Cassandra Clare: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Throwing away the plates? It took Magnus a moment to comprehend, and when he did, he felt cold inside. The Shadowhunters had thrown away the very plates Downworlders had touched, afraid their china would be corrupted.

On the other hand, that was not Edmund’s fault. The only other place Magnus had to go was the mansion he had perhaps rashly purchased in Grosvenor Square. A recent adventure had caused him to become temporarily wealthy (a state he despised; he usually tried to get rid of his money as soon as he had it), so he had decided to live in style. The ton of London were referring to him, he believed, as “Bane the nabob.” This meant a great many people in London were anxious to make his acquaintance, and a great many of them seemed tiresome. Edmund, at least, did not.

“Why not?” Magnus decided.

Edmund glowed. “Excellent. Very few people are willing to have real adventures. Haven’t you found that out, Bane? Isn’t it sad?”

“I have very few rules in life, but one of them is to never decline an adventure. The others are: to avoid becoming romantically entangled with sea creatures; to always ask for what you want, because the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment but the best thing that can happen is nudity; to demand ready money up front; and to never play cards with Catarina Loss.”

“What?”

“She cheats,” Magnus explained. “Never mind that one.”

“I would like to meet a lady who cheats at cards,” Edmund said wistfully. “Aside from Granville’s aunt Millicent, who is a terror at piquet.”

Magnus had never truly considered that the high-and-mighty Shadowhunters ever played cards, let alone cheated at them. He supposed he had imagined that their leisure activities consisted of weapons training and having discussions about their infinite superiority over everyone else.

Magnus ventured to give Edmund a hint. “Mundane clubs do generally frown upon patrons who have, purely for random example, an abundance of weaponry about their person. So that might be an impediment.”

“Absolutely not,” Edmund promised him. “Why, I have the most paltry assortment of weapons on me. Only a few miserable daggers, a single stiletto knife, a couple of whips—”

Magnus blinked. “Hardly an armory,” he said. “Though, it sounds like a most amusing Saturday.”

“Capital!” said Edmund Herondale, apparently taking this for approval of his company on Magnus’s excursion. He looked delighted.

White’s club, on St. James’s Street, had not changed outwardly at all. Magnus regarded the pale stone facade with pleasure: the Greek columns and the arched frames to the higher windows, as if each window were a chapel unto itself; the cast-iron balcony, which bore an intricate swirling pattern that had always made Magnus think of a procession of snail shells; the bow window out of which a famous man had once looked, and bet on a race between raindrops. The club had been established by an Italian, had been the haunt of criminals, and had been the irresistible bane of English aristocrats for more than a hundred years.

Whenever Magnus heard anything described as a “bane,” he felt sure he would like it. It was why he had chosen that particular last name for himself, and also why he had joined White’s several years before on a noindentying visit to London, in the main because his friend Catarina Loss had bet him that he could not do it.

Edmund swung around one of the black cast-iron lamps set before the door. The leaping noindentame behind the glass was dim compared to his eyes.

“This used to be a place where highwaymen drank hot chocolate,” Magnus told Edmund carelessly as they walked inside. “The hot chocolate was very good. Being a highwayman is chilly work.”

“Did you ever ask someone to stand and deliver?”

“I’ll just say this,” said Magnus. “I look dashing in a tasteful mask and a large hat.”

Edmund laughed again—he had an easy and delighted laugh, like a child. His gaze was roving all over the room, from the ceiling—constructed to look as if they stood in a vast stone barrel—to the chandelier dripping glittering jewels like a duchess; to the green baize-covered tables that clustered on the right side of the room, where men were playing cards and losing fortunes.

Edmund’s quality of bright wonder and surprise made him seem younger than he was; it lent a fragile air to his beauty. Magnus did not wonder why he, one of the Nephilim, was not warier of a Downworlder. He doubted Edmund Herondale was wary of anything in life. He was eager to be entertained, ready to be thrilled, essentially trusting of the world.

Edmund pointed to where two men stood, one making an entry in a large book with a defiant noindentourish of his pen.

“What’s afoot there?”

“I presume they are recording a wager. There is a betting book here in White’s that is quite celebrated. All sorts of bets are taken—whether a gentleman could manage to ravish a lady in a balloon a thousand feet off the ground, whether a man could live underwater for a day.”

Magnus found them a pair of chairs near a fire, and made a gesture indicating that he and his companion were sorely in need of a drink. Their thirst was supplied the next instant. There were advantages to a truly excellent gentlemen’s club.

“Do you think one could?” Edmund inquired. “Not live underwater; I know mundanes cannot. The other thing.”

“My experiences in a balloon with a lady were not very pleasant,” Magnus said, wincing at the memory. Queen Marie Antoinette had been an exciting but not comfortable traveling companion. “I would be disinclined to indulge in carnal delights in a balloon with a lady or a gentleman. No matter how delightful they were.”

Edmund Herondale did not seem in the least surprised by the mention of a gentleman in Magnus’s romantic speculations.

“It would be a lady in the balloon for me,” he said.

“Ah,” said Magnus, who had suspected as much.

“But I am always noindentattered to be admired,” said Edmund, with an engaging grin. “And I am always admired.”

He said it with that easy smile and another golden noindentutter of eyelashes, in the same way he had wound Amalia Morgenstern around his finger. It was clear he knew he was outrageous, and he expected people to like it. Magnus suspected they all did.

“Ah, well,” Magnus said, giving up the matter gracefully. “Any particular lady?”

“I am not perfectly certain I believe in marriage. Why have just one bonbon when you can have the box?”

Magnus raised his eyebrows and took a swallow of his excellent brandy. The young man had a way with words and the naïve delight of someone who had never had his heart broken.

“No one’s ever really hurt you, have they?” said Magnus, who saw no point in beating about the bush.

Edmund looked alarmed. “Why, are you about to?”

“With all those whips on your person? Hardly. I merely meant that you seem like someone who has never had his heart broken.”

“I lost my parents as a child,” said Edmund candidly. “But rare is the Shadowhunter with an intact family. I was taken in by the Fairchilds and raised in the Institute. Its halls have ever been my home. And if you mean love, then no, my heart has never been broken. Nor do I foresee that it will be.”

“Don’t you believe in love?”

“Love, marriage, the whole business is extremely overrated. For instance, this chap I know called Benedict Lightwood recently got leg-shackled, and the affair is hideous—”

“Your friends moving forward into a different era of their lives can be difficult,” Magnus said sympathetically.