The Last Stand of the New York Institute

Magnus looked around the room at the dead. When he looked back, Adam Whitelaw had turned his face away and set his mouth so that he would not betray either pain or grief. Magnus used all the magic he had left to ease the man’s pain, and in the end Adam lifted a hand and stilled Magnus’s, rested his head against Magnus’s arm.

“Enough, warlock,” he said, his voice rasping. “I would not—I would not live if I could.” He coughed, a wet terrible sound, and shut his eyes.

“Ave atque vale, Shadowhunter,” Magnus whispered. “Your angel would be proud.”

Adam Whitelaw did not seem to hear. It was only a very short time later that the last of the Whitelaws died in Magnus’s arms.

The Clave believed that the Whitelaws had been killed by rogue werewolves, and nothing Magnus said made any difference. He had not expected them to believe him. He hardly knew why he spoke out, except that the Nephilim so clearly preferred that he be silent.

Magnus waited for the Circle to return.

The Circle did not come to New York again, but Magnus did see them one more time. He saw them at the Uprising.

Not long after the night in the warehouse, Lucian Graymark disappeared as if he had died, and Magnus assumed he had. Then a year later Magnus had word of Lucian again. Ragnor Fell told Magnus there was a werewolf who had once been a Shadowhunter, and that he was spreading word that the time had come, that Downworld had to be ready to fight the Circle. Valentine unveiled his plan and armed his Circle at the time when the Accords of peace between Nephilim and Downworlders were to be signed again. His Circle cut down Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike in the Great Hall of the Angel.

Thanks to Lucian Graymark’s warning, Downworlders were able to rush into the Hall and surprise Valentine’s Circle. They’d been forewarned and also heavily forearmed.

The Shadowhunters surprised Magnus then, as the Whitelaws had surprised him before. The Clave did not abandon the Downworlders and turn to join with the Circle. The vast majority of them, the Clave and the Institute leaders, made the choice the Whitelaws had made before them. They fought for their sworn allies and for peace, and Valentine’s Circle was defeated.

But once the battle was done, the Shadowhunters blamed Downworlders for the deaths of so many of their people, as if the battle had been Downworld’s idea. The Shadowhunters prided themselves on their justice, but their justice for Magnus’s kind was always bitter.

Relations between the Nephilim and Downworld did not improve. Magnus despaired that they ever would.

Especially when the Clave sent the last remaining members of the Circle, the Lightwoods and another Circle member called Hodge Starkweather, to Magnus’s city, to atone for their crimes by running the New York Institute as exiles from the Glass City. The Shadowhunters were scarce enough after the massacre, and could not be replenished without the Mortal Cup, which seemed to have been lost with Valentine. The Lightwoods knew that they had been treated mercifully due to their high connections in the Clave, and that if they slipped up once, the Clave would crush them.

Raphael Santiago of the vampires, who owed Magnus a favor or twenty, reported that the Lightwoods were distant but scrupulously fair with every Downworlder they came into contact with. Magnus knew that sooner or later he would have to work with them, would learn to be civil to them, but he preferred that it be later. The whole bloody tragedy of Valentine’s Circle was over, and Magnus would rather not look back on the darkness but look forward and hope for light.

For more than two years after the Uprising, Magnus didn’t see any of Valentine’s Circle again. Until he did.

New York City, 1993

The life of warlocks was one of immortality, magic, glamour, and excitement through the ages.

Sometimes, though, Magnus wanted to stay in and watch television on the sofa like everyone else. He was curled up on the sofa with Tessa, and they were watching a video of Pride and Prejudice. Tessa was complaining at some length about how the book was better.

“This is not what Jane Austen would have wanted,” Tessa told him. “If she could see this, I am certain she would be horrified.”

Magnus uncurled from the sofa and went to stand by the window. He was expecting some Chinese to be delivered, and he was starving from a long day of idleness and debauchery. He did not see a deliveryman, though. The only person on the street was a young woman carrying a baby wrapped up tight against the cold. She was walking fast, no doubt on her way home.

“If Jane Austen could see this,” Magnus said, “I assume she would be screaming, ‘There are tiny demons in this little box! Fetch a clergyman!’ and hitting the television with her parasol.”

The doorbell rang, and Magnus turned away from the window.

“Finally,” Magnus said, grabbing a ten-dollar bill from a table near the door, and he buzzed the deliveryman in. “I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on an empty stomach, your head falls off.”

“If your head fell off,” Tessa said, “the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown.”

Magnus nodded and touched his hair, which was now in a chin-length sweep. He opened the door, still in his pose, and found himself staring at a woman with a crown of red curls. She was holding a child. She was the woman he had seen on the street moments ago. Magnus was startled to see someone at his door who looked so . . . mundane.

The young woman was dressed in sloppy jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. She lowered her hand, which had been raised as if to knock on the door, and Magnus saw the flicker of faded, silvery scars on her arm. Magnus had seen far too many of those to ever be mistaken.

She bore Covenant Marks, carried the remnants of old runes on her skin like mementoes. She was not mundane in the least, then. She was a Shadowhunter, but a Shadowhunter bearing no fresh Marks, not dressed in gear.

She was not here on official Shadowhunter business. She was trouble.

“Who are you?” Magnus demanded.

She swallowed, and replied, “I am—I was Jocelyn Morgenstern.”

The name conjured up memories years old. Magnus remembered the blade going into his back and the taste of blood. It made him want to spit.

The monster’s bride at his door. Magnus could not stop staring.

She was staring too. She seemed transfixed by his pajamas. Magnus was frankly offended. He had not invited any wives of crazed hate-cult leaders to come around and pass judgment on his wardrobe. If he wished to forgo a shirt and wear scarlet drawstring pajamas patterned with black polar bears, and a black silk bed jacket, he could do so. None of the others who had been lucky enough to see Magnus in his bedroom attire had ever complained.

“I don’t remember ordering the bride of an evil maniac,” said Magnus. “It was definitely beef and broccoli. What about you, Tessa? Did you order the bride of an evil maniac?”

He swung the door open wider so Tessa could see who was there. Nothing else was said for a moment. Then Magnus saw the blanket-covered lump in Jocelyn’s arms stir. It was in that moment that he remembered there was a child.

“I have come here, Magnus Bane,” Jocelyn said, “to beg your aid.”

Magnus gripped the edge of the door until his knuckles went white.

“Let me think,” he said. “No.”