For a moment nothing happened. Then, out of the burning heart of the fire, a dark shape began to take form. Magnus had stopped chanting; he stood, his narrowed eyes focused on the pentagram and what was happening within it, the gashes on his arms closing swiftly. There was little sound in the room, just the crackle of the fire and Wil ’s harsh breathing, loud in his own ears, as the dark shape grew in size—coalesced, and, final y, took a solid, recognizable shape.
It was the blue demon from the party, no longer dressed in evening wear. Its body was covered in overlapping blue scales, and a long yel owish tail with a stinger on the end switched back and forth behind it. The demon looked from Magnus to Wil , its scarlet eyes narrowed.
“Who summons the demon Marbas?” it demanded in a voice that sounded as if its words were echoing from the bottom of a wel .
Magnus jerked his chin toward the pentagram. The message was clear: This was Wil ’s business now.
Wil took a step forward. “You don’t remember me?”
“I remember you,” the demon growled. “You chased me through the grounds of the Lightwood country house. You tore out one of my teeth.” It opened its mouth, showing the gap. “I tasted your blood.” Its voice was a hiss. “When I escape this pentagram, I will taste it again, Nephilim.”
“No.” Wil stood his ground. “I’m asking you if you remember me.”
The demon was silent. Its eyes, dancing with fire, were unreadable.
“Five years ago,” said Wil . “A box. A Pyxis. I opened it, and you emerged. We were in my father’s library. You attacked, but my sister fended you off with a seraph blade. Do you recollect me now?”
There was a long, long silence. Magnus kept his cat’s eyes fixed on the demon. There was an implied threat in them, one that Wil couldn’t read.
“Speak the truth,” Magnus said final y. “Or it wil go badly for you, Marbas.”
The demon’s head swung toward Wil . “You,” it said reluctantly. “You are that boy. Edmund Herondale’s son.”
Wil sucked in a breath. He felt suddenly light-headed, as if he were going to pass out. He dug his nails into his palms, hard, gashing the skin, letting the pain clear his head. “You remember.”
“I had been trapped for twenty years in that thing,” Marbas snarled. “Of course I remember being freed. Imagine it, if you can, idiot mortal, years of blackness, darkness, no light or movement—and then the break, the opening. A nd the face of the man who imprisoned you hovering just above your gaze.”
“I am not the man who imprisoned you—”
“No. That was your father. But you look just like him to my eyes.” The demon smirked. “I remember your sister. Brave girl, fending me off with that blade she could hardly use.”
“She used it wel enough to keep you away from us. That’s why you cursed us. Cursed me. Do you remember that?”
The demon chuckled. “‘A ll who love you will find only death. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it. A nd I shall begin it with her.’”
Wil felt as if he were breathing fire. His whole chest burned. “Yes.”
The demon cocked its head to the side. “A nd you summoned me that we might reminisce about this shared event in our past?”
“I cal ed you up, you blue-skinned bastard, to get you to take the curse off me. My sister—El a—she died that night. I left my family to keep them safe. It’s been five years. It’s enough. Enough!”
“Do not try to engage my pity, mortal,” said Marbas. “I was twenty years tortured in that box. Perhaps you too should suffer for twenty years. Or two hundred—”
Wil ’s whole body tensed. Before he could fling himself toward the pentagram, Magnus said, in a calm tone, “Something about this story strikes me as odd, Marbas.”
The demon’s eyes flicked toward him. “A nd what is that?”
“A demon, upon being let out of a Pyxis, is usual y at its weakest, having been starved for as long as it was imprisoned. Too weak to cast a curse as subtle and strong as the one you claim to have cast on Wil .”
The demon hissed something in a language Wil didn’t know, one of the more uncommon demon languages, not Cthonic or Purgatic. Magnus’s eyes narrowed.
“But she died,” Wil said. “Marbas said my sister would die, and she did. That night.”
Magnus’s eyes were stil fixed on the demon’s. Some kind of battle of wil s was taking place silently, outside Wil ’s range of understanding. Final y Magnus said, softly, “Do you real y wish to disobey me, Marbas? Do you wish to anger my father?”
Marbas spat a curse, and turned to Wil . Its snout twitched. “The half-caste is correct. The curse was false. Your sister died because I struck her with my stinger.” It swished its yel owish tail back and forth, and Wil remembered El a knocked to the ground by that tail, the blade skittering from her hand. “There has never been a curse on you, Will Herondale. Not one put there by me.”