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the Thames on a hot day. Will wrinkled his nose. The footman looked at him with even more loathing. “Mr. Bane is in the drawing room.” His voice indicated that there was no chance whatsoever that he was going to accompany Will there. “Shall I take your coat?”
    “That won’t be necessary.” Coat still on, Will followed the scent of magic down the corridor. It intensified as he drew nearer to the door of the drawing room, which was firmly closed. Tendrils of smoke threaded out from the gap beneath the door. Will took a deep breath of sour air, and pushed the door open.
    The inside of the drawing room looked peculiarly bare. After a moment Will realized that this was because Magnus had taken all the heavy teak furniture, even the piano, and pushed it up against the walls. An ornate gasolier hung from the ceiling, but the light in the room was provided by dozens of thick black candles arranged in a circle in the center of the room. Magnus stood beside the circle, a book open in his hands; his old-fashioned cravat was loosened, and his black hair stood up wildly about his face as if charged with electricity. He looked up when Will came in, and smiled. “Just in time!” he cried. “I really think we may have him this round. Will, meet Thammuz, a minor demon from the eighth dimension. Thammuz, meet Will, a minor Shadowhunter from—Wales, was it?”
    “I will rip out your eyes,” hissed the creature sitting in the center of the burning circle. It was certainly a demon, no more than three feet high, with pale blue skin, three coal black, burning eyes, and long blood-red talons on its eight-fingered hands. “I will tear the skin from your face.”
    “Don’t be rude, Thammuz,” said Magnus, and although his tone was light, the circle of candles blazed suddenly, brightly upward, causing the demon to shrink in on itself with a scream. “Will has questions. You will answer them.”
    Will shook his head. “I don’t know, Magnus,” he said. “He doesn’t look like the right one to me.”
    “You said he was blue. This one’s blue.”
    “He is blue,” Will acknowledged, stepping closer to the circle of flame. “But the demon I need—well, he was really a cobalt blue. This one’s more . . . periwinkle.”
    “What did you call me?” The demon roared with rage. “Come closer, little Shadowhunter, and let me feast upon your liver! I will tear it from your body while you scream.”
    Will turned to Magnus. “He doesn’t sound right either. The voice is different. And the number of eyes.”
    “Are you sure—”
    “I’m absolutely sure,” said Will in a voice that brooked no contradiction. “It’s not something I would ever—could ever—forget.”
    Magnus sighed and turned back to the demon. “Thammuz,” he said, reading aloud from the book. “I charge you, by the power of bell and book and candle, and by the great names of Sammael and Abbadon and Moloch, to speak the truth. Have you ever encountered the Shadowhunter Will Herondale before this day, or any of his blood or lineage?”
    “I don’t know,” said the demon petulantly. “Humans all look alike to me.”
    Magnus’s voice rose, sharp and commanding. “Answer me!”
    “Oh, very well. No, I’ve never seen him before in my life. I’d remember. He looks as if he’d taste good.” The demon grinned, showing razor-sharp teeth. “I haven’t even been to this world for, oh, a hundred years, possibly more. I can never remember the difference between a hundred and a thousand. Anyway, the last time I was here, everyone was living in mud huts and eating bugs. So I doubt he was around” —he pointed a many-jointed finger at Will —“unless Earthkind lives much longer than I was led to believe.”
    Magnus rolled his eyes. “You’re just determined not to be any help at all, aren’t you?”
    The demon shrugged, a peculiarly human gesture. “You forced me to tell the truth. I told it.”
    “Well, then, have you ever heard of a demon like