Elliott leaned against Alec’s seat, shaking his head so his thin dreadlocks whipped about his face. “What would your parents think?” he asked with mock solemnity.
It was funny to the vampires. But it wasn’t funny to Alec.
“Elliott,” said Magnus. “You’re boring. And I don’t want to hear that you’ve been telling any tedious tales around the place. Do you understand me?”
He played with a teaspoon, blue sparks traveling from his fingers to the spoon and back again. Elliott’s eyes said that Magnus would not be able to kill him with a spoon. Magnus’s eyes invited Elliott to test him.
Raphael ran out of patience, which admittedly was like a desert running out of water.
“Dios,” snapped Raphael, and the other two vampires flinched. “I am not interested in your sordid encounters or constantly deranged life choices, and I am certainly not interested in prying into the affairs of Nephilim. I meant what I said. I don’t want to know about this. And I won’t know about this. This never happened. I saw nothing. Let’s go.”
So now Raphael had gone running off to report to Ragnor. That was vampires for you: always going for the jugular, both literally and metaphorically. They were messing up his love life as well as being inconsiderate party guests who had got blood in Magnus’s stereo system at his last party and turned Clary’s idiot friend Stanley into a rat, which was just bad manners. Magnus was never inviting any vampires to his parties ever again. It was going to be all werewolves and faeries all the time, even if it was hell getting fur and faerie dust out of the sofa.
Magnus and Alec sat in brief silence after the vampires departed, and then something else happened. The fight between the peri and the werewolf got out of hand. The werewolf’s face changed, snarling, and the peri turned the table upside down. A crash rang out.
Magnus started slightly at the sound, and Alec acted. He leaped to his feet, palming a throwing knife with one hand, his other hand going to a weapon in his belt. He moved faster than any other being in the room—werewolf, vampire, or faerie—could have moved.
And he moved automatically in front of the booth where Magnus was sitting, placed his body between Magnus and the threat without even thinking about it. Magnus had seen how Alec acted with his fellow Shadowhunters, with his sister and his parabatai, closer than a brother. He guarded their backs, watched out for them, behaved at all times as if their lives were more precious than his own.
Magnus was the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and for centuries had been powerful beyond the dreams of not only mundanes but most of Downworld. Magnus certainly did not need protection, and nobody had ever even thought to offer it, certainly not a Shadowhunter. The best one could hope for from Shadowhunters, if you were a Downworlder, was to be left alone. Nobody had tried to protect him, that he could remember, since he was very young. He had never wanted anybody to do so, not since he’d been a child who’d had to run to the cold mercy of the Silent Brothers’ sanctuary. That had been long ago in a country far away, and Magnus had never wanted to be so weak ever again. Yet seeing Alec spring to defend him caused Magnus to feel a pang in the center of his chest, at once sweet and painful.
And the customers in Taki’s café shrank back from Alec, from angelic power revealed in a sudden blaze of fury. In that moment nobody doubted that he could lay waste to them all.
The peri and the werewolf slunk to opposite corners of the café, and then hastily made their retreat from the building. Alec subsided into the booth opposite Magnus, and sent him an embarrassed smile.
It was strange and startling and terribly endearing, like Alec himself.
Magnus then dragged Alec outside, pushed him up against the brick wall of Taki’s under the sparking upside-down sign, and kissed him. Alec’s blue eyes that had blazed with angelic fury were tender suddenly, and darker with passion. Magnus felt Alec’s strong lithe body strain against Magnus’s, felt his gentle hands slide up Magnus’s back. Alec kissed him back with shattering enthusiasm, and Magnus thought, Yes, this one, this one fits, after all the stumbling around and searching, and here it is.
“What was that for?” Alec asked a long time later, eyes shining.
Alec was young. Magnus had never been old, had never known how the world reacted to you when you were old, and had not been allowed to be really young for long either. Being immortal meant being apart from such concerns. All the mortals Magnus had loved had seemed younger and older than him, both at once. But Magnus was keenly aware that this was Alec’s first time dating, doing anything at all. He had been Alec’s first kiss. Magnus wanted to be good to him, not burden him with the weight of feelings that Alec might not return.
