“So is there Alliance stuff you need to tell me?”

“God no,” said Alec. “You and Lily can certainly handle Alliance business for a few days. I might miss game night, though.”

Maia sighed. “Without you there, Lily’s going to make us play charades. Or whist or something. She’s such an old lady sometimes. A drunk old lady.”

“Maia,” Alec said disapprovingly.

“Oh, you know I love her,” Maia said. “Did you consider bringing her along? She speaks Mandarin, for one thing.”

“Just last week I heard Lily say, in my presence, the full sentence, ‘I want to never again in my life set foot within the borders of China,’ so, you know.… Magnus also speaks Mandarin.”

“Of course he does,” said Maia.

“There is one thing,” said Alec. “My mom is watching Max while we’re away. She’s never watched him for more than, like, a few hours. Can you… keep an eye on them?”

“I’m sure Max will be fine,” said Maia.

“Honestly, I’m more worried about my mother,” said Alec.

“I’ll stop by a few times,” Maia said. “I’m sure I can come up with some boring bureaucratic reasons I need to come to the Institute anyway. Um, anyway—” She suddenly looked up and past him. “You have company.”

Alec turned in surprise to see Jace, Clary, Simon, and Isabelle, all in gear and fully armed. They were mostly holding their usual favorite weapons—Simon his bow, Clary her sword, Isabelle her whip. Jace, for some reason, was carrying a kind of spiked flail on a chain. They and Maia waved—Jace waved very carefully, due to the flail—and exchanged hellos.

“We made a pile of our luggage,” Clary said, gesturing vaguely behind her. “So Magnus can teleport it later if we need to stay overnight.”

“Got the Projection working, I see,” Simon said to Maia approvingly. He gave her a thumbs-up.

“Wait—how can you tell she’s a Projection?” said Alec.

“You can totally tell,” Jace said. “You just get a feel for it.”

“You do?” said Alec.

“Yeah.” Simon nodded.

“Huh. What’s with the, uh, flail, Jace?”

“It’s a morning star,” said Clary, in deeply mournful tones.

“Morning stars don’t have chains,” said Alec. “It’s a flail.”

“He wants us to call it a morning star,” said Clary, even more gloomily. “You’re not even a Morgenstern,” she said to Jace. “I’m a Morgenstern.”

“I’m still closely associated with the name,” Jace insisted. “I was just feeling like—can I pull off having a morning star as my signature weapon? Is it me?”

“You mean, can you avoid looking like a heavy-metal album cover?” said Simon.

“I don’t know what that is, and I don’t want to,” said Jace. “I just mean, am I cool enough?”

“Of course you are, honey,” said Clary. “Look,” she added to Alec, “I see the concern on your face. I figure we let this run its course for a week or so. If it doesn’t burn out by then we can step in.”

“Fair enough,” said Alec.

“It’s a trial run,” agreed Jace. “Maybe I won’t like it and I’ll stop using the morning star. I’ve got seraph blades too, obviously. And, I don’t know, probably four or five knives on my person that were already in the pockets of my clothes when I put them on.”

Alec felt a rush of fondness for his parabatai. “I wasn’t worried.”

They said their good-byes to Maia, and she disappeared just as Magnus appeared at the door of the Sanctuary. He’d changed clothes—only the Angel knew where he had gotten the new outfit from—and was now in a velvet suit in dark navy, with a matching navy shirt and tie. Alec had always secretly found Magnus to be at his absolute most handsome in a suit and was pleased that his boyfriend had gone in that direction. He also noted that it prevented any possibility of his glowing wound being visible.

Behind Magnus was Alec’s mother, holding Alec’s son. It still felt strange, even after half a year, to think, my son. Strange but good. Maryse and Max were both waving excitedly.

“Wish your daddies luck on their mission,” Maryse said. “Let’s hope they get the magic book back from the bad woman who stole it.” Alec nodded. They had all agreed, at Magnus’s pleading, not to tell the Clave about Ragnor. So all Maryse knew was that a warlock named Shinyun Jung of Magnus’s acquaintance, who was bad news, had stolen the Book of the White, and that they were going to Shanghai to find her.

Alec went over to them and kissed Max’s forehead. “Be nice to your grandma, okay, kiddo?” Max put his hand on Alec’s nose and Alec quickly turned, gave his mother a kiss on the cheek, and retreated successfully without choking up.

