The Lost Book of the White

by Cassandra Clare

  Magnus raised one eyebrow. “In these shoes?”

  They descended the staircase, and the one after that, with the decorum appropriate to warlocks who had defeated a Prince of Hell that day. Or at least, they had been in the same place as a Prince of Hell, and they had made him leave first.

  By the time they reached Jace, Alec had clearly already exchanged some words with him and looked much less concerned.

  “So you haven’t all been devoured yet, I see,” said Ragnor.

  “No, they’ve got it all under control,” Alec said, excited. He gestured at Jace. “Tell them!”

  Jace looked at him sideways. “I was about to. We’ve got it all under control,” he went on. “I can’t really fight right now, so Clary helped me up here so we could see as much of the battlefield as possible, since the paths are so irregular and confusing. But then we noticed that the demons had the same problem we did. They could really only get to us on a set number of paths, and three people could cover two paths each.”

  Magnus raised his eyebrows.

  “So Simon, Tian, and Clary went down there to do that. We put Isabelle on the middle platform because she’s the only one whose weapon has any reach, so she can handle the occasional flying dude.”

  Alec seemed near tears. “I’m very proud of you,” he said to Jace. “You actually made a plan.”

  “I’m good at plans!” Jace said.

  “You are, actually, good at plans,” Magnus said. “It’s just usually you’re yelling them behind you as you sprint toward danger.”

  “But you used your sumptuous brain and you’re all okay!” Alec said, thumping Jace on the shoulder. He looked over at Ragnor. “Take that, pessimism guy!”

  Ragnor furrowed his brow. “Well, obviously I’m glad everyone is still alive.”

  “I should mention,” said Jace, “the ground started shaking a little while ago.”

  “That would be Shinyun,” said Magnus. “It’s a long story. Also, luckily for you I brought the world’s leading expert in dimensional magic, and he’s going to Portal us right on out of here.”

  Ragnor gave Magnus a sour look. “I suppose I am, but I’m going to need your help.”

  “Great news,” said Magnus, and he jumped off the platform. He floated slowly down to the plain, waving at Isabelle as he passed.

  “Magnus!” said Clary, lopping the head off one of the Baigujing skeletons. “Good to see you!”

  “I’m going to say something,” Simon said in Clary’s direction, “and I don’t want you to get mad.”

  Clary let out a long, beleaguered breath. “Go ahead. I guess you’ve earned it.”

  “Magnus,” Simon said with a smirk. “Nice of you to drop in.”

  Clary sighed again.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Magnus. “The good news is I’m here to Portal us back to Earth. The bad news is that I need Ragnor’s help, and he’s taking the stairs all the way down.”

  Ragnor, indeed, was strolling down the staircase at a leisurely pace. As Magnus watched, Jace overtook him, which was impressive given that he was walking with a crutch.

  The demon horde was beginning to flag, it seemed. New demons appeared from the Portals less and less frequently, and both Jace and Isabelle joined their friends to mop up what remained. Perhaps the demons had noticed Diyu’s imminent collapse and fled for their lives; perhaps once Sammael and Shinyun were gone they had no reason to obey their orders.

  Eventually, Ragnor deigned to join them. He and Magnus quickly worked together to set up a Portal; it occurred to Magnus how very much he’d missed working with Ragnor.

  And when the Portal opened, he was relieved to see it glow a familiar, cheering blue.

  CHAPTER TWENTY The Soul of the Clave

  IN 1910, CATARINA LOSS’S SON Ephraim died. By that time, he was an old man with children and grandchildren of his own. Catarina hadn’t seen him for decades; he believed that she’d died when he was only in his thirties, in a shipwreck.

  Magnus had been living in New York at the time, in a smart apartment in Manhattan across the street from the old Metropolitan Opera House, the one they tore down in 1967. A telegram came: No. 2, the Bund, Shanghai, it said in Catarina’s hurried hand. So Magnus fetched his gloves and his hat and he went.

