The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,40

him hard. Magnus was pale, his breath short. “He needs to rest,” Alec said to Tian. “Can we take him into the Institute?”

Tian shook his head. “That will lead to more trouble, not less. My family all knows Magnus, but there are other people coming in and out of the Institute constantly now that this Portal business is happening. And this warlock who doesn’t like you could find you here again.”

“What do you suggest?” Alec said.

Tian smiled. “How would you like to meet my grandmother?”

CHAPTER SEVEN Ke House

MAGNUS WANTED TO OPEN A Portal to Ke House. Everyone else voted not to open a Portal, considering what was going on with the Portals, but Magnus was feeling lucky.

Magnus knew he had to sleep, and very, very soon. But he also felt surprisingly good. He opened the Portal with a flourish. Beetle demons immediately began to drop out of it; each had just enough time to register surprise that it was in broad daylight before exploding into ichor. After about a minute and fifty or so beetle demons, Magnus closed the Portal with a sigh.

“I just couldn’t stand their sad little feelers anymore,” he said.

His friends looked at him with concern. Tian raised an eyebrow and waved a phone at Magnus. “I’ve called some taxis.”

Soon Magnus was watching the city go by out the window as they drove past Jiao Tong University and into more residential areas. Magnus hadn’t been to Ke House in… more than eighty years. Shanghai had gone through not just a transformation but many transformations piled atop one another since then.

He thought of the first time he came to Paris after Haussmann’s renovations. He stood on the Île de la Cité in bewilderment, unable to get his bearings. He could see the river; he could see the spires of Notre Dame a few blocks away. He had stood in this geographical location dozens of times before, but he had no idea where he was.

So it was today. The new houses of modern Shanghai smeared by in the windows.

No, Magnus thought as they helped him out of the car. That isn’t the strange thing. This is the strange thing. Tall double doors, gleaming metallic red, set in simple gray concrete walls impossible to see over. These doors were the same as he remembered. It was so strange, to see something that hadn’t changed.

The wards allowed Tian through, and he waved to his guests to follow him. They did so a bit warily. Magnus had seen how surprised Jace and Isabelle had looked when Tian had explained that the ancestral home of the Ke family wasn’t the Institute. It seemed the Ke family was a large one, and a traditional one. Ke House was older than the Institute, and those family members who had retired from Institute work, or were simply part of the Shanghai Conclave, had always lived here.

The property itself was large, Magnus remembered, but the main house itself very modest. He was sure there had been renovations since the 1920s, but the core of the house seemed much the same: brick-red columns, dougong brackets, and straight-lined roof, simple and modest, but protected, of course, by the traditional ridge beasts on the corners of the roof, beautifully carved lions and horses commemorating the joining of the Ke family and some other household, centuries ago. The brackets were painted blue now, Magnus thought. A blue that seemed to darken even as he looked at it. He heard Alec’s voice and closed his eyes.

He really was very tired.

* * *

HE AWOKE TO FIND HIMSELF in a small, comfy bedroom; out the window the sun was beginning to think about getting low in the sky. He felt refreshed, as though he had slept for a day. He wanted to find Alec.

He pulled himself out of bed and looked at the wound in his chest where it was exposed above the fold of his dressing gown. (He noted that he had apparently been put into a dressing gown, he presumed by Alec. He hoped by Alec.) Now, with two cuts, it formed an X over his heart, and he thought with a wince of Clary’s dream. No chains yet, at least. The X was warm to the touch, like an inflamed cut, but he felt no pain if he pushed at it. The little flames of light that wafted out of the wound didn’t feel like anything. The fact was, the wound felt good. Behind it was a warm core of magic