The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,51

jutting out around his chin like tusks. His eyes glinted like obsidian even in the yellow shadows of the room.

“Shinyun was not lying to you,” he went on. “The Svefnthorn is a great gift, one that was lost but, thanks to our master, is now found. It helps us to serve him better. It will help you to serve him better too, in the end.”

Magnus tore at his collar and opened his shirt to reveal the wound and its chains. “This is a gift?” he yelled. “How can this be a gift?”

Ragnor chuckled, and it was worse than the grating screech from before. He opened his mouth to speak, but he and Shinyun and the courtroom vanished, and Magnus bolted awake in his bedroom at the Ke house, a scream on his lips and Alec’s worried face shining in the full moonlight.

CHAPTER EIGHT Shadow and Sunlight

MAGNUS WAS STILL SHAKY, BUT he managed to put on a brave face through breakfast. He and the Shadowhunters wolfed down Yun’s congee before Clary opened a Portal for them back to the Mansion Hotel so they could put on street clothes. Tian pointed out that a team of Shadowhunters in gear trooping through any Downworlder Market wouldn’t be seen as friendly no matter their intentions.

Magnus stood in the Ke kitchen and watched out the window as demons scattered from Clary’s Portal, then burst into flame as they encountered the daylight. (They had decided to open the Portal out in the courtyard for just this reason.) It was no longer just beetles, Magnus noted—now they were joined by three-feet-long millipedes and something that looked like a bone-white daddy longlegs the size of a large watermelon. The Shadowhunters didn’t need to engage with them—the sunlight took care of that—but the enigma of why they were appearing at all was annoying Magnus. He should have asked Ragnor and Shinyun about the Portal thing, he thought, when he was in… wherever he was… in his dream.…

Absentmindedly he snapped his fingers in the direction of the dirty dishes, swooping them toward the sink for washing. The first few bowls were already clean by the time he noticed that his magic looked wrong.

The color of a warlock’s magic was not especially meaningful, under normal circumstances. It wasn’t like a movie, where good warlocks had pleasant blue magic and bad warlocks had ugly red magic. For that matter, it wasn’t like a movie where there were “good warlocks” or “bad warlocks”—there were just warlocks, people like any others, with the capacity to do good or bad and the ability to decide anew each time. Nevertheless, Magnus had always been pleased by the smooth cobalt blue of his own magic, which he’d cultivated over a period of centuries. It seemed to him powerful and yet controlled. Soothing, like the wallpaper at an upscale spa.

Today, however, his magic was red. A bright, overexposed red, almost pink, and crackling at its edges with wisps of black curling fire. It still did what he wanted, moving plates in and out of the sink and stacking them neatly, but it certainly looked scary.

With an effort he concentrated on bringing back his magic’s normal color. Nothing changed, and he began to grow frustrated. More and more of his concentration moved away from the dishes, and from his friends outside, and toward bending his magic to his own preference. That, after all, was what the color of magic was really about: a warlock’s magic was under his own control. It was whatever color the warlock wished it to be.

The glow around the dishes persisted in its tacky reddish haze. Magnus’s frustration grew, and finally, when a quiet voice called his name from the door behind him, he lost his grasp completely, and a bowl flew end over end away from the sink and broke as it struck the windowsill.

The magic faded completely. Magnus turned to see Jem standing in the doorway, his face grave.

“Sorry,” Magnus said. “But the color—I don’t know what it means.”

Jem shook his head. “I don’t either. Do the others know?”

“This is the first it’s happened,” Magnus said. “It wasn’t doing this yesterday.”

“Another thing to research today,” Jem said.

Magnus nodded slowly. “I guess that’s all we can do. It’s a bad sign, though. Are you coming with us?”

“If you wish me to,” said Jem. “I said I would help you with the Shinyun situation.”

Magnus picked up a bowl. “No need to risk yourself. You said dangerous people were following you—I assume some of them frequent