  Number Two, the Bund, turned out to be the home of the Shanghai Club, a little bit of English elitism dropped right in the heart of China, in the form of a squat marble baroque revival building in which Shanghai’s British elite hobnobbed, drank, and for a short time, essentially ruled the mundane world. The building was new, though the club was not. It was a funny choice for Catarina. She knew as well as Magnus that it was open to white men only. This was Catarina being mischievous, in her way. She sometimes enjoyed glamouring herself into the private spaces of rich mundanes, delighting in her ability to stand totally outside their world, to have a drink with an old friend in the face of those who wouldn’t allow them entrance under normal circumstances.

  The whole place was palatial in a way that was also a bit grotesque. Magnus walked through a cavernous columned Grand Hall, past taipans and diplomats, utterly pleased with themselves. And why not? They were living like royalty at the heart of one of the oldest kingdoms in the world. They had no reason to think it would ever end—and at the time, Magnus wondered himself how long it could last. Not much longer, it turned out.

  But for now, here were expensive cigars and brandy, fresh newspapers, and a library rumored to be larger than the city of Shanghai’s. Magnus was unsurprised to find Catarina in it.

  Though no one but Magnus could see her, she was elegantly put together as always: her dress was a slender column of white satin, with a black lace overlay and butterfly sleeves. A black velvet sash waistband completed the affair. Magnus thought he saw the hand of Paul Poiret, the famous designer, at work; Magnus wondered if Catarina had managed to outdress him.

  She was seated in one of the club chairs, gazing at the shelves across from her as though she was studying their spines from a distance, though they were too far for Magnus to read. He sat down in the chair opposite Catarina and said, “So what’s the plan? Are we tearing this whole place down in the name of freedom and equality?”

  Catarina looked up at him. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. “I had to watch a man die here once,” she said.

  Magnus leaned forward sharply. “What?”

  “It was a few years ago,” she said. “I was here, in the library, and a man fell to the ground, writhing in pain. A medic was called, the other club members gathered around their mate, but none of them had any medical training or knew what to do—they argued about whether to elevate his legs or elevate his head, whether he should be prone or supine—and he died there, before any doctor or nurse could reach him.”

  She looked distant. “Could I have saved him? Magically or otherwise? Could the mundane doctors, if there had been one here? I don’t know. Maybe he would have died regardless. But what could I do? I couldn’t simply appear to them as if from a dream; they’d think somebody had poisoned the punch.”

  “Do they still serve the punch?” said Magnus.

  Catarina raised an eyebrow. “You think I am being morbid.”

  “I think,” said Magnus, “that the fact that mundanes die, and we can’t save them, isn’t something you just recently learned.”

  Catarina sighed. “It’s not that we can’t save them,” she said, “it’s that we can’t save them even if we love them very, very much.” There were tears in her eyes now. He knew better than to say anything; instead he simply took her hands in his.

  After a moment she said, “For mundanes, it is considered the greatest of tragedies if a parent outlives their child. For warlock parents it is an inevitability. I always thought it was strange that most warlocks spend their lives alone, without attachments, without ever putting down roots.…”

  Magnus let her trail off and said, gently, “If you had it to do over again, would you choose not to do it
?”

  “No,” Catarina said without hesitation. “Of course I would do it again. No matter how many times I was made to choose, I would choose to adopt and raise Ephraim again, to see him become a man, to have children and grandchildren of his own. However hard it was. However hard it is now.”

  “I’ve never had a child,” said Magnus, “but I know what it is to lose someone you love, for no better reason than that all humans must die.”

  “And?” said Catarina.

  “So far,” said Magnus, “life seems to me to be a matter of choosing love, over and over, even knowing that it makes you vulnerable, that it might hurt you later. Or even sooner. You just have no choice. You choose to love or you choose to live in an empty world with no one there but you. And that seems like a truly terrible way to spend eternity.”

  Catarina didn’t quite smile, but her eyes glistened. “Do you think vampires go through this kind of thing too?”

  Magnus rolled his eyes. “Of course they do. I’ve found you can’t get them to shut up about the topic for even a moment.”

  “Thank you for coming, Magnus.”

