Quite magical

Chapter Thirty-Six

POV Alec

" ... and when we were in Rome together Magnus almost burned down one of the dancing clubs we were always going to" Ragnor finished his sentence and made Simon choke on his pizza.

"What?! How on earth did that happen?" he asked incredulously.

"Don't listen to that guy" Magnus said with his mouth full before Ragnor had the chance to answer. "He's a liar. He lets everybody believe that he's dead for years now while in reality he's obviously not."

At that Simon's eyes grew even bigger. Jace, Max and Izzy looked impressed as well.

"Really? Wow that's so cool. You can basically do anything then when everybody believes you're dead!"

Ragnor smirked and took a sip of the wine Magnus had offered him. "Exactly. But you always have to be careful not to get caught by annoying Shadowhunters."

"Yeah, you're right" Max said, his enthusiasm visibly fading. "That's a problem of course."

After the delivery guy had brought the food they had all sat down in the living room again and were eating together. In the meantime Ragnor was telling them stories about his past vacations with Magnus and even though most of them were very amusing and quite entertaining Alec just couldn't stop worrying about his boyfriend the whole time. Especially after the way Magnus had reacted to the allegedly unknown man approaching his window (who had turned out to be Ragnor) Alec knew that there was something wrong with him.

He had the feeling that Magnus was scared of somebody. That he thought that somebody was after him. But he didn't know what the truth was and that drove him completely crazy.

Lost in thought for the rest of the evening he didn't really listen to what Ragnor or the others were saying and barely participated in the conversation. Only when Izzy eventually declared that they needed to go home now because Maryse was waiting for them he raised his head and came back to reality again.

"And again thank you so much for everything" Magnus said while he was accompanying them all to the door. Alec realized that Ragnor was following them as well. "All your presents were absolutely perfect and you did so much for me ... I can't even put into words how much that meant to me. I've always hated celebrating my birthday but this year it was absolutely fantastic. You really are the best friends one could wish for."

"Awww Magnus I'm so happy to hear that" Izzy said touched and hugged him carefully. Clary did the same but Alec couldn't hear what she was saying because in that moment Simon opened the door and bumped into a person who had just arrived in front of the house. The person turned out to be Catarina and when Simon collided with her he made her drop the quite huge stack of books she was carrying.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry - I didn't see you" Simon apologized and hastily started picked up the books from the floor.

Catarina assured him that everything was alright multiple times but of course that didn't stop the nerd with the glasses from rambling on nervously. Alec suddenly felt very reminded of the Simon's first encounter with his sister and he chuckled quietly.

"I thought your glasses were supposed to prevent such things" Jace said amused but then he knelt down as well in order to help Simon.

Alec did the same thing and grabbed a thick book that was lying right next to his feet. It was very heavy and looked rather old. The brown binding wasn't exactly in the best shape and some of the letters from the title were slowly starting to peel off. Nevertheless Alec was still able to read what it said: "Transfer of magic - how does it work and what are the risks?"