The Lightwood parents stared at her, and then swung their heads in sync to stare at their son.
Lily waved a dismissive hand in their direction. “Except for Alec, he’s a special case. The rest of you Shadowhunters just come in, lay down your precious Law, and chop off people’s heads. We Downworlders can handle our business ourselves. You Nephilim can stick to chopping off demons’ heads and I will consult with you as soon as the next great evil occurs, instead of the next great annoyance, which will occur probably on Tuesday, and which I, Maia, and Alec will deal with. Thank you. Please stop interrupting me. Alec, can these people even be trusted?”
“They’re my parents,” said Alec. “I know about the faerie fruit. The fey have been taking more and more chances lately. I already sent a message to Maia. She’s got Bat and some other boys prowling the precincts of the park. Bat’s friends with Mordecai; he can reason with him. And you keep Elliott away from the park. You know how he is with faerie fruit. You know he bit that mundie on purpose.”
“It could have been an accident,” Lily muttered.
Alec gave Lily a deeply skeptical look. “Oh, it could have been his seventeenth accident? He has to stop or he’s going to lose control under the influence and kill somebody. He didn’t kill the man, did he?”
“No,” Lily said sullenly. “I stopped Elliott in time. I knew you’d kill him, and then I knew you’d give me your disappointed look.” She paused. “You’re sure the werewolves have this in hand?”
“Yes,” said Alec. “You didn’t need to charge to Idris and spill Downworlder business in front of my whole family.”
“If they’re your family, they know you can handle a little thing like this,” Lily said dismissively. She ran two hands through her sleek black hair, fluffing it up. “This is such a relief. Oh,” she added, as if she had just noticed. “You’re holding a baby.”
Lily tended to have laser focus.
After the war with Sebastian, the Shadowhunters had been left dealing with the betrayal of the faeries and the crisis of how many Institutes had fallen and how many Nephilim had been Endarkened and lost in the war, their second war in a year.
They were in no shape to keep a close eye on the Downworlders, but the Downworlders had lost a great deal as well. Old structures that had held their society in place for centuries, like the Praetor Lupus, had been destroyed in the war. The faeries were waiting to revolt. And the werewolf and vampire clans of New York both had brand-new leaders. Both Lily and Maia were young to be leaders, and had succeeded entirely unexpectedly to leadership. Both of them had found themselves, due to inexperience and not lack of trying, in trouble.
Maia had called Magnus and asked if she could come and visit him, to ask his advice on a few things. When she showed up, she’d dragged Lily along with her.
Lily, Maia, and Magnus then sat around Magnus’s coffee table shouting at each other for hours.
“You can’t just kill someone, Lily!” Maia kept saying.
Lily kept saying: “Explain why.”
Alec had been cranky that day, having wrenched his arm almost out of its socket during a fight with a dragon demon. He’d been leaning against the kitchen counter, listening, nursing his arm, and texting Jace messages like Y DO U SAY THINGS R XTINCT WHEN THINGS R NOT XTINCT and Y R U THE WAY THAT U R.
Until he ran out of patience.
“Do you know, Lily,” he said in a cold voice, putting down his phone, “that you spend more than half the time you are speaking baiting Magnus and Maia, instead of offering suggestions? And you make them spend about the same amount of time arguing you down. So you’re making everything last twice as long. Which means you’re wasting everyone’s time. That’s not a really efficient way for a leader to behave.”
Lily was so startled she looked almost blank for a moment, almost truly young, before she hissed: “Nobody asked you, Shadowhunter.”
“I am a Shadowhunter,” said Alec, still calm. “The issue you’re having with the mermaids. The Rio de Janeiro Institute was having the same problem a couple of years ago. I know all about it. Do you want me to tell you? Or do you want to end up with half a dozen tourists on a boat to Staten Island drowned, at least that many Shadowhunters asking you embarrassing questions, and a little voice in your head saying, ‘Wow, I wish I’d listened to Alec Lightwood when I had the chance’?”
There was a silence. Maia had put an entire cookie into her mouth as they waited. Lily kept her arms crossed and looked sulky.
“Don’t waste my time, Lily,” Alec said. “What do you want?”
“I want you to sit down and help me, I suppose,” Lily grumbled.
Alec had sat down.
Magnus had not expected the meetings to happen more than a few times, let alone to see a rapport spring up between Alec and Lily. Alec had not been entirely comfortable with vampires, once. But Alec always responded to being relied on, being turned to. Whenever Lily came to him with a problem, at first haughtily and with an air of reluctance and later with demanding confidence, Alec did not rest until he had solved it.
One Thursday evening Magnus had heard the doorbell and walked in from the bedroom to find Alec laying out glasses, and realized that the occasional emergency gatherings had become regular meetings. That Maia and Lily and Alec would unroll a map of New York to pinpoint problem areas and have heated debates in which Lily made very nasty werewolf jokes, and each of them would call the other when they had a problem they did not know how to solve. That Downworlders and Shadowhunters alike would come to New York knowing there was a group with Downworlders and Shadowhunters who had power and would cooperate to solve problems. They would come to consult and find out if the group could help them, too.
On the occasions when Alec had served as acting head of the New York Institute, it had been obvious that he didn’t enjoy it very much. Alec had less patience with bureaucracy now than he had before the war. He’d accidentally found his calling, working with Downworlders rather than the Clave. Magnus realized that this was his life now, and he would not have it different.
“I like Alec so much,” Lily told Magnus at a party months later, slightly drunk and with glitter in her hair. “Especially when he gets snippy with me. He reminds me of Raphael.”
“How dare you,” Magnus had replied. “You are speaking of the man I love.”
He was bartending. His tuxedo had a glow-in-the-dark waistcoat, which made bartending in the artful gloom of the party somewhat easier. He’d spoken without thinking, casually, and then stopped, glass in his hand winking turquoise in the party lights. He’d been talking about Raphael easily, casually insulting, as if Raphael were still alive.