  “I would always come,” he said.

  Catarina wiped her eyes with her hand. “You know,” she said, sniffling a bit, “this club contains the longest bar in the world, downstairs.”

  “The longest bar?” said Magnus.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s at least a hundred feet long. It’s called the Long Bar.”

  “The English are good at luxury,” Magnus said, “but they don’t always make creative naming decisions, do they?”

  “You’ll see,” said Catarina. “It’s very long.”

  “Lead the way, dear lady.”

  * * *

  AS THEY TUMBLED FORTH FROM the Portal, Alec at first was sure that Portals were still malfunctioning. He expected the busy streets of Shanghai, but they seemed to have ended up in a patch of trees, towering and narrow and densely planted, their leaves beginning to change from pale green to yellow to orange. Nearby Alec could see the moon reflected on water.

  It was dark, which surprised him, but he wasn’t quite sure how many hours they had spent in Diyu, and knowing how bizarre dimensional travel could be, there was probably some time dilation effect. He could probably ask Ragnor.

  “Where have we ended up?” Alec called out. “Are we close to Shanghai?”

  He turned to see Jace raise his eyebrows at him in surprise. Wordlessly Jace gestured to the view behind him.

  Alec took a few steps, and through the trees, very suddenly, were the lights of Shanghai, sparkling in every color. “Oh,” he said.

  “There are these things called ‘parks,’ ” said Jace.

  “It’s been a long couple of days,” said Alec.

  “People’s Park,” said Tian. He gestured to the water Alec had noticed before, which he now could see was a small pond with banks of carefully arranged stones. Lilies floated, black against the glassy surface. “That’s the Hundred Flower Pond there. A good choice,” he added to Ragnor and Magnus.

  Ragnor nodded in acknowledgment. “I thought it would be quiet, this time of night.”

  “What time is it?” said Clary.

  After a moment of peering at the sky, Magnus said, “It’s about ten thirty.”

  “You can tell the time from the sky?” said Alec, amused.

  Magnus looked surprised. “You can’t?”

  “Hey, guys?” said Simon. “Can we take a moment to, uh, just quickly celebrate that we won, and nobody died? Because I don’t think we should just let that go without mentioning it.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Isabelle, punching the air in victory. “Hooray for us. We beat a Prince of Hell.”

  “Well,” said Ragnor, “to be fair, you all saved Magnus and me from the Svefnthorn—Alec specifically, obviously—and then Shinyun went mad and began wrecking Diyu, so the Prince of Hell left to find a different realm, and he’ll definitely be back at some point. Shinyun, also, is a loose end, as she is now some kind of dragonfly-spider thing.”

  Everyone paused to soberly consider that for a moment. Finally Simon said, “But everyone lived. Magnus saved you. And Alec saved Magnus. And my girlfriend saved me while riding on a giant tiger.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Ragnor, “the day has not been a complete loss.”

  Alec smiled, but he was tired of being away. And he felt a pull toward home, one that he wasn’t used to, but that now beckoned him with an incredible force. Max. Max.

  He tried to catch Magnus’s eye, but Magnus had come up to Tian, who looked as weary as the rest of them. “Would you say good-bye to Jem for us? And give him all our regards?”

  Tian looked surprised. “You’re leaving?”

  Magnus nodded. “I really feel like we didn’t have time to explore Shanghai in the way I’d have preferred, but I hope you won’t take it as an insult if we New Yorkers head home straight from here.” Magnus looked over and caught Alec’s eye. “I’d like to see my kid.”

  “Of course not.” Tian smiled. A light had come back to his dark eyes that Alec hadn’t even realized was missing before. “I’m going to go see Jinfeng. She’ll be pretty happy to hear I’m not going to be spending time in Diyu anymore. Ragnor—” Ragnor turned to him, surprised. “As far as I know, you’re the only person alive who has been stabbed by Heibai Wuchang and survived. There might be some interesting side effects.”

  “Excellent,” said Ragnor mournfully. “Something to look forward to in my coming years of shame and anonymity.”