“Nothing,” Magnus lied.
Thinking about that night at Taki’s, Magnus realized what the perfect present for Alec would be. He also realized that he had no idea how to give it to him.
In the only piece of luck in a terrible day filled with slime and cruel friends, at that very moment the buzzer rang.
Magnus crossed the floor in three easy strides and boomed into the intercom: “WHO DARES DISTURB THE HIGH WARLOCK AT WORK?”
There was a pause.
“Seriously, if you are Jehovah’s Witnesses . . .”
“Ah, no,” said a girl’s voice, light, self-confident, and with the slight, odd inflection of Idris. “This is Isabelle Lightwood. Mind if I come up?”
“Not at all,” said Magnus, and he pressed the button to let her in.
Isabelle Lightwood walked straight for the coffee machine and got herself a cup without asking if she could have any. She was that kind of girl, Magnus thought, the kind who took what she wanted and assumed you would be delighted that she’d taken a fancy to it. She studiously ignored Elyaas as she went: she had taken one look at him when she’d come into Magnus’s apartment and apparently decided that asking questions about the presence of the tentacle demon would be impolite and probably boring.
She looked like Alec, had his high cheekbones, porcelain-pale skin, and black hair, though she wore hers long and carefully styled. Her eyes were different, though, glossy and black, like lacquered ebony: both beautiful and indestructible. She seemed as if she could be as cold as her mother, as if she might be as prone to corruption as so many of her ancestors had been. Magnus had known a lot of Lightwoods, and he had not been terribly impressed by most of them. Not until one.
Isabelle hopped up onto the counter, stretching out her long legs. She was wearing tailored jeans and boots with spike heels, and a deep red silk tank top that matched the ruby necklace at her throat, which Magnus had bought for the price of a London town house more than a hundred years before. Magnus rather liked seeing her wear it. It felt like watching Will’s niece, brash, laughing, cheroot-smoking Anna Lightwood—one of the few Lightwoods he had liked—wearing it a hundred years before. It charmed him, made him feel as if he had mattered in that space of time, to those people. He wondered how horrified the Lightwoods would be if they knew that the necklace had once been a dissolute warlock’s love gift to a murderous vampire.
Probably not as horrified as they would be if they learned Magnus was dating their son.
He met Isabelle’s bold black eyes, and thought that she might not be horrified to learn where her necklace had come from. He thought she might get a bit of a kick out of it. Maybe someday he would tell her.
“So it’s Alec’s birthday today,” Isabelle announced.
“I’m aware,” said Magnus.
He said nothing more. He didn’t know what Alec had told Isabelle, knew how painfully Alec loved her and wanted to shield her, not to let her down, as he wanted not to let any of them down and passionately feared he would. Secrecy did not sit well with Magnus, who had winked at Alec the first night he’d met him, when Alec had been simply a deliriously good-looking boy glancing at Magnus with shy interest. But it was all more complicated now, when he knew how Alec could be hurt, when Magnus
knew how much it would matter to him if Alec were hurt.
“I know you two are . . . seeing each other,” said Isabelle, picking her words carefully but still meeting Magnus’s eyes dead-on. “I don’t care. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me. At all.”
She flung the words defiantly at Magnus. There was no need to be defiant with him, but he understood why she was, understood that she must have practiced the defiant words that she might have to say to her parents one day, if she stood by her brother.
She would stand by him. She loved her brother, then.
“That’s good to know,” said Magnus.
He had known Isabelle Lightwood was beautiful, and had thought she seemed strong, and funny—had known that she was someone he would not mind having a drink with or having at a party. He had not known that there were depths of loyalty and love in her.
He was not adept at reading Shadowhunter hearts, behind their smooth angelically arrogant facades. He thought that might be why Alec had surprised him so much, had wrong-footed him so that Magnus had stumbled into feelings he had not planned to have. Alec had no facade at all.
