Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Ever since the unfortunate events of the French Revolution, Magnus had nursed a slight prejudice against vampires. The undead were always killing one’s servants and endangering one’s pet monkey. The vampire clan in Paris was still sending Magnus rude messages about their small misunderstanding. Vampires bore a grudge longer than any technically living creatures, and whenever they were in a bad temper, they expressed themselves through murder. Magnus generally wished his companions to be somewhat less—no pun intended—bloodthirsty.

There was also the fact that sometimes vampires committed crimes worse than murder. They committed crimes against fashion. When one was immortal, one tended to forget the passing of time. Still, that was no excuse for wearing a bonnet last fashionable in the era of Napoléon I.

Magnus was beginning, however, to feel as if he might have been a trinoindente hasty in dismissing all vampires.

Lady Camille Belcourt was a terribly charming woman. She was also attired in the absolute height of fashion. Her dress had a darling hoop skirt, and the fall of blue taffeta in seven narrow noindentounces about her chair made it appear as if she were rising from a cascade of gleaming blue water. There was not very much material at all around her bosom, which was as pale and curved as a pearl. All that broke the perfect pallor of the curve of bosom and the column of neck was a black velvet ribbon and the thick shining ringlets clustered about her face. One gold ringlet was long enough so that it rested in the delicate curve of her collarbone, which led Magnus’s eyes back once again to—

Really, all roads led back to Lady Camille’s bosom.

It was a wonderfully designed dress. It was also a wonderfully designed bosom.

Lady Camille, as observant as she was beautiful, noticed Magnus noticing, and smiled.

“The marvelous thing about being a creature of the night,” she confided in a low voice, “is that one need never wear anything but evening clothes.”

“I had never considered that point before,” said Magnus, much struck.

“Of course I adore variety, so I do seize any opportunity to change costumes. I find there are many occasions during an adventurous night for a lady to divest herself of her garments.” She leaned forward, one pale, smooth elbow resting against the Shadowhunters’ mahogany table. “Something tells me that you are a man who knows something about adventurous nights.”

“My lady, with me, every night is an adventure. Pray continue your discourse on fashion,” Magnus urged her. “It is one of my favorite subjects.”

Lady Camille smiled.

Magnus lowered his voice discreetly. “Or if you choose, pray continue your discourse on disrobing. I believe that is my most favorite subject of all.”

They sat side by side at a long table in the Shadowhunters’ London Institute. The Consul, a dreary Nephilim heading up the proceedings, was droning on about all the spells they wished warlocks to make available to them at cut-rate prices, and about their notions of proper behavior for vampires and werewolves. Magnus had not heard a single way in which these “Accords” could conceivably benefit Downworlders, but he could certainly see why the Shadowhunters had developed a passionate desire to ratify them.

He began regretting his agreement to make the voyage to London and its Institute so that the Shadowhunters could waste his valuable time. The Consul, who Magnus believed was called Morgwhatsit, seemed passionately in love with his own voice.

Though, actually he had stopped talking.

Magnus glanced away from Camille to find the far less pleasant sight of the Consul—his disapproval writ across his face, as stark as the runes on his skin—staring at him. “If you and the—the vampire woman could cease your noindentirtation for a moment,” he said in acid tones.

“noindentirting? We were merely indulging in a little risqué conversation,” Magnus said, offended. “When I begin to noindentirt, I assure you the entire room will know. My noindentirtations cause sensations.”

Camille laughed. “What a clever rhyme.”

Magnus’s joke seemed to liberate the restless discontent of all Downworlders at the table.

“What else are we to do but talk amongst ourselves?” asked a werewolf stripling, still young but with the intense green eyes of a fanatic and the thin determined face of a fanatic who was actually competent. His name was Ralf Scott. “We have been here for three hours and have not been given the chance to speak at all. You Nephilim have done all the talking.”

“I cannot believe,” put in Arabella, a charming mermaid with charmingly placed seashells, “that I swam up the Thames, and consented to be hauled out by pulleys and put in a large glass aquarium, for this.”

She spoke quite loudly.

Even Morgwhatsit looked taken aback. Why, Magnus wanted to know, were Shadowhunter names so long, when warlocks gave themselves elegant family names of one syllable? The long names were sheer self-importance.

“You wretches should be honored to be in the London Institute,” snarled a silver-haired Shadowhunter by the name of Starkweather. “I wouldn’t allow any of you in my Institute, unless I was carrying one of your filthy heads on a pike. Silence, and let your betters speak for you.”

An extremely awkward pause ensued. Starkweather glared around, and his eyes dwelled on Camille, not as if she were a beautiful woman but as if she might be a fine trophy for his wall. Camille’s eyes went to her leader and friend, the pale-haired vampire Alexei de Quincey, but he did not respond to her mute appeal. Magnus put out his hand and took hers.

Her skin was cool, but her fingers fit his very neatly. He saw Ralf Scott glance over at them and blanch. He was even younger than Magnus had thought. His eyes were huge and glass green, transparent enough for all his emotions to shine through, in his thin face. They were fixed on Camille.

Interesting, Magnus thought, and filed the observation away.

“These are meant to be peace accords,” Scott said, deliberately slowly. “Which means we are all meant to have a chance to have our voices heard. I have heard how peace will benefit Shadowhunters. I wish now to discuss how it will benefit Downworlders. Will we be given seats on the Council?”

Starkweather began to choke. One of the Shadowhunter women stood up hastily. “Gracious, I think my husband was so excited by the chance to deliver a speech that he did not offer refreshments,” she said loudly. “I am Amalia Morgenstern.” Oh, that’s it, Magnus thought. Morgenstern. Awful name. “And is there anything I can offer you?” the woman continued. “I will ring for the maid in a trice.”

“No raw meat for the dog, mind,” Starkweather said, and sniggered. Magnus saw another Shadowhunter woman titter silently behind her hand. Ralf Scott sat, pale and still. He had been the moving force behind assembling Downworlders here today, and had been the only werewolf willing to come. Even his own young brother, Woolsey, had stayed away, parting from Ralf on the front steps of the Institute with an insouciant toss of his blond head and a wink at Magnus. (Magnus had thought, Interesting, about that, too.)

The faeries had noindentatly refused to attend, the queen having set herself against the idea. Magnus was the only warlock who had come, and Ralf had been forced to hunt him down, knowing his connections to the Silent Brothers. Magnus himself had not had high hopes about this attempt to forge a peace with Shadowhunters, but it was a shame to see the boy’s airy dreams come to this.

“We are in England, are we not?” asked Magnus, and he bent a charming smile on Amalia Morgenstern, who looked rather noindentustered. “I would be delighted if we could have some scones.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Amalia. “With clotted cream, of course.”

Magnus gazed upon Camille. “Some of my fondest memories include lashings of cream and beautiful women.”

Magnus was enjoying scandalizing the Shadowhunters. Camille rather looked as if she were enjoying it too. Her green eyes were heavy-lidded for a moment with amused satisfaction, as if she were a cat who had already had her fill of cream.

Amalia rang the bell. “While we wait for scones, we can hear the rest of dear Roderick’s speech!”

There was an appalled silence, and in the stillness the mutter outside the door rang out, loud and clear.

“Merciful Angel, give me strength to endure. . . .”

Roderick Morgenstern, who Magnus thought truly deserved to have a name that sounded like a goat chewing gravel, stood up happily to continue his speech. Amalia attempted to rise unobtrusively from her seat—Magnus could have told her that hoop skirts and stealth together were a lost cause—and made her way to the door, which she threw open.

