“Shocking,” Magnus murmured, but Wil was gone, gone into his memories, which was perhaps for the best. He had begun to pace, scuffing his boots along Camil e’s lovely Persian carpet.
“You know what I’ve told you. I was in the library of my parents’ house in Wales. It was a rainy day; I was bored, going through my father’s old things. He kept a few things from his old life as a Shadowhunter, things he had not wanted, for sentiment I suppose, to give up. An old stele, though I did not know what it was at the time, and a smal , engraved box, in a false drawer of his desk. I suppose he assumed that would be enough to keep us out, but nothing is enough to keep out curious children. Of course the first thing I did upon finding the box was open it. A mist poured out of it in a blast, forming almost instantly into a living demon. The moment I saw the creature, I began to scream. I was only twelve. I’d never seen anything like it. Enormous, deadly, al jagged teeth and barbed tail—and I had nothing. No weapons. When it roared, I fel to the carpet. The thing was hovering over me, hissing. Then my sister burst in.”
“Cecily?”
“El a. My elder sister. She had something blazing in her hand. I know what it was now—a seraph blade. I had no idea then. I screamed for her to get out, but she put herself between the creature and me. She had absolutely no fear, my sister. She never had. She was not afraid to climb the tal est tree, to ride the wildest horse—and she had no fear there, in the library. She told the thing to get out. It was hovering there like a great, ugly insect. She said, ‘I banish you.’ Then it laughed.”
It would. Magnus felt a strange stirring of both pity and liking for the girl, brought up to know nothing about demons, their summoning or their banishment, yet standing her ground regardless.
“It laughed, and it swung out with its tail, knocking her to the ground. Then it fixed its eyes on me. They were al red, no whites at al . It said, ‘It is your father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you wil have to do.’ I was so shocked, al I could do was stare. El a was crawling over the carpet, grabbing for the fal en seraph blade. ‘I curse you,’ it said. ‘Al who love you wil die. Their love wil be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love wil die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shal begin it with her.’ It snarled in El a’s direction, and vanished.”
Magnus was fascinated despite himself. “And did she fal dead?”
“No.” Wil was stil pacing. He took off his jacket, slung it over a chair. His longish dark hair had begun to curl with the heat coming off his body, mixing with the heat of the fire; it stuck to the back of his neck. “She was unharmed. She took me in her arms. She comforted me. She told me the demon’s words meant nothing. She admitted she had read some of the forbidden books in the library, and that was how she knew what a seraph blade was, and how to use it, and that the thing I had opened was cal ed a Pyxis, though she could not imagine why my father would have kept one.
She made me promise not to touch anything of my parents’ again unless she was there, and then she led me up to bed, and sat reading while I fel asleep. I was exhausted with the shock of it al , I think. I remember hearing her murmur to my mother, something about how I had been taken il while they had been out, some childish fever. By that point I was enjoying the fuss that was being made over me, and the demon was beginning to seem a rather exciting memory. I recal planning how to tel Cecily about it—without admitting, of course, that El a had saved me while I had screamed like a child—”
“You were a child,” Magnus noted.
“I was old enough,” said Wil . “Old enough to know what it meant when I was woken up the next morning by my mother howling with grief. She was in El a’s room, and El a was dead in her bed. They did their best to keep me out, but I saw what I needed to see. She was swel ed up, greenish-black like something had rotted her from inside. She didn’t look like my sister anymore. She didn’t look human anymore.
“I knew what had happened, even if they didn’t. ‘A ll who love you will die. A nd I shall begin it with her. ’ It was my curse at work. I knew then that I had to get away from them—from al my family—before I brought the same horror down on them. I left that night, fol owing the roads to London.”
Magnus opened his mouth, then closed it again. For once he didn’t know what to say.