Alec woke to Magnus’s shaking his shoulder. “Come on, sweet pea,” he said. “Time to rise and face the day.”
Alec unfolded himself groggily out of his nest of pillows and blankets and blinked at his boyfriend. Magnus, despite having gotten very little sleep, looked annoyingly chipper. His hair was wet, dripping onto the shoulders of his white shirt and making it transparent. He wore jeans with holes in them and fraying hems, which usually meant he was planning to spend the day without leaving his apartment.
“‘Sweet pea’?” Alec said.
“I was trying it out.”
Alec shook his head. “No.”
Magnus shrugged. “I’ll keep at it.” He held out a chipped blue mug of coffee fixed the way Alec liked it—black, with sugar. “Wake up.”
Alec sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and took the mug. The first bitter swallow sent a tingle of energy through his nerves. He remembered lying awake the night before and waiting for Magnus to come to bed, but eventually exhaustion had overtaken him and he had fallen asleep at around five a.m. “I’m skipping the Council meeting today.”
“I know, but you’re supposed to meet your sister and the others in the park by Turtle Pond. You told me to remind you.”
Alec swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What time is it?”
Magnus took the mug gently out of his hand before the coffee spilled and set it on the bedside table. “You’re fine. You’ve got an hour.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips against Alec’s; Alec remembered the first time they had ever kissed, here in this apartment, and he wanted to wrap his arms around his boyfriend and pull him close. But something held him back.
He stood up, disentangling himself, and went over to the bureau. He had a drawer where his clothes were. A place for his toothbrush in the bathroom. A key to the front door. A decent amount of real estate to take up in anyone’s life, and yet he couldn’t shake the cold fear in his stomach.
Magnus had rolled onto his back on the bed and was watching Alec, one arm crooked behind his head. “Wear that scarf,” he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. “It matches your eyes.”
Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate—for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “The scarf’s a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something.”
Magnus sat up. “What’s gotten into you?”
Alec stared at him. “Am I the newest thing in this apartment?”
“I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He’s only two.”
“I said newest, not youngest,” Alec snapped. “Who’s W.S.? Is it Will?”
Magnus shook his head like there was water in his ears. “What the hell? You mean the snuffbox? W.S. is Woolsey Scott. He—”
“Founded the Praetor Lupus. I know.” Alec pulled on his jeans and zipped them up. “You mentioned him before, and besides, he’s a historical figure. And his snuffbox is in your junk drawer. What else is in there? Jonathan Shadowhunter’s toenail clippers?”
Magnus’s cat eyes were cold. “Where is all this coming from, Alexander? I don’t lie to you. If there’s anything about me you want to know, you can ask.”
“Bull,” Alec said bluntly, buttoning his shirt. “You’re kind and funny and all those great things, but what you’re not is forthcoming, sweet pea. You can talk all day about other people’s problems, but you won’t talk about yourself or your history, and when I do ask, you wriggle like a worm on a hook.”
“Maybe because you can’t ask me about my past without picking a fight about how I’m going to live forever and you’re not,” Magnus snapped. “Maybe because immortality is rapidly becoming the third person in our relationship, Alec.”
“Our relationship isn’t supposed to have a third person.”
“Exactly.”
Alec’s throat tightened. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he had never been good with words like Jace and Magnus were. Instead he grabbed the blue scarf off its peg and wrapped it defiantly around his neck.
“Don’t wait up,” he said. “I might patrol tonight.”
As he slammed out of the apartment, he heard Magnus yell after him, “And that scarf, I’ll have you know, is from the Gap! I got it last year!”
Alec rolled his eyes and jogged down the stairs to the lobby. The single bulb that usually lit the place was out, and the space was so dim that for a moment he didn’t see the hooded figure slipping toward him from the shadows. When he did, he was so startled that he dropped his key chain with a rattling clang.
The figure glided toward him. He could tell nothing about it—not age or gender or even species. The voice that came from beneath the hood was crackling and low. “I have a message for you, Alec Lightwood,” it said. “From Camille Belcourt.”
“Do you want to patrol together tonight?” Jordan asked, somewhat abruptly.
Maia turned to look at him in surprise. He was leaning back against the kitchen counter, his elbows on the surface behind him. There was an unconcern about his posture that was too studied to be sincere. That was the problem with knowing someone so well, she thought. It was very hard to pretend around them, or to ignore it when they were pretending, even when it would be easier.
“Patrol together?” she echoed. Simon was in his room, changing clothes; she’d told him she’d walk to the subway with him, and now she wished she hadn’t. She knew she should have contacted Jordan since the last time she’d seen him, when, rather unwisely, she’d kissed him. But then Jace had vanished and the whole world seemed to have blown into pieces and it had given her just the excuse she’d needed to avoid the whole issue.
Of course, not thinking about the ex-boyfriend who had broken your heart and turned you into a werewolf was a lot easier when he wasn’t standing right in front of you, wearing a green shirt that hugged his leanly muscled body in all the right places and brought out the hazel color of his eyes.
“I thought they were canceling the patrol searches for Jace,” she said, looking away from him.
“Well, not canceling so much as cutting down. But I’m Praetor, not Clave. I can look for Jace on my own time.”
“Right,” she said.
He was playing with something on the counter, arranging it, but his attention was still on her. “Do you, you know… You used to want to go to college at Stanford. Do you still?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I haven’t thought about college since…” She cleared her throat. “Not since I Changed.”
His cheeks flushed. “You were—I mean, you always wanted to go to California. You were going to study history, and I was going to move out there and surf. Remember?”
Maia shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. She felt as if she ought to be angry, but she wasn’t. For a long time she had blamed Jordan for the fact that she’d stopped dreaming of a human future, with school and a house and a family, maybe, someday. But there were other wolves in the police station pack who still pursued their dreams, their art. Bat, for instance. It had been her own choice to stop her life short. “I remember,” she said.
His cheeks flushed. “About tonight. No one’s searched the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so I thought… but it’s never much fun doing it on my own. But if you don’t want to…”
“No,” she said, hearing her own voice as if it were someone else’s. “I mean, sure. I’ll go with you.”
“Really?” His hazel eyes lit up, and Maia cursed herself inwardly. She shouldn’t get his hopes up, not when she wasn’t sure how she felt. It was just so hard to believe that he cared that much.
The Praetor Lupus medallion gleamed at his throat as he leaned forward, and she smelled the familiar scent of his soap, and under that—wolf. She flicked her eyes up toward him, just as Simon’s door opened and he came out, shrugging on a hoodie. He stopped dead in his doorway, his eyes moving from Jordan to Maia, his eyebrows slowly rising.
“You know, I can make it to the subway on my own,” he said to Maia, a faint smile tugging the corner of his mouth. “If you want to stay here…”
“No.” Maia hastily took her hands out of her pockets, where they had been balled into nervous fists. “No, I’ll come with you. Jordan, I’ll—I’ll see you later.”
“Tonight,” he called after her, but she didn’t turn around to look at him; she was already hurrying after Simon.