“Raphael,” she murmured into his black curls. First Magnus and Raphael had not been able to stop talking, and now it seemed she could not. “Raphael, mijo, Raphael, my Raphael.”
At first Magnus knew in the jumble of words of love and comfort only that she was inviting Raphael in, that they were safe, that they had succeeded, that Raphael could have his family and his family would never have to know. All the words she said were both endearments and statements, love and laying claim: my son, my boy, my child.
The other boys crowded up around Raphael, given their mother’s blessing, and Raphael touched them with gentle hands, touched the little ones’ hair, tugging with affection that looked careless, though it was so very careful, and shoved the older boys in rough but never too rough greeting.
Playing his role as Raphael’s benefactor and teacher, Magnus hugged Raphael too. As prickly as he was, Raphael did not invite embraces. Magnus had not been so close to him since the day he’d fought to stop Raphael from going into the sun. Raphael’s back felt thin under Magnus’s hands—fragile, though he was not.
“I owe you, warlock,” Raphael said, a cool whisper against Magnus’s ear. “I promise you I won’t forget.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Magnus, and then because he could get away with it, when he drew back, he ruffled Raphael’s curly hair.
The indignant look on Raphael’s face was hilarious.
“I will leave you to be alone with your family,” Magnus told him, and he went.
Before he did, though, he paused and created a few blue sparks from his fingers that formed tiny play houses and stars, that made magic something fun that the children did not fear. He told them all that Raphael was not quite as accomplished or fabulously talented as he himself was, and would not be able to perform such tiny miracles for years. He made a flourishing bow that had the little ones laughing and Raphael rolling his eyes.
Magnus did leave, walking slowly. The winter was coming but was not quite there yet, and he was happy to simply walk and enjoy the little things in life, the crisp winter air, the few stray golden leaves still curling under his feet, the bare trees above him waiting to be reborn in glory. He was going home to an apartment that he suspected would feel slightly too empty, but soon he would invite Etta over, and she would dance with him and fill the rooms with love and laughter, as she would fill his life with love and laughter, for a little while yet before she left him.
He heard steps thundering after him and thought it was Raphael for a moment, the masquerade in ruins around them suddenly, when they’d thought they were victorious.
But it was not Raphael. Magnus did not see Raphael again for several months, and by then Raphael was Camille’s second-in-command, calmly ordering around vampires hundreds of years older than himself as only Raphael could. Raphael spoke to Magnus then as one important Downworlder to another, with perfect professionalism, but Magnus knew Raphael had not forgotten anything. Relations had always been strained between Magnus and the vampires of New York, Camille’s clan, but suddenly they were less strained. New York vampires came to his parties, though Raphael did not, and came to him for magical aid, though Raphael never would again.
The footsteps chasing Magnus’s in the cool winter night were not Raphael’s but Guadalupe’s. She was panting from how hard she had been running, her dark hair slipping free of its pins, forming a cloud about her face. She almost ran into him before she could stop herself.
“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t paid you.”
Her hands were shaking, spilling over with bills. Magnus closed her fingers around the money and closed his hands around hers.
“Take it,” she urged him. “Take it. You earned it; you earned more. You brought him back to me, my oldest boy, the sweetest of them all, my dear heart, my brave boy. You saved him.”
She was still shaking as Magnus held her hands, so Magnus rested his forehead against hers. He held her close enough to kiss, close enough to whisper the most important secrets in the world, and he spoke to her as he would have wanted some good angel to speak to his family, to his own shivering young soul, long ago and in a land far away.
“No,” he murmured. “No, I didn’t. You know him better than anyone else ever has or ever will. You made him, you taught him to be all he is, and you know him down to his bones. You know how strong he is. You know how much he loves you. If I gave you anything, give me your faith now. Teach one thing to all your children. I have never told you anything more true than this. Believe this, if you believe nothing else. Raphael saved himself.”
The Fall of the Hotel Dumort
By Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
Her silver-blond hair was long and down, looking wild. She patted the end of the bed. This was not the greeting he’d been expecting. This was not the Camille he remembered, or even the one he had seen in passing.
—The Fall of the Hotel Dumort
July 1977
“What do you do?” the woman asked.