The Last Stand of the New York Institute

New York City, 1989

The man was far too close. He lingered by the postbox about six feet away from Magnus and ate a sloppy Gray’s Papaya hot dog covered in chili. When he was done, he crumpled the chili-stained wrapper and threw it onto the ground in Magnus’s general direction, then tugged at a hole in his denim jacket and did not look away. It was like the look some animals gave their prey.

Magnus was used to a certain amount of attention. His clothing invited it. He wore silver Doc Martens, artfully torn jeans so huge that only a narrow shining silver belt prevented them from slipping entirely off, and a pink T-shirt so big that it exposed collarbones and quite a slice of chest—the kind of clothing that made people think about nakedness. Small earrings rimmed one ear, ending in a larger one swinging from his earlobe, an earring shaped like a large silver cat wearing a crown and a smirk. A silver ankh necklace rested at the point over his heart, and he had shrugged on a tailored black jacket with jet bead trimming, more to complement the ensemble than to protect against the night air. The look was completed by a Mohawk boasting a deep pink stripe.

And he was leaning against the outside wall of the West Village clinic long after dark. That was enough to bring out the worst in some people. The clinic was for AIDS patients. The modern plague house. Instead of showing compassion, or good sense, or care, many people regarded the clinic with hate and disgust. Every age thought they were so enlightened, and every age was stumbling around in much the same darkness of ignorance and fear.

“Freak,” the man finally said.

Magnus ignored this and continued reading his book, Gilda Radner’s It’s Always Something, under the dim fluorescent light of the clinic entrance. Now annoyed by the lack of reply, the man began to mumble a string of things under his breath. Magnus couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he could take an educated guess. Slurs about Magnus’s perceived sexuality, no doubt.

“Why don’t you move along?” Magnus said, calmly flipping a page. “I know an all-night salon. They can fix up that monobrow of yours in no time.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say, but sometimes these things came out. You could take only so much blind, stupid ignorance without cracking around the edges a bit.

“What did you say?”

Two cops walked by at that moment. They cast their eyes in the direction of Magnus and the stranger. There was a look of warning for the man, and a look of thinly veiled disgust for Magnus. The look hurt a bit, but Magnus was sadly used to this treatment. He had sworn long ago that no one would ever change him—not the mundanes who hated him for one thing, or the Shadowhunters currently hunting him for another.

The man walked off, but there were backward looks.

Magnus shoved his book into his pocket. It was almost eight o’clock and really too dark to be reading, and now he was distracted. He looked around. Only a few years before, this had been one of the most vibrant, celebratory, and creative corners of the city. Good food on every corner, and couples strolling along. Now the cafés seemed sparsely populated. The people walked quickly. So many had died, so many wonderful people. From where he was standing Magnus could see three apartments formerly occupied by friends and lovers. If he turned the corner and walked for five minutes, he’d pass a dozen more dark windows.

Mundanes died so easily. No matter how many times he saw it, it never got easier. He had lived for centuries now, and he was still waiting for death to get easier.

Normally he avoided this street for this very reason, but tonight he was waiting for Catarina to finish her shift at the clinic. He shifted from foot to foot and pulled his jacket tighter around his chest, regretting for a moment that he had chosen based on fashionable flimsiness rather than actual warmth and comfort. Summer had stayed late, and then the trees had turned their leaves quickly. Now those leaves were dropping fast and the streets were bare and unsheltered. The only bright spot was the Keith Haring mural on the clinic wall—bright cartoon figures in primary colors dancing together, a heart floating above them all.

Magnus’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden reappearance of the man, who had clearly just walked around the block and gotten himself into a total state over Magnus’s comment. This time the man walked right up to Magnus and stood directly in front of him, almost toe to toe.

“Really?” Magnus said. “Go away. I’m not in the mood.”

In reply the man pulled out a jackknife and flicked it open. Their close stance meant that no one else could see it.

“You realize,” Magnus said, not looking at the point of the knife just below his face, “that by standing as you are, everyone will think we are kissing. And that is terribly embarrassing for me. I have much better taste in men.”

“You think I won’t do it, freak? You—”

Magnus’s hand went up. A hot flash of blue spread between his fingers, and in the next second his assailant was flying backward across the sidewalk, then falling and striking his head against a fire hydrant. For one moment, when the man’s prone form didn’t move right away, Magnus was worried that he had killed the man by accident, but then Magnus saw him stir. He peered up at Magnus with his eyes narrowed, a combination of terror and fury plain on his face. He was clearly a little stunned by what had just happened. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead.

At that moment Catarina emerged. She appraised the situation quickly, went right to the fallen man, and passed her hand over his head, stopping the blood.

“Get off me!” he yelled. “You came from in there! Get off me! You got the thing all over you!”

“You idiot,” Catarina said. “That’s not how you contract HIV. I’m a nurse. Let me—”

The stranger shoved Catarina away and scrabbled to his feet. Across the street some passersby watched the exchange with mild curiosity. But when the man stumbled off, they lost interest.

“You’re welcome,” she said to the retreating figure. “Jackass.”

She turned to Magnus. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “He was the one bleeding.”

“Sometimes I wish I could just let someone like that bleed,” Catarina said, taking out a tissue and wiping her hands. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I came here to see you home.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she said with a sigh. “I’m fine.”

“It’s not safe. And you’re exhausted.”

Catarina was listing slightly to one side. Magnus grabbed her hand. She was so tired that Magnus saw her glamour fade for a moment, saw a wash of blue on the hand he was holding.

“I’m fine,” she said again, but without much heart.

“Yes,” Magnus said. “Obviously. You know, if you don’t start taking care of yourself, you’ll force me to come to your house and make my magically disgusting tuna soup until you feel better.”

Catarina laughed. “Anything but the tuna soup.”

“Then we’ll eat something. Come on. I’ll take you to Veselka. You need some goulash and a big piece of cake.”

They walked east in silence, over slick piles of wet, crushed leaves.

