Magnus stepped back inside the ballroom carefully.
Still not sucked into the Void, he thought. Good. Definitely good.
The bodies were now smoldering skeletons, and the white marble floor was completely fractured. The blood had evaporated and left a dark stain. The granite slab, however, was fine. It was also levitating, about six feet from the ground, bathed in the faint green light Magnus had seen earlier. Aldous was nowhere to be seen.
What are you?
The voice came from nowhere. It was in the room. It was outside. It was in Magnus’s head.
“A warlock,” Magnus answered. “And what are you?”
We are many.
“Please don’t say you are legion. Someone’s taken that.”
Do you make mirth from the mundane scriptures, warlock?
“Just breaking the ice,” Magnus said to himself.
Ice?
“Where is Aldous?” Magnus said, more loudly.
He is with us. Now you will come with us. Come to the altar.
“I think I’ll pass,” Magnus said. “I’ve got a place here I like a lot.”
This was interesting. It didn’t seem that the demons could come out. If they could, they would have. This was what demons did. But a connection had been opened. A one-way connection, but still a connection.
Magnus stepped just a tiny bit closer, trying to look for any markings on the floor, anything to tell him how large the Portal was. There was nothing.
Warlock, do you not tire of your life?
“That’s a very philosophical question for a nameless and faceless voice from a Void,” Magnus replied.
Do you not tire of eternity? Do you not wish to end your suffering?
“By leaping into the Void? Not really.”
You are like us. You have our blood. You are one of us. Come and be welcome. Come and be with your own.
Blood . . .
If warlock blood opened the Portal . . . well, warlock blood might be able to close it.
. . . or not.
It was as good a guess as any.
“Why would you want that?” Magnus asked. “Pandemonium has to be a pretty crowded place, considering you’re always trying to leave it.”
Would you not know your father?
“My father?”
Yes, warlock. Your father. Would you not know him?
“My father never took much interest in me,” Magnus said.
Would you not know your father, even if you spoke to him?
Magnus stopped on that one.
“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose I would. Unless you are trying to tell me that what I am hearing now is the voice of my father.”
You hear your own blood, warlock.
Magnus regarded the levitating slab, the destruction, the remains of the bodies. He also became dimly aware of a presence behind him. Some of the Shadowhunters had come inside and were looking at the slab, but seemed to hear nothing.
“Magnus?” one of them asked.
“Keep back,” Magnus replied.
Why do you protect them? They would not protect you.
Magnus went to the closest Shadowhunter, grabbed a blade, and cut himself.
“You.” He pointed to the Shadowhunter who had shot Aldous. “Give me an arrow. Now.”
The arrow was handed over, and Magnus tipped it in his blood. Then he rubbed some more blood down the shaft for good measure. He didn’t need the bow. He directed the arrow at the slab with all his might, casting every Portal-closing spell he knew.
It felt like he was locked in place, his entire body concrete, time stretched and slow. Magnus was no longer certain where, or maybe even what, he was, only that he was still spell-casting, only that the altar remained, and the voices in his mind were yelling. Hundreds of voices. Thousands of them.
Magnus . . .
Magnus, come to me. . . .
Magnus, come. . . .
But Magnus held on. And then the slab fell to the ground, breaking into countless pieces.
There was a figure leaning against Magnus’s hotel door when he returned home that night.
“You got the message then, huh?” Dolly said. “About the mundie money? Guess it all went bust, huh?”
“It does appear to have all gone bust,” Magnus said.
“I didn’t think you believed me.”
Magnus leaned against the opposite wall and sighed heavily. There was no noise from any of the rooms on the hall, except for some distant, muffled yelling at the far end. He got the feeling that many people were probably leaving the hotel now that they had no money to pay the bill, or they were sitting behind their doors in stunned silence. And yet they had no idea that the crash was really the least of their worries, and the real danger had been averted. They would never know. They never did.
“You look tired,” Dolly said. “Like you need a pick-me-up.”
“I just closed a Portal to the Void. I need sleep. About three days’ worth.”
Dolly let out a low whistle.
“My friend said you’re a hot potato. She wasn’t joking, huh?”
“She?”
Dolly slapped a hand over her mouth, nicking her nose with her long, lacquered nails.
“Oops!”
“Who sent you?” Magnus asked.
Dolly lowered her hand and flashed a smile.
“A good friend of yours.”
“I’m not sure I have any good friends.”
“Oh, you do.” Dolly swung her tiny beaded purse in a loop. “You do. See ya around, Magnus.”
She made her way down the hall with a swinging step, turning around every once in a while to look back at him. Magnus slid down the wall a few inches, feeling the exhaustion hanging over his entire body. But with one massive effort, he pulled himself up and hurried after Dolly. He watched from around the corner as she got into an elevator, and he immediately pushed the button for the next one. This elevator was quite full of grim-looking people, visibly shattered by the day’s news. So what he was going to do next was very unfortunate for them.