Several young Shadowhunters tumbled into the room like puppies falling over one another. Amalia’s eyes rounded in comic surprise. “What on earth—”

Despite Shadowhunters having the swiftness of angels, only one managed to land with grace. It was a boy, or rather a young man, who ended his fall on one knee before Amalia, like Romeo proposing to Juliet.

He had hair the color of a coin that was pure gold, no base metal, and the lines of his face were as clean and elegant as a profile etched on one of those princely coins. His shirt had become disarranged at some point during the eavesdropping, the collar pulled open to reveal the edge of a rune drawn on his white skin.

The most remarkable thing about him were his eyes. They were laughing eyes, at once both joyous and tender: they were the radiant pale blue of a sky slipping toward evening in Heaven, when angels who had been sweet all day found themselves tempted to sin.

“I could not bear to be parted from you a moment longer, dear, dearest Mrs. Morgenstern,” said the young man, possessing himself of Amalia’s hand. “I yearn for you.”

He made play with his long golden eyelashes, and Amalia Morgenstern was forthwith reduced to blushes and smiles.

Magnus had always had a decided preference for black hair. It appeared as though fate were determined that he should broaden his horizons. Either that or the blonds of the world had formed some sort of conspiracy to be good-looking all of a sudden.

“Excuse me, Bane?” said Roderick Morgenstern. “Are you attending?”

“I’m so sorry,” Magnus said politely. “Somebody incredibly attractive just came into the room, and I ceased to pay attention to a word you were saying.”

It was perhaps an ill-judged remark. The Shadowhunter elders, representatives from the Clave, all appeared horrified and dismayed at any Downworlder expressing interest in one of their youths. The Nephilim also had very decided opinions on the subject of inverts and deviant behavior, since as a group their chief occupations were waving large weaponry about and judging everybody they met.

Camille, meanwhile, looked as if she found Magnus even more interesting than she had before. She looked back and forth between him and the young blond Shadowhunter boy, and covered her smile with a gloved hand.

“He is delightful,” she murmured to Magnus.

Magnus was watching as Amalia shooed out the young Shadowhunters—the blond boy; an older young man with thick brown hair and significant eyebrows; and a dark-eyed, birdlike little girl, barely more than a toddler, who looked over her shoulder and said, “Papa?” in a clear questioning voice to the head of the London Institute, a grave dark man called Granville Fairchild.

“Go, Charlotte. You know your duty,” said Fairchild. Duty before all; that was the warrior’s way, Magnus renoindentected. Certainly duty before love.

Little Charlotte, already a dutiful Shadowhunter, trotted obediently away.

Camille’s low voice recalled Magnus to attention. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share him?”

Magnus smiled back at her. “Not as a meal, no. Was that what you meant?”

Camille laughed. Ralf Scott made an impatient noise, but was shushed by de Quincey, who muttered at him in annoyance; while over that noise rose the discontented grumblings of Roderick Morgenstern, a man who clearly wished to continue with his speech—and then finally the refreshments arrived, carried in on silver tea trays by a host of maids.

Arabella the mermaid lifted a hand, sloshing energetically in her aquarium.

“If you please,” she said. “I would like a scone.”

When Morgenstern’s interminable speech was finally done, everybody had lost all will to converse and simply wished to go home. Magnus parted from Camille Belcourt with deep reluctance and from the Shadowhunters with deep relief.

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus’s eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus’s breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one.

As he walked down Thames Street, he began to plot ways in which to see Camille again. He should pay a call upon the vampire clan in London. He knew de Quincey lived in Kensington.

It was only civil.

“After all,” Magnus remarked aloud to himself, swinging his monkey-headed cane, “attractive and interesting persons do not simply drop out of the sky.”

It was then that the fair-haired Shadowhunter that Magnus had spotted at the Institute somersaulted from the top of a wall and landed gracefully in the street before him.

“Devastating ensembles made on Bond Street with red brocade waistcoats do not simply drop out of the sky!” Magnus proclaimed experimentally to the Heavens.

The young man frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” said Magnus. “May I help you? I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

The Nephilim stooped and picked up his hat, which had fallen onto the cobblestones when he’d made his leap. He then took it off in order to noindentourish it in Magnus’s direction. The effect of the smile and the eyelashes together was like a small earthquake of attractiveness. Magnus could not blame Amalia Morgenstern for her giggling, even if the boy was far too young for her.

“No fewer than four of my esteemed elders told me I was on no account to ever converse with you, so I vowed that I would know you. My name is Edmund Herondale. May I ask your name? They referred to you only as ‘that disgraceful one-warlock show.’”

“I am deeply moved by that tribute,” Magnus told Edmund, and made his own bow. “Magnus Bane, at your service.”

“Now we are acquainted,” Edmund said. “Capital! Do you frequent any low dens of sin and debauchery?”

“Oh, now and then.”

“The Morgensterns said you did, while they were throwing away the plates,” Edmund said, with every sign of enthusiasm. “Shall we go?”

Throwing away the plates? It took Magnus a moment to comprehend, and when he did, he felt cold inside. The Shadowhunters had thrown away the very plates Downworlders had touched, afraid their china would be corrupted.

On the other hand, that was not Edmund’s fault. The only other place Magnus had to go was the mansion he had perhaps rashly purchased in Grosvenor Square. A recent adventure had caused him to become temporarily wealthy (a state he despised; he usually tried to get rid of his money as soon as he had it), so he had decided to live in style. The ton of London were referring to him, he believed, as “Bane the nabob.” This meant a great many people in London were anxious to make his acquaintance, and a great many of them seemed tiresome. Edmund, at least, did not.

“Why not?” Magnus decided.

Edmund glowed. “Excellent. Very few people are willing to have real adventures. Haven’t you found that out, Bane? Isn’t it sad?”

“I have very few rules in life, but one of them is to never decline an adventure. The others are: to avoid becoming romantically entangled with sea creatures; to always ask for what you want, because the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment but the best thing that can happen is nudity; to demand ready money up front; and to never play cards with Catarina Loss.”

“What?”

“She cheats,” Magnus explained. “Never mind that one.”

“I would like to meet a lady who cheats at cards,” Edmund said wistfully. “Aside from Granville’s aunt Millicent, who is a terror at piquet.”

Magnus had never truly considered that the high-and-mighty Shadowhunters ever played cards, let alone cheated at them. He supposed he had imagined that their leisure activities consisted of weapons training and having discussions about their infinite superiority over everyone else.

Magnus ventured to give Edmund a hint. “Mundane clubs do generally frown upon patrons who have, purely for random example, an abundance of weaponry about their person. So that might be an impediment.”

“Absolutely not,” Edmund promised him. “Why, I have the most paltry assortment of weapons on me. Only a few miserable daggers, a single stiletto knife, a couple of whips—”

Magnus blinked. “Hardly an armory,” he said. “Though, it sounds like a most amusing Saturday.”

“Capital!” said Edmund Herondale, apparently taking this for approval of his company on Magnus’s excursion. He looked delighted.

White’s club, on St. James’s Street, had not changed outwardly at all. Magnus regarded the pale stone facade with pleasure: the Greek columns and the arched frames to the higher windows, as if each window were a chapel unto itself; the cast-iron balcony, which bore an intricate swirling pattern that had always made Magnus think of a procession of snail shells; the bow window out of which a famous man had once looked, and bet on a race between raindrops. The club had been established by an Italian, had been the haunt of criminals, and had been the irresistible bane of English aristocrats for more than a hundred years.