Veselka was quiet, and they got a table by the window. The only people around them spoke quietly in Russian and smoked, and ate cabbage rolls. Magnus had some coffee and rugelach. Catarina made it through a large bowl of borscht, a large plate of fried pierogi with onions and applesauce, a side of Ukrainian meatballs, and a few cherry lime rickeys. It wasn’t until she had finished these and ordered a dessert plate of cheese blintzes that she found the energy to speak.

“It’s bad in there,” she said. “It’s hard.”

There was little Magnus could say, so he just listened.

“The patients need me,” she said, poking her straw into the ice in her otherwise empty glass. “Some of the doctors—people who should know better—won’t even touch the patients. And it’s so horrible, this disease. The way they just waste away. Nobody should die like that.”

“No,” Magnus said.

Catarina poked at the ice a moment longer and then leaned back in the booth and sighed deeply.

“I can’t believe the Nephilim are causing trouble now, of all times,” she said, rubbing her face with one hand. “Nephilim kids, no less. How is this even happening?”

This was the reason Magnus had waited by the clinic to walk Catarina home. It wasn’t because the neighborhood was bad—the neighborhood wasn’t bad. He’d waited for Catarina because it was no longer completely safe for Downworlders to be alone. He could hardly believe that Downworld was in a state of chaos and fear over the actions of a gang of stupid Shadowhunter youths.

When he had first heard the murmurings, just a few months before, Magnus had rolled his eyes. A pack of Shadowhunters, barely twenty years old, barely more than children, were rebelling against their parents’ laws. Big deal. The Clave and Covenant and respected-elders shtick had always seemed to Magnus the ideal recipe for a youth revolt. This group called themselves the Circle, one Downworlder report had said, and they were led by a charismatic youth named Valentine. The group comprised some of the brightest and best of their generation.

And the Circle members were saying that the Clave did not deal harshly enough with Downworlders. That was how the wheel turned, Magnus supposed, one generation against the next—from Aloysius Starkweather, who’d wanted werewolf heads on the wall, to Will Herondale, who had tried and never quite succeeded in hiding his open heart. Today’s youth thought that the Clave’s policy of cold tolerance was too generous, apparently. Today’s youth wanted to fight monsters, and had conveniently decided that Magnus’s people were monsters, every one. Magnus sighed. This seemed like a season of hatred for all the world.

Valentine’s Circle had not done much yet. Perhaps they never would do much. But they had done enough. They had roamed Idris, had gone through Portals and visited other cities on missions to aid the Institutes there, and in every city they’d visited, Downworlders had died.

There were always Downworlders who broke the Accords, and Shadowhunters made them pay for it. But Magnus had not been born yesterday, or even this century. He did not think it was a coincidence that wherever Valentine and his friends went, death followed. They were finding any excuse to rid the world of Downworlders.

“What does this Valentine kid even want?” Catarina asked. “What’s his plan?”

“He wants death and destruction for all Downworld,” said Magnus. “His plan is possibly to be a huge jerk.”

“And what if they do come here?” Catarina asked. “What would the Whitelaws even do?”

Magnus had lived in New York for decades now, and had known the Shadowhunters of the New York Institute all that time. For the last several decades the Institute had been led by the Whitelaws. They had always been dutiful and distant. Magnus had never liked any of them, and none of them had ever liked Magnus. Magnus had no proof that they would betray an innocent Downworlder, but Shadowhunters thought so much of their own kind and their own blood that Magnus wasn’t sure what the Whitelaws would do.

Magnus had gone to meet with Marian Whitelaw, the head of the Institute, and had told her of the reports from Downworld that Valentine and his little helpers were killing Downworlders who were not breaking the Accords, and then the Circle members were lying about it to the Clave afterward.

“Go to the Clave,” Magnus had said to her. “Tell them to control their unruly brats.”

“Control your unruly tongue,” Marian Whitelaw had said coldly, “when you speak of your betters, warlock. Valentine Morgenstern is considered a most promising Shadowhunter, as are his young friends. I knew his wife, Jocelyn, when she was a child; she is a sweet and lovely girl. I will not doubt their goodness. Certainly not with no proof and based on the malicious gossip of Downworld alone.”

“They are killing my people!”

“They are killing Downworlder criminals, in full compliance with the Accords. They are showing zeal in the pursuit of evil. Nothing bad can come from that. I would not expect you to understand.”

Of course the Shadowhunters would not believe that their best and brightest had become just a little bit too bloodthirsty. Of course they would accept the excuses Valentine and the others gave them, and of course they would believe that Magnus and any other Downworlder who complained simply wanted criminals to escape justice.

Knowing they could not turn to the Shadowhunters, Downworlders had tried to put their own safeguards in place. A safe house had been set up in Chinatown, through an amnesty between the constantly feuding vampires and werewolves, and everybody was on the watch.

Downworlders were on their own. But then, hadn’t they always been on their own?

Magnus sighed and eyed Catarina over their plates.

“Eat,” he said. “Nothing’s happening right now. It’s possible nothing will happen.”

“They killed a ‘rogue vampire’ in Chicago last week,” she said, chopping into a blintz with a fork. “You know they’ll want to come here.”

They ate in silence, pensive on Magnus’s side and exhausted on Catarina’s. The check came, and Magnus paid. Catarina didn’t think much about things like money. She was a nurse at a clinic with few resources, and he had ample cash on hand.

“Gotta get back,” she said. She scrubbed a hand over her weary face, and Magnus saw cerulean trails in the wake of her fingertips, her glamour faltering even as she spoke.

“You are going home and sleeping,” Magnus said. “I’m your friend. I know you. You deserve a night off. You should spend it indulging in wanton luxuries such as sleep.”

“What if something happens?” she asked. “What if they come?”

“I can get Ragnor to help me.”

“Ragnor’s in Peru,” said Catarina. “He says he finds it very peaceful without your accursed presence, and that’s a direct quote. Could Tessa come?”

Magnus shook his head.

“Tessa is in Los Angeles. The Blackthorns, Tessa’s daughter’s descendants, run the Institute there. Tessa wants to keep an eye on them.”

