Cassandra Clare: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“We are in England, are we not?” asked Magnus, and he bent a charming smile on Amalia Morgenstern, who looked rather noindentustered. “I would be delighted if we could have some scones.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Amalia. “With clotted cream, of course.”

Magnus gazed upon Camille. “Some of my fondest memories include lashings of cream and beautiful women.”

Magnus was enjoying scandalizing the Shadowhunters. Camille rather looked as if she were enjoying it too. Her green eyes were heavy-lidded for a moment with amused satisfaction, as if she were a cat who had already had her fill of cream.

Amalia rang the bell. “While we wait for scones, we can hear the rest of dear Roderick’s speech!”

There was an appalled silence, and in the stillness the mutter outside the door rang out, loud and clear.

“Merciful Angel, give me strength to endure. . . .”

Roderick Morgenstern, who Magnus thought truly deserved to have a name that sounded like a goat chewing gravel, stood up happily to continue his speech. Amalia attempted to rise unobtrusively from her seat—Magnus could have told her that hoop skirts and stealth together were a lost cause—and made her way to the door, which she threw open.

Several young Shadowhunters tumbled into the room like puppies falling over one another. Amalia’s eyes rounded in comic surprise. “What on earth—”

Despite Shadowhunters having the swiftness of angels, only one managed to land with grace. It was a boy, or rather a young man, who ended his fall on one knee before Amalia, like Romeo proposing to Juliet.

He had hair the color of a coin that was pure gold, no base metal, and the lines of his face were as clean and elegant as a profile etched on one of those princely coins. His shirt had become disarranged at some point during the eavesdropping, the collar pulled open to reveal the edge of a rune drawn on his white skin.

The most remarkable thing about him were his eyes. They were laughing eyes, at once both joyous and tender: they were the radiant pale blue of a sky slipping toward evening in Heaven, when angels who had been sweet all day found themselves tempted to sin.

“I could not bear to be parted from you a moment longer, dear, dearest Mrs. Morgenstern,” said the young man, possessing himself of Amalia’s hand. “I yearn for you.”

He made play with his long golden eyelashes, and Amalia Morgenstern was forthwith reduced to blushes and smiles.

Magnus had always had a decided preference for black hair. It appeared as though fate were determined that he should broaden his horizons. Either that or the blonds of the world had formed some sort of conspiracy to be good-looking all of a sudden.

“Excuse me, Bane?” said Roderick Morgenstern. “Are you attending?”

“I’m so sorry,” Magnus said politely. “Somebody incredibly attractive just came into the room, and I ceased to pay attention to a word you were saying.”

It was perhaps an ill-judged remark. The Shadowhunter elders, representatives from the Clave, all appeared horrified and dismayed at any Downworlder expressing interest in one of their youths. The Nephilim also had very decided opinions on the subject of inverts and deviant behavior, since as a group their chief occupations were waving large weaponry about and judging everybody they met.

Camille, meanwhile, looked as if she found Magnus even more interesting than she had before. She looked back and forth between him and the young blond Shadowhunter boy, and covered her smile with a gloved hand.

“He is delightful,” she murmured to Magnus.

Magnus was watching as Amalia shooed out the young Shadowhunters—the blond boy; an older young man with thick brown hair and significant eyebrows; and a dark-eyed, birdlike little girl, barely more than a toddler, who looked over her shoulder and said, “Papa?” in a clear questioning voice to the head of the London Institute, a grave dark man called Granville Fairchild.

“Go, Charlotte. You know your duty,” said Fairchild. Duty before all; that was the warrior’s way, Magnus renoindentected. Certainly duty before love.

Little Charlotte, already a dutiful Shadowhunter, trotted obediently away.

Camille’s low voice recalled Magnus to attention. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share him?”

Magnus smiled back at her. “Not as a meal, no. Was that what you meant?”

Camille laughed. Ralf Scott made an impatient noise, but was shushed by de Quincey, who muttered at him in annoyance; while over that noise rose the discontented grumblings of Roderick Morgenstern, a man who clearly wished to continue with his speech—and then finally the refreshments arrived, carried in on silver tea trays by a host of maids.

Arabella the mermaid lifted a hand, sloshing energetically in her aquarium.

“If you please,” she said. “I would like a scone.”

When Morgenstern’s interminable speech was finally done, everybody had lost all will to converse and simply wished to go home. Magnus parted from Camille Belcourt with deep reluctance and from the Shadowhunters with deep relief.

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus’s eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus’s breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one.

As he walked down Thames Street, he began to plot ways in which to see Camille again. He should pay a call upon the vampire clan in London. He knew de Quincey lived in Kensington.

It was only civil.

“After all,” Magnus remarked aloud to himself, swinging his monkey-headed cane, “attractive and interesting persons do not simply drop out of the sky.”

It was then that the fair-haired Shadowhunter that Magnus had spotted at the Institute somersaulted from the top of a wall and landed gracefully in the street before him.

“Devastating ensembles made on Bond Street with red brocade waistcoats do not simply drop out of the sky!” Magnus proclaimed experimentally to the Heavens.

The young man frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” said Magnus. “May I help you? I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

The Nephilim stooped and picked up his hat, which had fallen onto the cobblestones when he’d made his leap. He then took it off in order to noindentourish it in Magnus’s direction. The effect of the smile and the eyelashes together was like a small earthquake of attractiveness. Magnus could not blame Amalia Morgenstern for her giggling, even if the boy was far too young for her.

“No fewer than four of my esteemed elders told me I was on no account to ever converse with you, so I vowed that I would know you. My name is Edmund Herondale. May I ask your name? They referred to you only as ‘that disgraceful one-warlock show.’”

“I am deeply moved by that tribute,” Magnus told Edmund, and made his own bow. “Magnus Bane, at your service.”

“Now we are acquainted,” Edmund said. “Capital! Do you frequent any low dens of sin and debauchery?”

“Oh, now and then.”

“The Morgensterns said you did, while they were throwing away the plates,” Edmund said, with every sign of enthusiasm. “Shall we go?”