a/n: this is pre-canon, and in fact set like an hour before the beginning of city of bones.

"Is she still in the shower?"

Alec jumped a little as Jace stuck his head round Isabelle's bedroom door and jerked his chin towards the sound of running water. Jace's own hair was still a little wet and tangled where it hit his jaw in twin gold curtains, and Alec forced himself to look at Isabelle's black-and-gold painted walls instead of at his parabatai. "I guess," he said, and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on Isabelle's hot pink comforter in as subtle a manner as he could manage. "You know what she's like."

"And what am I like, exactly?" Isabelle demanded as the water cut off. Her voice was muffled by the walls of her en suite bathroom, but her tone of indignation was still clear as day. There was a rustle, and then she emerged, clad in a tacky beach towel that Mom had brought back for her from the Madrid Institute once and her black hair dripping relentlessly down her chest and bare shoulders. Even from across the room, Alec could smell her vanilla bodywash. "I have to look good. I'm the bait."

Alec blanched at the phrase. "You are not the bait-"

"The femme fatale, whatever you want to call it," Isabelle waved his concern away and clattered over to her wardrobe, which was as disorganised as usual. Sometimes Jace liked to come in and reorder her clothes from lightest to darkest when he was feeling stressed, but Isabelle had so many different outfits that the chaos inevitably returned within a matter of days. She flung the door open, and waved what looked like a swathe of red silk in Alec and Jace's general direction. "What about this?"

"It's a nightclub, Isabelle, not a brothel," Jace scoffed, and Isabelle flipped him off without looking at him. "And this is, technically speaking, a mission."

"Tell that to Alec," Isabelle griped in murderous tones. Alec made a squark of surprise at the sudden attack. "He's wearing a sweater."

"He's going to be glamoured," Jace returned as he stepped into the room properly and attempted to navigate Isabelle's endless realms of clutter. Alec didn't even know how his sister acquired so much stuff - none of the Lightwood siblings got an allowance, and their parents only brought back presents if they were feeling especially guilty over something. Of course, now that they'd started whisper-yelling whenever they thought Alec and Jace and Isabelle weren't listening, they felt guilty all the time, so he supposed that was an upside. "Anyway, you might want to look for something more modest, if that's possible. Eidolons may be stupid, but they're not blind. They'll see your Marks, and then we'll have to burn your body in some slip dress from Macy's."

"I hate you," Isabelle sighed, because Jace being especially insulting usually meant that he was worried. Usually. It only really applied to Alec and Isabelle. Alec's sister selected a garment made of white lace, and shook it at Jace with something akin to venom. "Does this meet your approval, oh great Gok Wan?"

Jace's phone buzzed, and he fished it out of his pocket. "Don't know who that is, but yeah," he said, punching out a text quickly - though not as quick as Isabelle could. Their phones were supposed to be for emergencies only, but unless Isabelle wanting to make out with her faerie hookup counted as an emergency, they really weren't. Alec tried not to think of who Jace could possibly be texting. It wasn't worth the headache.

Isabelle had shimmied into the white dress without neither Alec nor Jace noticing, and Jace was right - even with Alec's Farsighted rune marked on the inside of his elbow, he could barely make out the runes that he knew were twining along Isabelle's arms and legs. Isabelle made no effort to pick up the towel as she hopped over to her dressing table and twisted her still-soaking hair into a pile on the top of her head and secured it with pins. "You'd think," she began conversationally, pushing a flyer off the table surface and reaching for a mascara wand, "that the Angel would have given us a rune for drying off quickly."

"How would that help with demon hunting, exactly?" Alec asked, reaching to pick the flyer up off the floor with intentions of putting it in the bin. However, those intentions grounded to a halt as soon as he saw what was written on it - an invitation from Magnus the Magnificent, a name that very vaguely rung a bell in the back of Alec's mind, to a party celebrating the birthday of his cat. Despite its crumpled state, the flyer still glittered and shined with what was either magic or Isabelle's eyeshadow, and Alec stared at the photocopied face of Magnus the Magnificent for a good few seconds while Isabelle went on some long-winded rant about blood and venom and how they were a pain to wash out when wet. Magnus the Magnificent had a handsome face. Alec let the flyer fall.

