Nothing but Shadows

  "I like Aunt Tessa," he said. "I never came to London because I worried about leaving Father. I always wished--she could come to Idris more often."

  James had received several shocks this morning that were actually not so bad, but this revelation was unwelcome and inevitable. Of course Mother and Father scarcely ever went to Idris. Of course James and Lucie had been raised in London, a little apart from their families.

  Because there were people in Idris, there were arrogant Shadowhunters who thought Mother was not worthy to walk among them, and Father would never have let her be insulted.

  Now it would be worse, now people would whisper that she had passed on the taint to her children. People would say horrible things about Lucie, James knew--about his scribbling, laughing little sister. Lucie could never be allowed to come to the Academy.

  Matthew cleared his throat. "I suppose I can understand all that. Maybe I will stop being so jealous that you are able to get chucked out of school. Maybe I can understand that your aims are noble. However, I still do not understand why you must make it so clear you detest the sight of me. I know, I know, you're aloof and you wish to be alone with literature all the time, but it's particularly horrible with me. It's very lowering. Most people like me. I told you that. I don't even have to try."

  "Yes, you're very good at Shadowhunting and everybody likes you, Matthew," said James. "Thanks for clarifying that."

  "You don't like me!" Matthew exclaimed. "I did try with you! And you still don't."

  "The thing is," said James, "I tend to like very modest people? Humble, you know."

  Matthew paused, considered James for a moment, and then burst out laughing. James was amazed by how gratifying that was. It made him feel like he could let out the humiliating truth.

  He closed his eyes and said: "I was jealous of you."

  When he opened his eyes, Matthew looked wary, as if expecting a trick. "Of what?"

  "Well, you're not considered an unholy abomination upon this earth."

  "Yes, but--no offense, James--nobody but you is," Matthew pointed out. "You are our unique feature in the school, like a sculpture of a warrior chicken. If we had one of those. You disliked me before anybody knew you were an unholy abomination, anyway. Well, I suppose you are simply trying to spare my feelings. Decent of you. I under--"

  "I'm not aloof," said James. "I don't know where you got that idea."

  "All the aloofness, I think," Matthew speculated.

  "I'm a swot," said James. "I read books all the time and I do not know how to talk to people. If I was a girl living in olden times, people would call me a bluestocking. I wish I could talk to people like you do. I wish I could smile at people and make them like me. I wish I could tell a story and have everybody listen, and have people follow me around wherever I went. Well, no, I don't, because I am slightly terrified by people, but I wish I could do all that you can do, just the same. I wanted to be friends with Thomas and Christopher, because I liked them and I thought maybe they were--similar to me, and they might like me back. You were jealous I could get kicked out of school? I was jealous of you first. I was jealous of everything about you, and I still am."

  "Wait," said Matthew. "Wait, wait, wait. You don't like me because I am so very charming?"

  He threw his head back and laughed. He kept laughing. He laughed so much that he had to come and sit beside James on the step, and then he laughed some more.

  "Stop it, Matthew," James grumbled. "Stop laughing. I am sharing my innermost feelings with you. This is very hurtful."

  "I've been in a bad mood this whole time," said Matthew. "You think I'm charming now? You have no idea."

  James punched him in the arm. He could not help smiling. He saw Matthew noticing, and looking very pleased with himself.

  *

  Sometime later, Matthew ushered James firmly into breakfast and to their table, which James noticed was only Christopher and Thomas, and a rather select table after all.

  Christopher and Thomas, in another surprise for James in a morning full of surprises, seemed pleased to see him.

  "Oh, have you decided not to detest Matthew any longer?" Christopher asked. "I'm so glad. You were really hurting his feelings. Though we are not supposed to talk about that to you." He gazed dreamily at the bread basket, as if it were a wonderful painting. "I forgot that."

  Thomas put his head down on the table. "Why are you the way that you are?"

  Matthew reached over and patted Thomas on the back, then rescued Christopher from setting his own sleeves on fire with a candle. He gave James the candle and a smile.

