Born to Endless Night (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #9)

“Hello, baby,” Lily whispered, hovering over the child. She snapped her fangs in the baby’s direction.

Jace rolled lightly, off the floor and to his feet. Robert, Maryse, and Isabelle put their hands on their weapons. Lily snapped her teeth again, entirely unaware the Lightwood family was clearly ready to mobilize and tear her into pieces. Alec looked at his family over Lily’s head and shook his own head in a small, firm gesture. The baby looked up at Lily’s glinting fangs and laughed. Lily clicked her teeth for him again and he laughed again.

“What?” Lily asked, looking up at Alec and sounding shy suddenly. “I always liked children, when I was alive. People said I was good with them.” She laughed, a little self-consciously. “It’s been a while.”

“That’s great,” said Alec. “You’ll be willing to babysit occasionally, then.”

“Ha-ha, I’m the head of the New York vampire clan and I’m much too important,” Lily told him. “But I’ll see him when I drop by your place.”

Magnus wondered how long Alec was envisioning it would be until they found the baby a home. Alec must think that it would take a while, and Magnus feared Alec was right.

He watched Alec, his head bowed over the baby in his arms, leaning toward Lily as they murmured to the baby together. Alec did not seem too upset, he thought. It was Lily who, after a space of baby-whispering, began to look a little uneasy.

“It occurs to me that I might be intruding,” Lily said.

“Oh really?” asked Isabelle, her arms crossed. “Do you think?”

“Sorry, Alec,” said Lily, pointedly not apologizing to anyone else. “See you in New York. Come back quick or some fool will burn the place down. Good-bye, Magnus, random other Lightwoods. Bye, baby. Good-bye, little baby.”

She stood on her tiptoes in high-heeled boots, kissed Alec on the cheek, and sashayed out.

“I do not like that vampire’s attitude,” said Robert in the silence following Lily’s departure.

“Lily’s all right,” said Alec mildly.

Robert did not say another word against Lily. He was careful with his son, Magnus had observed, painfully careful, but Robert was the one who had made the pain necessary. Robert had been thoughtless with his son in the past. It would be a long time of pain and care until things were right between them.

Both Robert and Alec were trying. That was why Alec had stayed to have breakfast with his father this morning.

Though Magnus was not at all sure what Robert Lightwood was doing here at the Shadowhunter Academy in the dark of night.

Let alone Maryse, who should be running the New York Institute. Let alone Isabelle and Jace.

Magnus was always pleased to see Clary.

“Hello, biscuit,” he said.

Clary sidled over to the doorway and grinned up at him, a thousand gallons of trouble in a pint-size body. “Hi.”

“What’s—”

Magnus intended to discreetly ask what the hell was going on, but he was interrupted by Jace lying down full length on the floor again. Magnus looked down, somewhat distracted.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m stuffing crevices with bits of material,” said Jace. “It was Isabelle’s idea.”

“I ripped up one of your shirts to do it,” Isabelle told him. “Not one of your nice shirts, obviously. One of the shirts that don’t suit you and which you shouldn’t wear again.”

The world blurred briefly in front of Magnus’s eyes. “You did what?”

Isabelle stared down at him from the stool where she was standing, her hands on her hips.

“We’re childproofing the whole suite. If you could call this a suite. This whole Academy is a baby death trap. After we get finished here, we’re going to childproof your loft.”

“You’re not allowed in our apartment,” Magnus told her.

“Alec gave me a set of keys that says different,” Isabelle told him.