Page 113 of Better in Black
“I’ll admit, I was surprised to hear they were together.” Max shook his head. “From what I remember of Robert Lightwood, he and Maryse were incredibly different. Robert was afraid of his own shadow, and Maryse was never afraid of anything.”
“But then they grew up,” said Clary. “And they changed.”
“Does that mean that Robert got braver, or that my sister learned to be afraid?” said Max quietly.
“I think a little of both,” Jace said. “Life wasn’t easy on either of them.”
Max paused, then said: “If Ididcome to the wedding, would I be able to come as myself? Max Travis, ex-Shadowhunter, current mundane?”
Jace and Clary exchanged a look. Clary realized in that moment that they should have discussed this before, come up with some kind of answer to the sorts of questions Max would obviously ask if they got that far. Maybe they just hadn’t believed that would really happen. But now it had, and they didn’t have an answer.
“I mean, you could always—” Clary began.
“Magnus could help us with a disguise for you,” said Jace.
Max’s eyes crinkled as he frowned wearily. “A disguise,” he echoed. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought.”
—
The final errand was less of an errand and more of a meal. If you could use that word to describe two slices of stale, flavorless, not-worthy-of-the-name pizza.
“Best pizza in town,” Max had promised them.
“I’m sorry to inform you, but this is not pizza,” Jace said. “This is…this is like if you rolled a slice of Wonder Bread into a tube and called it a bagel.”
Max laughed. “Go on, tell me how all pizza is inferior to the holy New York City slice.”
“You disagree?” Clary said.
Max shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. I’ve never gotten close enough to try one.”
“You live two hours from the city and you’ve never…” Clary trailed off. Of course he’d stayed away from New York City. He knew who lived there.
On the other hand, he was the one who’d chosen to live only ninety miles away.
Clary forced down another flavorless bite of pizza. “I know you don’t want us to tell you anything about Maryse’s life now, but—”
Max tensed. “I told you, I have my reasons.”
“But,”she pressed on, “will you tell us about what she was like? When you were kids?”
“Oh.” Max hesitated, looking off into the distance as if, were he to stare hard enough, he could see straight into the past. Then he smiled, with only a hint of pain. “I’m guessing a lot like she is now. Even as a little girl, Maryse was like a forty-year-old woman stuck in a five-year-old’s body. Strong. A little bossy, very insistent on following the rules. At least when it suited her.”
Clary laughed. “Sounds familiar.”
“All good qualities to have in a mother, I imagine,” he said to Jace. “Occasionally annoying in a little sister. And man, she hated being so much younger. Especially once I was old enough that my parents started taking me out on patrols.”
Jace looked down, a trace of pain on his face. Clary wondered if he was thinking of the other Max, and how desperately impatient he’d been to grow up.
“Shehatedbeing left behind at home. She always said it was because she wanted the chance to fight—but I think she was just terrified that we wouldn’t come home again.”
Max seemed like he’d forgotten they were there. Like he’d forgottenhewas there, in the present day, in the mundane suburbs, and not back in Idris, with his baby sister. Clary kept very quiet, afraid to remind him.
“She never let me leave until I promised her I’d be back.You big-brother swear it?she asked me once, and after that, I said it every time.Big-brother swear I’ll come home.A bit of a promise, a bit of a prayer. I always wondered if it saved my life now and then—if I fought a little harder, not wanting to disappoint her.” He sighed. “I said it again when I left on my travel year. And I did come home, that time. I couldn’t have known I would come home different.” He fell silent.
The moment stretched on. Clary didn’t want to break the spell, but decided to risk it. “Was that when you met your wife?”
He nodded. “I was in London. I’d gotten interested in ancient civilizations. That was the year I discovered how much the so-called mundane world had to offer. How much we were depriving ourselves of by walling ourselves away.”
