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Ty shook his head. The fairy lights shed colored patches of illumination over his pale skin. “I mean, than you used to be.”

“That makes sense.” Kit wondered if they were getting too close to all the things they’d promised not to talk about. “Most people would. The difference between fifteen and nineteen is a big one.”

“Have I changed?” Ty asked, and Kit knew he wasn’t angling for a compliment. He was honestly curious, and he’d expect an honest answer.

“Well, yes.” Kit looked down, away, anywhere but directly at Ty. “You’ve got more confidence, you…” God, this is hard. “You’re more grounded,” he said, a little desperately. “Calmer. It’s like you know yourself better. Maybe because you have the words now…”

His voice trailed off as Ty reached out to him across the table, resting the fingers of his right hand lightly on Kit’s wrist. Kit felt his pulse speed up, and wondered if Ty could feel it. His skin turned hot, then cold; his mouth was dry.

Kit had had girlfriends, and even a boyfriend, back in England. None of them had been able to make him feel anything like this by just touching his wrist.

He wondered what would have happened if he’d said, The way that you look at things makes me rethink everything I thought I knew about beauty. The way you talk makes me rethink everything I thought I knew about music.

“I’ll be right back,” Ty said, suddenly, and slid off his chair. A moment later, he had vanished into the crowd.

Kit waited for him to come back long enough to start feeling silly. He wondered if strangers were looking at him pityingly, assuming he had just been ditched by a gorgeous but emotionally unavailable internet date. If you only knew, Kit thought. He jumped down from his barrel and followed Ty into the depths of the bar.

He found Ty standing in front of a doorway tucked into a corner of the half-ruined west wall. The wooden face of the door itself was decorated with a mosaic mural made from bits of broken and painted glass. The shimmer of the glass surrounded Ty, a sort of earthly halo.

He had pressed himself into the frame of the doorway, as if he found it comforting there. Maybe he did. Ty liked small spaces in the same way he liked weighted blankets and being held tightly. Kit remembered his arms around Ty on the roof of the London Institute, and his heart ached.

He tucked himself against the opposite side of the doorway. The ache was spreading, from his heart through his whole body. It was an ache like hunger, like missing something essential.

“Ty,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

Ty opened his eyes slowly. They were luminous, shining, fixed on a point near Kit’s ear. “I don’t know.” He sounded honestly bewildered. “There was this…old amplifier that Anush was trying to fix. To get it to work. But the wires were just hopelessly tangled up. They kept sparking but not connecting.” He shook his head, strands of dark hair falling across his face. “When I’m with you, it’s like that. My wires feel all tangled up. I can’t think.”

Kit felt a hot surge of emotion, part surprise and part relief and part happiness. It was beyond strange, feeling happy when his family was missing, but apparently it was possible to feel awful joy and awful worry at the same time.

“Ty.” He raised his hand, stroking his fingertips across Ty’s cheekbone. His thumb tipped down, grazing Ty’s lower lip—the quickest brush of contact.

“I can’t think around you, either,” Kit whispered.

Ty’s hand rose to grip Kit’s shoulder, and for a moment they leaned together, their bodies almost touching. Ty smelled of vinegar and apples and it was all Kit could do not to lunge at him, crush him against the wall, kiss him so hard he imprinted himself on Ty, made a mark that would last forever.

Ty drew away first. “We should go.” His voice was soft, reluctant but firm, as if he was trying to steady himself. “If we don’t meet the next Guardian…”

Kit understood. The Shadow Market wasn’t every night. If they missed their connection tonight, they’d have to wait in Budapest, giving the Riders a chance to catch up to them. And that would be very bad.

“I know.” Kit drew back, too. He was aware that some people in the bar were looking at them curiously. He didn’t care. He reached up to push Ty’s hair out of his eyes, nodded once, and followed Ty out of the ruin bar, onto the street.

As they headed out, Kit looked back once, catching a glimpse of the doorway they’d just left. He hadn’t known what shape the mosaic on the door made; their bodies had been blocking it. He could see it now, and he paused for a moment, frowning. The mosaic was the face of a laughing devil, horns curling up from its temples, its eyes full of the dancing light of flames. Above it someone had spray-painted what looked like some kind of poetry across the wall: I am the hole in the heart of the world. I am the destruction that does not relent. I am the last light before the darkness.

Creepy, Kit thought, and turned to follow Ty out into the night.

Magnus

Magnus couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the New York Institute without Alec.

This was Alec’s world, the Consul’s world. A Shadowhunter world. When Alec and the others were here, Magnus rarely thought about it. But without them he couldn’t help but remember the many years when he’d thought of Shadowhunters as very uneasy allies. Now they were some of the most important people in his life.

He’d holed himself up in the library. It was where all the maps, books, and charts were, after all. And the space reminded him of Alec; this was the place he’d seen Alec for the last time.

Not the last time, he corrected himself. Alec isn’t dead. And while Alec was gone, it was Magnus’s responsibility to protect the people they both loved.

Maryse had taken Rafe and Max to her mundane brother’s house, so that if she too disappeared, there would be someone to watch them. Magnus missed them painfully, but they would be at their safest in a mundane’s house.

He wasn’t sure how many Shadowhunters had vanished by this point. Whatever malevolent force was responsible, they seemed to be snatching the staff of Institutes and any other Shadowhunter who was influential within the Clave. Diego, the Inquisitor, had also disappeared, and any fire-messages Magnus sent to the inhabitants of other Institutes came back unread. He’d stopped trying to contact Shadowhunters after that.