Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale tbc-3, Page 2

  Magnus ventured to give Edmund a hint. “Mundane clubs do generally frown upon patrons who have, purely for random example, an abundance of weaponry about their person. So that might be an impediment.”

  “Absolutely not,” Edmund promised him. “Why, I have the most paltry assortment of weapons on me. Only a few miserable daggers, a single stiletto knife, a couple of whips—”

  Magnus blinked. “Hardly an armory,” he said. “Though, it sounds like a most amusing Saturday.”

  “Capital!” said Edmund Herondale, apparently taking this for approval of his company on Magnus’s excursion. He looked delighted.

  White’s club, on St. James’s Street, had not changed outwardly at all. Magnus regarded the pale stone facade with pleasure: the Greek columns and the arched frames to the higher windows, as if each window were a chapel unto itself; the cast-iron balcony, which bore an intricate swirling pattern that had always made Magnus think of a procession of snail shells; the bow window out of which a famous man had once looked, and bet on a race between raindrops. The club had been established by an Italian, had been the haunt of criminals, and had been the irresistible bane of English aristocrats for more than a hundred years.

  Whenever Magnus heard anything described as a “bane,” he felt sure he would like it. It was why he had chosen that particular last name for himself, and also why he had joined White’s several years before on a noindentying visit to London, in the main because his friend Catarina Loss had bet him that he could not do it.

  Edmund swung around one of the black cast-iron lamps set before the door. The leaping noindentame behind the glass was dim compared to his eyes.

  “This used to be a place where highwaymen drank hot chocolate,” Magnus told Edmund carelessly as they walked inside. “The hot chocolate was very good. Being a highwayman is chilly work.”

  “Did you ever ask someone to stand and deliver?”

  “I’ll just say this,” said Magnus. “I look dashing in a tasteful mask and a large hat.”

  Edmund laughed again—he had an easy and delighted laugh, like a child. His gaze was roving all over the room, from the ceiling—constructed to look as if they stood in a vast stone barrel—to the chandelier dripping glittering jewels like a duchess; to the green baize-covered tables that clustered on the right side of the room, where men were playing cards and losing fortunes.

  Edmund’s quality of bright wonder and surprise made him seem younger than he was; it lent a fragile air to his beauty. Magnus did not wonder why he, one of the Nephilim, was not warier of a Downworlder. He doubted Edmund Herondale was wary of anything in life. He was eager to be entertained, ready to be thrilled, essentially trusting of the world.

  Edmund pointed to where two men stood, one making an entry in a large book with a defiant noindentourish of his pen.

  “What’s afoot there?”

  “I presume they are recording a wager. There is a betting book here in White’s that is quite celebrated. All sorts of bets are taken—whether a gentleman could manage to ravish a lady in a balloon a thousand feet off the ground, whether a man could live underwater for a day.”

  Magnus found them a pair of chairs near a fire, and made a gesture indicating that he and his companion were sorely in need of a drink. Their thirst was supplied the next instant. There were advantages to a truly excellent gentlemen’s club.

  “Do you think one could?” Edmund inquired. “Not live underwater; I know mundanes cannot. The other thing.”

  “My experiences in a balloon with a lady were not very pleasant,” Magnus said, wincing at the memory. Queen Marie Antoinette had been an exciting but not comfortable traveling companion. “I would be disinclined to indulge in carnal delights in a balloon with a lady or a gentleman. No matter how delightful they were.”

  Edmund Herondale did not seem in the least surprised by the mention of a gentleman in Magnus’s romantic speculations.

  “It would be a lady in the balloon for me,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Magnus, who had suspected as much.

  “But I am always noindentattered to be admired,” said Edmund, with an engaging grin. “And I am always admired.”

  He said it with that easy smile and another golden noindentutter of eyelashes, in the same way he had wound Amalia Morgenstern around his finger. It was clear he knew he was outrageous, and he expected people to like it. Magnus suspected they all did.

  “Ah, well,” Magnus said, giving up the matter gracefully. “Any particular lady?”

