The young man frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” said Magnus. “May I help you? I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”
The Nephilim stooped and picked up his hat, which had fallen onto the cobblestones when he’d made his leap. He then took it off in order to flourish it in Magnus’s direction. The effect of the smile and the eyelashes together was like a small earthquake of attractiveness. Magnus could not blame Amalia Morgenstern for her giggling, even if the boy was far too young for her.
“No fewer than four of my esteemed elders told me I was on no account to ever converse with you, so I vowed that I would know you. My name is Edmund Herondale. May I ask your name? They referred to you only as ‘that disgraceful one-warlock show.’”
“I am deeply moved by that tribute,” Magnus told Edmund, and made his own bow. “Magnus Bane, at your service.”
“Now we are acquainted,” Edmund said. “Capital! Do you frequent any low dens of sin and debauchery?”
“Oh, now and then.”
“The Morgensterns said you did, while they were throwing away the plates,” Edmund said, with every sign of enthusiasm. “Shall we go?”
Throwing away the plates? It took Magnus a moment to comprehend, and when he did, he felt cold inside. The Shadowhunters had thrown away the very plates Downworlders had touched, afraid their china would be corrupted.
On the other hand, that was not Edmund’s fault. The only other place Magnus had to go was the mansion he had perhaps rashly purchased in Grosvenor Square. A recent adventure had caused him to become temporarily wealthy (a state he despised; he usually tried to get rid of his money as soon as he had it), so he had decided to live in style. The ton of London were referring to him, he believed, as “Bane the nabob.” This meant a great many people in London were anxious to make his acquaintance, and a great many of them seemed tiresome. Edmund, at least, did not.
“Why not?” Magnus decided.
Edmund glowed. “Excellent. Very few people are willing to have real adventures. Haven’t you found that out, Bane? Isn’t it sad?”
“I have very few rules in life, but one of them is to never decline an adventure. The others are: to avoid becoming romantically entangled with sea creatures; to always ask for what you want, because the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment but the best thing that can happen is nudity; to demand ready money up front; and to never play cards with Catarina Loss.”
“What?”
“She cheats,” Magnus explained. “Never mind that one.”
“I would like to meet a lady who cheats at cards,” Edmund said wistfully. “Aside from Granville’s aunt Millicent, who is a terror at piquet.”
Magnus had never truly considered that the high-and-mighty Shadowhunters ever played cards, let alone cheated at them. He supposed he had imagined that their leisure activities consisted of weapons training and having discussions about their infinite superiority over everyone else.
Magnus ventured to give Edmund a hint. “Mundane clubs do generally frown upon patrons who have, purely for random example, an abundance of weaponry about their person. So that might be an impediment.”
“Absolutely not,” Edmund promised him. “Why, I have the most paltry assortment of weapons on me. Only a few miserable daggers, a single stiletto knife, a couple of whips—”
Magnus blinked. “Hardly an armory,” he said. “Though, it sounds like a most amusing Saturday.”
“Capital!” said Edmund Herondale, apparently taking this for approval of his company on Magnus’s excursion. He looked delighted.
White’s club, on St. James’s Street, had not changed outwardly at all. Magnus regarded the pale stone facade with pleasure: the Greek columns and the arched frames to the higher windows, as if each window were a chapel unto itself; the cast-iron balcony, which bore an intricate swirling pattern that had always made Magnus think of a procession of snail shells; the bow window out of which a famous man had once looked, and bet on a race between raindrops. The club had been established by an Italian, had been the haunt of criminals, and had been the irresistible bane of English aristocrats for more than a hundred years.
Whenever Magnus heard anything described as a “bane,” he felt sure he would like it. It was why he had chosen that particular last name for himself, and also why he had joined White’s several years before on a flying visit to London, in the main because his friend Catarina Loss had bet him that he could not do it.
Edmund swung around one of the black cast-iron lamps set before the door. The leaping flame behind the glass was dim compared to his eyes.
“This used to be a place where highwaymen drank hot chocolate,” Magnus told Edmund carelessly as they walked inside. “The hot chocolate was very good. Being a highwayman is chilly work.”