“Hello, Catarina!” said Magnus. “I am so pleased that you finally called me back.”
He might have laid a slight pointed emphasis on the “finally.”
“I only did because you said it was urgent,” said his friend Catarina, who was a nurse first and a warlock second. Magnus did not think she’d had a date in fifteen years. Before that she’d had a fiancé whom she had kept meaning to marry, but she’d never found the time, and eventually he’d died of old age, still hoping that one day she would set a date.
“It is urgent,” said Magnus. “You know that I’ve been, ah, spending time with one of the Nephilim at the New York Institute.”
“A Lightwood, right?” Catarina asked.
“Alexander Lightwood,” said Magnus, and he was mildly horrified to hear how his own voice softened on the name.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have time, with all the other things going on.”
It was true. The night when Magnus had met Alec, he had just wanted to throw a party, have some fun, act the part of a warlock filled with joie de vivre until he could feel it. He remembered how in the past, every few years, he used to feel a restless craving for love, and would start to search for the possibility of love in beautiful strangers. Somehow this time around it hadn’t happened. He had spent the eighties in a strange cloud of misery, thinking of Camille, the vampire he had loved more than a century before. He had not loved anyone, not really loved them and had them love him back, since Etta in the fifties. Etta had been dead for years and years, and had left him before she’d died. Since then there had been affairs, of course, lovers who’d let him down or whom he’d let down, faces he now barely remembered, glimpses of brightness that had flickered and gone out even as he’d approached.
He hadn’t stopped wanting love. He had simply, somehow, stopped looking.
He wondered if you could be exhausted without knowing it, if hope could be lost not all at once but could slip away gradually, day by day, and vanish before you ever realized.
Then Clary Fray had appeared at his party, the girl whose mother had been hiding Clary’s Shadowhunter heritage from her all her life. Clary had been brought to Magnus so that he could ensorcel her memory and cloud her sight, over and over again as she’d been growing up, and Magnus had done it. It was not a terribly kind thing to do to a girl, but her mother had been so afraid for her, and it had not felt like Magnus’s place to refuse. Yet Magnus had not been able to stop himself from taking a personal interest. Seeing a child grow up, year after year, had been new to him, as had feeling the weight of her memories in his hands. He had started to feel a little responsible, had wanted to know what would become of her and had begun to want the best for her.
Magnus had been interested in Clary, the little redheaded scrap who had grown into a—slightly bigger little redheaded scrap, but had not thought he would be terribly interested in the companions she had found for herself. Not the nondescript mundane boy; not golden-eyed Jace Wayland, who reminded Magnus of too much of a past that he would rather forget; and certainly not either of the Lightwood siblings, the dark boy and girl whose parents Magnus had good reason to dislike.
It made no sense that his eyes had been drawn to Alec, over and over again. Alec had hung to the back of their little group, had made no effort to attract the eye. He had striking coloring, the rare combination of black hair and blue eyes that had always been Magnus’s favorite, and Magnus supposed that was why he had looked in Alec’s direction at first. Strange to see the coloring that had so distinguished Will and his sister, so many miles and years gone by, and on someone with an entirely different last name . . .
Then Alec had smiled at one of Magnus’s jokes, and the smile had lit a lamp in his solemn face, making his blue eyes brilliant, and briefly taking Magnus’s breath away. And when Magnus’s attention had been held, he’d seen a flicker of returned interest in Alec’s eyes, a mixture of guilt, intrigue, and pleasure at Magnus’s attention. Shadowhunters were old-fashioned about such matters, which was to say bigoted and hidebound, as they were about everything. Magnus had been approached by male Shadowhunters before, of course, but always in a hole-and-corner way, always as if they were doing Magnus some huge favor and as if Magnus’s touch, though desired, might sully them. (Magnus had always turned them down.) It had been a shock to see such feelings open and innocent on a beautiful boy’s face.
When Magnus had winked at Alec and told him to call him, it had been a reckless impulse, little more than a whim. He had certainly not expected the Shadowhunter on his doorstep a few days later, asking for a date. Nor had he expected the date to go so spectacularly bizarrely, or expected to like Alec quite so much afterward.
“Alec took me by surprise,” said Magnus to Catarina at last, which was a massive understatement and so true that it felt like revealing too much.
“Well, it seems like a mad idea to me, but those usually work out for you,” said Catarina. “What’s the problem?”
That was the million-dollar question. Magnus resolved to sound casual about it. This was not something that he should be worrying about as much as he was, and he wanted advice but did not want to let anyone, not even Catarina, see how much it mattered.
