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Jace's mind logically tallied up everything that had been going on. Irelia's magic, which involved blood; because she was not the magical one, neither Beatrix nor Jack had ever bothered to ever try to drum in the laws of magic unto her, the first which would have been IF IT INVOLVES BLOOD MAGIC TURN THE OTHER WAY AND START RUNNING THEN AND THERE. This was serious magic now. There was a hole to somewhere else.

"Let me go first," she said, "let's kick it."

Her best friend squared her shoulders back, cracked her knuckles again, and shook the red spikes of her hair back away from her face. She looked overly determined. Her eyes were alight with the adrenaline and curiosity that had lead them to the Winchester Insane Asylum. Never a good look. Then again, she and Jace were not exactly into great decisions: before Irelia could say yea or nay, Jace had started down the staircase.

Jace froze on the steps; she turned around, eyes narrowed to orange slits, and selected the main part of what was happening. That was, in summation, that somebody was hitting Irelia, even if that somebody was actually Irelia's father, and who was slapping her in a way you generally only saw on 1950s television about shows with 1950s fathers. He had hit her clean through the face, really hit, not just as you'd do to a wayward child: totally smacked.

Probably the better solution would have been to grab Irelia and do what they always did: ran. That was not how she rolled.

"Get away from her, a*****e!" she said, and she flung herself on Asher bodily.

Jace stumbled back with the force of the blows, winded, holding herself, knocked flat on her a**. She stumbled to her feet again, breathing hard and ragged, and she flung herself at him again: it was much the same result as last time. Asher was apparently stronger, faster and a hell of a lot meaner even than the self-proclaimed badass of town Jacoba Darnell, even easily feinting away from her legs. In the end, she was really just a child, and he flung her away like one again.

She wiped blood away from her mouth, feeling like a dump truck had hit her, dazed and confused.

The redhead got to her feet. The rewriting of her everything felt like warm water coursing up through her veins, like tea, and she flexed her fingers (one of them had previously been broken, her shoulder fractured) in dull amazement. There was too much to say -- too much to ask -- but Jace was not one to focus on the details like that s**t when there was other stuff at hand.

Maybe it was the magic. Maybe it wasn't. A terrible white-hot rage was welling up deep inside her, flicking old switches that hadn't meant to be flicked while she was still just young (barely more than a child!) and an old memory. She didn't really know -- detached -- that her hands had suddenly lit on fire. She came at Asher again, fingers ablaze, fists bunched.

Of course, the rules were different with Asher. Despite Jace's spirit and anger and obvious desire to protect her friend, the battle wasn't hers to win.

That did something.. Jace fell back; suddenly a wall of something solid enveloped Asher, and Jace was drawing herself up and not quite Jace, shaping it around him and lacing her fingers together and somehow totally ignoring the fact that she had been beaten senseless. She was bruised, battered, and the expression on her face wasn't really Jacoba Darnell.

A sheet of red-hot metal twisted itself around him: by the sounds of things, he was already breaking out, the cooling steel already cracking around the edges. But not-Jace scooped up Irelia and winked at her; unlike before, her eyes were suddenly grey, and she was half-carrying half-dragging the girl down the line of bookcases in an effort to make it to the exit.

"Come on, kid," she said, though Jace's bleeding mouth, "time's a wasting, or some s**t. We have like sixty ******** seconds."

The staircase did not lead to any kind of dark, watery dungeon, or how the Asylum had been, or anything Irelia (and the Jace of before) might have expected; it was a small and cramped office, and the furniture was... was covered in chintz. There was a chintz ruffle on the table, with a lamp on it, and inside hung a couple of chubby fairies that cast a pink glow upon the whole affair.

"Look," said the girl next to her calmly, "older and stronger? That s**t is relative. Especially with you, but you'll find that out later. -- You're safe here, so stop panicking your freaky little a** off and -- wow, you really are a sheep girl. How ******** up is that? Look at your little horns. I feel like Little Bo Peep."

She dimly felt the not-Jace catch her; from far off, say something that sounded like, "God, what am I, five feet tall? ******** being Smurfette," and being laid down on one of the puffy couches that decorated the office.

The redheaded girl scrubbed herself down, intellectually looking at her one sprained wrist and the bruises busy forming over her body, rolling her head around and wincing a little at the crack. She looked up at the young man, standing over Irelia like an honour guard.

"She's had a shitty time," she said, "and just got slapped around like a red-headed stepchild by that ******** she calls her father, so treat her gently, okay?"