Magnus hesitated, then nodded in acceptance. “That’s true. Okay. Tomorrow morning we see who can watch Max for… for days.” He gave Alec an incredulous look that he knew well by now, as it was a look that he gave Magnus too. It was a look that said, How is this our life? How is it so strange, and difficult, and exhausting, and wonderful?
“How has this not come up before?” Alec said. “Having to find someone to watch Max?”
“Well, things have been quiet,” said Magnus.
He was right. It had been a relatively peaceful year—aside from the Cold Peace, of course, which continued to loom over all of Downworld. They had both barely been called away from New York, and certainly not overnight. They had left Max with others, but only for a few hours—a Conclave meeting, a fight breaking out somewhere locally, Downworlder politics gone awry. They had never been away from Max for longer than that. Max had never gone to sleep without them there.
Through force of will, Alec stopped his train of thought before it got too far out of the station. “We will make a plan for Max,” he said, “in four hours.” He threw himself onto the bed and reached out to pull Magnus down next to him. The warlock lay on his side, and Alec curled himself around Magnus, feeling a long exhale leave Magnus’s body as they nestled comfortably together.
The thrum of tension in Alec’s stomach slowed and eventually came to a rest. By the time Chairman Meow appeared from under the bed and perched smugly on top of Magnus’s hip, Magnus’s breathing was even and low. Alec planted a soft kiss on the top of his boyfriend’s head and allowed himself, too, to finally sleep.
* * *
IN HIS DREAM MAGNUS RULED over a ruined world. He sat on a golden throne at the top of a million golden stairs, calling orders in a language he didn’t understand to scurrying gray creatures far below him. He was so high that clouds floated by on the stairs below his throne, and beyond the stairs he could see the sun, bloated and red, reflected in flames on the surface of a vast flat ocean.
No other people were there. Other than the bedraggled, beaked gray things that lurched below him, he was alone. Slowly he stood up and walked, curious, down a few of the stairs. He thought that if he descended far enough, he would be able to see himself reflected in the ocean below.
He kept walking down the stairs, although when he glanced over his shoulder the throne barely seemed to recede behind him. Eventually he looked down at the surface of the sea and beheld himself. He was gigantic, he realized—fifty feet tall, a hundred feet tall. His cat’s eyes were huge and luminous. There was no sign of the wound in his chest that the Svefnthorn had made. Instead the skin of his chest was rough, textured, thick like the hide of an animal. He raised his hands up in front of him, palms out, and noted with some interest the huge curving claws at the ends of his fingers.
“What is this for?” he yelled. “Why would I be in this place?”
The gray creatures all stopped as one and turned to gaze at him. They spoke to him, but he couldn’t understand them. They seemed either to greatly love him or to be greatly frightened of him. He couldn’t tell which. He didn’t want either.
* * *
MAGNUS KNEW HE HAD SLEPT late when he awoke and saw the angle of the sunlight on the wall. He found the other side of the bed empty and concluded that Alec had decided to let him sleep in before their departure.
He found his robe, blinked the sleep from his eyes, and went into the kitchen, where Jace Herondale was pouring coffee into Magnus’s I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL mug.
Magnus was glad he had not wandered out into the kitchen naked. “Don’t you have your own coffeepot?” he said blearily.
Jace, blond hair in its usual, preternaturally excellent state, flashed him a winning smile that Magnus was not prepared to deal with before he, too, had some coffee. “I hear you got stabbed by a weird Norwegian thorn,” Jace said. “Also, do you have any soy milk? Clary’s doing a whole soy milk thing now.”
“What are you doing in my apartment?” said Magnus.
“Well,” said Jace, now rummaging in the fridge, “I’d like to think I’d be welcome anytime, what with my close relationship with all three of you. But in this case, Alec called us. Said something about Shanghai.”
“Who is us?” Magnus said suspiciously.
Jace waved his coffee cup around. “Us! You know. All of us.”
“All of you?” Magnus repeated. He held up a hand. “Wait. Stop. I am going to go put on something more substantial than a robe. You are going to use your angelic powers to pour me as large a mug of black coffee as you can find, and I will be right back, and then we can talk about terrible concepts like who ‘all of us’ are, and what Alec told you about last night.”