Magnus flicked his fingers and took over the control of the elevator from the operator, sending it on a very fast, somewhat uncontrolled descent. He’d tipped the operator very well the other day, so he felt he had a pass to take over if he liked. He had no such pass for the other passengers, who all started screaming as the elevator dropped floor after floor.
He made it to the lobby before Dolly, pushing past the still-traumatized (and several praying) people in his elevator. He ducked through the lobby, staying off to the side, behind columns and potted palms and groups of people. He slipped inside a telephone cabinet and watched Dolly pass by, her heels clicking lightly on the marble floor. He followed her, as quietly and inconspicuously as possible, to the front door, glamouring himself to slip past the doorman. There was a car just outside, a massive red Pierce-Arrow, with silver curtains over the windows of the passenger area, concealing the inhabitant’s face. The door, however, was open. A driver stood by, at attention. Through the opening, Magnus could see a foot and an ankle, both very handsome, and a little silver shoe, and a bit of stockinged leg. Dolly bounced over to the car and leaned into the open door. They had a conversation Magnus couldn’t hear, and then Dolly proceeded to climb inside the car, giving all the people in front of the Plaza a nice look at her rear end. Then the passenger leaned forward to speak to the driver, and Magnus caught her face in profile. There was no mistaking the face.
It was Camille.
Saving Raphael Santiago
By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan
He uncoiled, as swift as a snake, and sprang.
It was only because Magnus had seen where the vampire was looking and because he knew how Raphael felt, the exact exquisitely cold feeling of being an outcast, so alo
ne that he barely seemed to exist, that he moved fast enough.
—Saving Raphael Santiago
It was a violent heat wave in the late summer of 1953. The sun was viciously pummeling the pavement, which seemed to have become flatter than usual in submission, and some Bowery boys were opening a fire hydrant to make a fountain in the street and gain a few minutes of relief.
It was the sun getting to him, Magnus thought later, that had filled him with the desire to be a private eye. That and the Raymond Chandler novel he had just completed.
Still, there was a problem with the plan. On the covers of books and in films, most detectives looked like they were dressed up in Sunday suits for a small-town jamboree. Magnus wished to wash away the stain of his newly adopted profession and dress in a way that was both suitable to the profession, pleasing to the eye, and on the cutting edge of fashion. He ditched the trench coat and added some green velvet cuffs to his gray suit jacket, along with a curly-brimmed bowler hat.
The heat was so awful that he had to take off his jacket as soon as he set foot out of doors, but it was the thought that counted, and besides, he was wearing emerald-green suspenders.
Becoming a detective wasn’t really a decision based wholly on his wardrobe. He was a warlock, and people—well, not everyone thought of them as people—often came to him for magical solutions to their problems, which he gave them, for a fee. Word had spread throughout New York that Magnus was the warlock who would get you out of a jam. There was a Sanctuary, too, up in Brooklyn, if you needed to hide, but the witch who ran it didn’t solve your problems. Magnus solved problems. So why not get paid for it?
Magnus had not thought that simply deciding to become a private eye would cause a case to land in his lap the moment he painted the words MAGNUS BANE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE onto his window in bold black letters. But as if someone had whispered his private conviction into Fate’s ear, a case arrived.
Magnus arrived back at his apartment building after getting an ice-cream cone, and when he saw her, he was glad that he’d finished it. She was clearly one of those mundanes who knew enough about the Shadow World to come to Magnus for magic.
He tipped his hat to her and said, “Can I help you, ma’am?”
She wasn’t a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole through a stained-glass window. She was a small dark woman and though she was not beautiful, she had a bright, intelligent charm about her, powerful enough so that if she wanted any windows smashed, Magnus would see what he could do. She was wearing a slightly worn but still very becoming plaid dress, belted at her small waist. She looked to be in her late thirties, the same age as Magnus’s current lady companion, and under black curling hair she had a small heart-shaped face, and eyebrows so thin that they gave her a challenging air that made her both more attractive and more intimidating.
She shook his hand, her hand small but her grip firm. “I am Guadalupe Santiago,” she said. “You are a—” She waved her hand. “I do not know the word for it precisely. A sorcerer, a magic maker.”
“You can say ‘warlock,’ if you like,” said Magnus. “It doesn’t matter. What you mean is, someone with the power to help you.”
“Yes,” said Guadalupe. “Yes, that’s what I meant. I need you to help me. I need you to save my son.”
Magnus ushered her in. He thought he understood the situation now that she had mentioned help for a relative. People would often come to him for healing, not as often as they came to Catarina Loss but often enough. He would much rather heal a young mundane boy than one of the haughty Shadowhunters who came to him so often, even if there was less money in it for him.
“Tell me about your son,” he said.
“Raphael,” said Guadalupe. “His name is Raphael.”
“Tell me about Raphael,” said Magnus. “How long has he been sick?”
“He is not sick,” said Guadalupe. “I fear he may be dead.” Her voice was firm, as if she were not voicing what must assuredly be the most horrible fear of every parent.
Magnus frowned. “I don’t know what people have told you, but I can’t help with that.”