  “I am not perfectly certain I believe in marriage. Why have just one bonbon when you can have the box?”

  Magnus raised his eyebrows and took a swallow of his excellent brandy. The young man had a way with words and the naïve delight of someone who had never had his heart broken.

  “No one’s ever really hurt you, have they?” said Magnus, who saw no point in beating about the bush.

  Edmund looked alarmed. “Why, are you about to?”

  “With all those whips on your person? Hardly. I merely meant that you seem like someone who has never had his heart broken.”

  “I lost my parents as a child,” said Edmund candidly. “But rare is the Shadowhunter with an intact family. I was taken in by the Fairchilds and raised in the Institute. Its halls have ever been my home. And if you mean love, then no, my heart has never been broken. Nor do I foresee that it will be.”

  “Don’t you believe in love?”

  “Love, marriage, the whole business is extremely overrated. For instance, this chap I know called Benedict Lightwood recently got leg-shackled, and the affair is hideous—”

  “Your friends moving forward into a different era of their lives can be difficult,” Magnus said sympathetically.

  Edmund made a face. “Benedict is not my friend. It’s the poor young lady I feel sorry for. The man is peculiar in his habits, if you see what I’m trying to say.”

  “I don’t,” Magnus said noindentatly.

  “Bit of a deviant, is what I’m getting at.”

  Magnus regarded him with a cold air.

  “Bad News Benedict, we call him,” said Edmund. “Mostly due to his habit of consorting with demons. The more tentacles, the better, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Oh,” Magnus said, enlightened. “I know who you mean. I have a friend from whom he bought some most unusual woodcuts. Also a couple of engravings. Said friend is simply an honest tradesman, and I have never bought anything from him myself, mind you.”

  “Also Benedict Lightworm. And Bestial Benedict,” Edmund continued bitterly. “But he sneaks about while the rest of us get up to honest larks, and the Clave all think that he’s superlatively well behaved. Poor Barbara. I’m afraid she acted hastily because of her broken heart.”

  Magnus leaned back in his chair. “And who broke her heart, might I ask?” he asked, amused.

  “Ladies’ hearts are like bits of china on a mantelpiece. There are so many of them, and it is so easy to break them without noticing.” Edmund shrugged, a little rueful but mostly amused, and then a man in an unfortunate waistcoat walked into his armchair.

  “I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman. “I believe I am somewhat foxed!”

  “I am prepared to charitably believe you were drunk when you got dressed,” Magnus said under his breath.

  “Eh?” said the man. “The name’s Alvanley. You ain’t one of those Indian nabobs, are you?”

  Though he never much felt like explaining his origins to white-skinned Europeans who didn’t care to know the difference between Shanghai and Rangoon, given the troubles in India, it was not actually a good idea for Magnus to be taken for Indian. He sighed and disclaimed, made his introduction and his bow.

  “Herondale,” said Edmund, bowing too. Edmund’s golden assurance and open smile did their work.

  “New to the club?” Alvanley asked, suddenly benevolent. “Well, well. It’s a celebration. May I offer you both another drink?”

  Alvanley’s friends, some at the car
d table and some milling about, raised a discreet cheer. Queen Victoria had, so the happy report went, risen safe from childbed, and both mother and daughter were doing admirably.

  “Drink to the health of our new Princess Beatrice, and to the queen!”

  “Doesn’t the poor woman have nine children?” asked Magnus. “By the ninth I would think she would be too exhausted to think of a new name, and certainly too fatigued to rule a country. I will drink to her health by all means.”

  Edmund was very ready to be plied with more drinks, though at one point he slipped up and referred to the queen as Vanessa rather than Victoria.

  “Ahahaha,” said Magnus. “He is on the ran-tan, and no mistake!”

  Edmund was noindentushed with drink and almost immediately got absorbed in a card game. Magnus joined in playing Macao as well, but he found himself observing the Shadowhunter with some concern. People who blithely believed that the world owed them good luck could be dangerous at the gaming table. Add to that the fact that Edmund clearly craved excitement, and his kind of temperament was the very one most suited for disaster at play. There was something unsettling about the glitter of the boy’s eyes suddenly, changed by the light of the club’s wax candles, from being like a sky to being like a sea an instant before a storm.

