Alec didn't step further into the bookstore. He narrowed his eyes minutely, not looking away despite the blankness he found there. He'd met many people who could wipe their expressions, give away nothing in their body language so she wasn't presenting him with anything new there.

"Where's Luke?" he asked after letting the silence sit thick and heavy against and around them. "I was looking for him."

This wasn't the first time he'd come into the bookstore and found something unexpected. Having an employee wasn't that strange a thing, Alec knew, but had he ever had someone besides Clary helping him out in Manhattan? Alec had always just assumed that if Luke wasn't in his store, it was closed.

The sensor that he'd tucked inside his jacket remained calm. She was something else. Another one of those beings that wasn't a mundane but didn't slot into the other groups the Clave had crafted up so long ago. He would have actually been surprised if he'd known immediately what she was.

"Hild," he said, voice flat and toneless. He didn't give his name. Not yet.