Disclaimer: Credit for this chapter's first line goes to Laini Taylor's "Night of Cake and Puppets".

I'm sorry that this chapter has taken so long to be both written and published, and that it is so short! I hope to have another few up soon.

All reviews are appreciated. If you have enjoyed any or all of these chapters, or if you have any criticisms, they would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

The Altai Mountains, 1962

"... and Baba Yaga has been hunting me and Ragnor Fell ever since." The warlock paused and then cocked his head to listen at the window. "That doesn't sound like claws on the roof, does it, si-kecil?" He had to smile a little at the way the girl's eyes widened with trepidation. "Well, it's probably just crows. Good night." And then he clicked off the light and shut the door firmly behind himself, leaving the young girl to fall asleep to the imagined scrape of a child-eating witch scaling the rotting wooden roof.

Oh, how Magnus Bane loved having an apprentice.

Catarina Loss did not share his mirth.

"You will make a terrible father someday, Magnus," the blue-skinned warlock observed dryly. Her long star-white hair was dusted with a slender lattice of snow and ice from the extreme weather outside.

"Children," Magnus said dismissively, waving his hand theatrically. "Who wants anything to do with those? Mark my word, Catarina, I'll be rotting six feet under before I have anything to do with those vile creatures."

Sixty years later, Catarina would remind Magnus of these words as they sat together outside the palatial Herondale manor and watched the dark-haired Bane children chase their other father around the garden. Magnus would vehemently deny ever speaking them, to Catarina's amusement - but that would be then, and a part of another story.

"Just tell me one thing," Catarina said, her voice low as though she were afraid to wake the mundane girl. "What possessed you to take an apprentice? A mundane, at that?"

Magnus was silent for a moment, and the blue fire skipped shadows from his high cheekbones and sent light flickering in the hollows of his throat and brow. It sounded foolish that he, Magnus Bane, who had sworn to always retain a sense of wonder, to always fall in love, be surprised, be open to being hurt as much as he was open go being happy, was afraid of the calcification that seemed to slowly be taking his immortal friends, one by one - Raphael and Ragnor, Camille and Catarina.

Of course, it sounded even more foolish to say that he believed this girl could be the solution to a mystery that had plagued him for four hundred and fifty years.

So.

"I was bored," he said, with an arrogant shrug of his shoulders and a casual flick of his hair.

"Bored," Catarina echoed. "Yes, when I'm bored I find it rather cathartic to adopt strange children and drag them up the side of a mountain in a blizzard."

Magnus smirked and pulled out the chair opposite the warlock, but before he could reply, a slender shadow was thrown across the room.

"She's outside." Viktora said, her dark hair wild. "The witch is outside."

"Don't be ridiculous,"Magnus said at the same moment that Catarina said, "You probably just heard the wind or something."

"I didn't hear her. I saw her."

Magnus opened his mouth to say something disparaging about Vika's eyesight and state of mind, but Catarina spoke before he could. She had stood and crossed to the lone window, coated in a thin sheen of ice and frost, and her pale brows furrowed.

"Magnus," she said tersely. "She's right. Something's out there."