“I’m glad you asked. Here’s the thing,” said Magnus. “It’s Alec’s birthday today. He’s eighteen. And I’d like to get him a present, because the celebration of one’s birth is a traditional time for the giving of gifts, and it indicates your affection for them. But—and at this point I’d like to say that I wish you had returned my call sooner—I don’t really have any idea what to get him, and I would appreciate some advice. The thing is, he doesn’t really seem to care about material goods, including clothes, which I don’t understand, though I find it strangely charming. He is impossible to buy for. The only new things I ever see him with are weapons, and nunchakus are not a romantic gift. Also, I wondered if you thought that getting a present at all might make me seem too keen and chase him off. I’ve been seeing him for only a little while, and his parents don’t even know he likes boys, let alone likes degenerate warlocks, and so I want to be subtle. Maybe getting a gift at all would be a mistake. It’s possible that he will think I am being too intense. And as you know, Catarina, I am not intense. I am laissez-faire. I am a jaded sophisticate. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about me or think the present means more than it should. Maybe just a token gift. What do you think?”
Magnus took a deep breath. That had come out a little less cool, calm, well-reasoned, and sophisticated than he had been hoping for.
“Magnus,” said Catarina, “I have lives to save.”
Then she hung up on him.
Magnus stared at the phone in disbelief. He would never have thought Catarina would do this to him. It seemed like wanton cruelty. He had not sounded that bad on the telephone.
“Is Alec your lover?” asked Elyaas the tentacle demon.
Magnus stared. He was not ready for anyone to say “lover” to him with an oozing note of slime beneath the word. He felt he would never be ready.
“You should get him a mixed tape,” said Elyaas. “Kids love mixed tapes. They’re the cool ‘in’ thing right now.”
“Was the last time you were summoned the eighties?” Magnus asked.
“It might have been,” Elyaas said defensively.
“Things have changed.”
“Do people still listen to Fleetwood Mac?” asked the tentacle demon. There was a plaintive note in his voice. “I love the Mac.”
Magnus ignored the demon, who had softly begun to sing a slimy song to himself. Magnus was contemplating his own dark fate. He had to accept it. There was no way around it. There was no one else he could turn to.
He was going to have to call Ragnor Fell and ask for advice about his love life.
Ragnor was spending a lot of time lately in Idris, the Shadowhunters’ city of glass, where phones, television, and the Internet did not work, and where Magnus imagined the Angel’s chosen ones had to re
sort to pornographic woodcuts when they wanted to unwind after a long day’s demon-hunting. Ragnor had used his magic to install a single telephone, but he could not be expected to hang around it all the livelong day. So Magnus was deeply thankful when Ragnor’s phone actually rang and the warlock actually picked up.
“Ragnor, thank goodness,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Ragnor. “Is it Valentine? I’m in London, and Tessa’s in the Amazon and there’s no way to contact her. All right. Let me wrap this up fast. You call Catarina, and I will be with you in—”
“Ah,” said Magnus. “There’s no need for that. Though thank you for your immediate leaping to my rescue, my sweet emerald prince.”
There was a pause. Then Ragnor said, in a much less intent and much more grumpy voice, “Why are you bothering me, then?”
“Well, I’d like some advice,” said Magnus. “So I turned to you, as one of my oldest and dearest friends, as a fellow warlock and a trusted comrade, as the former High Warlock of London in whom I have implicit confidence.”
“Flattery from you makes me nervous,” said Ragnor. “It means you want something. Doubtless something awful. I am not becoming a pirate with you again, Magnus. I don’t care how much you pay me.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest it. My question for you is of a more . . . personal nature. Don’t hang up. Catarina was already extremely unsympathetic.”
There was a long silence. Magnus fiddled with his window catch, gazing out at the line of warehouses-turned-apartments. Lace curtains were fluttering in a summer breeze in an open window across the street. He tried to ignore the reflection of the demon in his own window.
“Wait,” said Ragnor, and he started to snigger. “Is this about your Nephilim boyfriend?”
“Our relationship is as yet undefined,” said Magnus with dignity. Then he clutched the phone and hissed, “And how do you know private details about my personal life with Alexander?”
“Ooooh, Alexander,” Ragnor said in a singsong voice. “I know all about it. Raphael called and told me.”
“Raphael Santiago,” said Magnus, thinking darkly of the current leader of the New York vampire clan, “has a black ungrateful heart, and one day he will be punished for this treachery.”
“Raphael calls me every month,” said Ragnor. “Raphael knows that it is important to preserve good relations and maintain regular communication between the different Downworlder factions. I might add, Raphael always remembers important occasions in my life.”
“I forgot your birthday one time sixty years ago!” said Magnus. “You need to let that go.”
“It was fifty-eight years ago, for the record. And Raphael knows we need to maintain a united front against the Nephilim and not, for instance, sneak around with their underage sons,” Ragnor continued.
“Alec is eighteen!”
“Whatever,” said Ragnor. “Raphael would never date a Shadowhunter.”
“Of course, why would he, when you two are in loooove?” Magnus asked. “‘Oooh, Raphael is always so professional.’ ‘Oooh, Raphael brought up the most interesting points in that meeting you forgot to attend.’ ‘Oooh, Raphael and I are planning a June wedding.’ Besides, Raphael would never date a Shadowhunter because Raphael has a policy of never doing anything that is awesome.”
“Stamina runes are not the only things that matter in life,” said Ragnor.
