“The important thing,” said Magnus, “is that I don’t think there were any casualties.”
The marble slid away, and they all saw the man lying beneath, facedown on the marble steps to the ruined mansion. He was dark-haired and middle-aged, his skin blue-tinged from the blood loss that had soaked and stiffened his clothes.
A phoenix mask was still clutched in his hand, an incongruous reminder of past festivity.
“Spoke too soon,” Malcolm said softly.
Magnus knelt down and gently turned the broken body over, though the man was long past caring. He closed the man’s open eyes.
Shinyun’s breath hissed in between her teeth.
“That’s him,” she said. “That’s Mori Shu.”
Horror washed over Alec as well. They would never get any answers from Mori Shu, lying still and silent forever in the cobbled streets.
“And he wasn’t killed by the building falling on him,” Shinyun continued, the horror in her voice turning to fury as she spoke. “He was murdered by vampires.”
They could all see the holes in his throat, the blood glimmering darkly in the moonlight. The New York vampires took several steps back.
“It wasn’t us,” said Lily, after a moment. “Let me look at the body.”
“No, Lily.” Raphael flung his hand out to arrest her step. “This has nothing to do with us. We’re leaving now.”
“They were with me,” said Alec.
“The whole night?” asked Shinyun. “Looks like he’s been dead a while.”
Alec was silent. There was blood on Elliott’s shirt, though it was not the color of human blood. The idea of a vampire feeding on someone helpless made him feel sick.
“We don’t feed on warlocks,” Lily said.
“Shut up,” Raphael snarled at her. “Don’t run your mouth in front of Nephilim!”
“Vampires don’t feed on warlocks,” said Magnus. “Nobody killed Mori Shu out of hunger. Someone killed him to silence him. Raphael and his people don’t have any reason to do that.”
“We don’t even know him,” Elliott said.
“This is literally the first time I’ve ever seen him,” said Lily.
“There were a lot of vampires on my guest list,” Malcolm remarked, “who have already left. And a lot of party crashers. Including the offensive one who sent the party crashing about our ears. I’m going to have to find a whole new palazzo for tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” Alec demanded.
“Of course,” said Malcolm. “You thought this was a one night victory party? The show must go on!”
Alec shook his head. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to keep partying at this point.
Shinyun was kneeling over Mori Shu’s body, searching for clues. Mori Shu had been a warlock—immortal. But no warlock was invulnerable. Any warlock could be hurt or killed.
Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low.
Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts.
“How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus.
“Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.”
“I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.”
There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn.
“Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?”
Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother.
Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back.
Ragnor Fell.
Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back.
There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends.
“I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.”
Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile.
“Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?”
Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.”
“I’m undead,” said Raphael.
“What about joie de unvivre?”
Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed.
“Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.”
“What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus.
“Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.”
“Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus.
Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do.”
The vampires made their way down the dark street, the canal a line of silver beside them. Malcolm wandered over to Hyacinth and began to discuss alternate party venues with a good deal more interest than he had shown in the dead body.
Alec stared after the vampires. “He wanted to help you.”
Magnus gave him a startled glance. “Raphael? I don’t think so. He’s not really the warlock’s little helper type.”
He turned to aid Shinyun in poring over the body. Alec let him, trusting Magnus to find anything relevant, and jogged after the vampires.
“Wait,” he said.
The vampires walked on, ignoring him entirely.
“Hold on.”
“Don’t speak to the Shadowhunter,” Raphael instructed the others. “Don’t even look at him.”
“Okay. Sorry to bother you. I forgot you have no interest in Magnus. I’ll just go back and help him myself,” said Alec.
Raphael stopped walking.
“Talk,” he said, not turning. When Alec hesitated, trying to think of how to phrase the problem, Raphael held up fingers. “Three. Two. One—”
“You basically run the vampire clan, don’t you?” Alec asked. “So you must know a lot about what is going on with Downworlders.”
“More than you ever will, Shadowhunter.”
Alec rolled his eyes. “Do you know anything about the Crimson Hand? They’re a cult.”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Raphael. “There’s a rumor Magnus founded it.”
Alec was silent.
“I don’t believe it,” said Raphael. “I’ll tell anyone who asks.”
“Great,” said Alec. “Thanks.”
“And I’ll ask around,” Raphael conceded.
“Okay,” said Alec. “Give me your phone.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Raphael, you obviously have a phone, you were texting on it when I first saw you at the party.”
Raphael finally turned and studied Alec warily. Elliott and Lily hung back, exchanging glances with each other. After a pause, Raphael closed the distance between them, slid his
phone out of his pocket, and laid it in Alec’s waiting hand. Alec sent himself a text from Raphael’s phone. He tried to think of a pithy and cutting message to send, but he wound up just writing, HI.
