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"You can't mean . . . ," began Simon. "They can't both--like me?"
There was a long silence.
"Neither of them like you?" Simon said. "You work out. And! You have a Scottish accent."
"Don't rub it in. Maybe girls fear me, because my keen eyes see too deeply into their souls," George said. "Or maybe they're intimidated by my good looks. Or maybe . . . Please don't make me talk about what a lonely bugger I am anymore."
He looked after Julie and Beatriz a little wistfully. Simon could not tell if George was wistful about Julie or Beatriz, or simply wistful about love in general. He'd had no idea his friends were involved in such an emotional tangle.
He was surprised. He felt awkward. And he didn't feel anything else.
He liked Beatriz a lot. Julie was terrible, but Simon thought of Julie telling him about her sister, and he had to admit: Julie was terrible, but he liked her, too. Both of them were beautiful and badass and did not come with a burden of lost memories and tangled emotions.
He wasn't even pleased they liked him. He wasn't even slightly tempted.
He wished, with single-minded intensity, that Isabelle was here--not a letter, not a voice on the phone, but here.
He looked at George's sad face and offered: "Want to talk about when Magnus and Alec go, and we steal their suite and make our own meals in our own little kitchen?"
George sighed. "Could we really, Simon, or is that too beautiful a dream? Every day would be a song. All I want is to make a sandwich, Simon. Just a humble sandwich, with ham, cheese, maybe a little dab of . . . oh my God."
Simon wondered what a dab of "oh my God" would taste like. George had frozen, spoon to his lips, eyes fixed on a point over Simon's shoulder.
Simon turned around in his seat and saw Isabelle framed in the doorway of the Academy dining hall. She was wearing a long dress the color of irises and her arms were spread wide, bracelets gleaming. Time seemed to slow, like a movie, like magic, like she was a genie who could appear in a puff of glittering smoke to grant wishes, and every wish would be her.
"Surprise," said Isabelle. "Miss me?"
Simon jumped to his feet. He might have knocked his bowl clear across the table and into George's lap. He was sorry, but he would make it up to him later.
"Isabelle," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Congratulations, Simon, that's a very romantic question," Isabelle told him. "Am I meant to take it as 'No, I didn't miss you, and I'm seeing other girls'? If so, don't worry about it. Why worry, when life is short? Specifically, your life, because I am going to cut off your head."
"I'm confused by what you're saying," Simon told her.
Isabelle raised her eyebrows and opened her lips, but before she could speak Simon caught her by the waist and drew her in against him, kissing her surprised mouth. Isabelle's mouth relaxed, curving under his. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him back, sultry and exuberant at once, a femme fatale and a warrior princess, all the dream girls of all his nerdy fantasies in one. Simon pulled back for a moment to look into Isabelle's night-dark eyes.
"I wasn't aware," said Simon, "that there are any other girls in the world but you."
He was embarrassed as soon as he said it. It was in no way a smooth line. It was pathetically honest, trying to tell Isabelle what he had only just realized himself. But he saw Isabelle's eyes shine like new stars waking in the night, felt her arm around his neck pulling him down for another kiss, and he thought to himself that the line might be a little smooth. After all, it had gotten him a girl, the girl. The only girl Simon wanted.
*
It was midnight before Magnus got all of the Lightwoods out of their suite. Isabelle had left to see Simon some time before, and Clary and Jace could usually be persuaded to go off together, but for a while he thought he was actually going to have to use magic on Maryse and Robert. He shoved them out of the door while they were still giving him helpful baby tips.
As soon as they were gone, Alec stumbled over to the bed and lay flat on his face, instantly asleep. Magnus was left with the baby.
It was possible the baby was stunned by the Lightwoods too. He lay in his crib staring up at the world with wide eyes. The crib was under a window, and he was in a small pool of light, moonshine shimmering on his crumpled blanket and his little fat legs. Magnus crouched down by the crib and watched him, waiting for the next eruption of screaming that meant he needed to be changed and fed. Instead he fell asleep too, his mouth open, a tiny blue rosebud.
Who could ever love it? the baby's mother had written, but the baby did not know that yet. He slept, innocent and serene as any child secure of love. Magnus's mother might have thought the same despairing words.
Alec thought they were keeping him.
Keeping him had not even occurred to Magnus. He had thought he lived life believing a thousand possibilities were open to him, but he had not thought of this possibility as being open to him: family life like mundanes and Nephilim had, love so secure that it could be shared with someone brand-new to the world and helpless.
He tried out the thought now.
Keeping him. Keeping the baby. Having a baby, with Alec.
