City of Heavenly Fire

Magnus plucked the crumpled piece of paper from her fingertips. “A dinner invitation?” he said in disbelief.

“Meliorn of the Fair Folk wishes for all the Council Downworlders to meet for supper the night before the great Council,” she said. “Some kind of gesture of peace and goodwill, or maybe he just wants to annoy everyone with riddles. Either way it should be interesting.”

“Faerie food,” Magnus said glumly. “I hate faerie food. I mean, even the safe kind that doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck dancing reels for the next century. All those raw vegetables and beetles—”

He broke off. Across the room Bat had his phone pressed to his ear. His other hand gripped the counter of the bar.

“There’s something wrong,” Magnus said. “Something pack-related.”

Catarina set her glass down. She was very used to Magnus, and knew when he was probably right. She looked over at Bat as well, who had snapped his phone shut. He had paled, his scar standing out, livid on his cheek. He leaned over to say something to Sneaky Pete behind the bar, then put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.

It sounded like the whistle of a steam train, and cut through the low murmur of voices in the bar. In moments every lycanthrope was on his or her feet, surging toward Bat. Magnus stood up too, though Catarina caught at his sleeve. “Don’t—”

“I’ll be fine.” He shrugged her off, and pushed through the crowd, toward Bat. The rest of the pack stood in a loose ring around him. They tensed mistrustfully at the sight of the warlock in their midst, shoving to get close to their pack leader. A blonde female werewolf moved to block Magnus, but Bat held up a hand.

“It’s all right, Amabel,” he said. His voice wasn’t friendly, but it was polite. “Magnus Bane, right? High Warlock of Brooklyn? Maia Roberts says I can trust you.”

“You can.”

“Fine, but we have urgent pack business here. What do you want?”

“You got a call.” Magnus gestured toward Bat’s phone. “Was it Luke? Has something happened in Alicante?”

Bat shook his head, his expression unreadable.

“Another Institute attack, then?” Magnus said. He was used to being the one with all the answers, and hated not knowing anything. And while the New York Institute was empty, that didn’t mean the other Institutes were unprotected—that there might not have been a battle—one Alec might have decided to involve himself in—

“Not an Institute,” Bat said. “That was Maia on the phone. The Praetor Lupus headquarters were burned to the ground. At least a hundred werewolves are dead, including Praetor Scott and Jordan Kyle. Sebastian Morgenstern has taken his fight to us.”





6

BROTHER LEAD AND SISTER STEEL


“Don’t throw it—please, please don’t throw it—oh, God, he threw it,” said Julian in a resigned voice as a wedge of potato flew across the room, narrowly missing his ear.

“Nothing’s damaged,” Emma reassured him. She was sitting with her back against Tavvy’s crib, watching Julian give his littlest brother his afternoon meal. Tavvy had reached the age where he was very particular about what he liked to eat, and anything that didn’t pass muster was hurled to the floor. “The lamp got a little potatoed, that’s all.”

Fortunately, though the rest of the Penhallows’ house was quite elegant, the attic—where “the war orphans,” the collective term that had been applied to the Blackthorn children and Emma since they’d arrived in Idris, were now living—was extremely plain, functional and sturdy in its design. It took up the whole top floor of the house: several connected rooms, a small kitchen and bathroom, a haphazard collection of beds and belongings strewn everywhere. Helen slept downstairs with Aline, though she was up every day; Emma had been given her own room and so had Julian, but he was hardly ever in it. Drusilla and Octavian were still waking up every night screaming, and Julian had taken to sleeping on the floor of their room, pillow and blanket piled up next to Tavvy’s crib. There was no high chair to be had, so Julian sat on the floor opposite the toddler on a food-covered blanket, a plate in one hand and a despairing look on his face.

Emma came over and sat down opposite him, heaving Tavvy up onto her lap. His small face was scrunched with unhappiness. “Memma,” he said as she lifted him.

“Do the choo-choo train,” she advised Jules. She wondered if she should tell him he had spaghetti sauce in his hair. On second thought, probably better not.

She watched as he zoomed the food around before placing it in Tavvy’s mouth. The toddler was giggling now. Emma tried to shove down her sense of loss: She remembered her own father patiently separating out the food on her plate during the phase she’d gone through where she refused to eat anything that was green.