4
" At this point, a faerie woman came twirling through. She had leaves in her updo and was swathed in ribbons and ivy and not much else. She tripped on a trailing line of ivy and Alec caught her.
“Good reflexes!” she said brightly. “Also great arms. Would you be interested in a night of tumultuous forbidden passion, with an option to extend to seven years?”
“Um, I am gay,” Alec said.
He was not used to saying that casually, to any random person. It was strange to say it, and feel both relief and a shadow of his old fear, twined together.
Of course, the declaration might not mean much to faeries. The faerie woman accepted it with a shrug, then looked over at Raphael and lit up.
Something about the leather jacket or the scowl seemed to appeal to her strongly.
“How about you, Vampire Without a Cause?”
“I’m not gay,” said Raphael. “I’m not straight. I’m not interested.”
“Your sexuality is ‘not interested’?” Alec asked curiously.
Raphael said, “That’s right.”
The faerie thought for a moment, then ventured, “I can also assume the appearance of a tree!”
“I didn’t say, ‘not interested unless you’re a tree.’ ”
“Wait,” said the faerie suddenly. “I recognize you. You’re Raphael Santiago! I’ve heard of you.”
Raphael made a gesture of dismissal. “Have you heard I like it when people go away?”
“You were one of the heroes in the Downworlder victory over Valentine.”
“He was one of the heroes of the Downworlder and Shadowhunter alliance, which led to the victory,” Alec said.
Raphael stopped looking annoyed and began to look nastily amused.
“Oh, did the Shadowhunters help a little?” he asked.
“You were there!” said Alec.
“Can I have your autograph, Raphael?” asked the faerie lady.
She produced a large, shiny green leaf and a quill. Raphael wrote LEAVE ME ALONE on the leaf.
“I’ll cherish it,” said the faerie. She ran away, clutching the leaf to her bosom.
“Don’t,” Raphael yelled after her. "
― Cassandra Clare , The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)
6
" A pretty vampire woman in a cheongsam came flying down the hallway, ribbons waving from her purple-streaked hair like a silken flag. Her face was familiar. Alec had seen her at Taki’s, and around the city more generally, usually with Raphael.
“Save us, oh fearless leader,” said Raphael’s lady friend. “Elliott’s in a huge aquarium puking blue and green. He tried to drink mermaid blood. He tried to drink selkie blood. He tried to—”
“Ahem,” said Raphael, with a savage jerk of his head in Alec’s direction.
Alec waved. “Shadowhunter,” he said. “Right here. Hi.”
“He tried to keep to the Accords and obey all the known Laws!” the woman declared. “Because that’s the New York clan’s idea of a truly festive good time.”
Alec remembered Magnus and tried not to look like he was here to ruin the Downworlder party. There was one thing he and this woman had in common. He recognized the bright purple she was wearing.
“I think I saw you earlier,” said Alec hesitantly. “You were—making out with a faerie girl?”
“Yeah, you’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” said the vampire woman. “This is a party. I’ve made out with six faerie girls, four faerie boys, and a talking toadstool whose gender I’m unsure about. Pretty sexy for a toadstool, though.”
Raphael covered his face briefly with his non-texting hand.
“Why, you want to make something of it?” The woman bristled. “How happy I am to see the Nephilim constantly crashing our parties. Were you even invited?”
“I’m a plus-one,” said Alec.
The vampire girl relaxed slightly. “Oh, right, you’re Magnus’s latest disaster,” she said. “That’s what Raphael calls you. I’m Lily.”
She lifted a hand in a halfhearted wave. Alec glanced at Raphael, who arched his eyebrow at Alec in an unfriendly way.
“Didn’t realize Raphael and I were on pet name terms,” said Alec. He continued to study Raphael. “Do you know Magnus well?”
“Hardly at all,” said Raphael. “Barely acquainted. I don’t think much of his personality. Or his dress sense. Or the company he keeps. Come away, Lily. Alexander, I hope I never see you again.”
“I’ve decided I detest you,” Lily told Alec.
“It’s mutual,” Alec said dryly.
Unexpectedly, that made Lily smile, before Raphael dragged her away. "
― Cassandra Clare , The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)
17
" Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus’s elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him.
