"You can't keep doing this!" he shouted, unsure whether he was yelling at her or himself. "It's not your job to choose for me anymore, to decide what I should do or how I should live. Who I should be. How many times do I have to tell you before you hear me? I'm not him. I will never be him, Isabelle. He belonged to you, I get that. But I don't. I know you Shadowhunters are used to having everything your way--you set the rules, you know what's best for the rest of us. But not this time, okay? Not with me."
With deliberate calm, Isabelle coiled her whip around her wrist. "Simon, I think you've mistaken me for someone who cares."
It wasn't the emotion in her voice that cracked his heart, but the lack of it. Behind the words were nothing: no pain, no suppressed anger, only a void. Hollow and cold.
"Isabelle--"
"I didn't come here for you, Simon. This is my job. I thought you wanted it to be your job, too. If you still feel that way, I'd suggest you reconsider some things. Like how you speak to your superiors."
"My . . . superiors?"
"And for the record, since you brought it up? You're right, Simon. I don't know this version of you at all. And I'm pretty sure I don't want to." She stepped past Simon, her shoulder brushing against his for the briefest of moments, then slipped out of the building and into the night.
Simon stared after her, wondering if he should follow, but he couldn't seem to make his feet move. At the sound of the door slamming shut, Jon Cartwright blinked his eyes open and woozily eased himself upright. "We got her?" he asked Simon, catching sight of the small pile of dust where the vampire girl had been.
"Yeah," he said wearily. "You could say that."
"Oh yeah, that's right, bloodsucker!" Jon pumped his fist in the air, then made devil fingers. "You mess with a Cartwright bull--you get the horns."
*
"I'm not saying she didn't break the Law," Simon explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time. "I'm just saying, even if she did, why did we have to kill her? I mean--what about, I don't know, jail?"
By the time they'd Portaled back to the Academy, dinner was long over. But as a reward for their labors, Dean Penhallow had opened up the dining hall and the kitchen for the twenty returning students. They huddled around a couple of the long tables, gnawing hungrily at stale eggrolls and mercifully flavorless shawarma. The Academy had returned to its traditional policy of serving international food--but unfortunately, all of these foods were prepared by a single chef, who Simon suspected was a warlock, because nearly everything they ate seemed enchanted to taste like dog food.
"Because that's what we do," Jon said. "A vampire--any Downworlder--violates the Covenant, someone has to kill it. Have you not been paying attention?"
"So why isn't there a Downworlder jail?" Simon said. "Why aren't there Downworlder trials?"
"That's not how it works, Simon," Julie said. He'd thought she might be friendlier after their conversation in the corridor the other night, but if anything, her edges had gotten sharper, more liable to draw blood. "This isn't your stupid mundane law. This is the Law. Handed down from the Angel. Higher than everything else."
Jon nodded proudly. "Sed lex, dura lex."
"Even if it's wrong?" Simon asked.
"How could it be wrong, if it's the Law? That's an oxymoron."
Takes one to know one, he thought childishly, but stopped himself before saying it out loud. Anyway, Jon was more of your garden-variety moron.
"You realize you all sound like you're in some kind of cult," Simon complained. He touched the star that was still hanging at his neck. His family had never been particularly religious, but his father had always loved helping him try to figure out the Jewish perspective on questions of right and wrong. "There's always a little wiggle room," he'd told Simon, "a little space to figure these things out yourself." He'd taught Simon to ask questions, to challenge authority, to understand and believe in rules before he followed them. There was a noble Jewish heritage of arguing, his father liked to say, even when it came to arguing with God.
Simon wondered now what his father would think of him, at this school for fundamentalists, swearing fealty to a higher Law. What did it even mean to be Jewish in a universe where angels and demons walked the earth, practiced miracles, carried swords? Was thinking for yourself an activity better suited to a world without any evidence of the divine?
"The Law is hard, but it's the Law," Simon added in disgust. "So freaking what? If the Law is wrong, why not change it? Do you know what the world would look like if we were all still following the laws made up back in the Dark Ages?"
"You know who else used to talk like that?" Jon asked ominously.