Magnus was worried about Tessa, too, hiding alone near the Los Angeles Institute, that house on the high hills by the sea. She was the youngest warlock whom Magnus was close enough to that he called her a friend, and she had lived for years with the Shadowhunters, where she could not practice magic to the extent that Magnus, Ragnor, or Catarina could. Magnus had hideous visions of Tessa hurling herself into a fight between Shadowhunters. Tessa would never allow one of hers to be hurt if she could sacrifice herself in their place.

But Magnus knew and liked the High Warlock of Los Angeles. He would not let Tessa come to harm. And Ragnor was wily enough that Magnus did not worry about him too much. He would never let his guard down anywhere that he did not feel completely safe.

“So it’s just us,” Catarina said.

Magnus knew that Catarina’s heart lay with mortals, and that she was involved more for friendship’s sake than because she wanted to fight Shadowhunters. Catarina had her own battles to fight, her own ground to stand on. She was more of a hero than any Shadowhunter that Magnus had ever met. The Shadowhunters had been chosen by an angel. Catarina herself had chosen to fight.

“It’s looking like a quiet night,” he said. “Come on. Finish up and let me take you home.”

“Is this chivalry?” Catarina said with a smile. “Thought that was dead.”

“Like us, it never dies.”

They walked back the way they had come. It was fully dark now, and the night had taken a decidedly cold turn. There was a suggestion of rain. Catarina lived in a simple, slightly run-down walk-up off West Twenty-First Street, not too far from the clinic. The stove never worked, and the trash cans out front were always overflowing, but she never seemed to care. It had a bed and a place for her clothes. That was all she needed. She led a simpler life than Magnus.

Magnus made his way home, to his apartment farther down in the Village, off Christopher Street. His apartment was also a walk-up, and he took the steps two at a time. Unlike Catarina’s, his place was extremely habitable. The walls were bright and cheerful shades of rose and daisy yellow, and the apartment was furnished in some of the items he had collected over the years—a marvelous little French table, a few Victorian settees, and an amazing art deco bedroom set entirely in mirrored glass.

Normally, on a crisp early fall night like this, Magnus would pour himself a glass of wine, put a Cure album into his CD player, crank up the volume, and wait for business to start. Night was often his working time; he had many walk-in clients, and there was always research to do or reading to catch up on.

Tonight he made a pot of strong coffee, sat in the window seat, and looked down on the street below. Tonight, like every other night since the dark murmurs of the bloodthirsty young Shadowhunters had started, he would sit and watch and think. If the Circle did come here, as it seemed that they would do eventually, what would happen? Valentine had a special hatred for werewolves, they said, but he had killed a warlock in Berlin for summoning demons. Magnus had been known to summon a demon himself a time or twenty.

It was extremely likely that if they came to New York, they would come for Magnus. The sensible thing would probably be to leave, disappear into the country. He’d gotten himself a little house in the Florida Keys to while away the brutal New York winters. The house was on one of the smaller, less inhabited islands, and he had a fine boat there as well. If anything happened, he could get in it and speed off into the sea, head for the Caribbean or South America. He’d packed a bag several times, and unpacked it right after.

There was no point in running. If the Circle continued their campaign of so-called justice, they would make the entire world unsafe for Downworlders. And there was no way Magnus could live with himself if he ran away and his friends, such as Catarina, were left to try to defend themselves. He did not like the idea of Raphael Santiago or any of his vampires being killed either, or any of the faeries he knew who worked on Broadway, or the mermaids who swam in the East River. Magnus had always thought of himself as a rolling stone, but he had lived in New York a long time now. He found himself wanting to defend not only his friends but his city.

So he was staying, and waiting, and trying to be ready for the Circle when they came.

The waiting was hardest. Maybe that was why he had engaged the man by the clinic. Something in Magnus wanted the fight to come. He wiggled and flexed his fingers, and blue light webbed between them. He opened the window and breathed in some of the night air, which smelled like a mix of rain, leaves, and pizza from the place on the corner.

“Just do it already,” he said to no one.

The kid appeared under his window at around one in the morning, just when Magnus had finally been able to distract himself and start translating an old Greek text that had had been on his desk for weeks. Magnus happened to look up and noticed the kid pacing confusedly outside. He was nine, maybe ten years old—a little East Village street punk in a Sex Pistols shirt that probably belonged to an older sibling, and a baggy pair of gray sweatpants. He had a ragged, home-done haircut. And he wore no coat.

All of these things added up to a kid in trouble, and the general streetwise appearance plus a certain fluidity to the walk suggested werewolf. Magnus pushed open the window.

“You looking for someone?” he called.

“Are you Magnificent Bane?”

“Sure,” said Magnus. “Let’s go with that. Hang on. Open the door when it buzzes.”

He slid off the window seat and went to the buzzer by the door. He heard the rapid footfalls on the steps. This kid was in a hurry. Magnus had no sooner opened the door than the kid was inside. Once inside and in the light, the true extent of the boy’s distress was clear. His cheeks were highly flushed and stained with dried tear trails. He was sweating despite the cold, and his voice was shaking and urgent.

“You gotta come,” he said as he stumbled in. “They have my family. They’re here.”

“Who are here?”

“The crazy Shadowhunters everyone’s freaking about. They’re here. They have my family. You gotta come now.”

“The Circle?”

The kid shook his head, not in disagreement but in confusion. Magnus could see he didn’t know what the Circle was, but the description fit. The kid had to be talking about the Circle.

“Where are they?” Magnus asked.

“In Chinatown. The safe house.” The kid almost shook with impatience. “My mom heard those freaks were here. They already killed a whole buncha vampires up in Spanish Harlem earlier tonight, they said for killing mundanes, but nobody heard of any dead mundanes, and a faerie said they were coming down to Chinatown to get us. So my mom brought all of us to the safe house, but then they broke in. I got out through a window. My mom said to come to you.”

The entire story was delivered in such a jumbled, frantic rush that Magnus had no time to unpick it.