Whenever Magnus heard anything described as a “bane,” he felt sure he would like it. It was why he had chosen that particular last name for himself, and also why he had joined White’s several years before on a noindentying visit to London, in the main because his friend Catarina Loss had bet him that he could not do it.

Edmund swung around one of the black cast-iron lamps set before the door. The leaping noindentame behind the glass was dim compared to his eyes.

“This used to be a place where highwaymen drank hot chocolate,” Magnus told Edmund carelessly as they walked inside. “The hot chocolate was very good. Being a highwayman is chilly work.”

“Did you ever ask someone to stand and deliver?”

“I’ll just say this,” said Magnus. “I look dashing in a tasteful mask and a large hat.”

Edmund laughed again—he had an easy and delighted laugh, like a child. His gaze was roving all over the room, from the ceiling—constructed to look as if they stood in a vast stone barrel—to the chandelier dripping glittering jewels like a duchess; to the green baize-covered tables that clustered on the right side of the room, where men were playing cards and losing fortunes.

Edmund’s quality of bright wonder and surprise made him seem younger than he was; it lent a fragile air to his beauty. Magnus did not wonder why he, one of the Nephilim, was not warier of a Downworlder. He doubted Edmund Herondale was wary of anything in life. He was eager to be entertained, ready to be thrilled, essentially trusting of the world.

Edmund pointed to where two men stood, one making an entry in a large book with a defiant noindentourish of his pen.

“What’s afoot there?”

“I presume they are recording a wager. There is a betting book here in White’s that is quite celebrated. All sorts of bets are taken—whether a gentleman could manage to ravish a lady in a balloon a thousand feet off the ground, whether a man could live underwater for a day.”

Magnus found them a pair of chairs near a fire, and made a gesture indicating that he and his companion were sorely in need of a drink. Their thirst was supplied the next instant. There were advantages to a truly excellent gentlemen’s club.

“Do you think one could?” Edmund inquired. “Not live underwater; I know mundanes cannot. The other thing.”

“My experiences in a balloon with a lady were not very pleasant,” Magnus said, wincing at the memory. Queen Marie Antoinette had been an exciting but not comfortable traveling companion. “I would be disinclined to indulge in carnal delights in a balloon with a lady or a gentleman. No matter how delightful they were.”

Edmund Herondale did not seem in the least surprised by the mention of a gentleman in Magnus’s romantic speculations.

“It would be a lady in the balloon for me,” he said.

“Ah,” said Magnus, who had suspected as much.

“But I am always noindentattered to be admired,” said Edmund, with an engaging grin. “And I am always admired.”

He said it with that easy smile and another golden noindentutter of eyelashes, in the same way he had wound Amalia Morgenstern around his finger. It was clear he knew he was outrageous, and he expected people to like it. Magnus suspected they all did.

“Ah, well,” Magnus said, giving up the matter gracefully. “Any particular lady?”

“I am not perfectly certain I believe in marriage. Why have just one bonbon when you can have the box?”

Magnus raised his eyebrows and took a swallow of his excellent brandy. The young man had a way with words and the naïve delight of someone who had never had his heart broken.

“No one’s ever really hurt you, have they?” said Magnus, who saw no point in beating about the bush.

Edmund looked alarmed. “Why, are you about to?”

“With all those whips on your person? Hardly. I merely meant that you seem like someone who has never had his heart broken.”

“I lost my parents as a child,” said Edmund candidly. “But rare is the Shadowhunter with an intact family. I was taken in by the Fairchilds and raised in the Institute. Its halls have ever been my home. And if you mean love, then no, my heart has never been broken. Nor do I foresee that it will be.”

“Don’t you believe in love?”

“Love, marriage, the whole business is extremely overrated. For instance, this chap I know called Benedict Lightwood recently got leg-shackled, and the affair is hideous—”

“Your friends moving forward into a different era of their lives can be difficult,” Magnus said sympathetically.

Edmund made a face. “Benedict is not my friend. It’s the poor young lady I feel sorry for. The man is peculiar in his habits, if you see what I’m trying to say.”

“I don’t,” Magnus said noindentatly.

“Bit of a deviant, is what I’m getting at.”

Magnus regarded him with a cold air.

“Bad News Benedict, we call him,” said Edmund. “Mostly due to his habit of consorting with demons. The more tentacles, the better, if you catch my meaning.”

“Oh,” Magnus said, enlightened. “I know who you mean. I have a friend from whom he bought some most unusual woodcuts. Also a couple of engravings. Said friend is simply an honest tradesman, and I have never bought anything from him myself, mind you.”

“Also Benedict Lightworm. And Bestial Benedict,” Edmund continued bitterly. “But he sneaks about while the rest of us get up to honest larks, and the Clave all think that he’s superlatively well behaved. Poor Barbara. I’m afraid she acted hastily because of her broken heart.”

Magnus leaned back in his chair. “And who broke her heart, might I ask?” he asked, amused.

“Ladies’ hearts are like bits of china on a mantelpiece. There are so many of them, and it is so easy to break them without noticing.” Edmund shrugged, a little rueful but mostly amused, and then a man in an unfortunate waistcoat walked into his armchair.

“I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman. “I believe I am somewhat foxed!”

“I am prepared to charitably believe you were drunk when you got dressed,” Magnus said under his breath.

“Eh?” said the man. “The name’s Alvanley. You ain’t one of those Indian nabobs, are you?”

Though he never much felt like explaining his origins to white-skinned Europeans who didn’t care to know the difference between Shanghai and Rangoon, given the troubles in India, it was not actually a good idea for Magnus to be taken for Indian. He sighed and disclaimed, made his introduction and his bow.

“Herondale,” said Edmund, bowing too. Edmund’s golden assurance and open smile did their work.

“New to the club?” Alvanley asked, suddenly benevolent. “Well, well. It’s a celebration. May I offer you both another drink?”

Alvanley’s friends, some at the card table and some milling about, raised a discreet cheer. Queen Victoria had, so the happy report went, risen safe from childbed, and both mother and daughter were doing admirably.

“Drink to the health of our new Princess Beatrice, and to the queen!”

“Doesn’t the poor woman have nine children?” asked Magnus. “By the ninth I would think she would be too exhausted to think of a new name, and certainly too fatigued to rule a country. I will drink to her health by all means.”

Edmund was very ready to be plied with more drinks, though at one point he slipped up and referred to the queen as Vanessa rather than Victoria.

“Ahahaha,” said Magnus. “He is on the ran-tan, and no mistake!”

Edmund was noindentushed with drink and almost immediately got absorbed in a card game. Magnus joined in playing Macao as well, but he found himself observing the Shadowhunter with some concern. People who blithely believed that the world owed them good luck could be dangerous at the gaming table. Add to that the fact that Edmund clearly craved excitement, and his kind of temperament was the very one most suited for disaster at play. There was something unsettling about the glitter of the boy’s eyes suddenly, changed by the light of the club’s wax candles, from being like a sky to being like a sea an instant before a storm.

Edmund, Magnus decided, put him in mind of nothing so much as a boat—a shining beautiful thing, buffeted by the whims of the water and winds. Only time would tell if he would find anchor and harbor, or if all that beauty and charm would be reduced to a wreck.

