The Lost Book of the White

In the kitchen, Raphael Santiago was sitting on the counter, swinging his legs back and forth.

“Raphael,” Magnus said in surprise. “But you’re dead.”

Raphael gave him a withering look. “I’ve always been dead,” he said. “You never knew me when I was alive.”

“I guess that’s true,” Magnus admitted, “but I mean now you’re dead and not moving around anymore. You’re gone. You let yourself be killed in Edom, rather than kill me.”

Raphael furrowed his brow. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like me.”

Magnus fumbled at the dishwasher, trying to open it, but his talons were in the way. “Could you give me a hand?” he asked.

Raphael sarcastically applauded.

“You’ve gotten grumpier since Sebastian killed you,” Magnus remarked. “Which honestly I would not have thought was possible.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly want to die. I didn’t deserve to die,” Raphael said. “I was immortal! I was supposed to live forever. And as it turned out, I didn’t even make it to a full mortal human life span.”

“You didn’t, did you,” said Magnus. He managed to hook one claw under the lip of the dishwasher and, bending awkwardly, levered it open. It was not his most graceful moment, but he couldn’t feel too embarrassed in front of Raphael, who, after all, was dead.

“How’s Ragnor?” Raphael said. He was still swinging his legs back and forth from his perch on the counter. It was a very un-Raphael thing to do, and it made Magnus want to shout at him to stop, but that seemed crazy. “Still dead as well?”

“No,” said Magnus, but then he stopped. How was Ragnor? When he’d last seen Ragnor, it had been in—

—Diyu.

He reached for the cup and the bowl, awkwardly balancing them in his glowing hands. “I have to bring these to Max,” he said.

“Try not to claw him up too much,” Raphael advised, and Magnus winced. He turned to leave the kitchen, and the cup and bowl slipped from his hands. Though they were definitely plastic—a matched set covered in apples that was Max’s favorite—when they hit the tile floor of the kitchen, they shattered into thousands of sharp splinters, as though they had been crystal.

“Whoa!” said Raphael. “I’ll just stay up here for now.”

The broom was in Max’s room. Magnus walked through the shards and felt them cutting up his bare feet (but why were his feet bare?). He looked behind him as he made his way back up the hallway and saw that he was leaving two trails of blood on the hall rug.

At least I still bleed normal blood, he thought.

“Alec?” he said, and Alec came around the corner with Max, now in the front carrier that they’d used to carry him around the streets of Brooklyn in their first few months with him. Max had outgrown the carrier a month or so ago, and they’d been meaning to get a new one. Maybe this was the new one? It looked like the old one.

Also, Max definitely didn’t fit. But that was because he had changed. His horns, just adorable little nubs only a few minutes ago, were now jagged spikes, black and shiny like Magnus’s talons. A whiplike tail emerged from behind him, hairless like a rat’s. It swayed back and forth dangerously, like the tail of a cat preparing to strike.

And his eyes. Magnus couldn’t quite describe what was going on with Max’s eyes. When he tried to look at them, it was like scratches formed on the inside of his retinas. He had to look away.

“Something’s wrong,” said Alec.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Magnus said desperately. “It’s just… warlocks… sometimes you don’t know…”

“You didn’t tell me,” said Alec. He sounded flat.

“I didn’t know,” said Magnus. He began to back away down the hall, stepping again on the shards he’d left behind when he’d approached Alec and Max just now. New jabs of pain arced through his feet.

Alec lifted Max out of the carrier and held him up to look into his face. “I can deal with the claws, and the horns, and the fangs,” he said. “But I don’t know how to deal with this.”

He turned Max back around to show Magnus. Max’s face was a frozen mask, expressionless, vacant. But that isn’t his warlock mark, Magnus thought. He looks like… like…

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Lady of Edom

ALEC WONDERED FOR A MOMENT if he was dreaming, as Shinyun descended through the space where once a rose window had been set.

He had seen her floating, arms extended, framed in the empty circle, and thought she was a statue for a moment. There was a statue outside the rose window of the real cathedral in the real Shanghai, he remembered.

But then she came floating in and Jace let out a long, frustrated groan. Alec knew how he felt. Had their escape, their daring fall from the bridge, been pointless, if Shinyun could just casually meet them shortly after they arrived?