“How many are you?” he asked.

“My mom and my brother and sister and six others from my pack.”

So nine werewolves in danger. The test had come, and come so quickly that Magnus had no time to really go through his feelings or think through a plan.

“Did you hear anything the Circle said?” Magnus asked. “What did the Circle accuse your family of doing?”

“They said our old pack did something, but we don’t know anything about that. It doesn’t matter, does it? They kill them anyway, that’s what everybody’s saying! You gotta come.”

He grabbed Magnus’s hand and made to pull him. Magnus detached the boy and reached for a pad and paper.

“You,” he said, scrawling down Catarina’s address, “you go here. You go nowhere else. You stay there. There’s a nice blue lady there. I will go to the safe house.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Either you do as I say or I don’t go,” Magnus snapped. “There’s no time to argue. You decide.”

The boy teetered on the edge of tears. He wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand.

“You’ll get them?” he asked. “You promise?”

“I promise,” Magnus said.

How he was going to do that, he had no idea. But the fight had come. At last the fight had come.

The last thing Magnus did before he left was write down the details: where the safe house—a warehouse—was, what he feared the Circle was planning to do to the werewolves inside it. He folded up the piece of paper into the shape of a bird and sent it, with a flick of his fingers and a burst of blue sparks. The frail little paper bird tumbled in the wind like a pale leaf, flying out into the night and toward the towers of Manhattan, which cut the darkness like glittering knives.

He didn’t know why he had bothered to send a message to the Whitelaws. He didn’t think they would come.

Magnus ran through Chinatown, under neon signs that flickered and sizzled, through the yellow smog of the city that clung like begging ghosts to passersby. He ran by a huddle of people freebasing on a street corner, and then finally reached the street where the warehouse stood, its tin roof rattling in the night wind. A mundane would have seen it as smaller than it really was, shabby and dark, its windows boarded. Magnus saw the lights: Magnus saw the broken window.

There was a small voice in Magnus’s head calling for caution, but Magnus had heard tell in great detail of what Valentine’s Circle did to vulnerable Downworlders when they found them.

Magnus ran toward the safe house, almost stumbling in his Doc Martens over the cracked pavement. He reached the double doors, spray-painted with halos, crowns, and thorns, and flung them open wide.

In the main room of the safe house, their backs to the wall, stood a cluster of werewolves, still in human form, most of them, though Magnus could see claws and teeth on some crouching in defensive positions.

Surrounding them was a crowd of young Shadowhunters.

Everybody turned around and looked at Magnus.

Even if the Shadowhunters had been expecting an interruption, and the werewolves had been hoping for a savior, apparently nobody had been expecting all the hot pink.

The reports about the Circle were true. So many of them were heartbreakingly young, a brand-new generation of Shadowhunters, shining new warriors who had just reached adulthood. Magnus was not surprised, but he found it sad and infuriating, that they should throw the bright beginnings of their lives away on this senseless hate.

At the front of the Shadowhunter crowd stood a little cluster of people who, though they were young, had an air of authority about them—the inner circle of Valentine’s Circle. Magnus did not recognize anyone who matched the description he’d heard of the ringleader.

Magnus was not certain, but he thought the current leader of the group was either the beautiful boy with the golden hair and the deep sweet blue eyes, or the young man beside him with the dark hair and narrow, intelligent face. Magnus had lived a long time, and could tell which members of a group were the leaders of the pack. Neither of these two looked imposing, but the body language of all the others deferred to them. These two were flanked by a young man and a woman, both with black hair and fierce hawk-like faces, and behind the black-haired man stood a handsome curly-haired youth. Behind those stood about six more. At the other end of the room was a door, a single door rather than double doors like the ones Magnus had burst in through, an inside door that led to another chamber. A stocky young Shadowhunter stood in front of it.

There were too many of them to fight, and they were all so young and so fresh from the schoolrooms of Idris that Magnus would never have met them before. Magnus had not taught in the academy of the Shadowhunters for decades, but he remembered the rooms, the lessons of the Angel, the upturned young faces drinking in every word about their sacred duty.

And these newly adult Nephilim had come out of their schoolrooms to do this.

“Valentine’s Circle, I presume?” he said, and he saw them all jolt at the words, as if they thought Downworlders did not have their own ways of passing along information when they were being hunted. “But I don’t believe I see Valentine Morgenstern. I hear he has charisma enough to draw birds out of trees and convince them to live under the sea, is tall, is devastatingly handsome, and has white-blond hair. None of you fit that description.”

Magnus paused.

“And you don’t have white-blond hair either.”

They all looked shocked to be spoken to in that manner. They were of Idris, and no doubt if they knew warlocks at all, they knew warlocks like Ragnor, who made certain to be professional and civil in all his dealings with the Nephilim. Marian Whitelaw might have told Magnus to control his unruly tongue, but she had not been shocked by his speaking out. These stupid children were content to hate from a distance, to fight and never speak to Downworlders, to never risk for a moment seeing their designated enemies as anything like people.

They thought they knew it all, and they knew so little.

“I am Lucian Graymark,” said the young man with the thin clever face at the front of the group. Magnus had heard the name before—Valentine’s parabatai, his second-in-command, dearer than a brother. Magnus disliked him as soon as he spoke. “Who are you to come here and interfere with us in the pursuit of our sworn duty?”

Graymark held his head high and spoke in a clear, authoritative voice that belied his years. He looked every inch the perfect child of the Angel, stern and merciless. Magnus looked back over his shoulder at the werewolves, huddled at the very back of the room.

Magnus lifted a hand and painted a line of magic, a shimmering barrier of blue and gold. He made the light blaze as fiercely as any angel’s sword might have, and barred the Shadowhunters’ way.

“I am Magnus Bane. And you are trespassing in my city.”

That got a little laugh. “Your city?” said Lucian.

“You need to let these people go.”

“Those creatures,” said Lucian, “are part of a wolf pack that killed my parabatai’s parents. We tracked them down here. We can now exact Shadowhunter justice, as is our right.”

