Cassandra Clare - Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Edmund made a face. “Benedict is not my friend. It’s the poor young lady I feel sorry for. The man is peculiar in his habits, if you see what I’m trying to say.”

“I don’t,” Magnus said noindentatly.

“Bit of a deviant, is what I’m getting at.”

Magnus regarded him with a cold air.

“Bad News Benedict, we call him,” said Edmund. “Mostly due to his habit of consorting with demons. The more tentacles, the better, if you catch my meaning.”

“Oh,” Magnus said, enlightened. “I know who you mean. I have a friend from whom he bought some most unusual woodcuts. Also a couple of engravings. Said friend is simply an honest tradesman, and I have never bought anything from him myself, mind you.”

“Also Benedict Lightworm. And Bestial Benedict,” Edmund continued bitterly. “But he sneaks about while the rest of us get up to honest larks, and the Clave all think that he’s superlatively well behaved. Poor Barbara. I’m afraid she acted hastily because of her broken heart.”

Magnus leaned back in his chair. “And who broke her heart, might I ask?” he asked, amused.

“Ladies’ hearts are like bits of china on a mantelpiece. There are so many of them, and it is so easy to break them without noticing.” Edmund shrugged, a little rueful but mostly amused, and then a man in an unfortunate waistcoat walked into his armchair.

“I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman. “I believe I am somewhat foxed!”

“I am prepared to charitably believe you were drunk when you got dressed,” Magnus said under his breath.

“Eh?” said the man. “The name’s Alvanley. You ain’t one of those Indian nabobs, are you?”

Though he never much felt like explaining his origins to white-skinned Europeans who didn’t care to know the difference between Shanghai and Rangoon, given the troubles in India, it was not actually a good idea for Magnus to be taken for Indian. He sighed and disclaimed, made his introduction and his bow.

“Herondale,” said Edmund, bowing too. Edmund’s golden assurance and open smile did their work.

“New to the club?” Alvanley asked, suddenly benevolent. “Well, well. It’s a celebration. May I offer you both another drink?”

Alvanley’s friends, some at the card table and some milling about, raised a discreet cheer. Queen Victoria had, so the happy report went, risen safe from childbed, and both mother and daughter were doing admirably.

“Drink to the health of our new Princess Beatrice, and to the queen!”

“Doesn’t the poor woman have nine children?” asked Magnus. “By the ninth I would think she would be too exhausted to think of a new name, and certainly too fatigued to rule a country. I will drink to her health by all means.”

Edmund was very ready to be plied with more drinks, though at one point he slipped up and referred to the queen as Vanessa rather than Victoria.

“Ahahaha,” said Magnus. “He is on the ran-tan, and no mistake!”

Edmund was noindentushed with drink and almost immediately got absorbed in a card game. Magnus joined in playing Macao as well, but he found himself observing the Shadowhunter with some concern. People who blithely believed that the world owed them good luck could be dangerous at the gaming table. Add to that the fact that Edmund clearly craved excitement, and his kind of temperament was the very one most suited for disaster at play. There was something unsettling about the glitter of the boy’s eyes suddenly, changed by the light of the club’s wax candles, from being like a sky to being like a sea an instant before a storm.

Edmund, Magnus decided, put him in mind of nothing so much as a boat—a shining beautiful thing, buffeted by the whims of the water and winds. Only time would tell if he would find anchor and harbor, or if all that beauty and charm would be reduced to a wreck.

All imaginings aside, there was no need for Magnus to play nursemaid to Shadowhunters. Edmund was a man full-grown and able to care for himself. It was Magnus who grew bored in the end, and coaxed Edmund out of White’s for a sobering walk in the night air.

They had not wandered far from St. James’s Street when Magnus paused in his retelling of a certain incident in Peru because he felt Edmund come to attention next to him, every line of that angelic athlete’s body suddenly tensed. He brought to mind forcibly a pointer dog hearing an animal in the undergrowth.

Magnus followed the line of Edmund’s sight until he saw what the Shadowhunter was seeing: a man in a bowler hat, his hand set firmly on a carriage door, having what appeared to be an altercation with the occupants of the carriage.

It was shockingly uncivil, and but a moment later it became worse. The man had hold of a woman’s arm, Magnus saw. She was dressed plainly, as befit an abigail or lady’s maid. The man tried to wrench her from the carriage by main force.

He would have succeeded but for the interference of the other occupant of the carriage, a small dark lady, this one in a gown that rustled like silk as her voice rang out like thunder.

“Unhand her, you wretch!” said the lady, and she belabored the man about the head with her bonnet.

The man started at the unexpected onslaught and let go of the woman, but turned his attention to the lady and grasped the hand holding the bonnet instead. The woman gave a shout that seemed more outrage than terror, and struck him in the nose. The man’s face turned slightly at the blow, and Magnus and Edmund were both able to see his eyes.

There was no mistaking the void behind those brilliant poison-green eyes. Demon, Magnus thought. A demon, and a hungry one, to be trying to abduct women from carriages in a London street.

A demon, and a very unlucky one, to do so in front of a Shadowhunter.

It did occur to Magnus that Shadowhunters generally hunted in groups, and that Edmund Herondale was inebriated.

“Very well,” Magnus said. “Let us pause for a moment and consider— Oh, you have already run off. Splendid.”

He found himself addressing Edmund’s coat, wrenched off and left in a heap upon the cobblestones, and his hat, spinning gently beside it.

Edmund jumped and somersaulted in midair, vaulting neatly onto the roof of the carriage. As he did so, he drew weapons from the concealing folds of his garments: the two whips he had spoken of before, arcs of sizzling light against the night sky. He wielded them with cutting precision, their light waking golden fire in his tousled hair and casting a glow on his carved features, and by that light Magnus saw his face change from a laughing boy’s to the stern countenance of an angel.

One whip curled around the demon’s waist like a gentleman’s hand around a lady’s waist during a waltz. The other wrapped as tight as wire about his throat. Edmund twisted one hand, and the demon spun, crashing to the ground.

“You heard the lady,” said Edmund. “Unhand her.”

The demon, his teeth suddenly much more numerous than before, snarled and lunged for the carriage. Magnus raised his hand and made the carriage door noindenty shut and the carriage jolt forward a few paces, despite the fact that the carriage driver was missing—presumed eaten—and despite the Shadowhunter who was still standing atop it.

Edmund did not lose his balance. As surefooted as a cat, he simply leaped down to the ground and struck the Eidolon demon a blow across the face with his whip, sending him noindentying backward again. Edmund landed a foot upon the demon’s throat, and Magnus saw the creature begin to writhe, its outlines blurring into a changing shape.

He heard the creak of a carriage door being opened and saw the lady who had punched the demon essaying to emerge from relative safety to the demon-haunted street.