“I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult,” Catarina said. “She told me you were, and I quote, ‘handling’ the cult. What’s going on? Explain.”
Magnus made a face. “I may have had a hand in founding it.”
“How much of a hand?”
“Well, both.”
Catarina bristled. “I specifically told you not to do that!”
“You did?” Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. “You remember what happened?”
She gave him a look of distress. “You don’t?”
“Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult,” said Magnus. “I don’t know who, or why.”
He sounded more desperate than he would’ve liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend’s face was full of sympathy.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That’s it.”
He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others. Being with his friends almost felt like having a home.
He did not know if there would ever be another trip. Ragnor was dead, and Magnus might have done something terrible.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked. “You usually stop me!”
“I had to take an orphan child across an ocean to save his life.”
“Right,” said Magnus. “That’s a good reason.”
Catarina shook her head. “I took my eyes off you for one second.”
She had worked in mundane hospitals in New York for decades. She saved orphans. She healed the sick. She’d always been the voice of reason in the trio that was Ragnor, Catarina, and Magnus.
“So I planned with Ragnor to start a joke cult, and I guess I did it. Now the joke cult is a real cult, and they have a new leader. It sounds like they’re mixed up with a Greater Demon.”
Even to Catarina, he wouldn’t say the name of his father.
“Sounds like the joke has gotten a little out of hand,” Catarina said dryly.
“Sounds like I’m the punch line. "
― Cassandra Clare , The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)
18
" Magnus’s head was tipped back, his shimmering white suit rumpled like bedsheets in the morning, his white cloak swaying after him like a moonbeam. His mirrorlike mask was askew, his black hair wild, his slim body arching with the dance, and wrapped around his fingers like ten shimmering rings was the light of his magic, casting a spotlight on one dancer, then another.
The faerie Hyacinth caught one radiant stream of magic and whirled, holding on to it as if the light were a ribbon on a maypole. The vampire woman in the violet cheongsam, Lily, was dancing with another vampire who Alec presumed was Elliott, given the blue and green stains around his mouth and all down his shirtfront. Malcolm Fade joined in the dance with Hyacinth, though he appeared to be doing a jig and she seemed very puzzled. The blue warlock who Magnus had called Catarina was waltzing with a tall horned faerie.The dark-skinned faerie whom Magnus had addressed as a prince was surrounded by others whom Alec presumed were courtiers, dancing in a circle around him.
Magnus laughed as he saw Hyacinth using his magic like a ribbon, and sent shimmering streamers of blue light in several directions. Catarina batted away Magnus’s magic, her own hand glowing faintly white. The two vampires Lily and Elliott both let a magic ribbon wrap around one of their wrists. They did not seem like trusting types, but they instantly leaned into Magnus with perfect faith, Lily pretending to be a captive and Elliott shimmying enthusiastically as Magnus laughed and pulled them toward him in the dance. Music and starshine filled the room, and Magnus shone brightest in all that bright company.
As Alec made for the stairs, he brushed past Raphael Santiago, who was leaning against the balcony rail and looking down at the dancing crowd, his dark eyes lingering on Lily and Elliott and Magnus. There was a tiny smile on the vampire’s face. When Raphael noticed Alec, the scowl snapped immediately back on.
“I find such wanton expressions of joy disgusting,” he declaimed.
“If you say so,” said Alec. “I like it myself.”
He reached the foot of the stairs and was crossing the gleaming ballroom floor when a voice boomed out from above.
“This is DJ Bat, greatest werewolf DJ in the world, or at least in the top five, coming to you live from Venice because warlocks make irresponsible financial decisions, and this one is for the lovers! Or people with friends who will dance with them. Some of us are lonely jerks, and we’ll be doing shots at the bar. "
― Cassandra Clare , The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)
19
" Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low.
Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts.
“How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus.
“Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.”
“I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.”
There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn.
“Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?”
Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother.
Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back.
Ragnor Fell.
Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back.
There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends.
“I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.”
Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile.
“Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?”
Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.”
“I’m undead,” said Raphael.
“What about joie de unvivre?”
Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed.
“Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.”
“What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus.
“Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.”
“Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus.
Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do. "
― Cassandra Clare , The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)
