“I don’t know about being certain,” Simon said. “I don’t know about being ready, either. I can’t say I haven’t had doubts, that I haven’t thought about turning back and being a kid in a band in Brooklyn. I think sometimes it’s too hard to believe in yourself. You just do the things you’re not sure you can do. You just act, in spite of not being certain. I don’t believe I can change the world—it sounds stupid to even talk about it—but I’m going to try.”
“We all change the world, with every day of living in it,” Magnus said. “You just have to decide how you want to change the world. I brought you into this world, the second time around, and though your choices are your own I do take some responsibility. Even if you are committed, you have other choices. I could arrange for you to be a vampire again, or a werewolf. Both are risky, but none as risky as Ascension.”
“Yes. I want to try changing the world as a Shadowhunter,” said Simon. “I really do. I want to try and change the Clave from the inside. I want that particular power to help people. It’s worth the risk.”
Magnus nodded.
He had meant it, Simon thought, when he said that Simon’s choices were his own. He had left it up to Simon, that day in Brooklyn when he and Isabelle had approached Simon outside his school. He did not question Simon now, even though Simon was afraid that choosing to be a Shadowhunter and not a Downworlder might have offended him. He didn’t want to be like the Shadowhunters who acted as if they were better than Downworlders. He wanted to be an entirely different kind of Shadowhunter.
Magnus did not look offended. He stood on the tower top, on stone in starlight, turning the coin that had belonged to the dead over and over in his fingers. He looked thoughtful.
“Have you thought about your Shadowhunter name?”
“Um . . . ,” Simon said shyly. “A little bit. I was wondering, actually—what’s your real name?”
Magnus sent him a sidelong glance. Nobody gave side-eye like someone with cat’s eyes. “Magnus Bane,” he said. “I know you’ve forgotten a lot, Smedley, but really.”
Simon accepted the subtle reproof. He understood why Magnus would object to the implication that the name he had chosen to define himself by, kept over long years and made both infamous and illustrious, was not real.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that my mind does keep coming back to names. If I survive Ascension, I’ll have to pick a Shadowhunter name. I don’t know how to pick the right one—I don’t know how to pick one that will mean something, mean more than any other name would.”
Magnus frowned.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this wise-advice business. Maybe I should wear a fake white beard to convince myself I am a sage. Pick the one that feels right, and don’t worry too much,” Magnus said eventually. “It’s going to be your name. You’re going to live with it. You’re going to give it meaning, not the other way around.”
“I’m going to try,” said Simon. “Is there any reason why ‘Magnus Bane’ was the one that felt right?”
“Magnus Bane felt right for a lot of reasons,” Magnus said, which was not really an answer. He seemed to sense Simon’s disappointment and take pity on him, because he added: “Here’s one.”
Magnus flipped the coin over and under his fingers, the circle of metal moving faster and faster. Blue lines of magic seemed to spring from his rings, a tiny storm rising in Magnus’s palm and catching the coin in a net of lightning.
Then Magnus threw the coin off the tower, into the night wind. Simon could see the falling coin, still touched with blue fire, going beyond the limits of the Academy grounds.
“There’s a scientific phenomenon to describe something that happens when an object is in motion. You think you know exactly what path it will take and where it will end up. Then suddenly, for no reason you can see . . . the arc changes. It goes somewhere you would never have expected.”
Magnus snapped his fingers, and the coin zigzagged in the air and returned to them as Simon stared, feeling like he was seeing magic for the first time. He dropped the coin in Simon’s hand and smiled, a blazing rebel’s smile, his eyes as gold as newly discovered treasure.
“It’s called the Magnus effect,” he said.
“Fzzzz,” Clary said, her bright red head hovering over the baby’s small dark-blue one. She pressed little kisses onto the baby’s cheeks, buzzing like a bee as she did so, and the baby chuckled and grasped at her curls. “Fzzzz, fzzz, fzzzz. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have never had a close relationship with any babies. For sixteen years I thought I was an only child, baby. And after that, baby, you don’t want to know what I thought. Please forgive me if I’m doing this wrong, baby. Do you like me, baby? I like you.”
“Give me the baby,” Maryse said jealously. “You’ve had him for four whole minutes, Clarissa.”
It was a party in Magnus and Alec’s suite, and the game of choice was Pass the Baby. Everyone wanted to hold him. Simon had shamelessly tried to curry favor with Isabelle’s father by teaching Robert Lightwood how to use Simon’s digital watch as a timer. Robert was now holding the watch in a death grip and studying it carefully. It would be Robert’s turn with the baby again in sixteen minutes, and he had clasped Simon’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, son,” which Simon took as a blessing to date Robert’s daughter. He did not regret the loss of his watch.
Clary surrendered the baby, and leaned back against the sofa between Simon and Jace. The sofa creaked dangerously as she settled back. Simon might have been safer in the formerly crooked tower, but he was willing to be in danger if he could stay next to Clary.
“He’s so sweet,” Clary whispered to Jace and Simon. “It’s strange to think he’s Alec and Magnus’s, though. I mean, can you imagine?”
“It’s not that strange,” Jace said. “I mean, I can imagine.”
A flush rose on his high cheekbones. He edged into the corner of the sofa as Simon and Clary both turned and stared at him.
Clary and Simon continued to stare judgmentally. It made Simon very happy. Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship.
Then Clary leaned forward and kissed Jace.
“Let’s pick up this conversation in about ten years,” she said. “Maybe longer! I’m going to dance with the girls.”
She went to join Isabelle, who was already dancing to the soft music in the midst of a circle of admirers who had come because they heard she was back. Foremost among them was Marisol, who Simon was pretty sure had determined to be Isabelle when she grew up.
The Lightwood baby celebration was in full swing. Simon smiled, watching Clary. He could remember a couple of times she had been wary around other girls, and they had stuck together instead. It was nice to see Isabelle hold out her hands to Clary, and Clary grasp them without hesitation.
“Jace,” said Simon as Jace watched Clary and smiled. Jace glanced at him and looked annoyed. “Remember when you told me that you wished I could remember?”
“Why are you asking me if I remember things?” Jace asked, sounding definitely annoyed. “I’m not the one who has problems with remembering. Remember?”
“I just wondered what you meant by that.”
Simon waited, giving Jace a chance to take advantage of his demon amnesia and tell him another fake secret. Instead, Jace looked incredibly uncomfortable.