"Let me guess: Valentine." Simon scowled. "Because apparently in all of Shadowhunter history only one guy has bothered to ask any questions. Yeah, that's me, charismatic, evil supervillain about to lead a revolution. Better report me."
George shook his head warningly. "Simon, I don't think--"
"If you hate it so much, why are you even here?" Beatriz cut in, an uncharacteristically hostile note in her voice. "You get to pick the life you want to live." She stopped abruptly, leaving something unspoken hanging in the silence. Something, Simon suspected, like: Unlike the rest of us.
"Good question." Simon set down his fork and pushed his chair back.
"Come on, you didn't even finish your . . ." George waved toward the plate, as if he couldn't bring himself to actually describe it as food.
"I just lost my appetite."
Simon was halfway to the dungeons when Catarina Loss stopped him in the hallway.
"Simon Lewis," she said. "We need to talk."
"Can we do it in the morning, Ms. Loss?" he asked. "It's been a long day, and--"
She shook her head. "I know about your day, Simon Lewis. We talk now."
*
The sky was bright with stars. Catarina's blue skin glowed in the moonlight, and her hair burned silver. The warlock had insisted that they both needed some fresh air, and Simon had to admit she was right. He felt better already, just breathing in the grass and trees and sky. Idris had seasons, but so far, at least, they weren't like the seasons he was used to. Or rather, they were like the best possible versions of themselves: each fall day crisp and bright, the air rich with the promise of bonfires and apple orchards, the approach of winter marked by only a startlingly clear sky and a new sharp bite to the air that was almost pleasurable in its icy pain.
"I heard what you said at dinner, Simon," Catarina said as they strolled across the grounds.
He looked at his teacher with surprise and a bit of alarm. "How could you?"
"I'm a warlock," she reminded him. "I can a lot of things."
Right. Magic school, he thought in despair, wondering if he'd ever have any privacy again.
"I want to tell you a story, Simon," she said. "It's something I've told a very few, trusted people, and I'll hope that you choose to keep it to yourself."
It seemed like a strange thing for her to risk on a student she barely knew--but then, she was a warlock. Simon had no idea what they were capable of, but he was getting better at imagining. If he broke her confidence, she'd probably know it.
And act accordingly.
"You were listening in class to the story of Tobias Herondale?"
"I always listen in class," Simon said, and she laughed.
"You're very good at evasive answers, Daylighter. You'd make a good faerie."
"I'm guessing that's not a compliment."
Catarina offered him a mysterious smile. "I'm no Shadowhunter," she reminded him. "My opinions on faeries are my own."
"Why do you still call me Daylighter?" Simon asked. "You know that's not what I am anymore."
"We are all what our pasts have made us," Catarina said. "The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we've been." She held up a finger to silence him, as if she knew he was about to argue. "Forgetting those choices doesn't unmake them, Daylighter. You'd do well t
o remember that."
"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" he asked, his irritation more visible than he'd intended. Why did everyone in his life feel the need to tell him who he was, or who he should be?
"You're impatient with me," Catarina observed. "Fortunately, I don't care. I'm going to tell you another story of Tobias Herondale now. Listen or not--that's your decision."
He listened.
"I knew Tobias, knew his mother before he was born, watched him as a child struggling to fit into his family, find his place. The Herondales are a rather infamous line, as you probably know. Many of them heroes, some of them traitors, so many of them brash, wild creatures consumed by their passions, whether it be love or hate. Tobias was . . . different. He was mild, sweet, the kind of boy who did as he was told. His older brother, William--now, there was a Shadowhunter fit to be a Herondale, just as brave and twice as headstrong as the grandson who later bore his name. But not Tobias. He had no special talent for Shadowhunting, and not much love for it, either. His father was a hard man, his mother a bit of a hysteric, though few could blame her with a husband like that. A bolder boy might have turned from his family and its traditions, decided he was unfit for the Shadowhunter life and struck out on his own. But for Tobias? That was unthinkable. His parents taught him the Law, and he knew only to follow it. Not so unusual among humans, even when their blood is mixed with the Angel's. Unusual for a Herondale, maybe, but if anyone thought that, Tobias's father made sure they kept their mouths shut. And so he grew up. He married, a match that surprised everyone, for Eva Blackthorn was the opposite of mild. A raven-haired spitfire, somewhat like your Isabelle."