All imaginings aside, there was no need for Magnus to play nursemaid to Shadowhunters. Edmund was a man full-grown and able to care for himself. It was Magnus who grew bored in the end, and coaxed Edmund out of White’s for a sobering walk in the night air.

They had not wandered far from St. James’s Street when Magnus paused in his retelling of a certain incident in Peru because he felt Edmund come to attention next to him, every line of that angelic athlete’s body suddenly tensed. He brought to mind forcibly a pointer dog hearing an animal in the undergrowth.

Magnus followed the line of Edmund’s sight until he saw what the Shadowhunter was seeing: a man in a bowler hat, his hand set firmly on a carriage door, having what appeared to be an altercation with the occupants of the carriage.

It was shockingly uncivil, and but a moment later it became worse. The man had hold of a woman’s arm, Magnus saw. She was dressed plainly, as befit an abigail or lady’s maid. The man tried to wrench her from the carriage by main force.

He would have succeeded but for the interference of the other occupant of the carriage, a small dark lady, this one in a gown that rustled like silk as her voice rang out like thunder.

“Unhand her, you wretch!” said the lady, and she belabored the man about the head with her bonnet.

The man started at the unexpected onslaught and let go of the woman, but turned his attention to the lady and grasped the hand holding the bonnet instead. The woman gave a shout that seemed more outrage than terror, and struck him in the nose. The man’s face turned slightly at the blow, and Magnus and Edmund were both able to see his eyes.

There was no mistaking the void behind those brilliant poison-green eyes. Demon, Magnus thought. A demon, and a hungry one, to be trying to abduct women from carriages in a London street.

A demon, and a very unlucky one, to do so in front of a Shadowhunter.

It did occur to Magnus that Shadowhunters generally hunted in groups, and that Edmund Herondale was inebriated.

“Very well,” Magnus said. “Let us pause for a moment and consider— Oh, you have already run off. Splendid.”

He found himself addressing Edmund’s coat, wrenched off and left in a heap upon the cobblestones, and his hat, spinning gently beside it.

Edmund jumped and somersaulted in midair, vaulting neatly onto the roof of the carriage. As he did so, he drew weapons from the concealing folds of his garments: the two whips he had spoken of before, arcs of sizzling light against the night sky. He wielded them with cutting precision, their light waking golden fire in his tousled hair and casting a glow on his carved features, and by that light Magnus saw his face change from a laughing boy’s to the stern countenance of an angel.

One whip curled around the demon’s waist like a gentleman’s hand around a lady’s waist during a waltz. The other wrapped as tight as wire about his throat. Edmund twisted one hand, and the demon spun, crashing to the ground.

“You heard the lady,” said Edmund. “Unhand her.”

The demon, his teeth suddenly much more numerous than before, snarled and lunged for the carriage. Magnus raised his hand and made the carriage door noindenty shut and the carriage jolt forward a few paces, despite the fact that the carriage driver was missing—presumed eaten—and despite the Shadowhunter who was still standing atop it.

Edmund did not lose his balance. As surefooted as a cat, he simply leaped down to the ground and struck the Eidolon demon a blow across the face with his whip, sending him noindentying backward again. Edmund landed a foot upon the demon’s throat, and Magnus saw the creature begin to writhe, its outlines blurring into a changing shape.

He heard the creak of a carriage door being opened and saw the lady who had punched the demon essaying to emerge from relative safety to the demon-haunted street.

“Ma’am,” Magnus said, advancing. “I must counsel you not to exit the carriage while a demon-slaying is in progress.”

She looked him full in the face. She had large dark blue eyes, the color of the sky immediately before night turned it black, and the hair slipping from her elaborate coiffure was black, as if night had come with no stars. Though her beautiful eyes were very wide, she did not look frightened, and the hand that had struck the demon was still clenched in a fist.

Magnus made a silent vow to come to London far more often in the future. He was meeting the most delightful people.

“We must render assistance to that young man,” said the lady, in a lilting musical accent.

Magnus glanced over to Edmund, who was at present being thrown against a wall and who was bleeding rather profusely, but grinning and sliding a dagger from his boot with one hand as he choked the demon with the other.

“Do not be alarmed, dear lady. He has the matter well in hand,” he said as Edmund slid the dagger home. “So to speak.”

The demon gurgled and thrashed in its death throes. Magnus made the decision to ignore the furor behind him, and made the two women a superb bow. It did not seem to console the maidservant, who shrank into the shadowed recesses of the carriage and attempted to crawl into a pocket handkerchief, face foremost.

The lady of the shining ebony hair and pansy eyes let go her hold on the carriage door and gave Magnus her hand instead. Her hand was small, soft, and warm; she was not even trembling.

“I am Magnus Bane,” said Magnus. “Call on me for aid at any time of mortal danger, or if in urgent need of an escort to a noindentower show.”

“Linette Owens,” said the lady, and dimpled. She had delicious dimples. “I heard the capital held many dangers, but this seems excessive.”

“I am aware that all this must seem very strange and frightening to you.”

“Is that man an evil faerie?” Miss Owens inquired. She met Magnus’s startled look with her own steady gaze. “I am from Wales,” she said. “We still believe in the old ways and the fey folk there.”

She tipped her head back to scrutinize Magnus. Her crown of midnight-colored plaits seemed like it had to be too massive for such a small head, on such a slender neck.

“Your eyes . . . ,” she said slowly. “I believe you must be a good faerie, sir. What your companion is, I cannot tell.”

Magnus glanced over his shoulder at his companion, who he had almost forgotten was there. The demon was darkness and dust at Edmund’s feet, and with his foe well and truly vanquished, Edmund had turned his attention to the carriage. Magnus observed the spark of Edmund’s golden charm kindle at the sight of Linette, blooming from candle to sun in an instant.

“What am I?” he asked. “I am Edmund Herondale, and, my lady, I am always and forever at your service. If you will have me.”

He smiled, and the smile was slow and devastating. In the dark narrow street long past midnight, his eyes were high summer.

“I do not mean to seem indelicate or ungrateful,” said Linette Owens, “but are you a dangerous lunatic?”

Edmund blinked.

“I fear I must point out that you are walking the streets armed to the teeth. Did you expect to do battle with a monstrous creature this night?”

“Not ‘expect’ exactly,” said Edmund.

“Then are you an assassin?” asked Linette. “Are you an overzealous soldier?”

“Madam,” said Edmund. “I am a Shadowhunter.”

“I am not familiar with the word. Can you do magic?” Linette asked, and placed her hand on Magnus’s sleeve. “This gentleman can do magic.”

She bestowed an approving smile on Magnus. Magnus was extremely gratified.

“Honored to be of assistance, Miss Owens,” he murmured.

Edmund looked as if he had been struck about the face with a fish.

“Of course—of course I can’t do magic!” he managed to splutter out, sounding in true Shadowhunter fashion appalled by the very idea.

“Oh, well,” said Linette, clearly rather disappointed. “That is not your fault. We all make do with what we have. I am indebted to you, sir, for saving me and my friend from an unspeakable fate.”

Edmund preened, and in his pleasure spoke incautiously. “Think nothing of it. It would be my honor to escort you to your home, Miss Owens. The streets about Mall Pall can be very treacherous for women at night.”

There was a silence.

“Do you mean Pall Mall?” Linette asked, and smiled slightly. “I am not the one overset by strong liquor. Should you like me to escort you home instead, Mr. Herondale?”