  Tian turned to face the others. “Thank you all, by the way, for all that you have done. And for keeping my and Jinfeng’s secret.”

  “And thank you, Tian,” said Simon, reaching to shake the other boy’s hand. “For saving Isabelle. For helping us.”

  There was a chorus of assent. “The Cold Peace won’t last forever,” said Alec. “We’ll keep working to make the Clave see reason and bring it to an end.”

  “I hope they will,” said Tian, “but I know you’re not the only influential force within the Clave these days.” He put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “You must understand how much of an inspiration you are,” he said firmly. “Your family—the two of you and your son—just by existing, by being so prominent in the Clave, you are doing much. Your family—if the Clave is to survive, that is their future. It must be.”

  “No pressure, though,” said Alec with a smile. “And you’re an inspiration yourself. Don’t forget it.”

  Tian inclined his head. “It’s only a matter of time before there’s a real fight for the soul of the Clave. If we don’t want the Cohort’s vision to become reality, we will have to be involved. To be loud, even if we would prefer not to be.”

  “You’re a good guy, Tian,” Alec said. “I’m glad we’re on the same side.”

  He wasn’t the loud one, in his family. He was the quietest by a good margin. But Tian was right. And he was going to do some thinking.

  Ragnor and Magnus had started preparations on a Portal home, though Ragnor seemed to be letting Magnus do most of the heavy lifting. His argument was that he was recovering from three strikes by a Svefnthorn, whereas Magnus was only recovering from two.

  “You know who should open this Portal? Clary,” Magnus grumbled. “Nothing that bad happened to her on this trip.”

  “I’m not entirely comfortable with that girl’s ability to open Portals,” Ragnor said, with a nervous glance in Clary’s direction. She had Jace’s arm around her, and was laughing with Isabelle. It was amazing how resilient people were, Magnus thought. “I find it… theologically confusing.”

  “That,” said Magnus in breezy tones, “is why I never think about the deeper meaning behind anything.” Ragnor’s look told him that the other warlock knew very well that wasn’t true. “So where are you headed?” he said. “Back to Idris? Tidy up your house for the first time in years?”

  Ragnor hesitated. Magnus rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re going to keep pretending you’re dead
. How well did that work last time?”

  “The mistake I made,” Ragnor said, “was in trying to disappear completely. That just made me seem more suspicious.” He gave a paranoid look behind each of his shoulders. “There’s going to be a lot of heat on me for a while. Shinyun and I were… not careful about being seen in the Sunlit Market. I’ll be a person of interest to much of Downworld, and possibly some Shadowhunters as well. Not to mention, Shinyun herself is still out there. Sammael, too, eventually.”

  Magnus sighed. “Ragnor, do you know how many hits my reputation has taken over the years? I’m still working. Nobody’s thrown me into the Silent City. Nobody’s hauled me up in front of a faerie court.”

  “That’s different,” said Ragnor. “You weren’t working for a Prince of Hell.”

  “Ragnor, not long after you faked your death I was being accused of running a cult for Asmodeus.”

  “You did start that cult,” Ragnor said, frowning. “It was one of your less funny jokes, as I remember.”

  “Then you’ll be happy to know I was duly punished for it,” Magnus said.

  Ragnor paused in his magical machinations. “No, of course not.” He sighed. “Maybe you can take that kind of heat, Magnus, but I can’t. More to the point, I don’t wish to. I did bad things, working for Sammael. Actual bad things, that I can’t now take back. Just bringing Sammael to Diyu should probably be a capital offense.”

  “You were mind-controlled!” said Magnus.

  “But I chose to take the third thorn. I chose that. I need time. To atone, I suppose. I’ve been dead for three years; I need to take some time to think of who Ragnor Fell will be when he comes back to life.”

  Magnus didn’t say anything for a while as they finished the Portal. “Will I still hear from you? Because if I don’t, I’m going to assume Shinyun has captured you again and I will come for you.”

  “Only you could make the promise of rescue sound like a threat,” grumbled Ragnor. “But yes, I expect you’ll have frequent dealings with the new me.”