  Edmund, Magnus decided, put him in mind of nothing so much as a boat—a shining beautiful thing, buffeted by the whims of the water and winds. Only time would tell if he would find anchor and harbor, or if all that beauty and charm would be reduced to a wreck.

  All imaginings aside, there was no need for Magnus to play nursemaid to Shadowhunters. Edmund was a man full-grown and able to care for himself. It was Magnus who grew bored in the end, and coaxed Edmund out of White’s for a sobering walk in the night air.

  They had not wandered far from St. James’s Street when Magnus paused in his retelling of a certain incident in Peru because he felt Edmund come to attention next to him, every line of that angelic athlete’s body suddenly tensed. He brought to mind forcibly a pointer dog hearing an animal in the undergrowth.

  Magnus followed the line of Edmund’s sight until he saw what the Shadowhunter was seeing: a man in a bowler hat, his hand set firmly on a carriage door, having what appeared to be an altercation with the occupants of the carriage.

  It was shockingly uncivil, and but a moment later it became worse. The man had hold of a woman’s arm, Magnus saw. She was dressed plainly, as befit an abigail or lady’s maid. The man tried to wrench her from the carriage by main force.

  He would have succeeded but for the interference of the other occupant of the carriage, a small dark lady, this one in a gown that rustled like silk as her voice rang out like thunder.

  “Unhand her, you wretch!” said the lady, and she belabored the man about the head with her bonnet.

  The man started at the unexpected onslaught and let go of the woman, but turned his attention to the lady and grasped the hand holding the bonnet instead. The woman gave a shout that seemed more outrage than terror, and struck him in the nose. The man’s face turned slightly at the blow, and Magnus and Edmund were both able to see his eyes.

  There was no mistaking the void behind those brilliant poison-green eyes. Demon, Magnus thought. A demon, and a hungry one, to be trying to abduct women from carriages in a London street.

  A demon, and a very unlucky one, to do so in front of a Shadowhunter.

  It did occur to Magnus that Shadowhunters generally hunted in groups, and that Edmund Herondale was inebriated.

  “Very well,” Magnus said. “Let us pause for a moment and consider— Oh, you have already run off. Splendid.”

  He found himself addressing Edmund’s coat, wrenched off and left in a heap upon the cobblestones, and his hat, spinning gently beside it.

  Edmund jumped and somersaulted in midair, vaulting neatly onto the roof of the carriage. As he did so, he drew weapons from the concealing folds of his garments: the two whips he had spoken of before, arcs of sizzling light against the night sky. He wielded them with cutting precision, their light waking golden fire in his tousled hair and casting a glow on his carved features, and by that light Magnus saw his face change from a laughing boy’s to the stern countenance of an angel.

  One whip curled around the demon’s waist like a gentleman’s hand around a lady’s waist during a waltz. The other wrapped as tight as wire about his throat. Edmund twisted one hand, and the demon spun, crashing to the ground.

  “You heard the lady,” said Edmund. “Unhand her.”

  The demon, his teeth suddenly much more numerous than before, snarled and lunged for the carriage. Magnus raised his hand and made the carriage door noindenty shut and the carriage jolt forward a few paces, despite the fact that the carriage driver was missing—presumed eaten—and despite the Shadowhunter who was still standing atop it.

  Edmund did not lose his balance. As surefooted as a cat, he simply leaped down to the ground and struck the Eidolon demon a blow across the face with his whip, sending him noindentying backward again. Edmund landed a foot upon the demon’s throat, and Magnus saw the creature begin to writhe, its outlines blurring into a changing shape.

  He heard the creak of a carriage door being opened and saw the lady who had punched the demon essaying to emerge from relative safety to the demon-haunted street.

  “Ma’am,” Magnus said, advancing. “I must counsel you not to exit the carriage while a demon-slaying is in progress.”

