“I’m not sure I have any good friends.”
“Oh, you do.” Dolly swung her tiny beaded purse in a loop. “You do. See ya around, Magnus.”
She made her way down the hall with a swinging step, turning around every once in a while to look back at him. Magnus slid down the wall a few inches, feeling the exhaustion hanging over his entire body. But with one massive effort, he pulled himself up and hurried after Dolly. He watched from around the corner as she got into an elevator, and he immediately pushed the button for the next one. This elevator was quite full of grim-looking people, visibly shattered by the day’s news. So what he was going to do next was very unfortunate for them.
Magnus flicked his fingers and took over the control of the elevator from the operator, sending it on a very fast, somewhat uncontrolled descent. He’d tipped the operator very well the other day, so he felt he had a pass to take over if he liked. He had no such pass for the other passengers, who all started screaming as the elevator dropped floor after floor.
He made it to the lobby before Dolly, pushing past the still-traumatized (and several praying) people in his elevator. He ducked through the lobby, staying off to the side, behind columns and potted palms and groups of people. He slipped inside a telephone cabinet and watched Dolly pass by, her heels clicking lightly on the marble floor. He followed her, as quietly and inconspicuously as possible, to the front door, glamouring himself to slip past the doorman. There was a car just outside, a massive red Pierce-Arrow, with silver curtains over the windows of the passenger area, concealing the inhabitant’s face. The door, however, was open. A driver stood by, at attention. Through the opening, Magnus could see a foot and an ankle, both very handsome, and a little silver shoe, and a bit of stockinged leg. Dolly bounced over to the car and leaned into the open door. They had a conversation Magnus couldn’t hear, and then Dolly proceeded to climb inside the car, giving all the people in front of the Plaza a nice look at her rear end. Then the passenger leaned forward to speak to the driver, and Magnus caught her face in profile. There was no mistaking the face.
It was Camille.
Saving Raphael Santiago
By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan
He uncoiled, as swift as a snake, and sprang.
It was only because Magnus had seen where the vampire was looking and because he knew how Raphael felt, the exact exquisitely cold feeling of being an outcast, so alone that he barely seemed to exist, that he moved fast enough.
—Saving Raphael Santiago
It was a violent heat wave in the late summer of 1953. The sun was viciously pummeling the pavement, which seemed to have become flatter than usual in submission, and some Bowery boys were opening a fire hydrant to make a fountain in the street and gain a few minutes of relief.
It was the sun getting to him, Magnus thought later, that had filled him with the desire to be a private eye. That and the Raymond Chandler novel he had just completed.
Still, there was a problem with the plan. On the covers of books and in films, most detectives looked like they were dressed up in Sunday suits for a small-town jamboree. Magnus wished to wash away the stain of his newly adopted profession and dress in a way that was both suitable to the profession, pleasing to the eye, and on the cutting edge of fashion. He ditched the trench coat and added some green velvet cuffs to his gray suit jacket, along with a curly-brimmed bowler hat.
The heat was so awful that he had to take off his jacket as soon as he set foot out of doors, but it was the thought that counted, and besides, he was wearing emerald-green suspenders.
Becoming a detective wasn’t really a decision based wholly on his wardrobe. He was a warlock, and people—well, not everyone thought of them as people—often came to him for magical solutions to their problems, which he gave them, for a fee. Word had spread throughout New York that Magnus was the warlock who would get you out of a jam. There was a Sanctuary, too, up in Brooklyn, if you needed to hide, but the witch who ran it didn’t solve your problems. Magnus solved problems. So why not get paid for it?
Magnus had not thought that simply deciding to become a private eye would cause a case to land in his lap the moment he painted the words MAGNUS BANE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE onto his window in bold black letters. But as if someone had whispered his private conviction into Fate’s ear, a case arrived.
Magnus arrived back at his apartment building after getting an ice-cream cone, and when he saw her, he was glad that he’d finished it. She was clearly one of those mundanes who knew enough about the Shadow World to come to Magnus for magic.