Lost Book of the White snippet
The Tracking rune had led them into one of the remaining pockets of old Shanghai, from before the wide boulevards and the shining silver malls. They had to walk in single file to avoid blocking the way for pedestrians and cyclists. And it was still crowded here, too, everywhere a flow of people, bicycles, ani- mals, like a rushing river, in a way that reminded Magnus of a dozen cities he’d been to that were always the same and yet always new. Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Jakarta, Tokyo, New York …
Magnus hadn’t told anyone yet, but he felt something within his chest, a swelling node of magic. Not evil magic, he thought. Not even alien magic. His own magic, pooling within him. It was creating a kind of aura at the edges of his vision, bright blue and sparkling. The aura seemed to pull and bend in response to other auras that Magnus wasn’t otherwise aware of.
He wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He guessed they would find Ragnor, then through Ragnor find Shinyun, and hopefully she would explain the phenomenon to him. Or he hoped it could wait until they could do some research tomorrow.
Clary was examining a series of signs covered in felt-tip hand- writing, tacked up to the windows of a closed storefront. Magnus gestured above them. “It’s a hair salon. That’s just their menu.”
“Isabelle,” Simon stage-whispered. “Can we take home one of the chickens?”
“Yes,” said Isabelle. “You can take home as many as you can catch.”
“Don’t encourage him,” said Clary. To Magnus she said, “Is this the kind of place Ragnor would be?”
Magnus looked around at the narrow lanes, the concrete walls tacked with notices and ads and stenciled graffiti; he could smell animals and food and garbage and people living too close together, everything unchanged for decades in a place that seemed to be transforming itself hourly. “This is not really where Ragnor would live,” he said slowly. “But it is exactly where Ragnor would hide.”