Sometime during their descent from the bridge, Magnus’s eyes had fluttered back in his head and closed. The three Shadowhunters had panicked, preparing to plummet freely downward, but luckily the spell had held. As the tenebrous shapes of Diyu’s mirror of Shanghai grew more distinct below them, they had seen the cathedral. It was exactly St. Ignatius’s shadow: every detail the same but with all color drained out of it, a picture in washes of dark grays and blacks. It was, thankfully, not literally upside down.

Magnus’s protective cloud had brought them to a landing on the church grounds next to one of the transepts, the side arms of the massive cross that formed the overall shape of the building. There was a small side door there, and they helped Magnus inside and arranged him on one of the carved wooden benches they found. Once he was at rest, the magic faded from his palms, and he breathed steadily, as though asleep.

They hadn’t been inside the real cathedral, but the interior of the shadow cathedral was sufficiently cathedral-like that Alec thought it was probably laid out the same way. It was strange to go from the eerie inhumanity of Diyu to the very distinct humanity of a Catholic church; at first glance they could have been in France or Italy, or even New York. Only once they walked around, and saw the elaborate wood carving of the pews, the distinctly Chinese tile running down the middle of the nave, did the unique character of Xujiahui come across. Except, Alec realized, for any holy symbol, or saint, or angel, which were missing. There were empty niches and picture rails all over where such things must have been in the original cathedral, but here they had been wiped away. Apparently Yanluo hadn’t been a fan. Alec supposed Sammael wouldn’t be either.

Returning to Magnus, Alec found him still breathing steadily and, to all appearances, napping. He put his hand on Magnus’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. When Magnus didn’t react, he gave him a slightly harder shake. He tried to be careful—startling Magnus didn’t seem wise either—but no amount of speaking Magnus’s name or touching him invoked any reaction.

“Come on, wake up,” Alec said urgently. He jiggled Magnus’s knee.

“We could throw some water on him,” suggested Clary.

“I don’t think there’s any water,” said Jace. “Maybe Magnus can conjure some up. Some food, too.”

“If we can wake him up,” said Clary.

“Wake up!” Alec said again, and then they heard the rustle of movement and turned to see Shinyun descending toward them through the blank hole where a window should have been.

She landed lightly, her elongated limbs folding under her, giving her an eerie insectile appearance. Jace drew his spear, and Clary her dagger. Alec continued to nudge Magnus, more and more desperately.

“I don’t want to fight,” Shinyun called out. Nobody moved to put their weapons away.

She approached, and they stood their ground. “Is Magnus… asleep?”

“It’s been a long day,” said Alec dryly.

“He suffers without the third thorn,” she said.

“He’d choose to die.”

“It’s very interesting,” said Shinyun, “how many people choose not to die, when the final decision comes.” She eyed them. “It’s usually because they worry about the effect it will have on others.”

“Not a problem for you, I guess,” said Jace.

“No,” she agreed. “I understand the nature of power too well to allow myself the kind of sentimental attachments that tether most people to the world. A world that will fail them, in the end.”

“You’re wrong,” Magnus said faintly.

Alec helped him sit up. He blinked his eyes, larger and more luminous than they had been, so familiar to Alec and yet becoming more alien with every passing hour.

“You’re wrong,” Magnus said again. “Those so-called sentimental attachments—they are where strength comes from. Where real power comes from.”

“It amazes me,” said Shinyun, “that you would think that, even after living four hundred years. After outliving so many. Knowing you’ll outlive all of them.” She gestured at the Shadowhunters.

“Not at this rate,” Magnus said lightly, gently running a hand down his front, as if checking to make sure all his organs were still inside.

Shinyun ignored this. “You know that time is a cruel joke, that it takes everything from us eventually. Time is a machine for turning love into pain.”

“But there’s so much fun to be had on the way,” murmured Magnus. He shook his head. “You can say it prettily, but that doesn’t make it true.”

Shinyun sighed. “I didn’t come here to argue philosophy with you, Magnus.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Magnus said. “I guess I assumed you came here to taunt us and lecture us.”

“No,” said Shinyun, a frown in her voice. “I came to tell you where to find your friend Simon.”

* * *

“WHY IN THE WORLD,” SAID Magnus, “would you do that?”