Guadalupe held up a hand. “This is not about ordinary sickness or anything that anyone in my world can cure,” she told him. “This is about your world, and how it has touched mine. This is about the monsters from whom God has turned his face away, those who watch in the darkness and prey on innocents.”
She took a turn about his living room, her plaid skirt belling about her brown legs.
“Los vampiros,” she whispered.
“Oh God, not the bloody vampires again,” said Magnus. “No pun intended.”
The dread words spoken, Guadalupe regained her courage and proceeded with her tale. “We have all heard whispers of such creatures,” she said. “Then there were more than whispers. There was one of the monsters, creeping around our neighborhood. Taking little girls and boys. One of my Raphael’s friends, his small brother was taken and found almost on his own doorstep, his little body drained of blood. We prayed, we mothers all prayed, every family prayed, that the scourge would be lifted. But my Raphael, he had started hanging around with a crowd of boys who were a little older than him. Good boys, you understand, from good families, but a little—rough, wanting a little too much to show that they were men before they truly were men at all, if you know what I mean?”
Magnus had stopped making jokes. A vampire hunting children for sport—a vampire who had the taste for it and no inclination to stop—was no joke. He met Guadalupe’s eyes with a level, serious gaze, to show that he understood.
“They formed a gang,” said Guadalupe. “Not one of the street gangs, but—well, it was to protect our streets from the monster, they said. They tracked him to his lair once, and they were all talking about how they knew where he was, how they could go get him. I should have— I was not paying attention to the boys’ talk. I was afraid for my younger boys, and it all seemed like a game. But then Raphael, and all his friends . . . they disappeared, a few nights ago. They’d stayed out all night before, but this—this is too long. Raphael would never make me worry like this. I want you to find out where the vampire is, and I want you to go after my son. If Raphael is alive, I want you to save him.”
If a vampire had already killed human children, a gang of teenagers coming after him would seem like bonbons delivered to his door. This woman’s son was dead.
Magnus bowed his head. “I will try to find out what happened to him.”
“No,” said the woman.
Magnus found himself looking up, arrested by her voice.
“You don’t know my Raphael,” she said. “But I do. He is with older boys, but he is not the tagalong. They all listen to him. He is only fifteen, but he is as strong and as quick and as clever as a grown man. If only one of them has survived, he will be that one. Do not go looking for his body. Go and save Raphael.”
“You have my word,” Magnus promised her, and meant it.
He was in a hurry to leave. Before he visited the Hotel Dumont, the place which had been abandoned by mortals and haunted by vampires since the 1920s, the place where Raphael and his friends had gone, he had other inquiries to make. Other Downworlders would know about a vampire who was breaking the Law that flagrantly, even if they had been hoping the vampires would work it out among themselves, even if the other Downworlders had not yet decided to go to the Shadowhunters.
Guadalupe grasped Magnus’s hand before he went, though, and her fingers clung to him. Her challenging look had turned beseeching. Magnus had the feeling she would never have begged for herself, but she was willing to beg for her boy.
“I gave him a cross to wear around his throat,” she said. “The padre at Saint Cecilia’s gave it to me with his own hands, and I gave it to Raphael. It is small and made of gold; you will know him by it.” She took a shaking breath. “I gave him a cross.”
“Then you gave him a chanc
e,” said Magnus.
Go to faeries for gossip about vampires, to werewolves for gossip about faeries, and do not gossip about werewolves, because they try to bite your face off: that was Magnus’s motto.
He happened to know a faerie who worked in Lou Walters’s Latin Quarter nightclub, on the seedier and nakeder side of Times Square. Magnus had gone to see Mae West here a time or two and had spotted a chorus girl with a glamour that covered up her faerie wings and pale amethyst skin. He and Aeval had been friendly ever since—as friendly as you could be when both you and the dame were in it only for information.
She was sitting on the steps, already in costume. There was a great deal of delicate lilac flesh on display.
“I’m here to see a faerie about a vampire,” he said in a low voice, and she laughed.
Magnus couldn’t laugh back. He had the feeling that he would not be able to shake off the memory of Guadalupe’s face or her hold on his arm anytime soon. “I’m looking for a boy. Human. Taken by one of the Spanish Harlem clan, most likely.”
Aeval shrugged, one graceful fluid motion. “You know vampires. Could be any one of them.”
Magnus hesitated, and then added, “The word is, this vampire likes them very young.”
“In that case . . .” Aeval fluttered her wings. Even the most hardened Downworlders didn’t like the thought of preying on children. “I might have heard something about a Louis Karnstein.”
Magnus motioned for her to go on, leaning in and tipping back his hat so she could speak into his ear.
“He was living in Hungary until very recently. He’s old and powerful, which is why the Lady Camille has welcomed him. And he has a particular fondness for children. He thinks their blood is the purest and sweetest, as young flesh is the tenderest. He was chased out of Hungary by mundanes who found his lair . . . who found all the children in it.”
Save Raphael, Magnus thought. It seemed a more and more impossible mission.
Aeval looked at him, her huge oval eyes betraying a faint flicker of worry. When the fey were worried, it was time to panic.
The Bane Chronicles Page 20
