Isabelle pressed the doorbell of the loft apartment, but the buzzing was drowned out by the party sounds that came from behind the door.
“They’re never gonna hear you,” said Simon.
“Actually, I think they will,” said Isabelle. She pulled out her stele and touched it to the doorbell, and an ear-shattering buzz shook the building.
The door opened to reveal a tall guy with cat eyes and a kimono, looking annoyed.
“Yes?” said the guy.
“Hi! Are you Magnus Bane?” said Isabelle.
“Maybe,” said the guy.
“We were invited to your party!” said Isabelle, holding up the e-vitation on her phone.
“Oh really?” said the guy. “That’s funny, because I don’t think I know you. What’s your name?”
“Well…actually, my friend invited me.”
“Uh huh,” said the guy. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
“Carrie!” said Isabelle.
The guy just kept staring at her.
“She might not have been on the original invite list, though,” said Isabelle. “But her friend was! I think his name is Dan? or Diana? Or something?”
Magnus rolled his eyes and waved them inside.
They walked in, and Isabelle handed Magnus a bottle of wine.
“Wow, one bottle for five people. Thanks!” said Magnus.
Clary glanced around and quickly realized this wasn’t the usual party crowd. It was strange. A woman with four arms was texting on four phones at once. A guy with webbed feet and serrated teeth like a shark was eating a raw fish. And a third person was drinking beer even though there was free hard alcohol available. Weird.
Clary was about to ask Simon to get her a drink when Isabelle whisked him off to the dance floor. Once they got there, Isabelle began grinding on Simon like she was giving him a lap dance. Clary burned with rage. The thing she valued most in life—an endless source of free meals, movies, and tickets to music festivals—was being ripped away from her. For a moment Clary forgot about the party, and felt like she was losing everything.
“Magnus Bane!”
Jace’s voice snapped Clary out of her spiral of despair. She looked up to see Jace putting his arm around Magnus.
“My friend, there’s something I need to ask you about,” said Jace.
“No, you can’t use the bathroom in my bedroom,” said Magnus.
“That wasn’t my question,” said Jace, “and I’m going to just use it anyway. My question is about Clary’s missing memories.” He pointed at Clary.
“Never seen her before tonight,” said Magnus.
“Then why did your name pop into her head when she visited the Silent Brothers?”
Magnus groaned and waved Jace and Clary into his bedroom.
“Come on, quick,” he said. “But do not use the bathroom.”
They all went inside and Magnus shut the door.
“So why’d you put a block on my memories, huh?” said Clary.
“Because your mother paid me to,” said Magnus.
“My mom? Not possible. She doesn’t have any money.”
“That’s probably because she was paying me $125,000 every two years to wipe your memories of anything related to the shadow world.”
“Every two years?” said Clary.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Magnus. “‘Shouldn’t a memory wipe be good for four, five years?’ Of course it should. I’m sorry, I tell customers ‘two’ because I’m trying to make a living. If you want, the next one’s on me.”
“I don’t want another memory wipe!” said Clary. “I want my memories back!”
Magnus frowned. “Well I can’t do that for free,” he said. “But I can offer you a discount price of $475,000.”
Jace took out his dagger. “We need those memories back,” he snarled.
“Fine, $450,000!” said Magnus.
“She doesn’t have $450,000. But you need to do it anyway, because it’s the key to finding the Mortal Keg before Valentine does.”
“Ahhhh, now I see what this is about,” said Magnus. “Look, being really hot myself, I’m sympathetic to your cause. So since you don’t have $450,000, here’s what I can do: I can give you the super discount special.”
“What’s that?” said Clary.
Magnus grabbed a large, ancient-looking book from the bookcase.
“I’ll teach you some secret tramp stamps that’ll help your memory come back,” said Magnus. “Your memories won’t return all at once, but it should be fast enough for your purposes.”
Magnus opened the book to a page showing a tramp stamp.
“What’s this one?” said Clary.
“It transfers $500 to my bank account,” said Magnus.
“Fine,” sighed Clary.
“Concentrate on it until you feel something change inside your mind,” said Magnus.
Clary stared at the tramp stamp, and then a vision of her bank balance popped into her head. She saw the balance go down by $500.