Jace would have thought of something pithy. Oh well. Everyone had their skills.
“This is a historic occasion,” Lily said. “The first time in fifty years Raphael has given someone his phone number at a party.”
Elliott lifted his drooping head. “This calls for another drink!”
Raphael and Alec both ignored them. Alec gave Raphael back his phone. Raphael accepted it. They nodded at each other.
“About Bane. Don’t hurt him,” Raphael said abruptly.
Alec hesitated. “No,” he said, his voice softer. “I would never—”
Raphael held up a peremptory hand. “Stop being disgusting, please,” he said. “I don’t care if you wound his, as the kids say, ‘wittle fee-fees.’ Dump him like a ton of magic bricks. I wish you would. I just meant, don’t kill him.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” Alec said, appalled.
His blood ran cold at the idea, and colder as he looked down into Raphael’s face. The vampire was serious.
“Aren’t you?” Raphael asked. “Shadowhunter.”
He said the word the same way as the Downworlders of the Shadow Market had, but it sounded different in service of protecting someone Alec would gladly give his life to shield from harm.
It made Alec wonder if the people of the Market were all looking at him and seeing a threat to someone they cared for.
“Stop it, Raphael,” said Lily. She gave Alec a brief, surprisingly sympathetic look. “Kid’s obviously in love.”
“Ugh,” said Raphael. “Terrible business. Let’s get out of here.”
Elliott cheered. “Can we go to the after-party?”
“No,” Raphael said with distaste. He left Alec and walked away without a look back. After a quick last glance, Lily and then Elliott turned to follow.
Alec stood alone in the street for a moment, and then returned to Magnus, who had given up on finding clues and was on his phone making arrangements for the quiet disposal of Mori Shu’s body. Alec approached him with caution. Magnus’s cloak was hanging from shoulders that were a little more hunched than usual. His face, beneath his shock of glitter-strewn black hair, was a little tired.
Alec didn’t know what to say. “How did you meet Raphael? You two seem to know each other pretty well.”
“I helped him out a little once, I suppose,” said Magnus. “It was nothing.”
Magnus had come and healed Alec, the second time they had ever met. Alec remembered waking from delirium and agony to Magnus’s strange bright eyes, his careful, gentle hands. It hurts, Alec had whispered. I know, Magnus had said. I’m going to help with that.
And Alec, believing him, had let go of some of the pain.
That memory had stayed with him until he followed it to Magnus’s doorstep. Magnus did not think of himself that way, but he was kind. He was so kind that he could dismiss healing or helping as just another day.
Whatever Magnus had done for Raphael, clearly Raphael did not think it was nothing.
Magnus’s life was crowded with strange incidents and stranger people. Alec did not know a lot about it yet, but he could learn, and he knew one thing. His sister had said that a trip was how you got to truly know each other, and Alec was now absolutely sure that in the bright chaos of his long, strange life, Magnus had stayed kind.
While Alec had been talking to Raphael, two identical brownies had arrived in what looked like a huge green melon on large rickety wheels but which Alec figured was some kind of faerie ambulance, to take Mori Shu’s body away. Shinyun gave them some money, spoke with them briefly in Italian, and came to join Magnus and Alec. She gazed upon the ruins of the palazzo, drawing Alec’s attention there too.
“If there was ever a stone goat,” she said, “it’s buried under a few tons of rubble.”
“We’d better get going,” said Magnus, sounding uncharacteristically tired. “I guess we’re done here.”
“Wait,” said Alec. “The Chamber. We never found it. And I don’t think it can have been in the part of the palazzo that was destroyed.”
“That is,” said Shinyun slowly, “the part of the palazzo aboveground. Or we would be looking at it in pieces in front of us.”
“There are stairs outside, behind the building,” Magnus said. “They go down into the palazzo basement, I assume. But maybe they go elsewhere after that.”
Alec looked out at the canal nearby. “How far underground can you even build here? Would you be underwater?”
“Without magic? Not very far,” said Magnus. “With magic?” He shrugged, a smile creeping back on his face. “Who wants to go explore a creepy dungeon?”
There was a long pause and then Shinyun, very slowly, raised her hand.
“Me too,” said Alec.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
The Red Scrolls of Magic
MAGNUS’S MEMORY WAS CORRECT. A stone staircase descended into darkness in the alley behind the ruined palazzo. Alec kindled a witchlight runestone as they reached the heavy wooden door at the bottom of the steps. Shinyun caused a beam of light to shine from her index finger, which she pointed around like a flashlight.
