"No point," he concluded, which prompted Clary to begin to yell at him. "He'll turn back on his own in a few hours. A transformation spell would just traumatise him. Too much magic is hard on mundanes, their systems aren't used to it."

"Well, I doubt his system is used to being a rat either. You're a warlock, can't you reverse the spell?"

"Not for free, darling," Magnus answered, a smug smile on his face, "and you can't afford me."

Before they could come to a solution, however, Magnus left them to go break up yet another fight (as it appeared, Magnus enjoyed inviting problematic people to his parties). Alec, being the voice of reason once again, proposed that Clary put the rat in her backpack, so that no one would see it and she wouldn't be arrested on the subway. Although the girl seemed to be looking for another harsh comment, she could find nothing wrong with the idea and nodded and did as told.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, miserably.

"Why mundanes always insist on taking responsibility for things that aren't their fault is a mystery to me. You didn't force that cocktail down his idiotic throat."

"If it weren't for me," Clary explained, slowly as if he were talking to a kid, "he wouldn't have been here at all."

"Don't flatter yourself. He came because of Aria."

"Can you keep my name out of your Angel-forsaken mouth, Jace?"

Finally, they decided to get out of there and go back to the Institute, which proved a bit difficult when a horde of vampires stood by the door, once more complaining about somebody vandalising their motorbikes and some of his friends missing. Apparently, somebody named Gregor had turned into dust and they would not leave until they found him. Not that they could leave anyways.

Magnus, tired of Downworlders fighting and arguing constantly, decided to end the party, which caused an even bigger avalanche of people towards the door. The group of now five remained behind, besides Magnus.

"Honestly, I don't know why I have these parties," the warlock whispered.

"Because of your cat," Clary reminded him, making Isabelle and Aria look at each other in confusion.

"True," he agreed. "Chairman Meow deserves my every effort. You on your way out?"

"Wouldn't want to overstay our welcome."

"What welcome?" he asked, although no one could tell whether he was joking or not. "I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you but it wasn't. Not that you aren't all fairly charming, and as for you–" he turned to look at Alec and winked at him. "Call me."

Alec blushed and stuttered, so they decided to spare him the suffering and usher him towards the door, the rest of them behind him in a desperate attempt not to get lost. It took them some minutes to navigate the sea of people but, finally, they emerged into the street and took a deep breath. They hadn't realised how heavy the air was inside.

Clary, however, was nowhere in sight. The normal reaction would have been to panic, but there was no way that Clary could have exited without them seeing her, so they decided to wait.

Aria and Isabelle decided to stand a little way off the boys. Aria could not help but lament the fact that she had been too slow to warn Simon about the cocktail, and Isabelle, disliking mundanes as she did, shared her suffering. Alec approached them, trying to comfort the two girls and to assure them that it was not their fault that the boy hadn't been more careful, but it was no use.

"This will teach you two that Downworlder parties are more trouble than they're worth." He was right, as he almost always was. Every single time Isabelle and Aria had attended a Downworlder party (most of the times because one boy or another had invited them) had ended in disaster, whether it was because of the alcohol or because of the boy in question.

"If anything happened to him, I—" Aria sniffed.

"Well, you would do whatever it is you did before. You didn't know him all that well," Alec tried to reason.

"But that doesn't mean that I don't–" she began, although he cut her short.

"What? Like him? You don't." He pointed at Jace with a gesture on his face, signalling that she only missed him.

"I was going to say 'feel guilty', Alec, but thank you for the reminder."

Before Alec could say anything else, nonetheless, Isabelle changed topics.

"Did you have fun at the party, Alec?"

"No."

"I thought you might like Magnus," she taunted him. "He's nice, isn't he?"

"Nice?" Alec looked at Isabelle as if she had to be checked into a mental facility. "Kittens are nice. Warlocks are not."

"I thought you might hit it off, get to be friends."

"I have friends." Alec said, his eyes moving towards Jace, almost imperceptibly. The boy, however, was too busy with Clary. Both of them were hunched over the girl's backpack, rummaging through it as if they were looking for something.

"Shut up!" she screamed, which prompted the others to run towards them to see if everything was okay. "You were the one who said not to bother changing him back and now he's gone."

"The zipper's torn, from the outside. Someone ripped this bag open," he observed after having inspected the backpack.

"I didn't..."

"I know." His tone was gentle, caring, something Aria knew was not too usual coming from Jace. "You three go ahead, we'll catch up."

"What? No," Aria said. "We'll go with you and find him."

"This is none of your business," Clary replied, bitterness written all over her face.

"I thought that since this is supposedly my fault, I should help."

"You've done enough." Both girls looked at each other straight in the eyes, their jaws clenched. Before they could continue the argument, however, Alec and Isabelle took Aria away from the couple and started walking down the street with her.