  She looked him full in the face. She had large dark blue eyes, the color of the sky immediately before night turned it black, and the hair slipping from her elaborate coiffure was black, as if night had come with no stars. Though her beautiful eyes were very wide, she did not look frightened, and the hand that had struck the demon was still clenched in a fist.

  Magnus made a silent vow to come to London far more often in the future. He was meeting the most delightful people.

  “We must render assistance to that young man,” said the lady, in a lilting musical accent.

  Magnus glanced over to Edmund, who was at present being thrown against a wall and who was bleeding rather profusely, but grinning and sliding a dagger from his boot with one hand as he choked the demon with the other.

  “Do not be alarmed, dear lady. He has the matter well in hand,” he said as Edmund slid the dagger home. “So to speak.”

  The demon gurgled and thrashed in its death throes. Magnus made the decision to ignore the furor behind him, and made the two women a superb bow. It did not seem to console the maidservant, who shrank into the shadowed recesses of the carriage and attempted to crawl into a pocket handkerchief, face foremost.

  The lady of the shining ebony hair and pansy eyes let go her hold on the carriage door and gave Magnus her hand instead. Her hand was small, soft, and warm; she was not even trembling.

  “I am Magnus Bane,” said Magnus. “Call on me for aid at any time of mortal danger, or if in urgent need of an escort to a noindentower show.”

  “Linette Owens,” said the lady, and dimpled. She had delicious dimples. “I heard the capital held many dangers, but this seems excessive.”

  “I am aware that all this must seem very strange and frightening to you.”

  “Is that man an evil faerie?” Miss Owens inquired. She met Magnus’s startled look with her own steady gaze. “I am from Wales,” she said. “We still believe in the old ways and the fey folk there.”

  She tipped her head back to scrutinize Magnus. Her crown of midnight-colored plaits seemed like it had to be too massive for such a small head, on such a slender neck.

  “Your eyes . . . ,” she said slowly. “I believe you must be a good faerie, sir. What your companion is, I cannot tell.”

  Magnus glanced over his shoulder at his companion, who he had almost forgotten was there. The demon was darkness and dust at Edmund’s feet, and with his foe well and truly vanquished, Edmund had turned his attention to the carriage. Magnus observed the spark of Edmund’s golden charm kindle at the sight
of Linette, blooming from candle to sun in an instant.

  “What am I?” he asked. “I am Edmund Herondale, and, my lady, I am always and forever at your service. If you will have me.”

  He smiled, and the smile was slow and devastating. In the dark narrow street long past midnight, his eyes were high summer.

  “I do not mean to seem indelicate or ungrateful,” said Linette Owens, “but are you a dangerous lunatic?”

  Edmund blinked.

  “I fear I must point out that you are walking the streets armed to the teeth. Did you expect to do battle with a monstrous creature this night?”

  “Not ‘expect’ exactly,” said Edmund.

  “Then are you an assassin?” asked Linette. “Are you an overzealous soldier?”

  “Madam,” said Edmund. “I am a Shadowhunter.”

  “I am not familiar with the word. Can you do magic?” Linette asked, and placed her hand on Magnus’s sleeve. “This gentleman can do magic.”

  She bestowed an approving smile on Magnus. Magnus was extremely gratified.

  “Honored to be of assistance, Miss Owens,” he murmured.

  Edmund looked as if he had been struck about the face with a fish.

  “Of course—of course I can’t do magic!” he managed to splutter out, sounding in true Shadowhunter fashion appalled by the very idea.

  “Oh, well,” said Linette, clearly rather disappointed. “That is not your fault. We all make do with what we have. I am indebted to you, sir, for saving me and my friend from an unspeakable fate.”

  Edmund preened, and in his pleasure spoke incautiously. “Think nothing of it. It would be my honor to escort you to your home, Miss Owens. The streets about Mall Pall can be very treacherous for women at night.”

  There was a silence.

  “Do you mean Pall Mall?” Linette asked, and smiled slightly. “I am not the one overset by strong liquor. Should you like me to escort you home instead, Mr. Herondale?”

  Edmund Herondale was left at a loss for words. Magnus suspected it was a novel experience, and one that would probably be good for him.