Edmund Herondale was left at a loss for words. Magnus suspected it was a novel experience, and one that would probably be good for him.

Miss Owens turned slightly from Edmund back to Magnus.

“My abigail, Angharad, and I were traveling from my estate in Wales,” she explained. “We are to spend the London season with a distant relative of mine. We have had a long and tiring journey, and I wished to believe that we might reach London before nightfall. It was very stupid and reckless of me, and it has caused Angharad great distress. Your aid was invaluable.”

Magnus could discern a great deal more from what Linette Owens had told him than what the lady had actually said. She had referred not to her papa’s estate but to her own, in a casual manner, as one accustomed to ownership. That combined with the costly material of her dress and a certain something about her bearing confirmed it for Magnus—the lady was an heiress, and not simply the heiress of a fortune but of an estate. The way she spoke of Wales made Magnus think the lady would not wish to have her lands cared for by some steward at a remove. Society would think it a scandal and a shame for an estate to be in the hands of a woman, especially one so young and so pretty. Society would expect her to contract a marriage so that her husband could administer the estate, take possession of both the land and the lady.

She must have come to London because she’d found the suitors available in Wales not to her taste, and was on a quest to find a husband to take back to Wales with her.

She had come to London in search of love.

Magnus could sympathize with that. He was aware that love was not always part of the bargain in high-society marriages, but Linette Owens seemed to have a mind of her own. He thought it likely she had a purpose—the right marriage, to the right man—and that she would accomplish it.

“Welcome to London,” Magnus told her.

Linette dropped a small curtsy in the open carriage. Her eyes traveled over Magnus’s shoulder and softened. Magnus looked around, and Edmund was standing there, one whip curled around his wrist as if he were comforting himself with it. Magnus had to admit it was a feat to look so gloriously handsome and yet so woebegone.

Linette visibly yielded to a charitable impulse and stepped out of the carriage. She made her way across the cobblestones and stood before the forlorn young Shadowhunter.

“I am sorry if I was uncivil, or if I in any way implied I thought you were a . . . twpsyn,” said Linette, tactfully not translating the word.

She put her hand out, and Edmund offered his, palm up and whip still curled around his shirt-sleeved wrist. There was a sudden hungry openness to his face; the moment had a sudden weight. Linette hesitated and then placed her hand in his.

“I am very much obliged to you for saving me and Angharad from a dreadful fate. Truly I am,” said Linette. “Again, I apologize if I was ungracious.”

“I will give you leave to be as ungracious as you choose,” Edmund said. “If I can see you again.”

He looked down at her, not making play with his eyelashes. His face was naked and open.

The moment turned. Edmund’s serious, humble honesty did what eyelashes and swagger had not, and made Linette Owens hesitate.

“You can pay a call at 26 Eaton Square, at Lady Caroline Harcourt’s,” she said. “If you still wish to in the morning.”

She drew her hand away, and after a single uncertain instant, Edmund let her.

Linette touched Magnus’s arm before she ascended into the carriage. She was just as pretty and amiable as before, but something in her manner had changed. “Please come pay a call on me as well, if you care to, Mr. Bane.”

“Sounds delightful.”

He took her hand and helped her into the carriage, giving her away in one light graceful movement.

“Oh, and Mr. Herondale,” said Miss Owens, putting her lovely laughing head through the carriage window. “Please leave your whips at home.”

Magnus made a small shooing gesture, minuscule cerulean sparks dancing between his fingers. The carriage set off driverless in the dark, down the London streets.

It was some time before Magnus attended another meeting about the proposed Accords, in the main because there had been disagreements about the choice of venue. Magnus himself had voted that they meet somewhere other than the section of the Institute that had been built off sacrosanct ground. He felt that the place had the air of the servants’ quarters. Mainly because Amalia Morgenstern had mentioned that the area used to be the Fairchilds’ servants’ quarters.

The Shadowhunters had resisted the idea of frequenting any low den of Downworlders (direct quote from Granville Fairchild), and the suggestion of staying outdoors and going to the park was vetoed because it was felt that the dignity of a conclave would be much impaired if some oblivious mundanes had a picnic in their midst.

Magnus did not believe a word of it.

After weeks of wrangling, their group finally capitulated and trailed dispiritedly back to the London Institute. The only bright spot was a literal bright spot—Camille was wearing an extremely fascinating red hat, and dainty red lace gloves.

“You look foolish and frivolous,” said de Quincey under his breath as the Shadowhunters found their places around the table in the large dim room.

“De Quincey is quite right,” said Magnus. “You look foolish, frivolous, and fabulous.”

Camille preened, and Magnus found it delightful and sympathetic, the way a small compliment could please a woman who had been beautiful for centuries.

“Exactly the effect I was attempting to produce,” said Camille. “Shall I tell you a secret?”

“Pray do.” Magnus leaned in toward her, and she inclined toward him.

“I wore it for you,” Camille whispered.

The dim, stately room, its walls cloaked in tapestries emblazoned with swords, stars, and the runes the Nephilim wore on their own skin, brightened suddenly. All of London seemed to brighten.

Magnus had been alive hundreds of years himself, and yet the simplest things could turn a day into a jewel, and a succession of days into a glittering chain that went on and on. Here was the simplest thing: a pretty girl liked him, and the day shone.

Ralf Scott’s thin pale face turned paler still, and was set in lines of pain now, but Magnus did not know the boy and was not bound to care overmuch for his broken heart. If the lady preferred Magnus, Magnus was not inclined to argue with her.

“How pleased we are to receive you all here again,” said Granville Fairchild, as stern as ever. He folded his hands before him on the table. “At long last.”

“How pleased we are that we could come to an agreement,” said Magnus. “At long last.”

“I believe Roderick Morgenstern has prepared a few words,” said Fairchild. His face was set, and his deep voice rang hollow. There was a slight suggestion of a kitten crying all alone in a large cave.

“I believe I have heard enough from Shadowhunters,” said Ralf Scott. “We have already heard the terms of the Nephilim for the preservation of peace between our kind and yours—”

“The list of our requirements was by no means complete,” interrupted a man called Silas Pangborn.

“Indeed it was not,” said the woman at his side, as stern and beautiful as one of the Nephilim’s statues. Pangborn had introduced her as “Eloisa Ravenscar, my parabatai” with the same proprietary air as he might have said “my wife.”

Evidently, they stood united against Downworlders.

“We have terms of our own,” said Ralf Scott.

There was utter silence from the Shadowhunters. From their faces, Magnus did not think they were preparing themselves to listen attentively. Instead they seemed stunned by Downworlder impudence.

Ralf persisted, despite the utter lack of encouragement for him to do so. The boy was valiant even in a lost cause, Magnus thought, and despite himself he felt a little pang.

“We will want guarantees that no Downworlder whose hands are clean of mundane blood will be slaughtered. We want a law that states that any Shadowhunter who does strike down an innocent Downworlder will be punished.” Ralf bore the outbreak of protest, and shouted it down. “You people live by laws! They are all you understand!”

“Yes, our laws, passed down to us by the Angel!” thundered Fairchild.

“Not rules that demon scum try to impose on us,” sneered Starkweather.

“Is it too much to ask, to have laws to defend us as well as laws to defend the mundanes and the Nephilim?” Ralf demanded. “My parents were slain by Shadowhunters because of a terrible misunderstanding, because my parents were in the wrong place at the wrong time and presumed guilty because they were werewolves. I am raising my young brother alone. I want my people to be protected, to be strong, and not to be driven into corners until they either become killers or are killed!”

