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

"So you come begging to us," Magnus said. "The monsters."

"I have no quarrel with Downworlders," Jocelyn said at last. "I . . . my best friend is a Downworlder, and I do not believe he is so changed from the person I always loved. I was wrong. I'll have to live forever with what I did. But please, my daughter did nothing."

Her best friend, the Downworlder. Magnus supposed that Lucian Graymark was still alive, then, though nobody had seen him since the Uprising. Magnus thought a little better of Jocelyn for claiming him as her best friend. People did say she and Lucian had planned to defeat Valentine together, though Jocelyn had not been there to confirm the rumor afte

r the battle. Magnus had not seen Jocelyn during the Uprising. He had not known whether to believe the claim or not.

Magnus had often considered that Shadowhunter justice was more like cruelty, and he did not want to be cruel. He looked at the woman's weary desperate face and the bundle in her arms, and he could not be cruel. He believed in redemption, the inchoate grace in every person he met. It was one of the few things he had to believe in, the possibility of beauty when faced with the reality of so much ugliness.

"You said you were married to a Herondale." Jocelyn appealed to Tessa, voice as faint as if she could already see the weakness of this argument but she had none other to make. "Stephen Herondale was my friend--"

"Stephen Herondale would have killed me if he'd ever met me," said Tessa. "I would not have been safe living among people like you, or like him. I am the wife and mother of warriors who fought and died and never dishonored themselves as you have. I have worn gear, wielded blades, and slain demons, and all I wished was to overcome evil so that I could live and be happy with those I loved. I'd hoped I had made this a better, safer world for my children. Because of Valentine's Circle, the Herondale line, the line that was my son's children's children, is finished. That happened through you and your Circle and your husband. Stephen Herondale died with hate in his heart and the blood of my people on his hands. I can imagine no more horrible way for mine and Will's line to end. I will have to carry for the rest of my life the wound of what Valentine's Circle has done to me, and I will live forever."

Tessa paused, and looked at Jocelyn's white despairing face, and then said, more gently, "But Stephen Herondale made his own choices, and you have made other choices besides the one to hate. I know that Valentine could not have been defeated without your help. And your child has done no wrong to anybody."

"That does not mean she has a right to our help," Magnus interrupted. He didn't want to reject Jocelyn, but there was still a nagging voice inside him that told him she was an enemy. "Besides which, I am not a Shadowhunter charity, and I doubt she has the money to pay for my help. Fugitives are so seldom well funded."

"I'll find the money," said Jocelyn. "I am not a charity case, and I am not a Shadowhunter any longer. I want nothing more to do with the Shadowhunters. I want to be someone else. I want to raise my daughter to be someone else, not bound to the Clave or led astray by anybody. I want her to be braver than I was, stronger than I was, and to let nobody decide her fate but herself."

"Nobody could ask for more than that for their child," Tessa said, and edged closer. "May I hold her?"

Jocelyn hesitated for a moment, holding the tightly wrapped bundle of the child close. Then slowly, reluctantly, her movements almost jerky, she leaned forward and placed her baby with enormous care into the arms of a woman she had just met.

"She's beautiful," Tessa murmured. Magnus did not know if Tessa had held a baby in decades, but she moved the child to her hip, held fast in the circle of her arm, with the instinctive loving and casual air of a parent. Magnus had seen her once, holding one of her grandchildren in just this way. "What's her name?"

"Clarissa," said Jocelyn, looking at Tessa intently, and then, as if she were telling them a secret, she said, "I call her Clary."

Magnus looked over Tessa's shoulder and into the child's face. The girl was older than Magnus had thought, small for her age, but her face had lost the roundness of babyhood: she must be almost two, and already looked like her mother. She looked like a Fairchild. She had red curls, the same color Henry's had been, clustering on her small head, and green eyes, glass-clear and jewel-bright and blinking around curiously at her surroundings. She did not seem to object to being handed to a stranger. Tessa tucked the baby's blanket more securely around her, and Clary's small fat fist closed determinedly around Tessa's finger. The child waved Tessa's finger back and forth, as if to display her new possession.

Tessa smiled down at the baby, a slow bright smile, and whispered, "Hello, Clary."

It was clear that Tessa at least had made up her mind. Magnus leaned in, his shoulder resting lightly against Tessa's, and peered into the child's face. He waved to catch her attention, moving his fingers so all his rings sparkled in the light. Clary laughed, all pearly teeth and the purest joy, and Magnus felt the knot of resentment in his chest ease.

Clary wriggled in a clear and imperious signal that she wanted to be let down, but Tessa handed her to Jocelyn so that Clary's mother could decide whether she should be put down or not. Jocelyn might not want her child roaming a warlock's home.

Jocelyn did look around apprehensively, but either she decided it was safe or small, intently squirming Clary was stubborn and her mother knew she would have to let her go free. She put Clary down, and Clary went toddling determinedly off on her quest. They stood and watched her bright little head bob as she grabbed up, in turn, Tessa's book, one of Magnus's candles (which Clary chewed on thoughtfully for a moment), and a silver tray Magnus had left under the sofa.