  "If you ever see Christopher near an open flame, take him away from it, or take it away from him," Matthew said. "Fight the good fight with me. I must be eternally watchful."

  "That must be difficult, when surrounded by, um, your adoring public," said James.

  "Well," said Matthew, and paused, "it's possible," he said, and paused again, "I may have been . . . slightly showing off? 'Look, if you don't want to be friends with me, everybody else does, and you are making a big mistake.' I may have been doing that. Possibly."

  "Is that over?" Thomas asked. "Thank the Angel. You know large crowds of people make me nervous! You know I can never think of anything to say to them! I am not witty like you or aloof and above it all like James or living in cloud cuckoo land like Christopher. I came to the Academy to get away from being bossed by my sisters, but my sisters make me much less nervous than battering rams flying through the air and parties all the time. Can we please have some peace and quiet occasionally!"

  James stared at Thomas. "Does everybody think I'm aloof?"

  "No, mostly people think you're an unholy abomination upon this earth," Matthew said cheerfully. "Remember?"

  Thomas looked ready to put his head back on the table, but he cheered up when he saw James had not taken offense.

  "Why would that be?" Christopher asked politely.

  James stared. "Because I can turn from flesh and blood into a ghastly shadow?"

  "Oh," said Christopher. His dreamy lavender eyes focused for a moment. "That's very interesting," he told James, his voice clear. "You should let me and Uncle Henry perform many experiments on you. We could do an experiment right now."

  "No, we could not," said Matthew. "No experiments at breakfast time. Add it to the list, Christopher."

  Christopher sighed.

  And just like that, as if it could always have been that easy, James had friends. He liked Thomas and Christopher as much as he'd always known he would.

  Of all his new friends, though, he liked Matthew the best. Matthew always wanted to talk about the books James had read, or tell James a story as good as a book. He made obvious efforts to find James when James was not there, and obvious efforts to protect James when he was there. James did not have many nice things to write letters home about: he ended up writing letters that were full of Matthew.

  James knew Matthew probably only felt sorry for him. Matthew was always looking after Christopher and Thomas, with the same painstaking care he must have looked after his father. Matthew was kind.

  That was all right. James would absolutely have wanted to share a room with Matthew, now it was out of the question.

  "Why do people call you Demon Eyes, James?" Christopher asked one day when they were sitting around a table studying Ragnor Fell's account of the First Accords.

  "Because I have golden eyes as if lit by eldritch infernal fires," James said. He had heard a girl whispering that and thought it sounded rather poetic.

  "Ah," said Christopher. "Do you look at all like your grandfather aside from that? The demonic one, I mean."

  "You cannot simply ask whether people look like their demon grandfather!" Thomas wailed. "Next you will ask Professor Fell if he looks like his demon parent! Please, please do not ask Professor Fell if he looks like his demon parent. He has a cutting tongue. Also, he might cut you with a knife."

  "Fell?" Christopher inquired.

  "Our teacher,
" said Matthew. "Our green teacher."

  Christopher looked genuinely astonished. "We have a teacher who is green?"

  "James looks like his father," said Matthew unexpectedly, then narrowed his laughing dark eyes in James's direction in a musing fashion. "Or he will, when he grows into his face and it stops being angles pointing in all different directions."

  James slowly raised his open book to hide his face, but he was secretly pleased.

  Matthew's friendship made other friends creep forward, too. Esme cornered James and told him how sorry she was that Mike was being an idiot. She also told him that she hoped James did not take this expression of friendly concern in a romantic way.

  "I have rather a tendresse for Matthew Fairchild, actually," Esme added. "Please put in a good word for me there."

  Life was much, much better now that he had friends, but that did not mean anything was perfect, or even mended. People were still afraid of him, still hissing "Demon Eyes"and muttering about unclean shadows.

  "Pulvis et umbra sumus," said James once, out loud in class, after hearing too many whispers. "My father says that sometimes. We are but dust and shadows. Maybe I'm just--getting a head start on all of you."

  Several people in the classroom were looking alarmed.

  "What did he say?" Mike Smith whispered, clearly agitated.

