“It’s bad in there,” she said. “It’s hard.”
There was little Magnus could say, so he just listened.
“The patients need me,” she said, poking her straw into the ice in her otherwise empty glass. “Some of the doctors—people who should know better—won’t even touch the patients. And it’s so horrible, this disease. The way they just waste away. Nobody should die like that.”
“No,” Magnus said.
Catarina poked at the ice a moment longer and then leaned back in the booth and sighed deeply.
“I can’t believe the Nephilim are causing trouble now, of all times,” she said, rubbing her face with one hand. “Nephilim kids, no less. How is this even happening?”
This was the reason Magnus had waited by the clinic to walk Catarina home. It wasn’t because the neighborhood was bad—the neighborhood wasn’t bad. He’d waited for Catarina because it was no longer completely safe for Downworlders to be alone. He could hardly believe that Downworld was in a state of chaos and fear over the actions of a gang of stupid Shadowhunter youths.
When he had first heard the murmurings, just a few months before, Magnus had rolled his eyes. A pack of Shadowhunters, barely twenty years old, barely more than children, were rebelling against their parents’ laws. Big deal. The Clave and Covenant and respected-elders shtick had always seemed to Magnus the ideal recipe for a youth revolt. This group called themselves the Circle, one Downworlder report had said, and they were led by a charismatic youth named Valentine. The group comprised some of the brightest and best of their generation.
And the Circle members were saying that the Clave did not deal harshly enough with Downworlders. That was how the wheel turned, Magnus supposed, one generation against the next—from Aloysius Starkweather, who’d wanted werewolf heads on the wall, to Will Herondale, who had tried and never quite succeeded in hiding his open heart. Today’s youth thought that the Clave’s policy of cold tolerance was too generous, apparently. Today’s youth wanted to fight monsters, and had conveniently decided that Magnus’s people were monsters, every one. Magnus sighed. This seemed like a season of hatred for all the world.
Valentine’s Circle had not done much yet. Perhaps they never would do much. But they had done enough. They had roamed Idris, had gone through Portals and visited other cities on missions to aid the Institutes there, and in every city they’d visited, Downworlders had died.
There were always Downworlders who broke the Accords, and Shadowhunters made them pay for it. But Magnus had not been born yesterday, or even this century. He did not think it was a coincidence that wherever Valentine and his friends went, death followed. They were finding any excuse to rid the world of Downworlders.
“What does this Valentine kid even want?” Catarina asked. “What’s his plan?”
“He wants death and destruction for all Downworld,” said Magnus. “His plan is possibly to be a huge jerk.”
“And what if they do come here?” Catarina asked. “What would the Whitelaws even do?”
Magnus had lived in New York for decades now, and had known the Shadowhunters of the New York Institute all that time. For the last several decades the Institute had been led by the Whitelaws. They had always been dutiful and distant. Magnus had never liked any of them, and none of them had ever liked Magnus. Magnus had no proof that they would betray an innocent Downworlder, but Shadowhunters thought so much of their own kind and their own blood that Magnus wasn’t sure what the Whitelaws would do.
Magnus had gone to meet with Marian Whitelaw, the head of the Institute, and had told her of the reports from Downworld that Valentine and his little helpers were killing Downworlders who were not breaking the Accords, and then the Circle members were lying about it to the Clave afterward.
“Go to the Clave,” Magnus had said to her. “Tell them to control their unruly brats.”
“Control your unruly tongue,” Marian Whitelaw had said coldly, “when you speak of your betters, warlock. Valentine Morgenstern is considered a most promising Shadowhunter, as are his young friends. I knew his wife, Jocelyn, when she was a child; she is a sweet and lovely girl. I will not doubt their goodness. Certainly not with no proof and based on the malicious gossip of Downworld alone.”
“They are killing my people!”
“They are killing Downworlder criminals, in full compliance with the Accords. They are showing zeal in the pursuit of evil. Nothing bad can come from that. I would not expect you to understand.”
Of course the Shadowhunters would not believe that their best and brightest had become just a little bit too bloodthirsty. Of course they would accept the excuses Valentine and the others gave them, and of course they would believe that Magnus and any other Downworlder who complained simply wanted criminals to escape justice.
Knowing they could not turn to the Shadowhunters, Downworlders had tried to put their own safeguards in place. A safe house had been set up in Chinatown, through an amnesty between the constantly feuding vampires and werewolves, and everybody was on the watch.
Downworlders were on their own. But then, hadn’t they always been on their own?
Magnus sighed and eyed Catarina over their plates.
“Eat,” he said. “Nothing’s happening right now. It’s possible nothing will happen.”
“They killed a ‘rogue vampire’ in Chicago last week,” she said, chopping into a blintz with a fork. “You know they’ll want to come here.”
They ate in silence, pensive on Magnus’s side and exhausted on Catarina’s. The check came, and Magnus paid. Catarina didn’t think much about things like money. She was a nurse at a clinic with few resources, and he had ample cash on hand.
“Gotta get back,” she said. She scrubbed a hand over her weary face, and Magnus saw cerulean trails in the wake of her fingertips, her glamour faltering even as she spoke.
“You are going home and sleeping,” Magnus said. “I’m your friend. I know you. You deserve a night off. You should spend it indulging in wanton luxuries such as sleep.”
“What if something happens?” she asked. “What if they come?”
“I can get Ragnor to help me.”
“Ragnor’s in Peru,” said Catarina. “He says he finds it very peaceful without your accursed presence, and that’s a direct quote. Could Tessa come?”
Magnus shook his head.
“Tessa is in Los Angeles. The Blackthorns, Tessa’s daughter’s descendants, run the Institute there. Tessa wants to keep an eye on them.”
Magnus was worried about Tessa, too, hiding alone near the Los Angeles Institute, that house on the high hills by the sea. She was the youngest warlock whom Magnus was close enough to that he called her a friend, and she had lived for years with the Shadowhunters, where she could not practice magic to the extent that Magnus, Ragnor, or Catarina could. Magnus had hideous visions of Tessa hurling herself into a fight between Shadowhunters. Tessa would never allow one of hers to be hurt if she could sacrifice herself in their place.
But Magnus knew and liked the High Warlock of Los Angeles. He would not let Tessa come to harm. And Ragnor was wily enough that Magnus did not worry about him too much. He would never let his guard down anywhere that he did not feel completely safe.