The Lost Book of the White

Magnus jumped up. “It never ends, does it,” he said. He ran over to Ragnor, who was sitting grumpily cross-legged on the ground, tapping impatiently at the bars of his prison.

Magnus reached for his magic, and he felt a woozy disorientation, like missing the last step on a staircase. There was an emptiness in his chest, and while he knew that the thorn’s power had come from a terrible enemy, the enemy of all humans, he understood why Shinyun had clung to it, had allowed herself to be warmed and comforted by it. It wasn’t love, but if you didn’t know the difference, it might have felt like love.

With a few gestures he shattered the bars of Ragnor’s cage and helped him to his feet. Ragnor looked at Magnus for a minute, then turned to look past him and said, “That was very stupid.”

Alec was making his way over to them, a little slow but walking steadily. When he got close, Magnus put his arm around his waist. “Maybe I need to make more thorough introductions here.” He cleared his throat. “Ragnor, this is Alec Lightwood, my boyfriend and co-parent. He just saved my life and, by extension, yours. Alec, this is Ragnor Fell. He is a terrible jerk to everybody, even when he’s not under the mind control of a Prince of Hell.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Alec said.

“I haven’t heard about anything for years, except creepy evil plans to rule the world,” Ragnor said, “but now that I’m back from that, I expect Magnus will bore me to tears with stories from my absence.” He looked at Alec again. “How did you survive the thorning? Anyone who wasn’t a warlock should have died from the overflow of demonic magic. And there aren’t any warlocks who are Shadowhunters, except—” He peered suspiciously at Alec. “You aren’t Tessa Gray in disguise, are you? This isn’t some elaborate prank you’ve been playing on poor Magnus? If it is, Tessa, you and I are going to have words.”

“Of course not!” Alec said, offended.

Ragnor squinted even harder at him. Magnus sighed. “I’ve been in the same room with both of them, Ragnor. He’s definitely not Tessa.”

“Then how—”

“Later,” said Magnus. Only then did he fully grasp how much Ragnor had missed, and how much more he needed to be told. The Alliance rune. The Mortal War. The Dark War! And smaller, more personal things. Malcolm Fade was the High Warlock of Los Angeles. Catarina was still in New York, for now.

One thing at a time. “Ragnor,” he said, “can you get us to the Hell of the Pit of Fire, where the other Shadowhunters are? We need to try to save them.”

Ragnor shook his head. “I’m sure it’s too late,” he said. “But I’ll open the Portal and we’ll see. At least we can take whatever’s left of them back to Earth.”

Alec looked stricken. Magnus patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t take it too seriously,” he said. “Ragnor’s just like that.”

Ragnor twiddled his fingers, the extra joint on each of them making his movements intricate and alien even to Magnus. Within a moment a door opened in the nothingness of Avici, through which orange flames leaped against black rock. It seemed to be quaking in the same way Avici was.

Magnus looked to Alec. “Are you ready to fight again?”

“Not really,” Alec said, drawing his seraph blade from his belt. “But here we go.”

“Right.” Magnus charged through, and Alec followed close behind.

They emerged onto a rocky platform suspended high above the lava pools below. A stone staircase led down to more platforms and the rest of the labyrinthine landscape. Magnus was not happy to note that nothing was visibly keeping their platform in the air, and the earthquake that was rumbling through Diyu was even stronger here.

“Okay,” said Alec. “Let’s save our friends.”

“Or what’s left of your friends,” Ragnor muttered. “Wait. Where are your friends?”

They seemed to be scattered. Far below them, on a fairly broad plain, Simon, Clary, and Tian were fighting some of Diyu’s various demons. Separated from them and somewhat elevated was Isabelle, and even higher, on a separate platform, was Jace.

Alec looked puzzled. “What’s going on?”

“Well, Jace’s foot was broken, so I guess they found a safe place for him,” offered Magnus.

“And why is Isabelle by herself?” Exhausted by magic he might have been, but Alec still jogged down the staircase ahead of them, weapon at the ready.

Ragnor gave Magnus a look. “You’re not going to jog, are you?”

Magnus raised one eyebrow. “In these shoes?”

They descended the staircase, and the one after that, with the decorum appropriate to warlocks who had defeated a Prince of Hell that day. Or at least, they had been in the same place as a Prince of Hell, and they had made him leave first.

By the time they reached Jace, Alec had clearly already exchanged some words with him and looked much less concerned.

