The Bane Chronicles 1: What Really Happened in Peru (7 page)
Read The Bane Chronicles 1: What Really Happened in Peru Online
Authors: Sarah Rees Brennan Cassandra Clare
He pulled Kitty into an alleyway. She was still laughing, and undoing the buttons of her blouse.
“It will probably take them a little longer,” she murmured, the mother-of-pearl buttons parting enough to show the sudden rich flash of emeralds and rubies, “to realize that I also stole all his mother’s jewels.”
She gave Magnus a little saucy smile. Magnus burst out laughing.
“Do you con a lot of annoying rich men?”
“And their mothers,” said Kitty. “I could probably have taken them for the whole family fortune, or at least the silver, but a handsome man asked me to run away with him, and I thought,
What the hell
.”
The sound of pursuit was closer now.
“You are about to be very glad you did,” Magnus told her. “Since you showed me yours, I believe it’s only fair I show you mine.”
He snapped his fingers, making sure to trail blue sparks to impress the lady. Kitty was clever enough to realize what was going on as soon as one of the first pursuers glanced down the alleyway and ran on.
“They can’t see us,” she breathed. “You turned us invisible.”
Magnus raised his eyebrows and made a gesture of display. “As you see,” he said. “And they don’t.”
Magnus had seen humans shocked and scared and amazed by his power. Kitty flung herself into his arms.
“Tell me, handsome stranger,” she said. “How do you feel about a life of magical crime?”
“Sounds like an adventure,” said Magnus. “But promise me something. Promise we will always steal from the irritating and spend the cash on booze and useless trinkets.”
Kitty pressed a kiss to his mouth. “I swear.”
They fell in love, not even for a mortal lifetime but for a mortal summer, a summer of laughing and running and being wanted by the law in several different countries.
In the end Magnus’s favorite memory of that summer was an image he had never seen: that last picture on Geoffrey’s camera, of a man trailing bright colors and a woman hiding them beneath a white blouse, both smiling because they knew a joke he did not.
Magnus’s sudden turn to a life of crime, shockingly enough, was not the reason he was banned from Peru either. The High Council of Peruvian warlocks met in secret, and a letter was sent to Magnus several months later announcing that he had been banned from Peru, on pain of death, for “crimes unspeakable.” Despite his inquiries, he never received an answer to the question of what he had been banned for. To this day, whatever it is that actually got him banned from Peru is—and perhaps must always remain—a mystery.
CASSANDRA CLARE is the author of the
New York Times
,
USA Today
,
Wall Street Journal
, and
Publishers Weekly
bestselling Mortal Instruments series and Infernal Devices trilogy. Her books have more than twenty million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts.
Visit her online at
www.cassandraclare.com
.
SARAH REES BRENNAN was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. After living briefly in New York and London, she returned to Ireland to write. The first in her Demon’s Lexicon series received three starred reviews and was an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults. Her latest book is
Unspoken
, a romantic Gothic mystery.
Unspoken
and
Team Human
, a novel cowritten with Justine Larbalestier, are both YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults picks and TAYSHAS picks. Sarah’s Irish is still woeful, but she feels the books under the desk were worth it. Come visit her at
www.sarahreesbrennan.com
, and she’ll teach you how to say “hello” in Irish.
Also by Cassandra Clare
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS
City of Bones
City of Ashes
City of Glass
City of Fallen Angels
City of Lost Souls
THE INFERNAL DEVICES
Clockwork Angel
Clockwork Prince
Clockwork Princess
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.
First published in Great Britain 2013 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2013 Cassandra Claire LLC
Cover photo-illustration © 2013 Cliff Nielsen
The right of Cassandra Clare to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-5202-3 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-1-4063-5201-6 (ePub)
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