“You kids be careful out there,” Maryse said.

Isabelle said, “Mom, we’re grown-ups.”

“I know,” said Maryse, leaning forward to embrace her daughter. She turned to Jace and, after a brief standoff, he also allowed her to hug him. “But be careful anyway.”

She blew Magnus a kiss and retreated, closing the door behind her.

Alec began to laugh. “This is not the way I’m used to launching a mission. It’s very emotional compared to the old way.”

Jace said, “You mean sneaking out under cover of darkness? I myself don’t miss it.”

“So, we’re already in the Sanctuary,” Magnus said. “I may as well make the Portal right here.” With some flourishes, he applied himself to the Portal’s construction. Alec watched him. Magnus could be extremely elegant even when he was giving it the least thought; the dexterity with which he went through the gestures and words that made up the Portal summoning was a beautiful thing to behold, a reminder that Alec not only loved Magnus but also continued to admire so much about him.

His reverie was interrupted when the Portal opened and Magnus’s expression changed from concentration to alarm. The view through the Portal definitely did not look like it was of a place on Earth. The colors were wrong.

Out of it swarmed a dozen demonic beetle-creatures, each about the size of a basketball.

Magnus yelled in surprise and began to wave frantically, working to shut the Portal. Alec drew a seraph blade, murmured, “Kalqa’il,” to it, and leaped at the nearest beetle.

“They’re Elytra demons,” called Simon. “I think.”

“Any further insights to share about them?” said Jace, drawing his flail. “Other than their name? Greetings, Elytra demons! Welcome to our dimension. Your time here will be instructive but short.”

“I have an insight,” said Isabelle. She swiftly gave a kick to the nearest beetle. When it flipped onto its back, she plunged a blade into the soft body under its hard carapace. “Kick ’em over.”

“Roger that,” said Jace. He spun his flail and, after a moment’s winding up, smashed it into the side of an Elytra, which promptly crumpled and vanished. “That also works, by the way. If you’ve got a flail with you.”

“Ha! I told you it was a flail!” yelled Alec, kicking over a beetle of his own.

They made quick work of the demons. When things were quiet again, Alec immediately made for Magnus, who had barely gotten a wrinkle in his suit, though Alec had seen him dispatch two of the beetles himself with bolts of blue fire. “What happened?” he said.

Magnus shook his head. “I have no idea. That was Shanghai, but… not our Shanghai. That doesn’t usually happen. And by that I mean, that doesn’t ever happen. You don’t open a door to an alternate world by accident. It’s hard enough to do on purpose.” He looked around at them. “Clary, can you try? Just try reactivating the one I closed.”

Clary looked at Magnus in surprise. Alec schooled his own expression, but he was just as taken aback. “Of course,” Clary said. She took out her stele and went to work.

Into the ensuing silence, Alec said, “Could it be because of the thorn?” Someone had to, after all.

Magnus hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ve been rushing around getting ready to leave, and I haven’t so much as googled the word Svefnthorn.”

“I googled it,” Jace said, to Alec’s surprise. “While we were getting our stuff together.”

“You,” said Alec, “googled it.”

“Yeah,” said Jace. “It sounded Norse, so I went into the library and looked it up in the Saga Concordances. Like a normal person. That’s googling, right?”

“More or less,” said Simon.

“And?” said Isabelle.

Jace shrugged. “It means ‘thorn of sleep.’ It shows up a few times. Some god uses a Svefnthorn to put another god into a magical slumber. You know, usual god stuff.”

“It didn’t put me to sleep,” Magnus said doubtfully. “Nobody mentioned sleep.”

“Well, that’s just mundane mythology,” Jace said. “I didn’t have time to go into our own texts, or anything demonic.”

“Unluckily,” said Magnus, “I fear that the library of the Shanghai Institute may mostly be in Chinese. Luckily, we happen to be traveling to a city that is home to one of the greatest wonders of Downworld: the Celestial Palace.”

“How is a palace going to help?” said Simon.

“Because,” said Magnus, clearly relishing this, which Alec found adorable, “the Celestial Palace is that greatest of things: a bookstore.”

From where she was working a few yards away, Clary waved her arms; she had the Portal open. “It looks okay?” she said uncertainly.

Magnus came to peer through it and shrugged. “Sky’s the right color, there are stars, moon’s out, buildings look right, no giant beetles. I say we go for it.”