“So you haven’t all been devoured yet, I see,” said Ragnor.

“No, they’ve got it all under control,” Alec said, excited. He gestured at Jace. “Tell them!”

Jace looked at him sideways. “I was about to. We’ve got it all under control,” he went on. “I can’t really fight right now, so Clary helped me up here so we could see as much of the battlefield as possible, since the paths are so irregular and confusing. But then we noticed that the demons had the same problem we did. They could really only get to us on a set number of paths, and three people could cover two paths each.”

Magnus raised his eyebrows.

“So Simon, Tian, and Clary went down there to do that. We put Isabelle on the middle platform because she’s the only one whose weapon has any reach, so she can handle the occasional flying dude.”

Alec seemed near tears. “I’m very proud of you,” he said to Jace. “You actually made a plan.”

“I’m good at plans!” Jace said.

“You are, actually, good at plans,” Magnus said. “It’s just usually you’re yelling them behind you as you sprint toward danger.”

“But you used your sumptuous brain and you’re all okay!” Alec said, thumping Jace on the shoulder. He looked over at Ragnor. “Take that, pessimism guy!”

Ragnor furrowed his brow. “Well, obviously I’m glad everyone is still alive.”

“I should mention,” said Jace, “the ground started shaking a little while ago.”

“That would be Shinyun,” said Magnus. “It’s a long story. Also, luckily for you I brought the world’s leading expert in dimensional magic, and he’s going to Portal us right on out of here.”

Ragnor gave Magnus a sour look. “I suppose I am, but I’m going to need your help.”

“Great news,” said Magnus, and he jumped off the platform. He floated slowly down to the plain, waving at Isabelle as he passed.

“Magnus!” said Clary, lopping the head off one of the Baigujing skeletons. “Good to see you!”

“I’m going to say something,” Simon said in Clary’s direction, “and I don’t want you to get mad.”

Clary let out a long, beleaguered breath. “Go ahead. I guess you’ve earned it.”

“Magnus,” Simon said with a smirk. “Nice of you to drop in.”

Clary sighed again.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Magnus. “The good news is I’m here to Portal us back to Earth. The bad news is that I need Ragnor’s help, and he’s taking the stairs all the way down.”

Ragnor, indeed, was strolling down the staircase at a leisurely pace. As Magnus watched, Jace overtook him, which was impressive given that he was walking with a crutch.

The demon horde was beginning to flag, it seemed. New demons appeared from the Portals less and less frequently, and both Jace and Isabelle joined their friends to mop up what remained. Perhaps the demons had noticed Diyu’s imminent collapse and fled for their lives; perhaps once Sammael and Shinyun were gone they had no reason to obey their orders.

Eventually, Ragnor deigned to join them. He and Magnus quickly worked together to set up a Portal; it occurred to Magnus how very much he’d missed working with Ragnor.

And when the Portal opened, he was relieved to see it glow a familiar, cheering blue.

CHAPTER TWENTY The Soul of the Clave

IN 1910, CATARINA LOSS’S SON Ephraim died. By that time, he was an old man with children and grandchildren of his own. Catarina hadn’t seen him for decades; he believed that she’d died when he was only in his thirties, in a shipwreck.

Magnus had been living in New York at the time, in a smart apartment in Manhattan across the street from the old Metropolitan Opera House, the one they tore down in 1967. A telegram came: No. 2, the Bund, Shanghai, it said in Catarina’s hurried hand. So Magnus fetched his gloves and his hat and he went.

Number Two, the Bund, turned out to be the home of the Shanghai Club, a little bit of English elitism dropped right in the heart of China, in the form of a squat marble baroque revival building in which Shanghai’s British elite hobnobbed, drank, and for a short time, essentially ruled the mundane world. The building was new, though the club was not. It was a funny choice for Catarina. She knew as well as Magnus that it was open to white men only. This was Catarina being mischievous, in her way. She sometimes enjoyed glamouring herself into the private spaces of rich mundanes, delighting in her ability to stand totally outside their world, to have a drink with an old friend in the face of those who wouldn’t allow them entrance under normal circumstances.

The whole place was palatial in a way that was also a bit grotesque. Magnus walked through a cavernous columned Grand Hall, past taipans and diplomats, utterly pleased with themselves. And why not? They were living like royalty at the heart of one of the oldest kingdoms in the world. They had no reason to think it would ever end—and at the time, Magnus wondered himself how long it could last. Not much longer, it turned out.