"Curious little thing, isn't she?" Magnus asked. Jocelyn glanced toward Magnus. Her eyes had been anxiously fastened on her child. Magnus found himself smiling at her. "Not a bad quality," he assured her. "She could grow up to be an adventurer."

"I want her to grow up to be safe and happy," said Jocelyn. "I don't want her to have adventures. Adventures happen when life is cruel. I want her to have a mundane life, quiet and sweet, and I hoped she would be born not able to see the Shadow World. It is no world for a child. But I've never had much luck with hope. I saw her trying to play with a faerie in a hedge this afternoon. I need you to help me. I need you to help her. Can you blind her to all that?"

"Can I tear away an essential part of your child's nature, and twist her into a shape that would suit you better?" Magnus asked her. "If you want her mad by the end of it."

He regretted the words as soon as he had spoken. Jocelyn stared at him, white-faced, as if she had just been hit. But Jocelyn Morgenstern was not the kind of woman who wept, not the kind of woman who broke, or Valentine would have broken her long since. She held herself tall and asked, her voice level, "Is there anything else you can do?"

"There is . . . something else I could try," said Magnus.

He did not say that he would. He kept his eyes on the little girl, and thought of the young werewolf girl Valentine had blinded, of Edmund Herondale stripped of his Marks centuries ago, and of Tessa's Jamie and Lucie and all they had borne. He would not give up a child to the Shadowhunters, for whom the Law came before mercy.

Clary espied Magnus's poor cat. The Great Catsby, who was getting on in years, lay prone upon a velvet cushion, his fluffy gray tail spilling over it.

The adults all saw that disaster was imminent. They took a step forward, as one, but Clary had already firmly pulled the Great Catsby's tail, with the regal assured air of a countess reaching for the bellpull to summon her maid.

The Great Catsby gave a piteous meow to protest the indignity, turned, and scratched Clary, and Clary began to scream. Jocelyn was on her knees beside Clary the next instant, her red hair like a veil over her child, as if she could somehow screen Clary from all the world.

"Is she part banshee?" Magnus asked over the piercing wail. Clary sounded like a police siren. Magnus felt as if he were going to be arrested for the twenty-seventh time. Jocelyn glared at him through her hair, and Magnus lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Oh, pardon me for implying that the bloodlines of Valentine's child are anything less than pure."

"Come on, Magnus," Tessa said quietly. She had loved so many more Shadowhunters than Magnus ever had. She went and stood beside Jocelyn. She put a hand against Jocelyn's shoulder, and Jocelyn did not shake her hand off.

"If you want the child safe," said Magnus, "she doesn't need only a spell to hide her own Sight. She needs to be protected from the supernatural as well, from any demons who might come crawling to her."

"And what Iron Sister and Silent Brother will do that ceremony for me without turning Clary and me over to the Clav

e?" Jocelyn demanded. "No. I can't risk it. If she knows nothing of the Shadow World, she will be safe."

"My mother was a Shadowhunter who knew nothing of the Shadow World," said Tessa. "That didn't keep her safe."

Jocelyn stared at Tessa in open horror, obviously able to infer the story of what had happened: that a demon had gained access to an unprotected Shadowhunter woman, and Tessa had been the result.

There was a silence. Clary had turned curiously to Tessa as Tessa had approached, her screams forgotten. Now she lifted her chubby little arms out to Tessa. Jocelyn let Tessa take Clary again, and this time Clary did not try to wriggle away from her. Clary wiped her small tearstained face against Tessa's T-shirt. It seemed to be a gesture of affection. Magnus hoped nobody would offer Clary to him in her current sticky condition.

Jocelyn blinked and began, slowly, to smile. Magnus noticed for the first time that she was beautiful. "Clary never goes to strangers. Maybe--maybe she can tell that you're not a stranger to the Fairchilds."

Tessa gazed at Jocelyn, her gray eyes clear. Magnus thought, in this case, Tessa was seeing more than he did. "Maybe. I will help you with the ceremony," she promised. "I know a Silent Brother who will keep any secret, if I ask him to."

Jocelyn bowed her head. "Thank you, Theresa Gray."

It occurred to Magnus how outraged Valentine would have been, to see his wife beseeching Downworlders, to think of his child in a warlock's arms. Magnus's thought of responding to Jocelyn's appeal with cruelty receded even further. This seemed the kind of revenge worth getting--to prove, even after Valentine's death, how wrong Valentine had been.

He walked over to the two women and the child, and he glanced at Tessa, and he saw her nod.

"Well, then," Magnus said, "it seems we are going to help you, Jocelyn Morgenstern."

Jocelyn flinched. "Don't call me that. I'm--I'm Jocelyn Fairchild."

"I thought you weren't a Shadowhunter anymore," Magnus said. "If you don't want them to find you, changing your last name seems a fairly elementary first step. Trust me, I'm an expert. I've watched a lot of spy movies."