Isabelle nodded, as if she understood what Magnus was telling her. “I thought—it seemed important to tell someone that, on his birthday,” she said. “I can’t tell anyone else, even though I would. It’s not like my parents or the Clave would listen to me.” Isabelle curled her lip as she spoke of both her parents and the Clave. Magnus was liking her more and more. “He can’t tell anyone. And you won’t tell anyone, right?”
“It is not my secret to tell,” said Magnus.
He might not enjoy sneaking around, but he would not tell anybody’s secret. Least of all would he risk causing Alec pain or fear.
“You really like him, right?” Isabelle asked. “My brother?”
“Oh, did you mean Alec?” Magnus retorted. “I thought you meant my cat.”
Isabelle laughed and kicked at one of Magnus’s cabinet doors with one spike heel, careless and radiant. “Come on, though,” she said. “You do.”
“Are we going to talk about boys?” Magnus inquired. “I didn’t realize, and I am honestly not prepared. Can’t you come over another time, when I’m in my jammies? We could do homemade facials and braid each other’s hair, and then and only then will I tell you that I think your brother is totally dreamy.”
Isabelle looked pleased, if a little mystified. “Most people go for Jace. Or me,” she added blithely.
Alec had said as much to Magnus once, seeming stunned that Magnus might hope to see him instead of Jace.
Magnus was not planning on talking about why he preferred Alec. The heart had its reasons, and they were seldom all that reasonable. You might as well have asked why Clary hadn’t created a hilarious love triangle by getting a crush on Alec, since he was—in Magnus’s admittedly biased opinion—extremely handsome, and had been consistently sullen in her direction, which some girls liked. You liked the people you liked.
For all that, Magnus had many reasons. Nephilim were guarded, Nephilim were arrogant, Nephilim were to be avoided. Even the Shadowhunters Magnus had met and liked had been, every one, a trouble sundae with dark secret cherries on top.
Alec was not like any Shadowhunter Magnus had met before.
“May I see your whip?” asked Magnus.
Isabelle blinked, but to do her justice, she did not demur. She un-looped the electrum whip and tangled its silvery-gold length around her hands for a moment, like a child playing cat’s cradle.
Magnus took the whip carefully, laid across his palms like a snake, and he carried it to his closet door, which he opened. He drew out a special potion, one that he had paid an exorbitant price for and that he had been saving for something special. Shadowhunters had their runes to protect them. Warlocks had magic. Magnus had always liked his magic better than theirs. Only a Shadowhunter could bear runes, but he could give magic to anyone. He tipped the potion—faerie dust and blood taken in one of the old rituals, hematite and hellebore and more besides—onto the whip.
In the last extremity this weapon will not fail you; in the darkest hour this weapon will bring your enemy low.
Magnus carried the whip back to Isabelle when he was done.
“What did you do to it?” Isabelle asked.
“I gave it a little extra kick,” said Magnus.
Isabelle regarded him with narrowed eyes. “And why would you do that?”
“Why did you come to tell me that you knew about me and Alec?” asked Magnus. “It’s his birthday. That means the people who care about him want to give him what he wishes for most. In your case, acceptance. In mine, I know that the most important thing to him in the world is that you be safe.”
Isabelle nodded, and their eyes met. Magnus had said far too much, and he worried that Isabelle could see more.
She launched herself off the counter, toward Magnus’s small alabaster-topped coffee table, and scrawled on his notepad. “Here’s my number.”
“May I ask why you’re giving it to me?”
“Well, wow, Magnus. I knew you were hundreds of years old and all, but I hoped you were keeping up with modern technology.” Isabelle held out her phone to illustrate her point, and waggled it about. “So that you can call me, or text me. If you ever need Shadowhunter help.”
