Cassandra Clare: The Last Stand of the New York Institute

“It’s looking like a quiet night,” he said. “Come on. Finish up and let me take you home.”

“Is this chivalry?” Catarina said with a smile. “Thought that was dead.”

“Like us, it never dies.”

They walked back the way they had come. It was fully dark now, and the night had taken a decidedly cold turn. There was a suggestion of rain. Catarina lived in a simple, slightly run-down walk-up off West Twenty-First Street, not too far from the clinic. The stove never worked, and the trash cans out front were always overflowing, but she never seemed to care. It had a bed and a place for her clothes. That was all she needed. She led a simpler life than Magnus.

Magnus made his way home, to his apartment farther down in the Village, off Christopher Street. His apartment was also a walk-up, and he took the steps two at a time. Unlike Catarina’s, his place was extremely habitable. The walls were bright and cheerful shades of rose and daisy yellow, and the apartment was furnished in some of the items he had collected over the years—a marvelous little French table, a few Victorian settees, and an amazing art deco bedroom set entirely in mirrored glass.

Normally, on a crisp early fall night like this, Magnus would pour himself a glass of wine, put a Cure album into his CD player, crank up the volume, and wait for business to start. Night was often his working time; he had many walk-in clients, and there was always research to do or reading to catch up on.

Tonight he made a pot of strong coffee, sat in the window seat, and looked down on the street below. Tonight, like every other night since the dark murmurs of the bloodthirsty young Shadowhunters had started, he would sit and watch and think. If the Circle did come here, as it seemed that they would do eventually, what would happen? Valentine had a special hatred for werewolves, they said, but he had killed a warlock in Berlin for summoning demons. Magnus had been known to summon a demon himself a time or twenty.

It was extremely likely that if they came to New York, they would come for Magnus. The sensible thing would probably be to leave, disappear into the country. He’d gotten himself a little house in the Florida Keys to while away the brutal New York winters. The house was on one of the smaller, less inhabited islands, and he had a fine boat there as well. If anything happened, he could get in it and speed off into the sea, head for the Caribbean or South America. He’d packed a bag several times, and unpacked it right after.

There was no point in running. If the Circle continued their campaign of so-called justice, they would make the entire world unsafe for Downworlders. And there was no way Magnus could live with himself if he ran away and his friends, such as Catarina, were left to try to defend themselves. He did not like the idea of Raphael Santiago or any of his vampires being killed either, or any of the faeries he knew who worked on Broadway, or the mermaids who swam in the East River. Magnus had always thought of himself as a rolling stone, but he had lived in New York a long time now. He found himself wanting to defend not only his friends but his city.

So he was staying, and waiting, and trying to be ready for the Circle when they came.

The waiting was hardest. Maybe that was why he had engaged the man by the clinic. Something in Magnus wanted the fight to come. He wiggled and flexed his fingers, and blue light webbed between them. He opened the window and breathed in some of the night air, which smelled like a mix of rain, leaves, and pizza from the place on the corner.

“Just do it already,” he said to no one.

The kid appeared under his window at around one in the morning, just when Magnus had finally been able to distract himself and start translating an old Greek text that had had been on his desk for weeks. Magnus happened to look up and noticed the kid pacing confusedly outside. He was nine, maybe ten years old—a little East Village street punk in a Sex Pistols shirt that probably belonged to an older sibling, and a baggy pair of gray sweatpants. He had a ragged, home-done haircut. And he wore no coat.

All of these things added up to a kid in trouble, and the general streetwise appearance plus a certain fluidity to the walk suggested werewolf. Magnus pushed open the window.

“You looking for someone?” he called.

“Are you Magnificent Bane?”

“Sure,” said Magnus. “Let’s go with that. Hang on. Open the door when it buzzes.”

He slid off the window seat and went to the buzzer by the door. He heard the rapid footfalls on the steps. This kid was in a hurry. Magnus had no sooner opened the door than the kid was inside. Once inside and in the light, the true extent of the boy’s distress was clear. His cheeks were highly flushed and stained with dried tear trails. He was sweating despite the cold, and his voice was shaking and urgent.

“You gotta come,” he said as he stumbled in. “They have my family. They’re here.”

“Who are here?”

“The crazy Shadowhunters everyone’s freaking about. They’re here. They have my family . You gotta come now .”

“The Circle?”

The kid shook his head, not in disagreement but in confusion. Magnus could see he didn’t know what the Circle was, but the description fit. The kid had to be talking about the Circle.

“Where are they?” Magnus asked.

“In Chinatown. The safe house.” The kid almost shook with impatience. “My mom heard those freaks were here. They already killed a whole buncha vampires up in Spanish Harlem earlier tonight, they said for killing mundanes, but nobody heard of any dead mundanes, and a faerie said they were coming down to Chinatown to get us. So my mom brought all of us to the safe house, but then they broke in. I got out through a window. My mom said to come to you.”

The entire story was delivered in such a jumbled, frantic rush that Magnus had no time to unpick it.

“How many are you?” he asked.

“My mom and my brother and sister and six others from my pack.”

So nine werewolves in danger. The test had come, and come so quickly that Magnus had no time to really go through his feelings or think through a plan.

“Did you hear anything the Circle said?” Magnus asked. “What did the Circle accuse your family of doing?”

“They said our old pack did something, but we don’t know anything about that. It doesn’t matter, does it? They kill them anyway, that’s what everybody’s saying! You gotta come .”

He grabbed Magnus’s hand and made to pull him. Magnus detached the boy and reached for a pad and paper.

“You,” he said, scrawling down Catarina’s address, “you go here. You go nowhere else. You stay there. There’s a nice blue lady there. I will go to the safe house.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Either you do as I say or I don’t go,” Magnus snapped. “There’s no time to argue. You decide.”

The boy teetered on the edge of tears. He wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand.

“You’ll get them?” he asked. “You promise?”

“I promise,” Magnus said.

How he was going to do that, he had no idea. But the fight had come. At last the fight had come.

The last thing Magnus did before he left was write down the details: where the safe house—a warehouse—was, what he feared the Circle was planning to do to the werewolves inside it. He folded up the piece of paper into the shape of a bird and sent it, with a flick of his fingers and a burst of blue sparks. The frail little paper bird tumbled in the wind like a pale leaf, flying out into the night and toward the towers of Manhattan, which cut the darkness like glittering knives.