sunrise over Fujiyama? A good old bottle of Tokay? That place we used to have coffee in the Hague, it came in those tiny thimbles and you could feel it burn its way to your stomach?” He thought harder. “How stupid an albatross looks when it lands on water?”
Ragnor finally blinked, many times in a row, and then dropped into the plaid-upholstered armchair behind him. “I’m not depressed, Magnus.”
“Sure,” said Magnus, “total existential nihilism, that’s regular old Ragnor.”
“It has caught up with me, Magnus. All of it. Now the big guy’s after me. The biggest guy. Well, the second-biggest guy.”
“Still a pretty big guy,” Magnus agreed. “Is this about Valentine? Because—”
“Valentine!” Ragnor barked. “Idiot Shadowhunter business, I’ve no patience for it. But the timing is good. For me to disappear. Anything bad happening in Idris right now is probably just part of this whole business with the Mortal Instruments. No reason for the agents of the real threat to question it.”
Magnus was getting fed up. “You want to tell me what this is about? Since you asked me to come here? Said something about the matter’s great urgency? Can we have a cup of tea, or have you already smashed the kettle?”
Ragnor leaned in toward Magnus. “I’m faking my own death, Magnus.”
He chuckled, before turning and heading through a doorway toward, Magnus guessed, more redecorating. With reluctance, Magnus followed.
“For heaven’s sake, why?” he called after Ragnor’s retreating back.
“I don’t know why now,” Ragnor called back, “but a bunch of them are coming back. You can’t kill them, you know, you can only send them away for a while, but then they come back. Oh yes, do they come back.”
Magnus was starting to wonder if Ragnor had finally lost it. “Who?”
Ragnor suddenly appeared directly beside Magnus, emerging from what Magnus had thought was a closet but was, he now realized, a hallway. “He says ‘who,’ ” Ragnor echoed sarcastically, and for a moment he sounded like his usual self. “Who are we talking about? Demons! Greater Demons! What a name. Why did we let them name themselves? They’re not so great.”
“Have you been drinking?” Magnus said.
“All my life,” Ragnor said. “Let me say a name to you. You tell me if it means anything.”
“Go.”
“Asmodeus.”
“Dear old Dad,” said Magnus.
“Belphegor.”
“Blobby sort of chap,” said Magnus. “Where are we going with this? Is one of them after you?”
“Lilith.”
Magnus sucked in air through his teeth. If Lilith was on Ragnor’s trail, that was very bad. “Mother of Demons. Lover of Sammael.”
“Right.” Ragnor’s eyes flashed. “Not her. Him.”
“Sammael?” Magnus said, chuckling. “No way.”
“Yes,” said Ragnor, with the sort of finality that made Magnus realize, with a sinking feeling, that Ragnor wasn’t kidding.
“Can I sit down or something?” Magnus asked.
* * *
THEY TOOK REFUGE IN THE wreckage of Ragnor’s bedroom. He’d managed to split the whole bed frame in two, which was a pretty impressive trick. Magnus sat on a desktop that had miraculously remained intact. Ragnor paced back and forth.
“Sammael, as everyone knows, is dead,” Magnus said. “He did something that started letting demons into our world, and then he was killed, people say by the Taxiarch—”
“You know Sammael couldn’t truly be killed,” Ragnor snapped impatiently. “Much lesser demons than him come back eventually. He was always going to. And now he has.”
“Fine,” Magnus reasoned, “but I don’t see what it has to do with you. I mean other than in the sense that it has to do with all of us. No, please don’t throw any furniture until you’ve explained.”
Ragnor lowered his hands, and a floor lamp that had been spinning lazily toward the ceiling fell to the ground with a clatter. “He’s been looking for me. I don’t know why, but I can guess.”
“Wait,” Magnus said, his brain starting to catch up. “If Sammael is back, why isn’t he, you know, wreaking havoc?”
“He’s not all the way back. He can’t spend much time in our world, and he’s still just floating out there in some kind of void. I think he wants me to find him a realm.”
Magnus’s eyebrows went up. “A realm?”
Ragnor nodded. “A demon realm. One of the other dimensions in the cluster of soap bubbles that is our reality. He’ll be very weak at the start. He’ll need energy to build up his strength, build up his magic. If he can find a realm to claim for his own, he can make it into a kind of dynamo for his own power. And I, Ragnor Fell, am the world’s leading expert on