“Where are we?” Magnus said. He addressed Ragnor and ignored Shinyun. He had the distinct impression that Shinyun was leering at him, though of course her face was as deadpan as always.

“Nowhere in particular,” Ragnor said, waving his hand lazily. “We’re just talking.”

Magnus strode forward, though he felt heavier than usual, as though his legs were chained to weights. “Talking about what? Are you ready to give me any answers? Will you tell me what’s going on with this… this thorn? The chains on my arms? What you’re up to? What you want with the Book of the White? Why you’ve thrown in your lot with S—”

At that instant Shinyun put a finger up to her lips and shushed him. The noise was deafening, like being drowned in a crashing wave, and Magnus put his hands to his ears, then pulled them away quickly as he felt the iron spikes from his palms poke them.

When the noise died down, Ragnor said reproachfully, “You must not say his name.”

“What?” said Magnus incredulously. “Sammael?”

The room shook very slightly, disturbing dust clouds into the air.

“Sammael!” Magnus yelled. “Sammael, Sammael, Sammael!”

The room rumbled now and shook like a derailing train. Magnus struggled to keep his footing, but Ragnor and Shinyun remained in their seats, looking impatient.

“Why?” Magnus shouted at Ragnor, angry now. “Why him? Why would the great Ragnor Fell ally himself with any demon, no matter how powerful? That’s not what you taught me. It’s against everything you’ve ever believed!”

“Times change,” Ragnor said, annoyingly calm.

“And what’s with this… this thorn? What’s that got to do with S—with your Prince of Hell?”

Ragnor laughed now, an unpleasant grating sound very different from the laugh Magnus remembered. “The Svefnthorn? That’s entirely Shinyun’s doing. It’s old magic, Magnus, very old and powerful warlock magic, and it had no master. Shinyun found it, and then it had a master. Our master. The thorn will only help you become who you are meant to be.”

He stood now, and Magnus gasped. Ragnor’s horns, always so tidy and elegant, had grown and wrapped themselves fully around his head; now they ended on either side of his face, 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 Shadow Markets?”

“Some of them,” Jem admitted.

“I’d rather not deal with Tessa’s wrath if anything happened to you. Stay here; we can confer when we get back.”

At that moment Alec appeared, wearing what for him were going-out clothes: gray jeans, a many-times-washed blue T-shirt that matched his eyes, and a pin-striped gray-and-white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. “We should go,” he said to Magnus. “The Portal finally seems demon free.”

Magnus handed the bowl he was holding to Jem. He ignored Jem’s raised eyebrow. “Did you ever have to wash dishes in the Silent City?”

“No,” said Jem.

“Then this’ll be good practice.”

* * *

ON THE WAY TO THE Downworlder Concession, Tian took them past a huge brick Gothic building, with two spires on either side of its door; it looked like it had been teleported in straight from the French countryside. Alec was used to taking note of houses of worship when he traveled—it was always good to know where the closest weapons cache could be found—and he’d been frustrated by not really being able to identify religious buildings on sight, in this city of so many different mundanes and mundane religions. This building, however, was familiar in a way that made it stand out in a sea of unfamiliarity.

“Is that a church?” he said to Tian as they walked.

Tian nodded. “Xujiahui Cathedral,” he said. “Also called Saint Ignatius. It’s got the largest cache of Nephilim arms in the city, if we need them. But it’s also swarming with tourists most of the time, so we don’t use it much.”

He was right; the place was abuzz with activity. Tourists lined up outside to go in. Some of it seemed to be under renovation, also: scaffolding was wrapped around most of the stained-glass windows along one side.

“Maybe we should stop by and pick up a few more weapons,” Simon muttered. “I feel a little naked going into this Market with only one seraph blade and nothing else.”

“Just like that dream you have sometimes,” Clary said brightly, and Isabelle snorted with a hastily suppressed laugh.

Jace gave Simon a quick sympathetic look. “Maybe Simon is right,” he said. “The bad guys seem to be able to find us when they want to, but we can’t find them. We should have gone in gear.”

“No,” Tian said. “This is better. The Institute and the concession are on fairly good terms, as these things go, but the Cold Peace has made everybody more tense. We need to be seen to come in a spirit of friendship.”

“We’ll see how much they like our spirit of friendship when demons swarm the place,” Jace said, and Simon looked over at him nervously.

Alec, meanwhile, looked at Magnus, who seemed relieved that they wouldn’t be going into the church. Magnus, like most warlocks, didn’t love spending time in mundane religious buildings. Mundane religions didn’t usually have much kindness for warlocks, and that was putting it mildly.

After some twists and turns, Tian led them through an elaborate red gate into a pedestrianized, cobblestoned street. The gate was guarded by two bronze statues: one a rather intimidating wolf on its hind legs, its claws up in either threat or welcome, Alec couldn’t be sure; the other a large bat, its wings folded over its body in a way that made it look strangely coquettish.

“Welcome to the Downworlder Concession,” Tian said, gesturing proudly.