Magnus looked over to Camille, to share the spark of sympathy and indignation for Ralf Scott, so terribly young and terribly hurt and terribly in love with her. Camille’s face was untouched, more like a porcelain doll’s face than a person’s, her skin porcelain that could not redden or pale, her eyes cold glass.

He felt a qualm and dismissed it out of hand. It was a vampire’s face, that was all—no renoindentection of how she actually felt. There were many who could not read anything but evil in Magnus’s own eyes.

“What a terrible shame,” said Starkweather. “I would have thought you might have more siblings to share the burden. You people generally have litters, do you not?”

Ralf Scott jumped up and hit the table with an open palm. His fingers grew claws and scored the surface of the table.

“I think we need scones!” exclaimed Amalia Morgenstern.

“How dare you?” bellowed Granville Fairchild.

“That was mahogany!” cried Roderick Morgenstern, looking appalled.

“I would very much like a scone,” said Arabella the mermaid. “Also possibly some cucumber sandwiches.”

“I like egg and cress,” contributed Rachel Branwell.

“I will not stand to be so insulted!” said a Shadowhunter called Waybread, or some such thing.

“You will not be insulted, and yet you will insist on murdering us,” Camille remarked, her cool voice cutting the air. Magnus felt almost unbearably proud of her, and Ralf threw her a passionately grateful look. “It seems hardly fair.”

“Do you know that, last time, they threw away the plates that our very touch had profaned, once we were gone?” Magnus asked softly. “We can come to an agreement only if we begin at a position of some mutual respect.”

Starkweather barked a laugh. Magnus actually did not hate Starkweather; at least he was no hypocrite. No matter how foul, Magnus did appreciate honesty.

“Then we won’t come to an agreement.”

“I fear I must agree,” Magnus murmured. He pressed a hand over his heart and his new peacock-blue waistcoat. “I strive to find some respect in my heart for you, but alas! It seems an impossible quest.”

“Damned insolent magical libertine!”

Magnus inclined his head. “Just so.”

When the refreshments tray arrived, the pause in hurling insults in order to consume scones was so excruciatingly awkward that Magnus excused himself under the pretext that he had to use the conveniences.

There were only a few chambers in the Institute into which Downworlders were permitted to venture. Magnus had simply intended to creep off into a shadowed corner, and he was rather displeased to find that the first shadowed corner he came upon was occupied.

There was an armchair and a small table. Slumped on the tabletop that depicted filigree gold angels was a seated man, cradling a small box in his hands. Magnus recognized the shining hair and broad shoulders immediately.

“Mr. Herondale?” he inquired.

Edmund started badly. For a moment Magnus thought he might fall from his chair, but Shadowhunter grace saved him. He stared at Magnus with blurred, wounded surprise, like a child slapped from sleep. Magnus doubted he had been doing much sleeping; his face was marked with sleepless nights.

“Had a night of it, did we?” Magnus asked, a little more gently.

“I had a few glasses of wine with the duck a l’orange,” Edmund said, with a pallid smile that vanished as soon as it was born. “I shall never eat duck again. I cannot believe I used to like duck. The duck betrayed me.” He was silent, then admitted, “Perhaps more than a few glasses. I have not seen you in Eaton Square.”

Magnus wondered why on earth Edmund had thought he would, and then he recalled. It was the beautiful young Welsh girl’s address.

“You went to Eaton Square?”

Edmund looked at him as if Magnus were dull-witted.

“Pardon me,” said Magnus. “I simply find it hard to imagine one of the mundanes’ glorious invisible protectors paying a social call.”

This time Edmund’s grin was the old one, brilliant and engaging, even though it did not last. “Well, they did ask me for a card, and I had not the faintest idea what they meant by that. I was turned away with vast contempt by her butler.”

“I take it you did not give the matter up there.”

“No indeed,” said Edmund. “I simply lay in wait, and after a mere few days had the opportunity to follow Li—Miss Owens, and caught up with her riding in Rotten Row. I have seen her every day since then.”

“‘Follow’ her? I wonder that the lady did not alert a constable.”

The glow returned to Edmund’s face, rendering him in gold and blue and pearl again. “Linette says I am fortunate she did not.” He added, a little shyly, “We are engaged to be married.”

That was news indeed. The Nephilim generally married among themselves, an aristocracy based on their belief in their own sanctity. Any prospective mundane bride or bridegroom would be expected to drink from the Mortal Cup and be transformed through dangerous alchemy into one of the Angel’s own. It was not a transformation that all survived.

“Congratulations,” said Magnus, and he kept his concerns locked in his own bosom. “I presume Miss Owens will soon Ascend?”

Edmund took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “She will not.”

“Oh,” said Magnus, understanding at last.

Edmund looked down at the box he held in his hands. It was a simple wooden affair, with the symbol for infinity drawn upon the side in what looked like burned match. “This is a Pyxis,” he said. “It holds within it the spirit of the first demon I ever slew. I was fourteen years old, and it was the day when I knew what I was born to do, what I was born to be—a Shadowhunter.”

Magnus looked at Edmund’s bowed head, his scarred warrior’s hands clenched on the small box, and could not help the sympathy kindling within him.

Edmund spoke, in a confessional stream to his own soul and to the only person he knew who might listen and not think Edmund’s love was blasphemy. “Linette thinks it her duty and her calling to care for the people on her estate. She does not wish to be a Shadowhunter. And I—I would not wish it, or ask it of her. Men and women perish in attempts to Ascend. She is brave and beautiful and unwavering, and if the Law says she is not worthy exactly as she is, then the Law is a lie. I cannot believe the unfairness of it, that I have found the one woman in all the world whom I could love, and what does the Law say to this feeling that I know is sacred? In order to be with her, either I am meant to ask my dearest love to risk her life, a life that is worth more to me than my own. Or I am meant to cut away the other part of my soul—burn away my life’s purpose and all the gifts the Angel gave me.”

Magnus remembered how Edmund had looked in that gorgeous leap to attack the demon, how his whole body had changed from restless energy to absolute purpose when he saw a demon: when he threw himself into the fray with the simple, natural joy of one who was doing what he was made for.

“Did you ever want to be anything else?”

“No,” said Edmund. He stood and put a hand against the wall and raked the other hand through his hair, an angel brought to his knees, wild and bewildered by pain.

“But what of your dim view of marriage?” Magnus demanded. “What of having only one bonbon when you could have the box?”

“I was very stupid,” Edmund said, almost violently. “I thought of love as a game. It is not a game. It is more serious than death. Without Linette, I might as well be dead.”

“You speak of giving up your Shadowhunter nature,” said Magnus softly. “One can give up many things for love, but one should not give up oneself.”

“Is that so, Bane?” Edmund whirled on him. “I was born to be a warrior, and I was born to be with her. Tell me how to reconcile the two, because I cannot!”

Magnus made no answer. He was looking at Edmund and remembering when he had drunkenly thought of the Shadowhunter as a lovely ship, that might sail straight out to sea or wreck itself upon the rocks. He could see the rocks now, dark and jagged on the horizon. He saw Edmund’s future without Shadowhunting, how he would yearn for the danger and the risk. How he would find it at the gaming tables. How fragile he would always be once his sense of purpose was gone.

