Born to Endless Night (Tales from Shadowhunter Academy 9)

Maia had called Magnus and asked if she could come and visit him, to ask his advice on a few things. When she showed up, she'd dragged Lily along with her.

Lily, Maia, and Magnus then sat around Magnus's coffee table shouting at each other for hours.

"You can't just kill someone, Lily!" Maia kept saying.

Lily kept saying: "Explain why."

Alec had been cranky that day, having wrenched his arm almost out of its socket during a fight with a dragon demon. He'd been leaning against the kitchen counter, listening, nursing his arm, and texting Jace messages like Y DO U SAY THINGS R XTINCT WHEN THINGS R NOT XTINCT and Y R U THE WAY THAT U R.

Until he ran out of patience.

"Do you know, Lily," he said in a cold voice, putting down his phone, "that you spend more than half the time you are speaking baiting Magnus and Maia, instead of offering suggestions? And you make them spend about the same amount of time arguing you down. So you're making everything last twice as long. Which means you're wasting everyone's time. That's not a really efficient way for a leader to behave."

Lily was so startled she looked almost blank for a moment, almost truly young, before she hissed: "Nobody asked you, Shadowhunter."

"I am a Shadowhunter," said Alec, still calm. "The issue you're having with the mermaids. The Rio de Janeiro Institute was having the same problem a couple of years ago. I know all about it. Do you want me to tell you? Or do you want to end up with half a dozen tourists on a boat to Staten Island drowned, at least that many Shadowhunters asking you embarrassing questions, and a little voice in your head saying, 'Wow, I wish I'd listened to Alec Lightwood when I had the chance'?"

There was a silence. Maia had put an entire cookie into her mouth as they waited. Lily kept her arms crossed and looked sulky.

"Don't waste my time, Lily," Alec said. "What do you want?"

"I want you to sit down and help me, I suppose," Lily grumbled.

Alec had sat down.

Magnus had not expected the meetings to happen more than a few times, let alone to see a rapport spring up between Alec and Lily. Alec had not been entirely comfortable with vampires, once. But Alec always responded to being relied on, being turned to. Whenever Lily came to him with a problem, at first haughtily and with an air of reluctance and later with demanding confidence, Alec did not rest until he had solved it.

One Thursday evening Magnus had heard the doorbell and walked in from the bedroom to find Alec laying out glasses, and realized that the occasional emergency gatherings had become regular meetings. That Maia and Lily and Alec would unroll a map of New York to pinpoint problem areas and have heated debates in which Lily made very nasty werewolf jokes, and each of them would call the other when they had a problem they did not know how to solve. That Downworlders and Shadowhunters alike would come to New York knowing there was a group with Downworlders and Shadowhunters who had power and would cooperate to solve problems. They would come to consult and find out if the group could help them, too.

Magnus realized that this was his life now, and he would not have it different.

"I like Alec so much," Lily told Magnus at a party months later, slightly drunk and with glitter in her hair. "Especially when he gets snippy with me. He reminds me of Raphael."

"How dare you," Magnus had replied. "You are speaking of the man I love."

He was bartending. His tuxedo had a glow-in-the-dark waistcoat, which made bartending in the artful gloom of the party somewhat easier. He'd spoken without thinking, casually, and then stopped, glass in his hand winking turquoise in the party lights. He'd been talking about Raphael easily, casually insulting, as if Raphael were still alive.

Lily had been Raphael's ally and backup for decades. She had been utterly loyal to him.

"Well, I loved Raphael," said Lily. "And Raphael never loved anyone, I know that much. But he was my leader. If I compare anybody to Raphael, it's a compliment. I like Alec. And I like Maia." She regarded Magnus with wide eyes, pupils dilated until they were almost black. "I've never been terribly fond of you. Except Raphael always said you were an idiot, but you could be trusted."

Raphael had loved many people, Magnus knew. He had loved his mortal family. Maybe Lily didn't know about them: Raphael had been so careful about them. Magnus thought Raphael might have loved Lily, though not in the way she had wanted.

He knew Raphael had trusted her. And Raphael had trusted Magnus. They stood together, these two Raphael had trusted, in one of those quietly terrible moments remembering the dead and knowing you would never see them again.

"Do you want another drink?" Magnus asked. "I can be trusted to make you another drink."

