The Last Stand of the New York Institute (The Bane Chronicles 9)

For more than two years after the Uprising, Magnus didn't see any of Valentine's Circle again. Until he did.

New York City, 1993

The life of warlocks was one of immortality, magic, glamour, and excitement through the ages.

Sometimes, though, Magnus wanted to stay in and watch television on the sofa like everyone else. He was curled up on the sofa with Tessa, and they were watching a video of Pride and Prejudice. Tessa was complaining at some length about how the book was better.

"This is not what Jane Austen would have wanted," Tessa told him. "If she could see this, I am certain she would be horrified."

Magnus uncurled from the sofa and went to stand by the window. He was expecting some Chinese to be delivered, and he was starving from a long day of idleness and debauchery. He did not see a deliveryman, though. The only person on the street was a young woman carrying a baby wrapped up tight against the cold. She was walking fast, no doubt on her way home.

"If Jane Austen could see this," Magnus said, "I assume she would be screaming, 'There are tiny demons in this little box! Fetch a clergyman!' and hitting the television with her parasol."

The doorbell rang, and Magnus turned away from the window.

"Finally," Magnus said, grabbing a ten-dollar bill from a table near the door, and he buzzed the deliveryman in. "I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on an empty stomach, your head falls off."

"If your head fell off," Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown."

Magnus nodded and touched his hair, which was now in a chin-length sweep. He opened the door, still in his pose, and found himself staring at a woman with a crown of red curls. She was holding a child. She was the woman he had seen on the street moments ago. Magnus was startled to see someone at his door who looked so . . . mundane.

The young woman was dressed in sloppy jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. She lowered her hand, which had been raised as if to knock on the door, and Magnus saw the flicker of faded, silvery scars on her arm. Magnus had seen far too many of those to ever be mistaken.

She bore Covenant Marks, carried the remnants of old runes on her skin like mementoes. She was not mundane in the least, then. She was a Shadowhunter, but a Shadowhunter bearing no fresh Marks, not dressed in gear.

She was not here on official Shadowhunter business. She was trouble.

"Who are you?" Magnus demanded.

She swallowed, and replied, "I am--I was Jocelyn Morgenstern."

The name conjured up memories years old. Magnus remembered the blade going into his back and the taste of blood. It made him want to spit.

The monster's bride at his door. Magnus could not stop staring.

She was staring too. She seemed transfixed by his pajamas. Magnus was frankly offended. He had not invited any wives of crazed hate-cult leaders to come around and pass judgment on his wardrobe. If he wished to forgo a shirt and wear scarlet drawstring pajamas patterned with black polar bears, and a black silk bed jacket, he could do so. None of the others who had been lucky enough to see Magnus in his bedroom attire had ever complained.

"I don't remember ordering the bride of an evil maniac," said Magnus. "It was definitely beef and broccoli. What about you, Tessa? Did you order the bride of an evil maniac?"

He swung the door open wider so Tessa could see who was there. Nothing else was said for a moment. Then Magnus saw the blanket-covered lump in Jocelyn's arms stir. It was in that moment that he remembered there was a child.

"I have come here, Magnus Bane," Jocelyn said, "to beg your aid."

Magnus gripped the edge of the door until his knuckles went white.

"Let me think," he said. "No."

He was stopped by Tessa's voice, soft. "Let her in, Magnus," she said.

Magnus wheeled around to look at Tessa. "Seriously?"

"I want to speak with her."

Tessa's voice had taken on a strange tone. Also, the delivery person had just appeared in the hall carrying their bag of food. Magnus nodded Jocelyn inside, handed over the ten dollars, and shut the door on the confused man's face before he had a chance to hand over the food.

Now Jocelyn stood awkwardly by the door. The tiny person in her arms kicked its feet and stretched its legs.

"You have a baby," Magnus said, pointing out what was now obvious.

Jocelyn shifted uncomfortably and clutched the baby to her chest.

Tessa padded toward them silently and stood by Jocelyn. Even though she wore black leggings and an oversize gray T-shirt that read WILLIAM WANTS A DOLL, she still always carried an air of formality and authority about her. The shirt, as it happened, was a feminist statement that boys liked to play with dolls and girls with trucks, but Magnus suspected she had chosen it partly because of the name. Tessa's husband had been dead for long enough that his name brought back happy, faded memories instead of the raw agony she had felt for years after his passing. Other warlocks had loved and lost, but few were as hopelessly faithful as Tessa. Decades later she had not allowed anyone else to even come close to winning her heart.

"Jocelyn Fairchild," Tessa said. "Descended from Henry Branwell and Charlotte Fairchild."

Jocelyn blinked as if she had not been expecting a lecture on her own genealogy.

"That's right," she said cautiously.

"I knew them, you see," Tessa explained. "You have a great look of Henry."

"Knew them? Then you must be . . ."

Henry had been dead for the better part of a century, and Tessa looked no older than twenty-five.

"Are you a warlock too, then?" Jocelyn asked suspiciously. Magnus saw her eyes drift from the top of Tessa's head to her feet, searching for a demon's mark, the sign that would indicate to Shadowhunters that she was unclean, inhuman, and to be despised. Some warlocks could hide their marks under their clothes, but Jocelyn could look at as much of Tessa as she wished and never find a mark.

Tessa did not draw herself up obtrusively, but it was clear suddenly that Tessa was taller than Jocelyn was, and her gray eyes could be very cold.

"I am," said Tessa. "I am Theresa Gray, daughter of a Greater Demon and Elizabeth Gray, who was born Adele Starkweather, one of your kind. I was the wife of William Herondale, who was the head of the London Institute, and I was the mother of James Herondale and Lucie Blackthorn. Will and I raised our Shadowhunter children to protect mundanes, to live by the Laws of Clave and Covenant, and to keep to the Accords."

She spoke in the way she well knew how, in the manner of the Nephilim.

"Once, I lived among the Shadowhunters," Tessa said softly. "Once I might almost have seemed like a person to you."

Jocelyn looked lost, in the way that people did when they learned something so strange that the whole world seemed unfamiliar.

"I understand if you find my crimes against Downworlders unforgivable," Jocelyn said, "but I--I have nowhere else to go. And I need help. My daughter needs your help. She is a Shadowhunter and Valentine's daughter. She cannot live among her own kind. We can never go back. I need a spell to shield her eyes from all but the mundane world. She can grow up safe and happy in the mundane world. She never needs to know what her father was." Jocelyn almost choked, but she lifted her chin and added, "Or what her mother did."