And then there was Linette, who had fallen in love with a golden Shadowhunter, an avenging angel. What would she think of him when he was just another Welsh farmer, all his glory stripped away?

Yet love was not something to be thrown aside lightly. It came so rarely, only a few times in a mortal life. Sometimes it came but once. Magnus could not say Edmund Herondale was wrong to seize love when he had found it.

He could think Nephilim Law was wrong for making him choose.

Edmund exhaled. He looked drained. “I beg your pardon, Bane,” he said. “I am simply being a child, screaming and kicking against fate, and it is time to stop being a stupid boy. Why struggle against a choice that is already made? If I were asked to choose between sacrificing my life or sacrificing Linette’s every day for the rest of eternity, I would sacrifice my own every time.”

Magnus looked away, so as not to see the wreckage. “I wish you luck,” he said. “Luck and love.”

Edmund made a small bow. “I bid you good day. I think we will not meet again.”

He walked away, into the inner reaches of the Institute. A few feet away, he wavered and paused, light from one of the narrow church windows turning his hair rich gold, and Magnus thought he would turn. But Edmund Herondale never looked back.

Magnus returned with a heavy heart to the room where the Shadowhunters and Downworlders were still fighting a war of words. Neither side seemed inclined to give way. Magnus was inclined to give the matter up as hopeless.

Through the stained-glass windows the curtains of night began to show the signs of drawing down to reveal the day, and the vampires had to leave.

“It seems to me,” said Camille, drawing on her scarlet gloves, “that another meeting will prove just as futile as these have been.”

“If Downworlders continue to be insolent wretches,” said Starkweather.

“If Shadowhunters continue to be sanctimonious murderers,” snapped Scott. Magnus could not quite look at his face, not after Edmund Herondale’s. He did not want to watch as another boy’s dreams died.

“Enough!” said Granville Fairchild. “Madam, do not ask me to believe that you have never harmed a human soul. I am not a fool. And what kills Shadowhunters have made, they have made in the cause of justice and in the defense of the helpless.”

Camille smiled a slow, sweet smile. “If you believe that,” she murmured, “then you are a fool.”

Cue another dreary, wearying burst of outrage from the assembled Shadowhunters. It warmed Magnus to see Camille defending the boy. She was fond of Ralf Scott, he thought. Perhaps more than fond. Magnus might hope that she would choose him, but he found he could not begrudge Scott her affection. He offered her his arm as they left the room, and she took it. They went out into the street together.

And there on the very doorstep of the Institute, the demons descended. Achaieral demons, their teeth razors and their wide wings scorched-black leather like the aprons of blacksmiths. They blanketed the night, blotting out the moon and wiping away the stars, and Camille shuddered at Magnus’s side, her fangs out. At the sign of Camille’s fear, Ralf Scott lunged at the enemy, transforming as he went, and brought one down in a bloody tangle onto the cobbles.

The Shadowhunters rushed out too, weapons sliding out of sheaths and garments alike. Amalia Morgenstern, it emerged, had been hiding a small tasteful axe under her hoop skirt. Roderick Morgenstern ran out into the street and stabbed the demon Ralf Scott was wrestling with.

From the small cart that contained her aquarium, Arabella gave a scream of real fear, and ducked down to the bottom of her woefully inadequate tank.

“To me, Josiah!” thundered Fairchild, and Josiah Waybread—no, Magnus thought it was Wayland, actually—joined him. They ranged themselves in front of Arabella’s cart and stood to defend her, letting no demon past the bright line of their blades.

Silas Pangborn and Eloisa Ravenscar moved to the street, fighting back-to-back, their weapons bright blurs in their hands and their movements in perfect synchronization, as if the pair of them had melded into a single fierce creature. De Quincey followed and fought with them.

The presence at Magnus’s side was gone suddenly. Camille left him and went running to help Ralf Scott. One demon leaped onto her from behind and seized her up in its bladelike talons. Ralf howled despair and grief. Magnus blasted the demon out of the sky. Camille went tumbling onto the ground, and Magnus knelt and gathered her, shaking, into his arms. He was amazed to see the gleam of tears in her green eyes, was amazed at how fragile she felt.

“I beg your pardon. I am not generally so easily overset. A mundane fortune-teller once told me that death would come to me as a surprise,” Camille said, her voice trembling. “A foolish superstition, is it not? Yet I always wish to be warned. I fear nothing, if only I am told that danger is coming.”

“I would be entirely overset myself, if my ensemble had been spoiled by demons who know nothing of fashion,” said Magnus, and Camille laughed.

Her eyes looked like grass under the dew, and she was brave and beautiful and would fight for their kind and yet rest against him. It was in that moment that Magnus felt as if he had stopped searching for love.

Magnus looked up from Camille’s enchanting face to see that the Shadowhunters and Downworlders were, for a wonder, not arguing. Instead they were all observing one another, standing in the suddenly-quiet street with the bodies of their foes around them, vanquished because they had stood together. There was a certain wonder in the air, as if the Nephilim could not see the Downworlders as demonic when they had fought alongside them against true demons. The Shadowhunters were warriors; the bonds of war meant a great deal to them.

Magnus was no warrior, but he remembered how the Shadowhunters had moved to protect a mermaid and a werewolf. That meant something to him, too. Perhaps there was something to be salvaged here this night. Perhaps they could make this wild idea of the Accords work after all.

Then he felt Camille move in his arms, and saw where she was looking. She was gazing at Ralf Scott, and he was looking back at her. There was a world of hurt in his eyes.

The boy climbed to his feet, and vented his ire on the Shadowhunters.

“You people did this,” he raged. “You want us all dead. You lured us here—”

“Are you mad?” Fairchild demanded. “We are Nephilim. If we wanted you dead, you would be dead. We do not require demons to do our killing for us, and we certainly do not wish for them to befoul our very doorstep. My daughter lives here. I would not put her in danger for anything you care to name, and certainly not for Downworlders.”

Magnus had to admit he had a point.

“It is you people who brought that filth to us!” Starkweather bellowed.

Magnus opened his mouth to argue, and then he recalled how excessively vehement the queen of the faeries had been when she argued against an agreement with Shadowhunters, and yet how strangely curious she had been about the details thereof, such as the time and place of their meetings. He closed his mouth.

Fairchild gave Magnus a condemning glance, as if the Shadowhunter could read the guilt of all Downworlders on his countenance. “If what Starkweather says is true, you have lost any opportunity to forge an agreement between our people.”

It was done, then, and Magnus saw the rage pass from Ralf Scott’s face as he visibly gave up his struggle. Ralf looked up at Fairchild with clear eyes, and spoke in a calm, ringing voice.

“You will not give us aid? Very well. We do not need it. Werewolves will take care of their own. I will see it done.”

The werewolf boy evaded de Quincey’s detaining hand and paid no heed to Fairchild’s sharp reply. The only one he paid attention to was Camille. He looked at her for a moment. Camille lifted her hand, then dropped it, and Ralf whirled and walked away from both Shadowhunters and his fellow Downworlders. Magnus saw him square his thin shoulders as he went, a boy accepting a heavy burden and accepting that he had lost what he loved best. Magnus was reminded of Edmund Herondale.

Magnus did not see Edmund Herondale again, but he heard him once more.

The Shadowhunters decided that Magnus and Camille were the most reasonable among the Downworlders that they had assembled. Given that the other choices were intemperate werewolves and Alexei de Quincey, Magnus could not feel himself noindentattered by the preference.

