The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,53

very specific and unusual history that allowed this to happen.”

Magnus said, “The Shadowhunters would never allow it.”

Jace said, “The Downworlders in most places fight each other too much.”

They all looked at one another.

“I think it’s probably all those things,” Alec said diplomatically. Magnus nodded but looked around, distracted.

“Any chance we could grab some food?” he said.

Alec gave him a funny look. “We just had breakfast.”

“Research demands calories,” Magnus said.

“I could eat,” put in Clary. “Tian, is there dim sum?”

“There is a lot of dim sum,” Tian confirmed. “Follow me.”

Though it was in better shape than the neighborhood of old Shanghai that they’d been to a couple of days before, the Downworlder Concession was the same kind of confusing warren of narrow streets. What Alec took to be an alley turned out to be the entrance to a house; what he took to be a storefront turned out to be a road.

Alec trusted Tian—he was a fellow Shadowhunter, he was a Ke, he had been vouched for by Jem—but he couldn’t help thinking that there was no way they would be able to find their way out again without Tian’s help. He exchanged a glance with Jace, who was clearly thinking the same thing, then reached around to put a reassuring hand on his bow before remembering he didn’t have it.

After a few turns, the street opened up onto a larger courtyard, with restaurants on all sides and clusters of plane trees in the center. Tian gestured around him. “Welcome to the dim sum district, so to speak. I don’t know how often you eat at Downworlder establishments—”

“Maybe more frequently than you’d think,” said Clary.

“Well,” said Tian, “there’s vampire dim sum, faerie dim sum, and werewolf dim sum.”

“Which do we want?”

“We definitely want werewolf dim sum,” Tian said.

Werewolf dim sum turned out to be not all that different from New York mundane dim sum, except that the tough gray-haired women pushing the carts around were all werewolves. They also spoke no English, but this was, for one thing, also not very different from New York, and for another, easily solved by simply pointing to the stacked steamer baskets and metal bowls as needed. Alec was not the biggest congee fan and had eaten only a small bowl so as not to insult Mother Yun, so he dug into shrimp dumplings, turnip cakes, steamed buns, clams in black bean sauce, stir-fried gai lan—and carefully watched Tian’s face and the subtle shake of his head when things came by that were too werewolfish for them: tiny blood sausage, slices of raw red meat, what appeared to be some kind of deep-fried small rodent in sweet-and-sour sauce. Tian tried to stop Magnus from grabbing chicken feet, but once Magnus was contentedly nibbling on one of them, he gave in and ordered some chicken feet of his own. Oddly, so did Jace.

“You like chicken feet?” Tian said, surprised.

“I like everything,” Jace said, mouth full of food.

Simon shook his head. “My ancestors fled their home country so they wouldn’t have to eat chicken feet anymore. I’m not about to start now. Does anything on the table not have meat in it?”

Tian grabbed some vegetable dumplings and mushrooms wrapped in bean curd from the next cart, and the werewolf lady gave Simon a disapproving look.

“Sorry,” Tian said. “Even the ones without meat often use dry shrimp or pork fat.”

“I’m used to it,” Simon said with resignation.

“Also,” pointed out Clary, chewing on a steamed bun, “they’re werewolves.”

Satiated, the team headed out again. As they walked behind Tian, Alec came over to Magnus and bumped into him affectionately. “Hey, are you all right? You were quiet all through the meal.”

“Fat and sassy,” Magnus said, rubbing his stomach and smiling at Alec. Alec smiled back but felt an uncertain twist in his gut. The chains, the shining wound—and Magnus had awoken in the night screaming. He had claimed it was only a random nightmare, but Alec wasn’t sure.

He also hadn’t told the rest of them about the chains on Magnus’s body. He wasn’t sure how exactly to bring such a thing up.

Where a moment ago Alec had been in good spirits, all of a sudden he felt far away from home, unsettled and on edge. He found himself very aware that he couldn’t read any of the street signs or storefronts, that he was half a world away from his child, that there were people here who might hate him for being a Shadowhunter in a Downworlder neighborhood, no matter