“We didn’t kill any Shadowhunters!” the only woman among the werewolves said. “And my children are innocent. Killing my children would be murder. Bane, you have to make him let my children go. He has my—”

“I would hear no more of your whining like a mongrel dog,” said the young man with the hawklike face, the one standing beside the black-haired woman. They looked like a matched set, and the expressions on their faces were identically ferocious.

Valentine was not famed for his mercy, and Magnus did not have any confidence in his Circle’s sparing the children.

The werewolves might have been partially shifted from human to wolf form, but they did not look ready to fight, and Magnus did not know why. There were too many Shadowhunters for Magnus to be sure he could fight them off successfully on his own. The best he could hope for was to stall them with conversation, and hope that he could inspire doubt in some of the Circle, or that Catarina would come or that the Whitelaws would come, and that they might stand with Downworlders and not their own kind.

It seemed a very slim hope, but it was all he had.

Magnus could not help but look again toward the golden-haired youth at the front of the group. There was something terribly familiar about him, as well as a suggestion of tenderness about his mouth, and hurt in the deep blue wells of his eyes. There was something that made Magnus look toward him as the one chance to get the Circle to turn from their purpose.

“What’s your name?” Magnus asked.

Those blue eyes narrowed. “Stephen Herondale.”

“I used to know the Herondales very well, once upon a time,” said Magnus, and he saw it was a mistake by the way Stephen Herondale flinched. The Shadowhunter knew something, had heard some dark whisper about his family tree, then, and was desperate to prove it was not true. Magnus did not know how desperate Stephen Herondale might be, and he had no wish to find out. Magnus went on, genially addressing them all: “I have always been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years.”

“There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors,” Lucian said.

Magnus hated this guy.

“Also,” Magnus went on, pointedly ignoring Lucian Graymark, “I find your story suspect. Valentine is ready to hunt down any Downworlder on any vague pretext. What had the vampires he killed in Harlem done to him?”

Stephen Herondale frowned, and glanced at Lucian, who looked troubled in turn, but said, “Valentine told me he went hunting some vampires who broke the Accords there.”

“Oh, the Downworlders are all so guilty. And that is so very convenient for you, isn’t it? What about their children? The boy who came to collect me was about nine. Has he been dining on Shadowhunter flesh?”

“The pups gnaw on whatever bones their elders drag in,” muttered the black-haired woman, and the man beside her nodded.

“Maryse, Robert, please. Valentine is a noble man!” Lucian said, his voice rising as he turned to address Magnus. “He would not hurt a child. Valentine is my parabatai, my best beloved swordbrother. His fight is mine. His family has been destroyed, the Accords have been broken, and he deserves and will have his vengeance. Stand aside, warlock.”

Lucian Graymark did not have his hand on his weapon, but Magnus saw that the black-haired woman, Maryse, behind him had a blade shining between her fingers. Magnus looked again at Stephen and realized exactly why his face was so familiar. Gold hair and blue eyes—he was a more ethereal and slender version of a young Edmund Herondale, as though Edmund had come back from heaven, twice as angelic. Magnus had not known Edmund for long, but Edmund had been the father of Will Herondale, who had been one of the very few Shadowhunters that Magnus had ever thought of as a friend.

Stephen saw Magnus looking. Stephen’s eyes had narrowed so much now that the sweet blue of them was lost, and they seemed black.

“Enough of this byplay with demonspawn!” said Stephen. He sounded as if he were quoting somebody, and Magnus bet that he knew who.

“Stephen, don’t—” Lucian ordered, but golden-haired Stephen had already flung a knife in the direction of one werewolf.

Magnus flicked his hand and sent the knife dropping to the ground. He glared at the werewolves. The woman who had spoken before stared intensely back at him, as if trying to convey a message with her eyes alone.

“This is what the modern young Shadowhunter has become, is it?” Magnus asked. “Let me see, how does your little bedtime story about how super-duper extra special you all are go again? . . . Ah, yes. Through the ages your mandate has been to protect mankind, to fight against evil forces until they are finally vanquished and the world can live in peace. You don’t seem terribly interested in peace or protecting anybody. What is it that you’re fighting for, exactly?”

“I am fighting for a better world for myself and my son,” said the woman called Maryse.

“I have no interest in the world you want,” Magnus told her. “Or in your doubtless repellent brat, I might add.”

Robert drew a dagger from his sleeve. Magnus was not prepared to waste all his magic deflecting daggers. He lifted a hand into the air, and all the light in the room was quenched. Only the noise and neon glow of the city spilled in, not providing enough illumination to see by, but Robert threw the dagger just the same. That was when the glass of the windows broke and dark forms came flooding in: young Rachel Whitelaw landed in a roll on the floor in front of Magnus, and took the blade meant for him in her shoulder.

Magnus could see better in the dark than most. He saw that, past all hope, the Whitelaws had come. Marian Whitelaw, the head of the Institute; her husband, Adam; and Adam’s brother; and the young Whitelaw cousins whom Marian and Adam had taken in after their parents’ deaths. The Whitelaws had already been fighting tonight. Their gear was bloodstained and torn, and Rachel Whitelaw was clearly wounded. There was blood in Marian’s gray bob of hair, but Magnus did not think it was hers. Marian and Adam Whitelaw, Magnus happened to know, had not been able to have their own children. The word was that they adored the young cousins who lived with them, that they always made a fuss over any young Shadowhunters who came to their Institute. The Circle members must have been peers of the Whitelaw cousins, brought up together in Idris. The Circle was exactly designed to win the Whitelaws’ sympathy.

The Circle was, however, in a panic. They could not see as Magnus could. They did not know who was attacking them, only that somebody had come to Magnus’s aid. Magnus saw the swing and heard the clash of blades meeting, so loud it was almost impossible to hear Marian Whitelaw’s shouted commands for the Circle to stop and drop their weapons. He wondered which of the Circle even realized who they were fighting. He conjured a small light in his palm and searched for the werewolf woman. He had to know why the werewolves would not attack.