The Nephilim asked Magnus and Camille to come for a private meeting, to exchange information so that they could continue to correspond, independent of Ralf Scott. Implicit in their request was the promise that the Shadowhunters might offer their protection if Magnus and Camille needed it at some future time. In exchange, of course, for magic or Downworlder information.

Magnus went to the meeting to see Camille, and for no other reason. He told himself that he was not thinking at all of that fight against the demons, and how they had been united.

When he stepped into the Institute, however, he was pulled up short by the sounds. The noises came from the depths of the building, and they were the rattling, tormented sounds of someone being noindentayed alive. They sounded like the screams of a soul in Hell, or a soul being ripped from Heaven.

“What is that?” Magnus asked.

There were only a few Shadowhunters present at this unofficial meeting, instead of the mass of Clave representatives. Only Granville Fairchild, Silas Pangborn, and Josiah Wayland were in attendance. The three Shadowhunters stood in the small hall, cries of agony reverberating from the tapestry-covered walls and the domed ceiling, and all three Nephilim appeared entirely indifferent.

“A young Shadowhunter by the name of Edmund Herondale has disgraced his family name and forsaken his calling so that he might noindenting himself into the arms of a mundane chit,” Josiah Wayland answered, with no sign of emotion. “He is being stripped of his Marks.”

“And being stripped of your Marks,” Magnus said slowly. “It is like that?”

“It is being remade, into a baser thing,” said Granville Fairchild, his voice cold, though his face was pale. “It is against the will of the Angel. Of course it hurts.”

There was a shuddering scream of agony to underlie his words. He did not turn his head.

Magnus felt cold with horror. “You’re barbarians.”

“Do you want to rush to his aid?” inquired Wayland. “If you try, every one of us will move to strike you down. Do not dare to question our motives or our way of life. You speak of that which is higher and nobler than you can possibly understand.”

Magnus heard another scream, and this one broke off into desperate sobbing. The warlock thought of the bright boy he had spent one night at a club with, his face radiant and untouched by pain. This was the price Shadowhunters set on love.

Magnus started forward, but the Shadowhunters drew together with bared blades and stern faces. An angel with a noindentaming sword, proclaiming that Magnus should not pass, could not have expressed more conviction of his own righteousness. He heard the echoes of his stepfather’s voice in his mind: devil’s child, Satan’s get, born to be damned, forsaken by God.

The long lonely cry of a suffering boy he could not help chilled Magnus through to the bone, like cold water seeping through to find a grave. Sometimes he thought they were all forsaken, every soul on this earth.

Even the Nephilim.

“There is nothing to be done, Magnus. Come away,” said Camille’s voice in his ear in an undertone. Her hand was small but held Magnus’s arm in a firm grip. She was strong, stronger than Magnus was, perhaps in all ways. “Fairchild raised the boy from a child, I believe, and yet he is throwing him away like refuse into the street. The Nephilim have no pity.”

Magnus allowed her to draw him away, into the street and away from the Institute. He was impressed that she was still so calm. Camille had fortitude, Magnus thought. He wished she could teach him the trick of being less foolish, and less easily hurt.

“I hear you are leaving us, Mr. Bane,” Camille said. “I shall be sorry to see you go. De Quincey hosts the most famous parties, and I hear you are quite the life and soul of any party you attend.”

“I am sorry to go, indeed,” said Magnus.

“If I might ask why?” said Camille, her lovely face upturned, her green eyes glittering. “I had rather thought that London had caught your fancy, and that you might stay.”

Her invitation was almost irresistible. But Magnus was no Shadowhunter. He could have pity on someone who was suffering, and young.

“That young werewolf, Ralf Scott,” Magnus said, abandoning pretense. “He is in love with you. And it seemed to me you looked at him with some interest as well.”

“And if that is true?” Camille asked, laughing. “You do not strike me as the sort of man to step aside and renounce a claim for the benefit of another!”

“Ah, but I am not a man. Am I? I have years, and so do you,” he added, and that was glorious too, the idea of loving someone and not fearing they would soon be lost. “But werewolves are not immortals. They age and die. The Scott boy has but one chance for your love, where I—I might go and return, and find you here again.”

She pouted prettily. “I might forget you.”

He bent to her ear. “If you do, I shall have to recall myself forcibly to your attention.” His hands spanned her waist, the silk of her dress smooth under the pads of his fingertips. He could feel the swell and rise of her under his touch. His lips brushed her skin, and he felt her jump and shudder. He whispered, “Love the boy. Give him his happiness. And when I return, I shall devote an age to admiring you.”

“An entire age?”

“Perhaps,” said Magnus, teasing. “How does Marvell’s poem go?

“An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart. . . .”

Camille’s eyebrows had lifted at the reference to her bosom, but her eyes were sparkling. “And how do you know that I have a heart?”

Magnus raised his own eyebrows, conceding the point. “I have heard it said that love is faith.”

“Whether your faith is justified,” Camille said, “time will tell.”

“Before time tells us anything more,” Magnus said, “I humbly beg of you to accept a small token of my regard.”

He reached inside his coat, which was made of blue superfine fabric and which he hoped Camille found dashing, and produced the necklace. The ruby glinted in the light of a nearby streetlamp, its heart the rich color of blood.

“It is a pretty thing,” said Magnus.

“Very pretty.” She sounded amused at the understatement.

“Not worthy of your beauty, of course, but what could be? There is one small thing besides prettiness to recommend it. There is a spell on the jewel, to warn you when demons are near.”

Camille’s eyes went very wide. She was an intelligent woman, and Magnus saw she knew the full value of the jewel and of the spell.

Magnus had sold the house in Grosvenor Square, and what else had he to do with the proceeds? He could think of nothing more valuable than purchasing a guarantee that would keep Camille safe, and cause her to remember him kindly.

“I will think of you when I am far away,” Magnus promised, fastening the pendant about her white throat. “I would like to think of you fearless.”

Camille’s hand noindentuttered, a white dove, to the sparkling heart of the necklace and away again. She looked up into Magnus’s eyes.

“In all justice, I must give you a token to remember me by,” she said, smiling.

“Oh, well,” said Magnus as she drew close. His hand settled on the small silk circle of her waist. Before his lips met hers, he murmured, “If it is in the cause of justice.”

Camille kissed him. Magnus spared a thought to making the streetlamp burn more brightly, and the noindentame within the iron and glass case filled the whole street with soft blue light. He held her and the promise of possible love, and in that warm instant all the narrow streets of London seemed to expand, and he could even think kindly of Shadowhunters, and one more than the rest.

He spared a moment to hope that Edmund Herondale would find comfort in the arms of his beautiful mundane love, that he would live a life that made all he had lost and all he had suffered seem worthwhile.

Magnus’s ship would sail that night. He left Camille so that she might search out Ralf Scott, and he boarded his steamship, a glorious iron-hulled thing called the Persia that had been made with the latest of mundane inventiveness. His interest in the ship and his thoughts of an adventure to come made him regret his departure less, but even so, he stood at the rail as the ship departed into night waters. He looked his last on the city he was leaving behind.

Years later Magnus would return to London and Camille Belcourt’s side, and find it not all that he had dreamed. Years later another desperate Herondale boy with blue, blue eyes would come to his door, shaking with the cold of the rain and his own wretchedness, and this one Magnus would be able to help.

Magnus knew none of that then. He only stood on the deck of the ship and watched London and all its light and shadows slide away out of sight.