The Lost Book of the White

“You know—Elyaas!” Elyaas said enthusiastically, waving some tentacles around and dripping slime on the desk. “Magnus must have told you about me. We were roommates!”

“We weren’t roommates,” Magnus said sharply. “I summoned you to my apartment. Once.”

“But I was there all day! What did you end up getting Alec for his birthday?” Elyaas seemed legitimately pleased to see them.

Magnus turned to Alec with a sigh. “I summoned Elyaas as part of a job, a few years ago. Just standard business stuff, nothing exciting.”

“He was trying to figure out what to get you for your birthday,” Elyaas said in what was probably intended to be a sweet tone, but just sounded like a man choking to death on a whole octopus. “I always knew you two would stay together.”

“No,” said Magnus, “you told me he would always hate me in his heart, and that eventually my father would come for me.”

There was a pause. Elyaas said, “So I guess that didn’t happen.”

“Well, my father did come for me,” admitted Magnus, “but it didn’t go well for him.”

“Is this the demon that was dripping slime all over your apartment that day?” Isabelle said.

“Yes!” said Magnus, pleased that someone else could corroborate his version of events.

“Wait, you’ve met this demon?” Alec was giving Isabelle a look of betrayal.

“We’re all great friends,” enthused Elyaas.

“We are not,” said Magnus firmly. “What are you doing here?”

“Working the front desk,” said Elyaas with a flutter of tentacles that might have been a shrug. “This is the Office of Welcome, where the magistrate—that’s me—evaluates your sins and sends you to your appropriate eternal torment. So are you guys married?” he added eagerly. “Got any kids?”

“We have a kid now,” admitted Alec, against his better judgment.

“That’s wonderful,” said Elyaas. “I do love children.”

“I assume you mean to eat,” said Jace.

Elyaas looked disappointed. “You stepped on my line.”

“Look, Elyaas, it’s good to see you again,” Magnus said, lying. “But we’re trying to find some friends of ours and we really have to go. So whatever the procedure is for getting through here and into Diyu proper, we’re ready to get started.”

“Well…” Elyaas hemmed and hawed. “Nobody’s been through recently, so your friends didn’t come this way. In fact, nobody’s been through at all, ever, since I started working here.” He scratched his head with a tentacle. “I’m not actually sure of the procedure.”

“Can we just kill him and move on?” Jace called out.

“That’s very rude,” Elyaas said. “Just because you’re Shadowhunters doesn’t mean you’re supposed to kill every demon you see.”

“It does, actually,” Clary said, grimacing.

“This puts our relationship in a very different light,” Elyaas told Magnus in tones of disapproval. “I thought we had an understanding. I’ve never been summoned by the same warlock twice before.”

“Twice?” said Alec.

“The first time was way back,” Magnus said. “Like, nineteenth century. Elyaas, I promise I’ll summon you for a chat later. But we really do need to move.”

“Okay, okay. Um.” Elyaas picked up one of the rotting books from the desk and opened it with a tentacle. The front cover fell off and onto the floor, and his tentacle came away with pages stuck to it. “Just give me a moment. Why, why did I never learn to read Chinese?”

“Maybe,” said Alec, “you could just tell us where to go, and we’ll go there, and we’ll tell everyone you totally went through the whole thing with the books and the judgment.”

“And we won’t kill you,” added Jace. “This time.”

Elyaas considered this. “Okay. But you owe me one.”

“No,” said Magnus.

“Okay,” said Elyaas. “I owe you one.”

“Also no.”

“Just go through the door,” Elyaas said, waving his tentacles at a tall door that had appeared in the far wall. “It leads to the Second Court, and so on to the others. Your friends must be in one of them. If not, you’ll eventually get to the center of Diyu and find Sammael, and maybe he’ll help you.”

“Not all demons are as helpful as you, Elyaas,” Magnus said wearily. “We’ll be going.” He headed toward the door next to the desk, deeper into Diyu, and the Shadowhunters followed. Behind the door were more stone steps, and Magnus started down them.

“Thanks for coming by,” Elyaas said cheerfully. As Alec passed him, he added, “So you’re the famous Alec. Hmm.”

“What?” Alec snapped.

“Nothing,” said Elyaas. “I just thought you’d be better-looking, that’s all.”