  "It's not a demon language, buffoon," Matthew snapped. "It's Latin."

  Despite everything Matthew could do, the whispers rose and rose. James kept expecting a disaster.

  And then the demons were let loose in the woods.

  *

  "I'll be partners with Christopher," said Thomas at their next training exercise, sounding resigned.

  "Excellent, I will be partners with James," said Matthew. "He reminds me of the nobility of the Shadowhunter way of life. He keeps me right. If I am parted from him I will become distracted by truth and beauty. I know I will."

  Their teachers seemed extremely pleased that Matthew was actually participating in training courses now, aside from the courses only for the elites, in which Thomas reported that Matthew was still determined to be hopeless.

  James did not know why the teachers were so worried. It was obvious that as soon as anyone was actually in danger, Matthew would leap to their defense.

  James was glad to be so sure of that, as they walked through the woods. It was a windy day, and it seemed as if every tree was stooping down to howl in his ear, and he knew that Pyxis boxes had been placed throughout the woods by older students--Pyxis boxes with the smallest and most harmless of demons inside, but still real Pyxis boxes with real demons inside, who they were meant to fight. Pyxis boxes were a little outmoded these days, but they were still sometimes used to transport demons safely. If demons could ever be said to be safe.

  James's aunt Ella, who he had never seen, had been killed by a demon from a Pyxis box when she was younger than James was now.

  All the trees seemed to be whispering about demons.

  But Matthew was at his side, and both of them were armed. He could trust himself to kill a small, almost powerless demon, and if he could trust himself, he could trust Matthew more.

  They waited, and walked, then waited. There was a rustle among the trees: It turned out to be a combination of wind and a single rabbit.

  "Maybe the upper years forgot to lay out our demon buffet," Matthew suggested. "It is a beautiful springtime day. At such times as these, one's thoughts are filled with love and blossoms, not demons. Who am I to judge--"

  Matthew was abruptly quiet. He clutched James's arm, fingers tight, and James stared down at what Matthew had discovered in the heather.

  It was Clive Cartwright, Alastair's friend. He was dead.

  His eyes were open, staring into nothing, and in one hand he was clutching an empty Pyxis box.

  James grabbed Matthew's arm and turned him in a circle, looking around, waiting. He could tell what had happened: Let's give Demon Eyes a scare, a demon won't hurt its own kind, let's chase him away once and for all with a demon larger than he was expecting.

  He could not tell what kind of demon it was, but that question was answered when the demon came toward them through the wild woods.

  It was a Vetis demon, its shape almost human but not quite, dragging its gray, scaly body through the fallen leaves. James saw the eel-like heads on its arms lifting, like the heads of pointer dogs out hunting.

  James slipped from skin to shadow without a thought, like plunging into water to rescue someone, as easy as that. He ran unseen at the Vetis demon and, raising his sword, cleaved one questing head from its arm. He turned to face the head on the other arm. He was going to call to Matthew but when he glanced back he saw Matthew clearly, despite the sparkling grayness of the world. Matthew already had his bow out, strung and raised. He could see Matthew's narrowed eyes, the determined focus that always lay behind the laughter, and remained when his laughter was stripped away.

  Matthew shot the Vetis demon in the red-eyed, sharp-toothed face that sat atop its neck, just as James cut the other head from its remaining arm. The demon lurched, then fell over sideways, twitching.

  And James raced through the trees, through the wind and the whispering, afraid of nothing, with Matthew running behind him. He found Alastair and his remaining friend, hiding behind a tree. He crept up to them, a shadow among the whirling shadows of wind-tossed trees, and held his sword to Alastair's throat.

  While James was touching the sword, nobody could see it. But Alastair felt the sharpness of the blade and gasped.

  "We didn't mean for any of this to happen!" cried Alastair's friend, looking around wildly. Alastair was wise enough to stay quiet. "It was Clive's idea--he said he would finally get you to leave--he only meant to scare you."

