The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,3

will have to go unpolished,” Ragnor said. “Get out of my way, I’m faking my own death now.”

“I didn’t know you had to polish your horns.”

“You do. Or at least you should. If you have horns. If you don’t want them to look dirty and unkempt. I’m leaving, Magnus.”

Finally Magnus’s composure broke. “Do you have to?” he said, sounding to his own ears like a petulant child. “This is insane, Ragnor. You don’t have to die to protect yourself. We can talk to the Spiral Labyrinth. You don’t have to deal with this alone. You have friends! Powerful friends! Such as myself!”

Ragnor gazed at Magnus for a long moment. Eventually, he walked over and with great solemnity gave his friend a hug. Magnus reflected that this was perhaps their fifth or sixth hug in their hundreds of years of friendship. Ragnor was not much for physical touch.

“This is my problem, and I will deal with it myself,” said Ragnor. “My dignity demands it.”

“What I’m saying,” said Magnus, “is that you don’t have to.”

Ragnor stepped away and looked at him sadly. “I do, though.” He turned to go.

Magnus looked at the letters of fire on the wall, now fading to invisibility. “I don’t know why I’m making such a big deal of this,” he said. “You just love a dramatic gesture. We’ll see if this ‘fake death’ thing lasts a week before you get bored and show up in my apartment with your crokinole set.”

Ragnor chuckled and vanished without another word.

Magnus stood there for a long time, staring at the empty space where Ragnor used to be. His former mentor had taken no luggage, not a change of clothes or a toothbrush. He had simply disappeared from the world.

The front door hung open, as Ragnor had left it. It looked better for the scenario he was trying to portray, but it gnawed at Magnus like a wound, and after a short while he closed it gently.

In the ruins of Ragnor’s kitchen Magnus found an enormous clay tobacco pipe, and in the ruins of the bathroom a jar of a rare dried leaf, of Idrisian origin, that had been popular for Shadowhunters to smoke back when Magnus himself was a child, hundreds of years ago. For Ragnor’s sake, for old times’ sake, he lit the pipe and puffed on it thoughtfully.

From the window he watched the steady footfalls of Clary Fairchild’s and Sebastian Verlac’s horses as they descended into the clearing to meet him.

PART I New York

CHAPTER ONE The Sleep Thorn

September 2010

IT WAS LATE, AND UNTIL a moment ago, all had been quiet. Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn, sat in his living room on his favorite chair, open book facedown in his lap, and watched the latch of his top-story window jiggle. For the last week, somebody had been prodding and testing the magical wards protecting his apartment. Now it seemed they had decided to prod more directly.

Magnus thought this a foolish decision on their part. Warlocks kept late hours, for one thing. For another, he lived with a Shadowhunter—who was currently out on patrol, true, but Magnus was fully capable of defending himself, even in his pajamas. He cinched the belt of his black silk robe tighter and wiggled his fingers in front of him, feeling magic gather in them.

He reflected that years ago he would have been much more casual about this kind of break-in, letting it play out naturally and trusting his instincts to lead him through. Now he sat pointing literal finger-guns at the window. Now his infant son was asleep just down the hall.

At just over a year old, Max was sleeping through the night most of the time now. This was a relief, but also an inconvenience, because both of Max’s parents kept nocturnal hours. Max, on the other hand, kept military hours, waking every morning at five thirty with a cheerful shriek that Magnus both adored and dreaded.

The window slid upward. Fire woke in both of Magnus’s palms, and magic blazed in the dark, sapphire-blue.

A figure pulled its torso through the window and then froze. Framed in the opening was a Shadowhunter in full demon-hunting gear, bow looped over one shoulder. He looked surprised.

“Uh, hi,” said Alec Lightwood. “I’m home. Please don’t shoot me with magical rays.”

Magnus waved with both hands, blue lights paling, then winking out, leaving faint traces of smoke curling around his fingers. “You usually use the door.”

“Sometime I like the change of pace.” Alec pulled himself the rest of the