It was extremely likely that if they came to New York, they would come for Magnus. The sensible thing would probably be to leave, disappear into the country. He’d gotten himself a little house in the Florida Keys to while away the brutal New York winters. The house was on one of the smaller, less inhabited islands, and he had a fine boat there as well. If anything happened, he could get in it and speed off into the sea, head for the Caribbean or South America. He’d packed a bag several times, and unpacked it right after.
There was no point in running. If the Circle continued their campaign of so-called justice, they would make the entire world unsafe for Downworlders. And there was no way Magnus could live with himself if he ran away and his friends, such as Catarina, were left to try to defend themselves. He did not like the idea of Raphael Santiago or any of his vampires being killed either, or any of the faeries he knew who worked on Broadway, or the mermaids who swam in the East River. Magnus had always thought of himself as a rolling stone, but he had lived in New York a long time now. He found himself wanting to defend not only his friends but his city.
So he was staying, and waiting, and trying to be ready for the Circle when they came.
The waiting was hardest. Maybe that was why he had engaged the man by the clinic. Something in Magnus wanted the fight to come. He wiggled and flexed his fingers, and blue light webbed between them. He opened the window and breathed in some of the night air, which smelled like a mix of rain, leaves, and pizza from the place on the corner.
“Just do it already,” he said to no one.
The kid appeared under his window at around one in the morning, just when Magnus had finally been able to distract himself and start translating an old Greek text that had been on his desk for weeks. Magnus happened to look up and noticed the kid pacing confusedly outside. He was nine, maybe ten years old—a little East Village street punk in a Sex Pistols shirt that probably belonged to an older sibling, and a baggy pair of gray sweatpants. He had a ragged, home-done haircut. And he wore no coat.
All of these things added up to a kid in trouble, and the general streetwise appearance plus a certain fluidity to the walk suggested werewolf. Magnus pushed open the window.
“You looking for someone?” he called.
“Are you Magnificent Bane?”
“Sure,” said Magnus. “Let’s go with that. Hang on. Open the door when it buzzes.”
He slid off the window seat and went to the buzzer by the door. He heard the rapid footfalls on the steps. This kid was in a hurry. Magnus had no sooner opened the door than the kid was inside. Once inside and in the light, the true extent of the boy’s distress was clear. His cheeks were highly flushed and stained with dried tear trails. He was sweating despite the cold, and his voice was shaking and urgent.
“You gotta come,” he said as he stumbled in. “They have my family. They’re here.”
“Who are here?”
“The crazy Shadowhunters everyone’s freaking about. They’re here. They have my family. You gotta come now.”
“The Circle?”
The kid shook his head, not in disagreement but in confusion. Magnus could see he didn’t know what the Circle was, but the description fit. The kid had to be talking about the Circle.
“Where are they?” Magnus asked.
“In Chinatown. The safe house.” The kid almost shook with impatience. “My mom heard those freaks were here. They already killed a whole buncha vampires up in Spanish Harlem earlier tonight, they said for killing mundanes, but nobody heard of any dead mundanes, and a faerie said they were coming down to Chinatown to get us. So my mom brought all of us to the safe house, but then they broke in. I got out through a window. My mom said to come to you.”
The entire story was delivered in such a jumbled, frantic rush that Magnus had no time to unpick it.
“How many are you?” he asked.
“My mom and my brother and sister and six others from my pack.”
So nine werewolves in danger. The test had come, and come so quickly that Magnus had no time to really go through his feelings or think through a plan.
“Did you hear anything the Circle said?” Magnus asked. “What did the Circle accuse your family of doing?”
“They said our old pack did something, but we don’t know anything about that. It doesn’t matter, does it? They kill them anyway, that’s what everybody’s saying! You gotta come.”
He grabbed Magnus’s hand and made to pull him. Magnus detached the boy and reached for a pad and paper.
“You,” he said, scrawling down Catarina’s address, “you go here. You go nowhere else. You stay there. There’s a nice blue lady there. I will go to the safe house.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Either you do as I say or I don’t go,” Magnus snapped. “There’s no time to argue. You decide.”
The boy teetered on the edge of tears. He wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand.
“You’ll get them?” he asked. “You promise?”
“I promise,” Magnus said.