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CHAPTER NINE:

❝ Dead Man's Party ❞

The directions on the invitation took them to a largely industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn whose streets were lined with factories and warehouses. Some, Esme could see, had been converted into lofts and galleries, but there was still something forbidding about their looming square shapes, boasting only a few windows covered in iron grilles.

They made their way from the subway station, Isabelle navigating with the Sensor, which seemed to have a sort of mapping system built-in. Simon, who loved gadgets, was fascinated - or at least he was pretending it was the Sensor he was fascinated with. Hoping to avoid them, Clary lagged behind as they crossed through a scrubby park, its badly kept grass burned brown by the summer heat. And hoping to avoid everyone, Esme trudged forward alone, to her right the spires of a church gleamed gray and black against the starless night sky. She remembered the last time she'd been in a church. Her mother had been asking for forgiveness the day before she forced her father out of the house. It was the day she had been the proudest of her mother. Wind swept her blonde hair aside and in her face. She tucked it behind her ear again.

"Cold?"

"The jacket's surprisingly warm, actually," she answered, surprised herself.

Nico chuckled. "Isabelle's clothes are practical?" the question seemed to be rhetoric.

"Our sister," it's Alec's voice, sharp and tinged with distaste, "won't like that."

"Oh, you wouldn't - " Nico went to protest and Esme turned around, walking backwards not wanting to miss the fight between the brothers but Nico's gaze focused elsewhere and he trailed off. His eyes were glittering - as if all the stars of the night sky were captured in them. He looked like a little kid and she swore she almost saw him jump with excitement. "Hey, is that - " he started but Alec was already calling for his parabatai.

"Jace!" They paused on the pavement, not far away.

Jace turned, his hand falling away from Clary's shoulder. "Yes?"

"Think we're in the right place?" Alec was pointing at something Esme couldn't see; it was hidden behind the bulk of a large black car. 

"What's that?" Jace joined Alec and Nico; Esme heard him laugh. Coming around the car, she saw what they were looking at as Clary joined her: several motorcycles, sleek and silvery, with low-slung black chassis. Oily-looking tubes and pipes slithered up and around them, ropy as veins. There was a queasy sense of something organic about the bikes, like the bio-creatures in a Giger painting. "Vampires," Jace said.

"They look like motorcycles to me," said Simon, joining them with Isabelle at his side.

 She frowned at the bikes. "They are, but they've been altered to run on demon energies," she explained. "Vampires use them - it lets them get around fast at night. It's not strictly Covenant, but . . ."

"I've heard some of the bikes can fly," said Alec eagerly. He sounded like Simon with a new video game. 

"Or go invisible at the flick of a switch," added Nico. "Or operate underwater."

Jace had jumped down off the curb and was circling the bikes, examining them. He reached out a hand and stroked one of the bikes along the sleek chassis. It had words painted along the side, in silver: nox invictus. "Victorious night," he translated.

Alec was looking at him strangely. "What are you doing?"

Clary thought she saw Jace slide his hand back inside his jacket. "Nothing."

"Well, hurry up," said Isabelle. "I didn't get this dressed up to watch you mess around in the gutter with a bunch of motorcycles."

"They are pretty to look at," said Jace, hopping back up on the pavement. "You have to admit that."

"So am I," said Isabelle, who didn't look inclined to admit anything. Esme had to applaud her self-confidence and in good faith. "Now hurry up."

Jace was looking at Clary. "This building," he said, pointing at the red brick warehouse. "Is this the one?"

Clary exhaled. "I think so," she said uncertainly. "They all look the same."

"One way to find out," said Isabelle, mounting the steps with a determined stride. The rest of them followed, crowding close to one another in the foul smelling entryway. A naked bulb hung from a cord overhead, illuminating a large metal-bound door and a row of apartment buzzers along the left wall. Only one had a name written over it: BANE. 

Isabelle pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. She was about to press it a third time when Alec caught her wrist. "Don't be rude," he said. 

She glared at him. "Alec - " The door flew open. A slender man standing in the doorway regarded them curiously. It was Isabelle who recovered herself first, flashing a brilliant smile. "Magnus? Magnus Bane?"

"That would be me." The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. Esme guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue, darker than hers but not her mother. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully. "Children of the Nephilim," he said. "Well, well. I don't recall inviting you."

Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. "I have an invitation. These - " she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm - "are my friends."

Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. "I must have been drunk," he said. He threw the door open. "Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests."

Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?"

"Even then." Magnus's hand shot out, so fast it was barely a blur. He plucked the stele out of Jace's hand - Clary hadn't even realized he was holding it - and held it up. Jace looked faintly abashed. "As for this," Magnus said, sliding it into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter."

Magnus grinned and started up the stairs, leaving a surprised-looking Jace holding the door. "Come on," he said, waving the rest of them inside. "Before anyone thinks it's my party."