Someone knocked into him. Magnus stared into the eyes of Stephen Herondale.

“Do you never have doubts about all this?” Magnus breathed.

“No,” Stephen panted. “I have lost too much—I have sacrificed too much to this great cause ever to turn my back on it now.”

As he spoke, he swung his knife up toward Magnus’s throat. Magnus turned the hilt hot in the young man’s hand until he dropped it.

Magnus suddenly did not care what Stephen had sacrificed, or about the pain in his blue eyes. He wanted Stephen gone from this earth. Magnus wanted to forget he had ever seen Stephen Herondale’s face, so full of hate and so reminiscent of faces Magnus had loved. The warlock summoned a new spell into his hand and was about to hurl it at Stephen, when a thought arrested him. He did not know how he could face Tessa again if he killed one of her descendants.

Then Marian Whitelaw stepped into the light from the spell shimmering in Magnus’s palm, and Stephen’s face went blank with surprise.

“Ma’am, it’s you! We shouldn’t— We’re Shadowhunters. We shouldn’t be fighting over them. They are Downworlders,” Stephen hissed. “They will turn on you like the treacherous dogs they are. That’s their nature. They are not worth fighting for. What do you say?”

“I don’t have any proof these werewolves broke the Accords.”

“Valentine said,” began Stephen, but Magnus heard the uncertainty in his voice. Lucian Graymark might believe they only hunted Downworlders who had broken the Accords, but Stephen at least knew they were acting as vigilantes rather than Law-abiding Shadowhunters. Stephen had been doing it, just the same.

“I do not care what Valentine Morgenstern says. I say that the Law is hard,” Marian Whitelaw replied. She drew her blade, swung, and met Stephen’s.

Their eyes met, glittering, over their blades.

Marian continued softly, “But it is the Law. You will not touch these Downworlders while I or any of my blood live.”

Chaos erupted, but Magnus’s darkest imaginings had been proved wrong. When the fight was joined, there were Shadowhunters on his side, fighting with him against Shadowhunters, fighting for Downworlders and the Accords of peace they had all agreed to.

The first fatality was the youngest Whitelaw. Rachel Whitelaw lunged at the woman called Maryse, and the sheer ferocity of the attack took Maryse aback so much that Rachel almost had her. Maryse stumbled and collected herself, fumbling for a new blade. Then the black-haired man, Robert, who Magnus thought was her husband, lunged at Rachel in his turn, and ran her through.

Rachel sagged, the point of the man’s blade like a pin piercing her, as if she were a butterfly.

“Robert!” said Maryse softly, as if she could not believe this was happening.

Robert unsheathed his sword from Rachel’s chest, and Rachel tumbled to the floor.

“Rachel Whitelaw was just killed by a Shadowhunter,” shouted Magnus, and even then he thought Robert might cry out that he had been defending his wife. Magnus thought that the Whitelaws might put away their blades rather than spill more Nephilim blood.

But Rachel had been the baby of the family, everyone’s special pet. The Whitelaws as one roared a challenge and hurled themselves into the fray with redoubled ferocity. Adam Whitelaw, a stolid white-haired old man who had always seemed to simply follow his wife’s lead, charged at Valentine’s Circle, whirling a shining axe over his head, and cut down all those who stood before him.

Magnus edged toward the werewolves, to the woman who was the only one who remained human, even though her teeth and claws were growing apace.

“Why aren’t you fighting?” he demanded.

The werewolf woman glared at him as if he were impossibly stupid.

“Because Valentine’s here,” she snapped. “Because he has my daughter. He took her through there, and they said if we moved to follow her, they would kill her.”

Magnus did not have an instant to reflect on what Valentine might do to a helpless Downworlder child. He lifted a hand and blasted from his feet the stocky Shadowhunter at the single door at the far end of the room, and then Magnus ran toward the door.

He heard the cries behind him, of the Whitelaws demanding, “Bane, where are you—” and a shout, Magnus thought from Stephen, saying, “He’s going after Valentine! Kill him!”

Behind the door Magnus heard a low, awful sound. He pushed the door open.

On the other side of the door was a small ordinary room, the size of a bedroom, though there was no bed, only two people and a single chair. There was a tall man with a fall of white-blond hair, wearing Shadowhunter black. He was stooped over a girl who looked about twelve. She was fastened to the chair with silver cord, and was making a terrible low sound, a cross between a whine and a moan.

Her eyes were shining, Magnus thought for a moment, the moonlight turning them into mirrors.

His mistake lasted for the briefest of instants. Then Valentine moved slightly and the gleam of the girl’s eyes resolved in Magnus’s vision. The gleam was not her eyes. The moonlit shine was silver coins pressed to the girl’s eyes, tiny wisps of smoke escaping from beneath the bright discs as the tiny sounds escaped from between her lips. She was trying to suppress the sound of her pain, because she was so scared of what Valentine would do to her next.

“Where did your brother go?” demanded Valentine, and the girl’s sobbing continued, but she said nothing.

Magnus felt for a moment as if he had become a storm, black curling clouds, the slam of thunder and slash of lightning, and all the storm wanted was to leap at Valentine’s throat. Magnus’s magic lashed out almost of its own volition, leaped from both hands. It looked like lightning, burning so blue that it was almost white. It knocked Valentine off his feet and into a wall. Valentine hit the wall so hard that a crack rang out, and he slid to the floor.

That one act also used up far too much of Magnus’s power, but he could not think of that now. He ran over to the girl’s chair and wrenched the chain off her, then touched her face with painful gentleness.

She was crying now, more freely, shuddering and sobbing beneath his hands.

“Hush, hush. Your brother sent me. I’m a warlock; you’re safe,” he murmured, and clasped the back of her neck.

The coins were hurting her. They had to come off. But would removing them do more damage? Magnus could heal, but it had never been his specialty as it was Catarina’s, and he had not had to heal werewolves often. They were so resilient. He could only hope she would be resilient now.

He lifted the coins as gently as he could, and threw them against the wall.