Alec blinked at him. Behind him, Jace stifled a laugh.

“When I heard how he talked about you, I thought, this guy has to have a ton of tentacles. Hundreds of tentacles! But look at you.” He shook his head sadly. “None at all.”

Alec walked on without further comment.

As they descended the stairs, they could hear Elyaas’s wet voice fading in the distance:

“How would you rate your welcome experience today? Very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, a little satisfied, a little dissatisfied, somewhat…”

* * *

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE stairs was a stone archway leading into a second building much like the first. The archway was three times Alec’s height, and its supports were leaning against one another alarmingly. Blocking the way were the remains of two collapsed stone pillars, elaborately carved but now piled in a jumble of hunks of rock, like a gigantic child had been playing with blocks and had failed to put them away.

Magnus seemed ready to magic the stones out of the way, but Alec stopped him. “Let’s just climb over them,” he suggested, and Magnus agreed, though he gave Alec a strange look. Jace had already begun scrambling over the rocks, and the others followed.

The Second Court was in much worse shape than the First. Or maybe it had been more cluttered to begin with. There was a lot more furniture, some carved of stone, some of wood, all shattered and broken—desks, chairs, tables. There were broken tablets and ledgers, rolls of yellowed parchment abandoned in the dirt. Alec picked his way carefully around the detritus and reached down to pick up a cracked slab of wood with the remains of red and gold paint on it. It might have depicted a face, once.

“It’s a battlefield,” Jace said, looking around with a practiced eye; Alec thought he was probably right. Here and there abandoned weapons lay—swords, spears, and broken bows—and at the back of the large open courtroom was another table like the one Elyaas had sat behind, but this one was cleaved neatly in two. Five open doors led in various directions out of the room, in addition to the one they’d come from.

The only fully intact object in the room was an oil painting of a young woman in white, hanging on a wall near the broken desk. It had been painted in watercolor, with delicate brushstrokes. The woman was beautiful, Alec thought, and her brightness seemed out of place in these darkened ruins. The painting was marred only by a tear in the canvas across the woman’s cheek, a scar that would never fade.

Magnus came to stand next to Alec and look at the painting, and as he did, the woman’s face turned within the painting to look at them. Her eyes were empty and white.

“Ack! Evil painting!” Clary jumped back.

The woman’s head rolled eerily on her shoulders within the painting, and when she spoke, it was with a voice like the crackling of dry kindling.

“Welcome, lost souls,” she said. Alec thought perhaps she would say something about how lonely she had been, but she said only, “Here is where your path will be chosen, and you will pass through the ghost gate to your suffering.”

“Great news,” muttered Jace.

“Take heart,” the woman told him, with a smile that revealed long, needlelike teeth. “When your anguish equals the pain you caused in life, you will be released back into the cycle of living and death. I advise you to face your tribulations with courage. You cannot avoid them, so you may as well go to them with your face raised up.”

None of them said anything, and she went on, “All I will require is the standard toll for passage.”

“The standard toll?” said Alec.

“Yes,” said the woman. “Yuanbao are traditional, but these days we also accept the new paper money.”

Magnus groaned. “I assume,” said Alec, “you don’t have any cash on you.”

“I have the change from when I bought some faerie tea cakes earlier,” Clary said, fishing around in her jeans pocket. “Oh, never mind, it’s turned into leaves.”

“We don’t have any money,” Magnus told the painting, “but you see—”

“If you lack payment, you can traverse the Ice Caverns to the Bank of Sorrows,” the woman began.

“We’re not going to have any money in the bank of Hell,” Magnus explained. “We’re not dead, you see.”

The woman looked taken aback. “If no one has sent offerings of money to you, you may be able to claim remaining funds that were sent to your ancestors—”

Magnus interrupted. “We’re not dead! And also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place is in ruins. Diyu has ceased normal operations. Can’t you see this whole court has fallen down?” The woman didn’t speak for a moment, and he went on, “When was the last time someone came through here?”

“Magnus—” Jace said. He was staring at one of the side doors, looking through it. “Someone’s coming.”

The woman spoke, slower than Alec would have liked. “It has been a long time,” she said, “and the beadles have done a wretched job of keeping it clean.”