“That will keep the words ‘vampire killer’ out of the papers for a while,” Lincoln said. “But clearly things have gotten worse, and now someone is dead.”
Magnus heard various remarks in low voices about vampires, and some in louder voices. All of the remarks contained profanity.
“Okay.” Lincoln put his hands up and silenced the general sounds of dismay. “Magnus, what do you think about this?”
“I don’t know,” Magnus said. “I only just got back.”
“Ever seen anything like this? Mass, random attacks?”
All heads turned in his direction. He steadied himself against the file cabinet. He wasn’t quite ready to give a presentation on the ways of vampires at this hour of the morning.
“I’ve seen bad behavior,” Magnus said. “It really depends. I’ve been in places where there was no police force and no Shadowhunters nearby, so sometimes it can get out of hand. But I’ve never seen anything like it here, or in any developed area. Especially not near an Institute.”
“We need to take care of this,” a voice called out.
Various voices of assent echoed around the room.
“Let’s talk outside,” Lincoln said to Magnus.
He nodded at the door, and the werewolves parted so that Magnus could pass. Lincoln and Magnus got some burned coffee at the corner deli and sat on a stoop in front of an acupuncturist’s shop.
“Something’s wrong with them,” Lincoln said. “Whatever it is, it hit fast, and it hit hard. If we have diseased vampires around causing this kind of bloodshed . . . eventually we’ll have to act, Magnus. We can’t let it go on. We can’t let murders happen, and we can’t run the risk of bringing the Shadowhunters down here. We can’t have problems like that starting up again. It will end badly for all of us.”
Magnus examined the crack in the step below. “Have you contacted the Praetor Lupus?” he asked.
“Of course. But we can’t identify who is doing this. It doesn’t seem like the work of one rogue fledgling. This is multiple attacks in multiple locations. The only luck for us is that all of the victims have been on various substances, so they can’t articulate what happened to them. If one of them says vampire, the police will think it’s because they’re high. But eventually the story will take shape. The press will get wind of it, and the Shadowhunters will get wind of it, and the whole thing will escalate rapidly.”
Lincoln was right. If this went on, the werewolves would be well within their rights to act. And then there would be blood.
“You know Camille,” Lincoln said. “You could talk to her.”
“I knew Camille. You probably know her better than I do at this point.”
“I don’t know how to talk to Camille. She’s a difficult person to communicate with. I would have spoken to her already if I knew how. And our relationship isn’t quite the same as the relationship you had.”
“We don’t really get along,” Magnus said. “We haven’t spoken for several decades.”
“But everyone knows that you two were . . .”
“That was a long time ago. A hundred years ago, Lincoln.”
“For you two does that kind of time even matter?”
“What would you want me to say to her? It’s hard to walk in after that long a time and just say, ‘Stop attacking people. Also, how have you been since the turn of the century?’”
“If there’s something wrong, maybe you could help them. If they’re just overfeeding, then they need to know that we’re prepared to act. And if you care for her, which I think you do, she deserves this warning. It would be for the good of us all.”
He put his hand on Magnus’s shoulder.
“Please,” Lincoln said. “It’s possible we can still fix this. Because if this goes on, we’ll all suffer.”
Magnus had many exes. They were strewn throughout history. Most of them were memories, long dead. Some were now very old. Etta, one of his last loves, was now in a nursing home and no longer recognized him. It had become too painful to visit her.
Camille Belcourt was different. She’d come into Magnus’s life under the light of a gas lamp, looking regal. That had been in London, and it had been a different world. Their romance had happened in fog. It had happened in carriages bumping along cobbled streets, on settees covered in damson-colored silk. They’d loved in the time of the clockwork creatures, before the mundane wars. There seemed to be more time then, time to fill, time to spend. And they’d filled it. And they’d spent it.