  "Who's scared?" James whispered, and the whisper came from nowhere. He heard the older boys gasp in fear. "I'm not the one who's scared. If you come after me again, I won't be the one who suffers. Run!"

  The pair that had once been a trio stumbled away. James pressed one hand around the hilt of his sword, against the bark of the tree, and willed himself back into a world of solidity and sunshine. He found Matthew looking at him. Matthew had known, all the time, exactly where he was.

  "Jamie," Matthew said, sounding unsettled but impressed. "That was terrifying."

  "It's James, for the last time," said James.

  "No, I'm calling you Jamie for a little while, because you just displayed arcane power and calling you Jamie makes me feel better."

  James laughed, shakily, and that made Matthew smile. It did not occur to them until later that a student was dead, and the Shadowhunters feared and distrusted the demonic--that somebody would be blamed. James did not discover until the next day that his parents had been informed of everything that had transpired, and that he, James Herondale, was now officially expelled.

  *

  They kept him in the infirmary until his father came. They did not say this was because the infirmary had bars on its doors.

  Esme came and gave James a hug, and promised to look him up when she Ascended.

  Ragnor Fell entered, his tread heavy, and for a moment James thought he was going to be asked for his homework. Instead Ragnor stood over his bed and shook his horned head slowly from side to side.

  "I waited for you to ask me for help," Ragnor told him. "I thought perhaps you might make a warlock."

  "I never wanted to be anything but a Shadowhunter," James said helplessly.

  Ragnor said, sounding disgusted as usual: "You Shadowhunters never do."

  Christopher and Thomas visited. Christopher brought a fruit basket, under the mistaken impression that James was in the infirmary because he was unwell. Thomas apologized for Christopher several times.

  James did not see Matthew, however, until his father arrived. Father did not come on a mission to charm the dean. His face was grim as he escorted James through the shining gray walls of the Academy, under the flaming colors of the stained-glass angel, for the
last time. He stalked down stairs and through halls as if defying someone to insult James.

  James knew nobody ever would, not in front of Father. They would whisper behind his back, whisper in James's ear, his whole life long.

  "You should have told us, Jamie," said Father. "But Jem explained to us why you did not."

  "How is Mother?" James whispered.

  "She cried when Jem told her, and said you were her sweet boy," said Father. "I believe she may be planning to strangle you and then bake you a cake afterward."

  "I like cake," James said at last.

  All that suffering, all that nobly trying to spare her, and for what? James thought, as he walked out the door of the Academy. He had saved her only a month or two of pain. He hoped that did not mean he was a failure: He hoped Uncle Jem would still think it was worthwhile.

  He saw Matthew standing in the courtyard, hands in his pockets, and brightened up. Matthew had come to say good-bye, after all. It did feel worthwhile to have stayed, after all, to have made a friend like this.

  "Are you expelled?" Matthew asked, which James thought was slightly obtuse.

  "Yes?" he said, indicating his father and his trunk.

  "I thought you were," said Matthew, nodding vigorously so his much-brushed hair went tumbling every which way. "So I had to act. But I wanted to make absolutely certain. You see, James, the thing is--"

  "Isn't that Alastair Carstairs?" asked Father, perking up.

  Alastair did not meet James's eyes as he slunk toward him. He definitely did not respond to Father's beaming smile. He seemed very interested in the flagstones of the courtyard.

  "I just wanted to say . . . sorry for everything," he mumbled. "Good luck."

  "Oh," said James. "Thanks."

  "No hard feelings, old sport," said Matthew. "As a bit of a jolly prank, I put all your belongings in the south wing. I don't know why I did that! Boyish high spirits, I suppose."

  "You did what?" Alastair gave Matthew a harried look, and departed at speed.

  Matthew turned to James's father and dramatically clasped his hand.

  "Oh, Mr. Herondale!" he said. "Please take me with you!"

  "It's Matthew, isn't it?" Father asked. He tried to disengage his hand. Matthew clung to it with extreme determination.

  James smiled. He could have told Father about Matthew's determination.

  "You see," Matthew proceeded, "I am also expelled from Shadowhunter Academy."