Hours passed. Magnus hardly noticed, time went by so quietly, as if someone had laid out the carpet of the night to muffle time's footsteps. He did not register anything but that small face, until he felt a soft touch on his shoulder.
Magnus did not get up, but he turned to see Alec looking down at him. The moonlight turned Alec's skin silver and his eyes a darker, deeper blue, infinitely tender.
"If you thought I was asking you to keep the baby," Magnus said, "I wasn't."
Alec's eyes widened. He absorbed this in silence.
"You're . . . still really young," Magnus said. "I'm sorry if sometimes it seems as if I do not remember that. It's strange to me--being immortal means both being young and being old are strange to me. I know I must seem strange to you sometimes."
Alec nodded, thoughtful and not hurt. "You do," he said, and leaned down with one hand gripping the side of the crib, touched Magnus's hair, and gave him a moonlight-soft kiss. "And I never want anything but this. I never want a less strange love."
"But you don't have to be scared I would ever leave you," said Magnus. "You don't have to be scared of what will happen to the baby or that I will be hurt because the baby--is a warlock, and was not wanted. You do not have to feel trapped. You do not have to be scared, and you do not have to do this."
Alec knelt down in the shadows and on the bare, dusty boards of the attic, next to the crib and facing Magnus.
"What if I want to?" he asked. "I'm a Shadowhunter. We marry young, and we have children young, because we might die young, because we want to do our duty to the world and have all the love in the world we can. I used to . . . I used to think I could never do that, never have that. I used to feel trapped. I don't feel trapped now. I could never ask you to live in an Institute, and I don't want to. I want to stay in New York, with you, and with Lily and Maia. I want to keep doing what we're doing. I want Jace to run the Institute after my mother, and I want to work with him. I want to be part of the connection between the Institute and Downworlders. For so long I thought I could never have any of the things I wanted, except that I could maybe keep Jace and Isabelle safe. I thought I could have their backs in a fight. Now I have more and more people I care about, and . . . I want everyone I care about--I want people I don't even know, I want all of us--to know we have each other's backs so we do not have to fight alone. I am not trapped. I'm happy. I am exactly where I want to be. I know what I want, and I have the life I want. I'm not scared of any of the things you said."
Magnus took a deep breath. It was better to ask Alec than to keep imagining the wrong thing. "What are you scared of, then?"
"Do you remember Mom suggesting calling the baby Max?"
Magnus nodded, carefully quiet.
He had never even met Alec's little brother, Max. Rob
ert and Maryse Lightwood had always tried to keep their children away from Downworlders, and Max had been too young to disobey.
Alec's voice was soft, both for the baby and with memory. "I was never the cool brother. I remember when Mom used to leave Max with me, when he was really little, just learning how to walk, and I was always scared he would fall down and it would be my fault. I'd constantly try to get him to obey the rules and do what Mom said. Isabelle was so great with him, always making him laugh, and by the Angel, Max wanted to be just like Jace. He thought Jace was the coolest, the best Shadowhunter who ever lived, that the sun rose and set on him. Jace gave him a little toy soldier and Max used to take it to bed with him. I was jealous of how much Max loved that toy. I used to give him other things, toys that I thought were better, but he always loved that soldier best. He died holding that toy for comfort. I'm so glad he had it, that he had something he loved to comfort him. It was stupid and petty to be jealous."
Magnus shook his head. Alec gave him a rueful smile, and then bowed his black head, looking at the floor.
"I always thought there would be more time," said Alec. "I thought Max would get older, and he'd train with us more, and I'd help him train. I thought he would come on missions with us, and I'd have his back, the way I always try to have Jace's and Isabelle's backs. He'd know his boring big brother was good for something then. He'd know he could count on me, no matter what. He should have been able to count on me."
"He was able to count on you," Magnus said. "I know that. He knew that. Nobody who has ever met you could doubt it."
"He never even knew that I'm gay," said Alec. "Or that I love you. I wish he could have met you."
"I wish I could have met him," said Magnus. "But he knew you. He loved you. You know that, don't you?"
"I do know that," said Alec. "I just . . . I always wished I could be more for him."
"You always try to be more, for everyone you love," Magnus said. "You don't see how your whole family turns to you, how they rely on you. I rely on you. Even Lily relies on you, for God's sake. You love the people you love so much that you want to be an impossible ideal for them. You don't realize that you are more than enough."
Alec shrugged, a little helplessly.
"You asked me what I was scared of. I'm scared he won't like me," Alec said. "I'm scared I'll let him down. But I want to try to be there for him. I want him. Do you?"