“I think it worked,” said Clary.
“We’d better check, just to make sure.” Magnus ran over to his computer and checked his banking webpage.
“Indeed it did!” he said happily. “Okay, now go to page 714.”
Clary turned to page 714 and saw it only had one word, “Remember!”, written in ancient script.
“Now turn the page,” said Magnus.
Clary did so. The next page just said, “Come on, remember!”
“Keep going,” said Magnus.
Clary turned to the next page, which said, “How long is it gonna take you, you idiot? Just remember already!”
“Annnnd one more,” said Magnus.
She turned the page again, and saw the words, “You really suck at remembering.”
Magnus closed the book.
“Super discount session is over. Believe me, you’ve gotten more than your money’s worth. Good luck in your search for the Mortal Instrument!”
“Mortal Instrument?” said Clary.
Jace nodded. “The Mortal Keg is one of several Mortal Instruments,” said Jace. “There’s also the mortal shot glass, the mortal funnel, the mortal mini-keg, and however many others are needed for sequels, depending on how popular this book series is.”
“Okay, out of my bedroom,” said Magnus.
“Hey one last thing,” said Jace. “Do you think you could memory-block this girl I hooked up with two weeks ago and make her forget we ever met? She keeps texting me and it’s really annoying.”
“Out!” said Magnus.
A minute after Clary and Jace left the bedroom, Isabelle approached in tears.
“Where have you been?” said Isabelle. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“What’s wrong?” said Clary.
“It’s Simon! He drank one of those blue drinks, even though I told him not to!”
“Oh no!” said Jace. “Did he transform into something?
Isabelle nodded. “He turned cool!”
Jace gasped.
“He actually knows how to talk to girls now,” whimpered Isabelle, “so I can no longer make him do whatever I want by holding out the prospect of sex he’ll never get otherwise, and that he doesn’t realize he’ll never get from me.”
“Where is he?” said Clary. She really needed to see this for herself.
“He got invited to this super awesome afterparty some vampires are having, and he already left!”
Jace shook his head. “How could you be so stupid?” he said. “If you were gonna let him transform, you should at least have gotten us the address to this awesome afterparty.” He sighed sadly. “I guess it’s Slurpees at 7-Eleven as usual.”
“Hey, maybe Magnus knows where the party is,” said Isabelle. She pointed at Magnus, who was walking by.
“Excuse me, Magnus?” said Jace.
“Yes, people who brought one bottle of wine?”
“Do you happen to know the address of this super awesome vampire afterparty that’s way better than this?” said Jace. Isabelle elbowed him. “I mean, just a little better than this? Our friend Simon went there after transforming into someone cool.”
“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” said Magnus.
“Why not?”
“Because the vampires saw someone taking a leak on one of their motorcycles earlier, and they suspect it was you.”
“Jace, did you really do that?” said Clary.
Jace shrugged. “I figured I’d better go before the party, in case the bathroom line was crazy long ‘cause the host was a jerk who wouldn’t let anyone use the bathroom in his bedroom.”
“Look, don’t worry about your friend,” Magnus. “The blue drinks have short effects. After a couple of hours he’ll turn back into a loser again.”
“And when he does, the vampires will realize he’s our friend and retaliate against him for the motorcycle!” said Isabelle.
“Come on Magnus, pleeeeease?” said Clary. “If you give us the address, I’ll give your memory manipulation business a good review on Yelp rather than the zero-star review I was going to give you.”
“Fine,” said Magnus. “It’s at the Hotel Dumbort. And remember, anything less than 5 stars isn’t a good review!”
“Let’s grab Alec and go,” said Jace.
“Um, I think he’s a little busy,” said Isabelle.
She pointed at Alec, who was across the room canoodling with a werewolf.
“Is that a werewolf?” said Jace.
“I’ll explain later,” said Isabelle. “I’d better go run some recon. If we’re gonna have some strange werewolf waking up at our place, I wanna at least make sure he’s not a total wacko.” She headed over toward Alec.
“Jace, come on!” said Clary. “We don’t have much time!”
“A werewolf?” said Jace, as Clary dragged him out the door.
