madhouse . . . killing people . . . don't know what came over me . . . " raising his head slightly, and looking at Jace ". . . and he laughs about it."
Izzy went over to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke kindly. "They weren't people, Theo, they were demons. It's not the same thing at all; we had to kill them, or they would have eaten us, and probably half the people at the convention as well."
He stared at her, unbelieving "But demons don't exist, and I've met those men before, they were offering such a good deal for the books"
Jace looked at him "I wonder . . .? Eidolon demons generally need a pattern to copy. I suspect that they came across the publishers, and used their forms. It would be very unlike them actually to have a proper conversation"
Theo looked more hopeful "So they might still be here?"
"Well" Jace replied, cheerfully "they probably would have eaten them first, before copying them, but we might find the odd shoelace." '
"Hang on" Simon spoke now. "Surely Theo shouldn't have been able to see them . . .?" Clary realised he was remembering the night, so many years ago now, when he and Clary had first met the Shadowhunters in the Pandemonium Club. That had been an Eidolon demon, too. Clary had been able to see it; to Simon she had appeared to be speaking to the empty air.
"That" said Jace "is very true". He looked at Theo, hard. "Do you often see odd things . . .?" He let the question hang, as Theo continued to make strange, distressed noises and muttered something about "medication".
Clary realised that they needed to figure out what to do, without Theo overhearing. She motioned to Simon to go and try to reassure him, and pulled Izzy and Jace into a corner. Scrawling a Soundless rune with the stele that lived in her other boot, she said "OK, so what now? Do we persuade him that he's just forgotten to take his medication, and let him think that he's going mad – or do we 'fess up?"
"Surely we have to tell him something . . . " Izzy sounded torn "If it was just the demons, it would be one thing, but to let him think that he's imagining things all over the place .. . "
"He probably doesn't actually see that many things he shouldn't, though" It was Jace, now "It's not like he spends his spare time drinking in Downworlder hangouts, I don't suppose, he looks far too respectable for that."
"Maybe that's the answer" Izzy mused "Not Downworlder bars, obviously, but take him and get him thoroughly drunk, let Simon loose on him at his most persuasive, give him the rough idea that maybe he can see something special, give it a nice religious spin, but make sure he has enough of a hangover that it'll blur it all nicely?"
It wasn't a great suggestion, but it was the best they could come up with, so they went with it. After the fifth beer, Theo volunteered that the corporate publishers probably deserved to be eaten by demons anyway, Izzy assured him that they were perfectly happy with their current publishing deal, and Clary volunteered to draw some new pictures for publicity material.
They finally poured him into a taxi at midnight, dropped him at his apartment, and headed back to Clary & Jace's, reasonably confident that he wouldn't have a clear recollection of anything much the next morning.
Izzy and Simon decided to come up for a coffee to clear their heads before going home to the Institute. As they went in, they could hear laughter and music.
Going through into the living room, Clary found Amatis, Gabe, Maddy and Max all sprawled on the floor, playing computer games. With them were the two vampires & the faerie boy that they'd seen at the Convention earlier.
"Hey – how did it go?" Amatis spoke first. "We all came over to laugh at you, but you'd already finished. Did you sell your next book for a million pound advance? Do I get a raise on my allowance?"
"Not quite" Jace had followed Clary into the room. "But I think it's fair to say they made something of a killing in the after-party. "