He saw teeth flash in the dark and did not see Alec, because Alec was a blur of motion, rolling away, then coming back at the wolf.

At Marcy, Magnus thought, and at the same time he saw that Alec hadn’t forgotten that Marcy was a person, or at least that Magnus had asked him to help her.

He wasn’t using his seraph blades. He was trying not to hurt someone who had fangs and claws. Magnus did not want Alec to get scratched—and he definitely did not want to risk Alec getting bitten.

“Alexander,” Magnus called, and realized his mistake when Alec turned his head and then had to back up hurriedly out of the way of the werewolf’s vicious swipe at him. He tucked and rolled, landing in a crouch in front of Magnus.

“You have to stay back,” he said, breathlessly.

The werewolf, taking advantage of Alec’s distraction, growled and sprang. Magnus threw a ball of blue fire at her, knocking her back and sending her spinning. Some yells rose up from the few people still left in the bar, all of whom were hurrying toward the exits. Magnus didn’t care. He knew Shadowhunters were meant to protect civilians, but Magnus was emphatically not one.

“You have to remember I’m a warlock.”

“I know,” Alec said, scanning the shadows. “I just want—” He wasn’t making any sense, but the next sentence he spoke unfortunately made perfect sense. “I think,” he said clearly, “I think you made her mad.”

Magnus followed Alec’s gaze. The werewolf was back on her feet and was stalking them, her eyes lit with unholy fire.

“Those are some excellent observational skills you have there, Alexander.”

Alec tried to push Magnus back. Magnus caught hold of his black T-shirt and pulled Alec back with him. They moved together slowly out of the back lounge.

The werewolf’s friend had been as good as her word: the bar was empty, a glittering shadowy playground for the werewolf to stalk them through.

Alec surprised Magnus and the werewolf both by breaking away and lunging at Marcy. Whatever he had been planning, it didn’t work: this time the werewolf’s swipe caught him full in the chest. Alec went flying into a hot pink wall decorated with gold glitter. He hit a mirror set into the wall and decorated with curling gold fretwork with enough force to crack the glass across.

“Oh, stupid Shadowhunters,” Magnus moaned under his breath. But Alec used his own body hitting the wall as leverage, rebounding off the wall and up, catching a sparkling chandelier and swinging, then dropping down as lightly as a leaping cat and crouching to attack again in one smooth movement. “Stupid, sexy Shadowhunters.”

“Alec!” Magnus called. Alec had learned his lesson: he didn’t look around or risk getting distracted. Magnus snapped his fingers, a dancing blue flame appearing from them as if he had snapped on a lighter. That caught Alec’s attention. “Alexander. Let’s do this together.”

Magnus lifted his hands and cast a web of lucent blue lines from his fingers, to baffle the wolf and protect the mundanes. Each of the shimmering strings of light would give off enough of a magical charge to make the wolf hesitate.

Alec wove around them, and Magnus wove the light around him at the same time. He was surprised at the ease with which Alec moved with his magic. Almost every other Shadowhunter he had known had been a little wary and taken aback.

Maybe it was the fact that Magnus had never wished to help and protect in quite this way before, but the combination of Magnus’s magic and Alec’s strength worked, somehow.

The wolf snarled and ducked and whimpered, her world filled with blinding light, and everywhere she went, there Alec was. Magnus kind of knew how the wolf felt.

The wolf flagged and whimpered, a line of blue light cutting across her brindled fur, and Alec was on it. His knee pressed into the wolf’s flank, and his hand went to his belt. Despite everything, fear flashed cold up Magnus’s spine. He could picture the knife, and Alec cutting the werewolf’s throat.

What Alec drew out was a rope. He wrapped it around the werewolf’s neck as he held her pinned down with his body. She struggled and bucked and snarled. Magnus let the lines of magic drop and murmured, the magic words falling from his lips in fading puffs of blue smoke, spells of healing and soothing, illusions of safety and calm.

“Come on, Marcy,” Magnus said clearly. “Come on!”

The werewolf shuddered and changed, bones popping and fur flowing away, and in a few long, agonizing moments Alec found himself with his arms wrapped around a girl dressed only in the torn ribbons of a dress. She was very nearly naked.

Alec looked more uncomfortable than he had when she was a wolf. He let go quickly, and Marcy slid to a sitting position, her arms clutched around herself. She was whimpering under her breath. Magnus pulled off his long red leather coat and knelt to wrap it around her. Marcy clutched at the lapels.

“Thank you so much,” said Marcy, looking up at Magnus with big beseeching eyes. She was a fetching little blonde in human form, which made her giant, angry wolf form seem funnier in retrospect. Then her face tightened with anguish, and nothing seemed funny at all. “Did I . . . please, did I hurt anybody?”

“No,” said Alec, his voice strong, confident as it only very rarely was. “No, you didn’t hurt anyone at all.”

“There was someone with me . . .” Marcy began.

“She was scratched,” Magnus said, keeping his voice steady and reassuring. “She’s fine. I healed her.”

“But I hurt her,” Marcy said, and put her face in her blood-stained hands.

Alec reached out and touched Marcy’s back, rubbing it gently as if this werewolf stranger was his own sister.

“She’s fine,” he said. “You didn’t—I know you didn’t want to hurt her, that you didn’t want to hurt anyone. You can’t help being what you are. You’re going to figure it all out.”

“She forgives you,” Magnus told Marcy, but Marcy was looking at Alec.

“Oh my God, you’re a Shadowhunter,” she whispered, just as Erik the werewolf waiter had, but with fear in her voice instead of scorn. “What are you going to do to me?” She shut her eyes. “No. I’m sorry. You stopped me. If you hadn’t been here—whatever you do to me, I deserve it.”

“I’m not going to do anything to you,” said Alec, and Marcy opened her eyes and looked up into Alec’s face. “I meant what I said. I’m not going to tell anyone. I promise.”

Alec had looked the same when Magnus had spoken of his childhood at the party when they had first met. It was something Magnus hardly ever did, but he had felt spiky and defensive about the advent of all these Shadowhunters in his house, at Jocelyn Fray’s daughter, Clary, showing up without her mother and with so many questions she deserved answers to. He had not expected to look into a Shadowhunter’s eyes and see sympathy.

Marcy sat up, gathering the coat around her. She looked suddenly dignified, as if she had realized she had rights in this situation. That she was a person. That she was a soul, and that soul had been respected as it should have been.

“Thank you,” she said calmly. “Thank you both.”

“Marcy?” said her friend’s voice from the door.

Marcy looked up. “Adrienne!”




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