They pushed past Jace, laughing nervously. Only Isabelle stopped to shake her head. "Try not to piss him off, please. Then he won't help us." 

Jace looked bored. "I know what I'm doing."

"I hope so." Isabelle flounced past him in a swirl of skirts.

Magnus's apartment was at the top of a long flight of rickety stairs. Simon hurried to catch up with Clary, who was regretting having put her hand on the banister to steady herself. It was sticky with something that glowed a faint and sickly green.

"Yech," said Simon, and offered her a corner of his T-shirt to wipe her hand on. She did. "Is everything all right? You seem - distracted."

"He just looks so familiar. Magnus, I mean."

"You think he goes to St. Xavier's?"

"Very funny." She looked at her sourly.

"You're right. He's too old to be a student. I think I had him for chem last year." Clary laughed out loud and Esme cracked an all-teeth grin. Immediately Isabelle was beside them, breathing down Clary's neck. "Am I missing something funny? Simon?"

Simon had the grace to look embarrassed but said nothing. Clary muttered, "You're not missing anything," and dropped behind them. Esme's phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans and she fished it out. MOM flashed across the screen but she declined the call and put it on silent. When she looked back up, most of her group had already climbed only Alec seemed to have lingered back, hesitant to go in. She climbed up the stairs and paused beside him.

Timidly, she asked, "Do you want me to hold your hand?"

He screwed his face into a scowl and grumbled before continuing forward and she followed, taking two steps at a time to keep pace.

She was in awe as soon as she walked through Magnus's front door. The loft was huge and almost totally empty of furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows were smeared with a thick film of dirt and paint, blocking out most of the ambient light from the street. Big metal pillars wound with colored lights held up an arched, sooty ceiling. Doors were torn off their hinges and laid across dented metal garbage cans made a makeshift bar at one end of the room. A lilac-skinned woman in a metallic bustier was ranging drinks along the bar in tall, harshly colored glasses that tinted the fluid inside them: blood red, cyanosis blue, poison green. Even for a New York bartender, she worked with an amazingly speedy efficiency - probably helped along by the fact that she had a second set of long, graceful arms to go with the first. Esme was reminded of Luke's Indian goddess statue. 

The rest of the crowd was just as strange. A good-looking boy with wet green-black hair grinned at her over a platter of what looked like raw fish. His teeth were sharp and serrated, like a shark's. Beside him stood a girl with long dirty blond hair, braided with flowers. Under the skirt of her short green dress, her feet were webbed like a frog's. A group of young women so pale Esme wondered if they were wearing white stage makeup sipped scarlet liquid too thick to be wine from fluted crystal glasses. The center of the room was packed with bodies dancing to the pounding beat that bounced off the walls, though she couldn't see a band anywhere.

"You like the party?" the voice was dulcet and calling and she turned to find a tanned boy looking at her with a poorly hidden appraisal. She leaned back and looked around - the crowd had swallowed her companions. On the edge of the dance floor, she spotted Simon and Isabelle but no one else. The boy's fingers ran along her arm and before she knew it his other arm had wound around her waist and his lips were pressed to hers. For the first few moments, Esme was aware she should push him off, she would, she was. But as the moments ticked, his lips started tasting like honey and her ears were ringing and she forgot her name. The ground under her opened and swallowed her whole. She was floating and flying and falling and drowning all at the same time. Her heart in her chest hammered right out of her rib cage and - 

She was yanked back away from the boy, hands clutching her shoulder tightly. Her ears were still buzzing and through it, she heard a muffled conversation that involved profused cursing and telling off. She was lightheaded and dizzy, and in her double-vision colors were swimming increasingly vibrant. She extended her hand forward and it came to rest against something hard; she leaned her head against it, too. A sound was bubbling in her ears as if rising from the bottom of the ocean before it finally broke the surface. "Esme."

She blinked.

Clear and crystal and sharp. "Esme?"

"Someone kissed me," she said still loopy, her voice slurred. "They had wings." They did not have wings.

"Hmpf." The voice rang in her ears and resonated under her hands and forehead that were still rested against the hard surface. Someone's chest. Blinking the daze out of her eyes, she tilted her head back at stared at him. 

Her eyes narrowed. Then, "Alec?"

There was nothing more satisfying than hearing that annoyed grumble under his breath. She smiled. Nico half-balanced her on her feet, her knees weak. He was holding her up by her elbows and examining her for any external injuries. Apparently, her lips were the only victims - they were red and swollen. Yet, she was smiling. Maybe she was not thinking straight. He looked over his shoulder back at the vampire getting lost in the crowd and frowned. When he turned back around, he was taken aback by her smile. It was an unnatural curl of her lips and for a moment he was reminded of Church. It was a secret smile. A smile that said she knew something he didn't. A smile that taunted him. And he hated it. He straightened her and said, "Let's see if they have water here." And he dragged her off to the side, her thoughts still intoxicated from the vampire's kiss.