“Me need Shadowhunter help?” Magnus inquired, incredulous. “Over the—you’re right, hundreds of years—let me tell you that I’ve found it is almost invariably the other way around. I presume you’ll be wanting my number in return, and I’m also prepared to bet, based on nothing more than a passing acquaintance with your circle of friends, that you are going to get into trouble and need my expert magical assistance rather a lot.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Isabelle with a rakish grin. “I’ve been known to be a troublemaker. But I didn’t give you my number because I want magical help, and okay, I understand that the High Warlock of Brooklyn probably doesn’t need an assist from a bunch of underage Nephilim. I was thinking that, if you’re going to be important to my brother, we should be able to get in touch. And I was thinking that you might want to have it if—if you need to contact me about Alec. Or if I need to contact you.”
Magnus understood what the girl meant. His number was easy enough to get—the Institute had it—but in giving him her own, Isabelle was offering the free exchange of information about Alec’s safety. The Nephilim led dangerous lives, chasing after demons, stalking the Downworld for lawbreakers, their rune-Marked, angel-swift bodies the last line of defense for the mundane world. The second time Magnus had ever seen Alec, he had been dying of demon poison.
Alec could die at any time, in any of the battles to come. Isabelle would be the only one of the Shadowhunters who knew for sure that there was anything between Magnus and Alec. She would be the only one who knew that if Alec died, Magnus would be someone who needed to be told.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Thank you, Isabelle.”
Isabelle winked. “No need to thank me. I’ll be driving you mad before long.”
“I’ll be expecting it,” said Magnus as she clattered out on her high, weaponized heels. He admired anyone who made beauty and utility work together.
“By the way, that demon is dripping slime all over your floor,” said Isabelle, poking her head back around the door.
“Hi,” said Elyaas, and he waved a tentacle at her.
Isabelle regarded him with disdain, then raised an eyebrow in Magnus’s direction. “Just thought I’d point it out,” she said, and closed the door.
“I don’t undersssstand the point of your present,” said Elyaas. “He isn’t even going to know about it? You should have just gone with flowers. Red rosssses are very romantic. Or perhaps tulips if you think that roses say you just want him for sssssex.”
Magnus lay upon his golden sofa and contemplated the ceiling. The sun was low in the sky, a flas
h of golden paint inscribed with a careless hand over the New York skyline. The demon’s shape had become more and more gelatinous as the day had progressed, until he seemed like nothing more than a lurking pile of slime. Possibly Caroline Connor would never come back. Possibly Elyaas was going to live with Magnus now. Magnus had always thought Raphael Santiago was the worst possible roommate he could ever have. Possibly he was about to be proven wrong.
He wished, with a profundity of longing that surprised him, that Alec were here.
Magnus remembered a town in Peru whose Quechua name meant “quiet place.” He recalled even more vividly being obscenely drunk and unhappy over his heartbreak of that time, and the maudlin thoughts that had recurred to him over the years, like an unwanted guest slipping in through his doors: that there was no peace for such as he, no quiet place, and there never would be.
Except he found himself remembering lying in bed with Alec—all of their clothes on, lounging on the bed on a lazy afternoon, Alec laughing, head thrown back, the marks Magnus had left on his throat very plain to see.
Time was something that moved in fits and starts for Magnus, dissipating like mist or dragging like chains, but when Alec was here, Magnus’s time seemed to fall into an easy rhythm with Alec’s, like two heartbeats falling into sync. He felt anchored by Alec, and his whole self felt restless and mutinous when Alec was not there, because he knew how different it would be when Alec was there, how the tumultuous world would quiet at the sound of Alec’s voice.
It was part of the dichotomy of Alec that had caught Magnus unaware and left him fascinated—that Alec seemed old for his age, serious and responsible, and yet that he approached the world with a tender wonder that made all things new. Alec was a warrior who brought Magnus peace.
Magnus lay on the sofa and admitted it to himself. He knew why he had been acting demented and pestering his friends over a birthday present. He knew why, on an ordinary unpleasant workday, his every thought had been punctuated with a thought of Alec, with insistent longing for him. This was love, new and bright and terrifying.
The Bane Chronicles Page 30