It was too late. It had been too late before he’d ever entered the room. She was blind.

Her lips parted. She said, “Is my brother safe?”

“As safe as can be, sweetheart,” said Magnus. “I’ll take you to him.”

No sooner had he said the word “him” than he felt the cold blade sink into his back and his mouth fill with hot blood.

“Oh, will you?” asked Valentine’s voice in his ear.

The blade slid free, hurting as much on the way out as it had on the way in. Magnus gritted his teeth and gripped the back of the chair harder, kept himself arched over and protecting the child, and turned his head to face Valentine. The white-haired man looked older than the other leaders, but Magnus was not sure if he was actually older or if cold purpose simply made his face seem carved from marble. Magnus wanted to smash it.

Valentine’s hand moved, and Magnus only just managed to catch Valentine’s wrist before he found Valentine’s blade in his heart.

Magnus concentrated and made the clasp of his hand burn, blue electricity circling his fingers. He made the contact burn as the touch of silver had burned the girl, and he grinned as he heard Valentine’s hiss of pain.

Valentine did not ask his name as the others had, did not treat Magnus as that much of a person. Valentine simply stared at Magnus with cold eyes, the same way anyone might stare at a loathsome animal in their path and impeding their progress. “You are interfering in my business, warlock.”

Magnus spat blood into his face. “You are torturing a child in my city. Shadowhunter.”

Valentine used his free hand to deal Magnus a blow that sent Magnus staggering back. Valentine wheeled and followed him, and Magnus thought, Good. It meant that he was moving away from the girl.

She was blind, but she was a werewolf, smell and sound as important to her as sight. She could run, and find her way back to her family.

“I thought we were playing a game where we said what the other person was and what we were doing,” Magnus told him. “Did I get it wrong? Can I guess again? Are you breaking your own sacred Laws, asshole?”

He glanced at the girl, hoping she would run, but she seemed frozen to the spot with terror. Magnus did not dare call out to her in case it attracted Valentine’s attention.

Magnus lifted a hand, sketching a spell in the air, but Valentine saw the spell coming and dodged it. He leaped into the air and then bounded off the wall, Nephilim-swift, to lunge at Magnus. He scythed Magnus’s legs out from under him, and when Magnus landed, Valentine kicked him brutally hard. He drew a sword and brought it down. Magnus rolled so that it caught him a glancing blow along the ribs, cutting through shirt and skin but not hitting vital organs. Not this time.

Magnus dearly hoped he was not going to die here, in this cold warehouse, far from anyone he loved. He tried to rise from the floor, but it was slippery with his own blood, and the scraps of magic he had were not enough to heal or fight, let alone both.

Marian Whitelaw stood in front of him, her blades drawn and new runes shining on her arms. Her hair shone silver in his blurred vision.

Valentine swung his sword, and cut her almost in half.

Magnus gasped, salvation lost as quickly as it had been found, then turned his head toward the sound of more footsteps on the stone.

He was a fool to have hoped for another rescue. He saw one of Valentine’s Circle, standing in the doorway with his eyes fixed on the werewolf girl.

“Valentine!” Lucian Graymark shouted. He ran for the girl, and Magnus tensed, coiled himself for a leap, and then froze as he saw Lucian pick the girl up and wheel on his master. “How could you do this? She’s a child!”

“No, Lucian. She’s a monster in the shape of a child.”

Lucian was holding the girl, his hand in her hair, soothing and stroking. Magnus was starting to think he might have really misjudged Lucian Graymark. Valentine’s face was as white as bone. He resembled a statue more than ever.

Valentine said slowly, “Did you not promise me unconditional obedience? Tell me, what use have I for a second-in-command who undermines me like this?”

“Valentine, I love you and I share your grief,” said Lucian. “I know you are a good man. I know if you stop and think, you will see that this is madness.”

When Valentine took a step toward him, Lucian took a step back. He curved his hand protectively over the werewolf girl’s head as she clung to him with her small legs locked around his waist, and his other hand wavered as if he might go for his weapon.

“Very well,” Valentine said gently, at last. “Have it your way.”

He stood aside to let Lucian Graymark pass through the door and out into the corridor, and back into the room where the werewolves had thought they might be safe. He let Lucian bring the werewolves’ daughter back to them, and followed him at a distance.

Magnus did not trust Valentine for an instant. He would not believe the girl was safe until she was in her mother’s arms.

Lucian Graymark had bought Magnus enough time to gather up his magic. Magnus concentrated, felt his skin knit even as his power drained away.

He pulled himself up from the floor, and ran after them.

The fight in the room they had left was quieter, because there were so many dead. Someone had managed to turn the lights back on. There was a wolf lying dead on the ground, transforming inch by inch into a pale young man. Another young man lay dead beside him, one of the Circle, and in death they did not look so different.

Many of the Shadowhunters in Valentine’s Circle were still standing. None of the Whitelaws were. Maryse Lightwood had her face in her hands. Some of the others were visibly shaken. Now the shadows and the frenzy of battle had receded, and they were left in the light to look at what they had done.

“Valentine,” Maryse said, her voice imploring as her leader approached. “Valentine, what have we done? The Whitelaws are dead. . . . Valentine . . .”

They all looked to Valentine as he approached, clustered up to him like frightened children rather than adults. Valentine must have gotten hold of them very young, Magnus thought, but he found himself unable to care if they were brainwashed or deluded, not after what they had done. It seemed like there was no pity left in him.

“You have done nothing but try to uphold the Law,” said Valentine. “You know that all traitors to our kind must pay one day. If they had chosen to step aside, to trust us, their fellow children of the Angel, all would have been well.”

“What about the Clave?” said the curly-haired man, a note of challenge in his voice.

“Michael,” murmured Maryse’s husband.

“What of them, Wayland?” Valentine asked, his voice sharp. “The Whitelaws died because of rogue werewolves. It is the truth, and we will tell the Clave so.”