“So says someone who is wasting his life,” Magnus told him. “And anyway, it’s not like . . . Alec is . . .”
“If you tell me about your gooey feelings for one of the Nephilim, I will go double green and be sick,” said Ragnor. “I’m warning you now.”
Double green sounded interesting, but Magnus did not have time to waste. “Fine. Just advise me on this one practical matter,” said Magnus. “Should I buy him a birthday present, and if so, what should it be?”
“I just remembered that I have some very important business to attend to,” said Ragnor.
“No,” said Magnus. “Wait. Don’t do this. I trusted you!”
“I’m sorry, Magnus, but you’re breaking up.”
“Maybe a cashmere sweater? What do you think about a sweater?”
“Oops, tunnel,” said Ragnor, and a dial tone echoed in Magnus’s ear.
Magnus did not know why all of his immortal friends had to be so callous and horrible. Ragnor’s important business was probably getting together to write a burn book with Raphael. Magnus could see them now, sharing a bench and scribbling happily away about Magnus’s stupid hair.
Magnus was drawn from this dark private vision by the actual dark vision currently happening in his loft. Elyaas was generating more and more slime. It was steadily filling the pentagram. The cecaelia demon was wallowing in the stuff.
“I think you should buy him a scented candle,” Elyaas proposed, his voice stickier by the minute. He waved his tentacles enthusiastically to illustrate his point. “They come in many exciting scents, like bilberry and orange blossom. It will bring him serenity and he’ll think about you when he goes to sleep. Everybody likes scented candles.”
“I need you to shut up,” said Magnus. “I have to think.”
He threw himself onto his sofa. Magnus should have expected that Raphael, filthy traitor and total priss that he was, would have reported back to Ragnor.
Magnus remembered the night when he took Alec to Taki’s. Usually they went to places frequented by mundanes. The haunts of Downworld, crawling with faeries, werewolves, warlocks, and vampires who might pass on word to his parents, clearly made Alec nervous. Magnus did not think Alec understood how much Downworld preferred to keep apart from Shadowhunter business.
The café was bustling, and the center of attention was a peri and a werewolf having some kind of territorial dispute. Nobody paid Alec and Magnus any attention at all, except Kaelie, the little blond waitress, who had smiled when they’d come in and who’d been very attentive.
“Do you know her?” asked Magnus.
“A little,” said Alec. “She’s part nixie. She likes Jace.”
She wasn’t the only one who liked Jace, Magnus knew that. He didn’t see what all the fuss was about, personally. Other than the fact that Jace had a face like an angel’s and abs for days.
Magnus started to tell Alec a story about a nixie nightclub he’d been to once. Alec was laughing, and then Raphael Santiago came in the door of the café with his most faithful vampire followers, Lily and Elliott. Raphael spotted Magnus and Alec, and then his thin arched eyebrows hit his hairline.
“Nope, nope, nope, and also no,” Raphael said, and he actually took several steps back toward the door. “Turn around, everybody. I do not wish to know this. I refuse to be aware of this.”
“One of the Nephilim,” said Lily, bad girl that she was, and she drummed on the table of their booth with shining blue fingernails. “My, my.”
“Hi?” said Alec.
“Wait a minute,” said Raphael. “Are you Alexander Lightwood?”
Alec looked more panicked by the minute. “Yes?” he said, as if he were uncertain on the subject. Magnus thought he might be considering changing his name to Horace Whipplepool and fleeing the country.
“Aren’t you twelve?” Raphael demanded. “I distinctly recall you being twelve.”
“Uh, that was a while ago,” said Alec.
He looked even more freaked out. Magnus supposed it must have been unsettling to be accused of being twelve by someone who looked like a boy of fifteen.
Magnus might have found the situation funny at another time, but he looked at Alec. Alec’s shoulders were tense.
He knew Alec well enough by now to know what he was feeling, the conflicting impulses that warred in him. He was conscientious, the kind of person who believed that the others around him were so much more important than he was, who already believed that he was letting everybody down. And he was honest, the kind of person who was naturally open about all he felt and all he wanted. Alec’s virtues had made a trap f
or him: these two good qualities had collided painfully. He felt he could not be honest without disappointing everybody he loved. It was a hideous conundrum for him. It was as if the world had been designed to make him unhappy.
“Leave him alone,” Magnus said, and reached for Alec’s hand over the table. For a moment Alec’s fingers relaxed under Magnus’s, began to curl around them, holding his hand back. Then he glanced at the vampires and snatched his hand away.
Magnus had known a lot of men and women over the years who’d been afraid of who they were and what they wanted. He had loved many of them, and had hurt for them all. He had loved the times in the mundane world when people had had to be a little less afraid. He loved this time in the world, when he could reach out in a public place and take Alec’s hand.
It did not make Magnus feel any more kindly toward the Shadowhunters to see one of their Angel-touched warriors made afraid by something like this. If they had to believe they were so much better than everyone else, they should at least be able to make their own children feel good about who they were.
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.”
What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything (The Bane Chronicles 8) Page 2
