CITY OF BONES

The door flew open.

A slender man standing in the doorway regarded them curiously. It was Isabelle who recovered herself first, flashing a brilliant smile. “Magnus? Magnus Bane?”

“That would be me.” The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. Clary guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully. “Children of the Nephilim,” he said. “Well, well. I don’t recall inviting you.”

Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. “I have an invitation. These”—she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm—“are my friends.”

Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. “I must have been drunk,” he said. He threw the door open. “Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests.”

Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. “Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?”

“Even then.” Magnus’s hand shot out, so fast it was barely a blur. He plucked the stele out of Jace’s hand—Clary hadn’t even realized he was holding it—and held it up. Jace looked faintly abashed. “As for this,” Magnus said, sliding it into Jace’s jeans pocket, “keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter.”

Magnus grinned and started up the stairs, leaving a surprised-looking Jace holding the door. “Come on,” he said, waving the rest of them inside. “Before anyone thinks it’s my party.”

They pushed past Jace, laughing nervously. Only Isabelle stopped to shake her head. “Try not to piss him off, please. Then he won’t help us.”

Jace looked bored. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so.” Isabelle flounced past him in a swirl of skirts.

Magnus’s apartment was at the top of a long flight of rickety stairs. Simon hurried to catch up with Clary, who was regretting having put her hand on the banister to steady herself. It was sticky with something that glowed a faint and sickly green.

“Yech,” said Simon, and offered her a corner of his T-shirt to wipe her hand on. She did. “Is everything all right? You seem—distracted.”

“He just looks so familiar. Magnus, I mean.”

“You think he goes to St. Xavier’s?”

“Very funny.” She looked at him sourly.

“You’re right. He’s too old to be a student. I think I had him for chem last year.”

Clary laughed out loud. Immediately Isabelle was beside her, breathing down her neck. “Am I missing something funny? Simon?”

Simon had the grace to look embarrassed, but said nothing. Clary muttered, “You’re not missing anything,” and dropped behind them. Isabelle’s lug-soled boots were starting to hurt her feet. By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was limping, but she forgot the pain as soon as she walked through Magnus’s front door.

The loft was huge and almost totally empty of furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows were smeared with a thick film of dirt and paint, blocking out most of the ambient light from the street. Big metal pillars wound with colored lights held up an arched, sooty ceiling. Doors torn off their hinges and laid across dented metal garbage cans made a makeshift bar at one end of the room. A lilac-skinned woman in a metallic bustier was ranging drinks along the bar in tall, harshly colored glasses that tinted the fluid inside them: blood red, cyanosis blue, poison green. Even for a New York bartender she worked with an amazingly speedy efficiency—probably helped along by the fact that she had a second set of long, graceful arms to go with the first. Clary was reminded of Luke’s Indian goddess statue.

The rest of the crowd was just as strange. A good-looking boy with wet green-black hair grinned at her over a platter of what looked like raw fish. His teeth were sharp and serrated, like a shark’s. Beside him stood a girl with long dirty-blond hair, braided with flowers. Under the skirt of her short green dress, her feet were webbed like a frog’s. A group of young women so pale Clary wondered if they were wearing white stage makeup sipped scarlet liquid too thick to be wine from fluted crystal glasses. The center of the room was packed with bodies dancing to the pounding beat that bounced off the walls, though Clary couldn’t see a band anywhere.

“You like the party?”

She turned to see Magnus lounging against one of the pillars. His eyes shone in the darkness. Glancing around, she saw that Jace and the others were gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

She tried to smile. “Is it in honor of anything?”

“My cat’s birthday.”

“Oh.” She glanced around. “Where’s your cat?”