A Malec Story

Chapter 51: Something's wrong

Magnus

It was getting late. Magnus was listening to Tchaikovsky and writing a note to Tessa, asking her if she could send him more information on binding rituals from the Spiral Labyrinth. He heard the front door open and footsteps approaching. He looked up to find Alec with Chairman Meow in his arms, standing in the doorway of the study. He looked as if he wasn't entirely comfortable.

"The Chairman likes you," Magnus commented.

"He likes anyone who scratches behind his ears," Alec said.

Magnus flexed his muscles, leaned back and yawned. He was exhausted from hours on end searching for anything that could help with finding out what had happened to Jace.

"How was the Seelie Queen?" he asked Alec.

"Same as usual." Alec said.

"Raging bitch, then?"

"Pretty much. She wants us to get her rings. Seelie rings which are in the Institute." Alec said, "Clary's going to steal them for her."

"I worry about Clary," said Magnus. "I worry she's getting in over her little red head."

Clary was in love, Magnus understood that. It was why she would move heaven and earth to get Jace back, and that made it dangerous.

"She wants to find Jace." Alec said, while dropping the Chairman down on the desk. "Can you blame her?"

Magnus looked up at Alec and hooked a finger in his jeans to pull him closer. "Are you saying you'd do the same thing if it were me?" he asked, smiling a little.

But Alec turned away and stared at the desk, looking at the scribbles and the runes, ignoring his question. "You looking at these again?"

Magnus's heart fell as he let him go and looked down on the papers. "There's got to be a key to unlocking them. Some language I haven't looked at yet. Something ancient. This is old black magic, very dark, not like anything I've ever seen before."

His eye fell on a scribble in the corner of one of the papers. He tilted his head a little, wanting to look at it at another angle.

"Can you hand me that snuffbox over there? The silver one, on the edge of the table." He asked Alec, gesturing to the other end of the desk.

"What is this?" Alec asked as he took the box.

"It's a snuffbox," said Magnus, shifting one of the papers. "I told you."

"Snuff? As in snuffing people out?"

Magnus looked up at him, and couldn't help but laugh. "As in tobacco. It was very popular around the seventeenth, eighteenth century. Now I use the box to keep odds and ends in."

Alec handed him the box and he took it, intending to open it, but then Alec started talking.

"Do you ever wonder," Alec said, but he broke off his sentence. Magnus looked up at him, arching his eyebrows.

"Does it bother you that Camille's out there somewhere? That she got away?" Alec asked

"She's always been out there somewhere," said Magnus. "I know the Clave isn't terribly pleased, but I'm used to imagining her living her life, not contacting me. If it ever bothered me, it hasn't in a long time."

"But you did love her. Once."

Magnus ran his fingers over the diamond insets in the snuffbox. "I thought I did."

"Does she still love you?"

"I don't think so," Magnus said, thinking back at how Camille had used him. "She wasn't very pleasant the last time I saw her. Of course that could be because I've got an eighteen-year-old boyfriend with a stamina rune and she doesn't." He smiled.