The only one of Valentine’s Circle not desperately listening was Lucian Graymark. He made his way to the werewolf woman, and placed the little girl into her arms. Magnus heard the woman’s indrawn breath as she saw her daughter’s eyes. He heard her begin to cry softly. Lucian stood beside the mother and daughter, looking deeply distressed, then crossed the floor with a suddenly determined tread.

“Let’s go, Valentine,” he said. “All this with the Whitelaws was . . . was a terrible accident. We can’t have our Circle suffering for it. We should go now. These creatures aren’t worth your time, not any of them. These werewolves are just strays who broke off from their pack. You and I will go hunting in the werewolf encampment where the real threat lies tonight. We will bring down the pack leader together.”

“Together. But tomorrow night. Come back to the house tonight?” Valentine asked in a low voice. “Jocelyn has something to tell you.”

Lucian clasped Valentine’s arm, clearly relieved. “Of course. Anything for Jocelyn. Anything for either of you. You know that.”

“My friend,” said Valentine, “I do.”

Valentine clasped Lucian’s arm in return, but Magnus saw the look Valentine gave Lucian. There was love in that look, but hate as well, and the hate was winning. It was as clear as a silvery shark’s fin in the dark waters of Valentine’s black eyes. There was death in those eyes.

Magnus was not surprised. He had seen many monsters who could love, but only a few who had let that love change them, who had been able to alchemize love for one person into kindness for many.

He remembered Valentine’s face as the Circle’s leader had cut Marian Whitelaw into bloody halves, and Magnus wondered what it would be like, living with someone like Valentine, wondered what it was like for his wife, who Marian had described as lovely. You could share your bed with a monster, lay your head on the same pillow next to a head filled with murder and madness. Magnus had done it himself.

But love that blind did not last. One day you lifted your head from the pillow and saw you were living in a nightmare.

Lucian Graymark might be the only one of the lot worth bothering with, and Magnus would bet he was as good as dead.

Magnus had been so terribly wrong to let the past deceive him; he’d been wrong to think that the one with depths of goodness in him was Stephen Herondale. Magnus looked at Stephen, at his beautiful face and his weak mouth. Magnus had a sudden impulse to tell the Shadowhunter that Magnus knew and loved his ancestor, that Tessa would be so disappointed in him. But he did not want Valentine’s Circle to remember or go after Tessa.

Magnus said nothing. Stephen Herondale had chosen his side, and Magnus had chosen his.

Valentine’s Circle withdrew from the warehouse, marching like a little army.

Magnus ran to where old Adam Whitelaw lay in a pool of blood, his shining axe lying, dull and still, in the same dark pool.

“Marian?” Adam asked. Magnus went to his knees in the pool, hands searching to find and close the worst of the wounds. There were so many—too many.

Magnus looked at Adam’s eyes, where the light was going out, and knew Adam read the answer on his face before Magnus could think to lie to him.

“My brother?” Adam asked. “The—the children?”

Magnus looked around the room at the dead. When he looked back, Adam Whitelaw had turned his face away and set his mouth so that he would not betray either pain or grief. Magnus used all the magic he had left to ease the man’s pain, and in the end Adam lifted a hand and stilled Magnus’s, rested his head against Magnus’s arm.

“Enough, warlock,” he said, his voice rasping. “I would not—I would not live if I could.” He coughed, a wet terrible sound, and shut his eyes.

“Ave atque vale, Shadowhunter,” Magnus whispered. “Your angel would be proud.”

Adam Whitelaw did not seem to hear. It was only a very short time later that the last of the Whitelaws died in Magnus’s arms.

The Clave believed that the Whitelaws had been killed by rogue werewolves, and nothing Magnus said made any difference. He had not expected them to believe him. He hardly knew why he spoke out, except that the Nephilim so clearly preferred that he be silent.

Magnus waited for the Circle to return.

The Circle did not come to New York again, but Magnus did see them one more time. He saw them at the Uprising.

Not long after the night in the warehouse, Lucian Graymark disappeared as if he had died, and Magnus assumed he had. Then a year later Magnus had word of Lucian again. Ragnor Fell told Magnus there was a werewolf who had once been a Shadowhunter, and that he was spreading word that the time had come, that Downworld had to be ready to fight the Circle. Valentine unveiled his plan and armed his Circle at the time when the Accords of peace between Nephilim and Downworlders were to be signed again. His Circle cut down Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike in the Great Hall of the Angel.

Thanks to Lucian Graymark’s warning, Downworlders were able to rush into the Hall and surprise Valentine’s Circle. They’d been forewarned and also heavily forearmed.

The Shadowhunters surprised Magnus then, as the Whitelaws had surprised him before. The Clave did not abandon the Downworlders and turn to join with the Circle. The vast majority of them, the Clave and the Institute leaders, made the choice the Whitelaws had made before them. They fought for their sworn allies and for peace, and Valentine’s Circle was defeated.

But once the battle was done, the Shadowhunters blamed Downworlders for the deaths of so many of their people, as if the battle had been Downworld’s idea. The Shadowhunters prided themselves on their justice, but their justice for Magnus’s kind was always bitter.

Relations between the Nephilim and Downworld did not improve. Magnus despaired that they ever would.

Especially when the Clave sent the last remaining members of the Circle, the Lightwoods and another Circle member called Hodge Starkweather, to Magnus’s city, to atone for their crimes by running the New York Institute as exiles from the Glass City. The Shadowhunters were scarce enough after the massacre, and could not be replenished without the Mortal Cup, which seemed to have been lost with Valentine. The Lightwoods knew that they had been treated mercifully due to their high connections in the Clave, and that if they slipped up once, the Clave would crush them.

Raphael Santiago of the vampires, who owed Magnus a favor or twenty, reported that the Lightwoods were distant but scrupulously fair with every Downworlder they came into contact with. Magnus knew that sooner or later he would have to work with them, would learn to be civil to them, but he preferred that it be later. The whole bloody tragedy of Valentine’s Circle was over, and Magnus would rather not look back on the darkness but look forward and hope for light.

For more than two years after the Uprising, Magnus didn’t see any of Valentine’s Circle again. Until he did.