Inside the door (unlocked by Alec with an Open rune), damp packed-earth walls held empty barrels and ancient rags, nothing more exciting. They turned a corner, then another and another, and then came upon a much nicer door, smooth and polished, with an image of a winged lion carved into it.
Once through the door, Magnus and Shinyun exclaimed in excitement, but Alec sighed in disappointment. “I’ve been here,” he said. “I remember this little statue of Bacchus.”
Magnus regarded it. “For the god of wine and revelry,” he said, “I always thought Bacchus was dressed much too plainly in his statues.”
Shinyun was poking at the walls of the chamber, looking for a secret panel or catch. Magnus was drawn to the statue on its plinth.
“I always thought,” he continued slowly, “that if it had been up to me, the statues of the gods would dress a little more . . . fun.”
As he finished the sentence, he reached out to touch the statue of Bacchus. Blue sparks flew from his fingers, and color and texture began to appear along the toga’s folds, his magic sifting away the plain white stone as though the marble had been dust that now fell away to reveal the more vivid, decorated statue underneath.
With a grinding noise, the section of wall beside the statue slid open to reveal a narrow staircase.
“A colorful solution,” said Shinyun. “Good work.” She sounded amused. Alec, however, was giving Magnus a strange, thoughtful look.
Magnus started down the stairs, Alec following just behind. Magnus almost wished that he was not there. He could not conquer his dread of what they might find, and what Alec might think of him when they did. The Bacchus statue had been a joke—one that no longer struck him as in the least bit funny.
The staircase leveled out into a long stone corridor that ended in darkness. “How is this all not underwater?” said Alec. “We’re in Venice.”
“One of the cult’s warlocks must have put up barriers against water coming in,” Magnus said. “Like Mori Shu.” Or me, he did not add.
At the end the corridor suddenly opened up to a large, high-ceilinged chamber that had been built for storage or cellaring food. Alec waved his witchlight around, revealing rows of unlit candles all over the room.
“Well, that’s easy enough,” said Magnus, and with a snap of his fingers all the candles kindled, bringing bright warm light into the room.
This was definitely a former cellar. On the far end was a shoddy, rickety altar that cavemen might have erected to worship a fire god. Two wooden columns flanked a large stone block cut into a perfect cube on a raised platform.
On the left wall was a table that looked like cheap plastic lawn furniture covered with
incense and prayer beads and other generic-looking knickknacks that someone could buy at a yoga studio.
“Oh my God, my cult is so low-rent,” moaned Magnus. “I am deeply shamed. I am disowning my followers for being evil and having no panache.”
“But it’s not your cult,” Alec said distractedly. He walked over to the side table and ran his finger along its surface. “There’s a lot of dust. This place hasn’t been used in a while.”
“I’m joking,” said Magnus. “Whistling in the dark.” He glanced at the empty corner of the room, where a tree root had pushed its way inside from between two stones. He walked up to the vine and yanked it. Nothing happened. He cast some detection magic over the corner. Still nothing.
“There has to be more,” said Shinyun. “Where are the signs of terrible rituals being done? Where is the blood on the walls?”
Alec picked up a small statuette and shook his head.
“There’s a manufacturer’s sticker here. Someone bought this in a souvenir shop. If this thing is magical, then I’m the Angel Raziel.”
“The Shadowhunters really wouldn’t approve of me dating the Angel Raziel,” said Magnus.
“But they’d have to be nice to you,” Alec said, brandishing the statuette, “or I would smite them.”
“Can you never be serious?” asked Shinyun. She strode toward the makeshift altar, then suddenly tripped and sprawled onto the ground. There was a silence during which nobody laughed. Magnus and Alec stood identically bug-eyed. After a long moment Shinyun snapped from the ground, “Well, someone look and see what I tripped over, at least.”
As she sat up and brushed the dust from her clothes, Magnus walked over and knelt down. Set in the earth floor before the altar was a tiny stone statue of a goat. Magnus knelt down and murmured into the statue’s ear the password Johnny Rook had given him. “Asmodeus.”
“What?” Alec said.
Magnus had deliberately spoken more softly than even a Shadowhunter could hear. He avoided Alec’s eyes.
The sound of grinding stone echoed throughout the room, drowning out whatever moment had been brewing between the two of them. The stone cube on the altar unfolded like a flower. It lifted from the altar and floated to the wall behind, where it embedded itself into the stone there. The platform the cube had been resting on crumbled into powder. Red-gold light appeared around the rosette that the stone cube had become, tracing the outline of a door.
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