"What's this about a Downworld party?" he demanded, cutting her tirade off, and Jace glanced up from his phone as Isabelle looked over her shoulder at him. "Iz, you know what Dad would say."

"He's not here, though, is he?" Isabelle said with mild disdain. One eye was perfectly made up, the other still bare, and the effect was uncanny. "I thought it'd be fun. I could go with Meliorn, and Jace could take Kaelie or Fifi or whichever girl he's tormenting by next week, and maybe you could meet someone."

The word was weighted, though Jace thankfully seemed to miss it. "What's the point in taking a date to a party? The whole point of parties is to seduce everyone in the room," he said, and Isabelle rolled her black eyes at him. "Besides, I don't think a knight of the Seelie Court is going to attend a party that, and I quote, is supposed to make Barnabas Hale shit himself with jealousy. Who even is that?"

Jace had the flyer in his hand. Alec had no recollection him picking it up - he'd been too busy glaring at Isabelle.

"Probably another warlock," Isabelle replied when it became obvious that Alec wasn't going to. "And yeah, maybe not sober, but I'm sure I can convince him after a couple of drinks."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear my sixteen year old sister say that," Alec groaned, and Isabelle beamed.

"Thanks."

"How are we getting to this Pandemonium club, anyway?" Alec asked. If it were just him and Jace, they'd walk, but Isabelle despised walking around Manhattan unglamoured. "A cab?"

"The subway," Jace answered, sitting down beside Alec on Isabelle's bed. He picked up the black lace bra that was strewn beside him with a slightly green look on his face - weird, since Alec knew Jace wasn't a virgin; he'd bragged about it endlessly - and threw it vaguely towards Isabelle's head. Alec pulled a face.

"You know I hate the subway," he said. "You know it makes me feel sick."

"Isabelle's bras make me feel sick," Jace muttered, and Isabelle's expression in the mirror showed that she'd heard him and had chosen to ignore this comment. Jace's hair was dry now, like ripened wheat as his eyes shone gold as coins, and Alec forced himself to look at Isabelle's floor again. "You'll be fine. I think half of the problem comes from you thinking that everyone in the car is looking at you."

"Can't believe I'm saying this, but Wayland's right," Isabelle agreed, pressing her lips together and spreading her red lipstick around them. At some point she'd looped her necklace back around her pale neck, and it stood out as red as blood under the harsh Institute lighting. "Nobody cares about your body image issues apart from you."

"I do not have body image issues," Alec protested. "Are you ready or not? The club opens soon."

"And I would hate to miss any of DJ Bat's set," Jace added with a wicked grin. "A werewolf DJ called Bat. Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds that funny."

"Find me a vegetarian werewolf called Cat, and then I'll laugh," Isabelle informed him, standing up and slipping her fishnet-stockinged feet into her heeled and runed boots. "This is going to be so fun. I can't believe Hodge is letting us do this. He never lets us have any really good missions when Mom and Dad are away."

"About that," Jace grinned crookedly, his chipped tooth showing. "He may be under the impression that the Eidolon is roaming a book club and not a nightclub. But the semantics don't matter."

"Totally," Isabelle agreed as she wound her whip around her arm into a series of golden bracelets. She turned her gaze to Alec. "Come on, brother of mine. This'll be one for the history books."

She extended her hand to him, and Alec took it, albeit with some reluctance. "I don't want to make history," he told her.

"Too bad," she said. "We're Lightwoods. Devastatingly attractive, ridiculously charismatic, and superbly talented. It's in our blood."

"Yeah, so is missing the subway if you keep this pep talk business up," Jace said. "Let's go."

And Alec followed, watching their backs like he always did.