"Bring on the party O neg, I'm feeling frisky," Lily told him. She stared off into the distance as Magnus made her drink, her eyes fixed on showers of glitter that fell from the ceiling at intervals, but not seeing them. "I never thought I'd have to lead the clan. I thought Raphael would always be there. If I didn't have the sessions with Alec and Maia, I wouldn't know what to do half the time. A werewolf and a Shadowhunter. Do you think Raphael would be ashamed?"

Magnus slid Lily's drink across the bar to her. "I don't," he told her.

Lily had smiled, a flash of fang beneath her plum-colored lipstick, and, clutching her drink, wandered over to Alec.

Now Lily stood next to Alec, having followed him to Idris, and looked at the baby in his arms.

"Hello, baby," Lily whispered, hovering over the child. She snapped her fangs in the baby's direction.

Jace rolled lightly, off the floor and to his feet. Robert, Maryse, and Isabelle put their hands on their weapons. Lily snapped her teeth again, entirely unaware the Lightwood family was clearly ready to mobilize and tear her into pieces. Alec looked at his family over Lily's head and shook his own head in a small, firm gesture. The baby looked up at Lily's glinting fangs and laughed. Lily clicked her teeth for him again and he laughed again.

"What?" Lily asked, looking up at Alec and sounding shy suddenly. "I always liked children, when I was alive. People said I was good with them." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "It's been a while."

"That's great," said Alec. "You'll be willing to babysit occasionally, then."

"Ha-ha, I'm the head of the New York vampire clan and I'm much too important," Lily told him. "But I'll see him when I drop by your place."

Magnus wondered how long Alec was envisioning it would be until they found the baby a home. Alec must think that it would take a while, and Magnus feared Alec was right.

He watched Alec, his head bowed over the baby in his arms, leaning toward Lily as they murmured to the baby together. Alec did not seem too upset, he thought. It was Lily who, after a space of baby-whispering, began to look a little uneasy.

"It occurs to me that I might be intruding," Lily said.

"Oh really?" asked Isabelle, her arms crossed. "Do you think?"

"Sorry, Alec," said Lily, pointedly not apologizing to anyone else. "See you in New York. Come back quick or some fool will burn the place down. Good-bye, Magnus, random other Lightwoods. Bye, baby. Good-bye, little baby."

She stood on her tiptoes in high-heeled boots, kissed Alec on the cheek, and sashayed out.

"I do not like that vampire's attitude," said Robert in the silence following Lily's departure.

"Lily's all right," said Alec mildly.

Robert did not say another word against Lily. He was careful with his son, Magnus had observed, painfully careful, but Robert was the one who had made the pain necessary. Robert had been thoughtless with his son in the past. It would be a long time of pain and care until things were right between them.

Both Robert and Alec were trying. That was why Alec had stayed to have breakfast with his father this morning.

Though Magnus was not at all sure what Robert Lightwood was doing here at the Shadowhunter Academy in the dark of night.

Let alone Maryse, who should be running the New York Institute. Let alone Isabelle and Jace.

Magnus

was always pleased to see Clary.

"Hello, biscuit," he said.

Clary sidled over to the doorway and grinned up at him, a thousand gallons of trouble in a pint-size body. "Hi."

"What's--"

Magnus intended to discreetly ask what the hell was going on, but he was interrupted by Jace lying down full length on the floor again. Magnus looked down, somewhat distracted.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm stuffing crevices with bits of material," said Jace. "It was Isabelle's idea."

"I ripped up one of your shirts to do it," Isabelle told him. "Not one of your nice shirts, obviously. One of the shirts that don't suit you and which you shouldn't wear again."

The world blurred briefly in front of Magnus's eyes. "You did what?"

Isabelle stared down at him from the stool where she was standing, her hands on her hips.

"We're childproofing the whole suite. If you could call this a suite. This whole Academy is a baby death trap. After we get finished here, we're going to childproof your loft."

"You're not allowed in our apartment," Magnus told her.

"Alec gave me a set of keys that says different," Isabelle told him.

"I did do that," Alec said. "I did give her keys. Forgive me, Magnus, I love you, I did not know she was going to be like this."

Usually Robert looked slightly uneasy whenever Alec expressed affection to Magnus. This time, however, he was staring fixedly at the warlock baby and did not even seem to hear.

Magnus was starting to feel ever more disturbed by the turns this night was taking.

"Why are you being like this?" Magnus asked Isabelle. "Why?"