When he entered the living room, now suitably dressed, he found Alec, arms folded, looking long-suffering. In the far corner of the room, next to the ceiling, Max floated, tumbling in the air. He didn’t seem to be in peril—indeed, he was yelling, “Wheeeeeeeeeee,” and appeared to be having an excellent time. Under him, Clary Fairchild and Isabelle Lightwood attempted to nudge him back to the ground with a broom handle. With her free hand, Clary was waving a red braid, trying to get Max interested as though he were Chairman Meow. Max was upside down and obviously feeling good about it. Everyone other than Isabelle was in T-shirts and jeans, but she, of course, had shown up in a fitted black sweater over a tiered velvet maxi skirt. She was one of the few people who could occasionally make Magnus feel underdressed.
He went over to Alec. “Antigravity spell, I bet,” he said.
“He knows it drives us crazy. He’s loving Clary and Isabelle right now.” Alec seemed both annoyed and admiring, a tone of voice Magnus had not realized he would so closely associate with having a child.
“I thought we were haring off to Shanghai,” Magnus said quietly.
“We are,” said Alec. “But I told you. If we’re going to be fighting evil warlocks, we can’t go alone. I called Jace this morning.”
“And invited the whole gang?” The door opened and Simon Lovelace entered. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said, in large white bubble letters, GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR THING. But he had an unexpected look on his face—distracted, unhappy—and Magnus wondered why.
Maybe it was just the weight of the last few years on his shoulders. Even among their group, Simon had been through a lot. He’d been a mundane, been a vampire, been in Shadowhunter prison, become invulnerable, killed the Mother of Demons, met the Angel Raziel, lost his memories, gotten them back, and graduated from Shadowhunter Academy, and they’d all expected that would be it—a happily ever after for Simon.
But it hadn’t turned out that way. Four months ago, Simon had indeed gone through the ritual of Ascension to become a full-fledged Shadowhunter. And what should have been a time of triumph and celebration for all of them had turned tragic, as Simon’s closest friend at the Academy, George Lovelace, had died during the ritual. Died horribly, as a matter of fact, in front of all of them. The memory sprang to his mind unbidden, of Simon throwing himself hopelessly at George’s burning body and being held back by Catarina. Simon had taken George’s name in honor of his memory.
Considering this, Magnus had to admit it was actually stranger to see Simon break into a wryly amused smile as he took in the situation at the far end of the room. He ran to help Clary and Isabelle, and Magnus gave Alec a look. “So, the whole gang?”
“Well,” Alec said, “Jace thought Clary should come, and that seemed fine to me. And then Clary suggested that Simon should come along as well—he’s her parabatai, after all, and with demon activity being pretty minimal these days, he could use some more on-the-ground experience. And then Isabelle found out and she was offended that I hadn’t asked her first thing, and said she was coming too.”
Magnus had to wonder whether it was wise for Simon to come along on this trip, and why Clary had insisted. She knew better than anyone, except maybe Isabelle, how Simon was doing, and it was obvious that he wasn’t doing well. He would have to remember to ask her about it later.
For now he clapped his hands, very loudly, and the three Shadowhunters stopped in their tracks. Simon was holding on to Max’s arm as Max hung upside down above him, laughing delightedly. “All Shadowhunters in my house,” he called out. “If one of you would please put your hands out to catch my son, I’m going to deal with the spell. And where’s the blond kid with my coffee?”
Magnus quickly annulled his son’s spell with a few gestures, and Max returned to the ground (where he immediately crawled over to Alec and threw his arms around Alec’s leg in excitement). Jace returned from the kitchen with the promised coffee, and Magnus finally sat down on the couch. “All right, so what’s going on?” he asked.
Isabelle raised her eyebrows. “First—does that happen with Max a lot?”
Magnus shrugged. “Not a lot. Warlock babies do some magic sometimes. By accident.”
“It’s not so bad,” Alec said. “You just keep more extra clothes around, and you keep a fire extinguisher close by.”
Jace hopped up to sit on the window ledge, somehow managing not to spill any of his coffee. “I thought you were changing.”
“I did change,” Magnus said, puzzled.
“You’re still wearing a robe,” Jace said.
“I was wearing a yukata,” said Magnus. “Now I’m wearing a dressing gown.”
“Well, they both look like robes,” said Jace.
“Let’s talk about last night,” Magnus said. “What did Alec tell you?”
“Can we see the glowing fissure in your chest?” Simon asked.
“Simon, it’s rude to bring up glowing fissures in other people’s chests,” said Clary. “What do you think they want with the Book of the White, Magnus?”
Magnus turned to look at Alec. “So, you told them everything? Did you say the S-word? The R-word?”