Lily fell silent. Alec knew he had to say something, but he didn’t know how. “Thanks, Lily,” he said at last. “Not for the information. Thanks for telling me.”

Lily smiled, as though she didn’t think what Alec had said was too dumb. “After London I traveled on and met Camille Belcourt in Russia. Camille was fun. She was bright and heartless and hard to hurt. I wanted to be like her. When Camille traveled to New York and became head of the vampire clan there, I went with her.”

Lily bowed her head. After a long moment sunk in memory, she looked up.

“Want to know something dumb? When Camille and I reached New York after the Great War,” she said brightly, “I looked around for Shadowhunters. Wasn’t that stupid? Most Shadowhunters are not like you or Jem or Cordelia. I encountered Nephilim who made it very clear the angelic warriors were not sent to shield a creature like me. I didn’t care about anybody, and nobody cared about me, and that was how it was, for decades and decades. It was really fun.”

“Was it?” Alec asked.

He kept his voice noncommittal. She sounded so brittle.

“The twenties in New York were the brightest time for both of us, when the whole world seemed as frenzied as we were. Decades later Camille was still trying to replicate them, and so was I, but even I thought Camille went too far sometimes. There was an emptiness in her she was always trying to fill. She’d permit her vampires to do anything. Once, in the 1950s, she let a very old vampire called Louis Karnstein stay at the hotel. He preyed on children. I thought he was disgusting, but I didn’t care much. I was very good at not caring by then.”

Lily shrugged and laughed. The sound was not convincing.

“Maybe I hoped the Shadowhunters would come, but they didn’t. Someone else came instead. A pack of scruffy mundane boys who wanted to defend their streets from the monster. They all died, except one. He always did what he set out to do. He killed the monster. He was my Raphael.”

Lily stroked the leather jacket where it lay in a heap on her bed.

“Before he killed the monster, Raphael was made into a vampire himself. Your Magnus came to Raphael’s aid, but I didn’t. Raphael could have died then, and I would never have even known. I met Raphael later. He came upon a bunch of us feeding in an alley and gave us a terrible lecture. He was so solemn, I thought he was funny. I didn’t take him seriously at all. But when he came to live at the hotel, I was pleased. Because hey, it seemed like more fun. Who doesn’t want more fun? There was nothing else in the world.”

Magnus had told Alec this story, though Magnus had never painted himself as anyone’s savior. It was strange to hear it from Lily, and stranger to hear knowing how the story ended.