Simon bristled. She wasn't his Isabelle, not anymore. He wondered if she ever truly had been. Isabelle didn't seem like the type of girl to belong to someone. It was one of the things he liked best about her.
"Tobias loved her more than he'd loved anything--his family, his duty, even himself. There, perhaps, the Herondale blood ran true. She was carrying her first child when he was called to the mission in Bavaria--you've heard how that story ended."
Simon nodded, heart clenching all over again at the thought of the punishment visited on Tobias's wife. Eva. And her unborn child.
"Lazlo Balogh knows only the version of this story as it's been handed down to him by generations of Shadowhunters. Tobias is no longer a person to them, or an ancestor. He's nothing but a cautionary tale. There are few of us left to remember him as the kind boy he once was."
"How did you know him so well?" Simon asked. "I thought back then, warlocks and Shadowhunters weren't exactly . . . you know. On speaking terms." Actually, Simon had thought it was more like killing terms; from what he'd learned from the Codex and his history classes, the Shadowhunters of the past had gone after warlocks and other Downworlders the way big-game hunters went after elephants. Sportingly and with bloodthirsty abandon.
"That's a different story," Catarina chided him. "I'm not telling you my story, I'm telling you Tobias's. Suffice it to say, he was a kind boy, even to Downworlders, and his kindness was remembered. What you know, what all Shadowhunters today think they know, is that Tobias was a coward who abandoned his fellows in the heat of battle. The truth is never so simple, is it? Tobias hadn't wanted to leave behind his wife when she was ill and pregnant, but he went anyway, doing as he was told. Deep in those Bavarian woods, he encountered a warlock who knew his greatest fear, and used it against him. He found the chink in Tobias's armor, found a way into his mind by convincing him his wife was in terrible danger. He showed him a vision of Eva, bloody and dying and screaming for Tobias to save her. Tobias was held spellbound and stricken, and the warlock hurled vision after vision of all the horrors in the world Tobias could not bear. Yes, Tobias ran away. His mind broke. He abandoned his fellows and fled into the woods, blinded and tormented by waking nightmares. Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse. When he thought Eva was dead, he shattered. I know who I blame for the destruction of Tobias Herondale."
"They can't have known he was driven mad!" Simon protested. "No one could punish him for that!"
"They did know," Catarina told him. "That didn't matter. What mattered was his treason against his duty. Eva was never in danger, of course--at least, not until Tobias abandoned his post. That was the last cruel irony of Tobias's life: that he doomed the woman he would have died to save. The warlock had shown him a glimpse of the future, a future that would never have come to pass if Tobias had been able to resist him. He could not resist. He could not be found. The Clave came for Eva."
"You were there," Simon guessed.
"I was," she agreed.
"And you didn't try to stop them?"
"I did not waste my time trying, no. The Nephilim do not pay heed to interfering Downworlders. Only a fool would try to get between the Shadowhunters and their Law."
There was something about the way she said it, wry and sorrowful at the same time, that made him ask, "You're a fool, aren't you?"
She smiled. "It's dangerous to call a warlock names like that, Simon. But . . . yes. I tried. I looked for Tobias Herondale, using ways the Nephilim do not have access to, and found him wandering mad in the forest, not even knowing his own name." She lowered her head. "I couldn't save him or Eva. But I saved the baby. I managed that much."
"But how? Where--?"
"I used a certain amount of magic and cunning to make my way into the prison of the Shadowhunters, where you were held once," said Catarina, nodding to him. "I made the baby come early, and cast a spell to make it seem as if she was still carrying the child. Eva was steel that night, relentless and bright in the darkness that had come upon her. She did not falter and she did not flinch and she did not betray herself by any sign as she walked to meet her death. She kept our secret to the very end, and the Shadowhunters who killed her never suspected a thing. After that, it was almost easy. The Nephilim seldom have any interest in the doings of Downworlders--and Downworlders often find their blindness very convenient. They never noticed when I sailed away to the New World with a baby. I stayed there for twenty years, before I went back to my people and my work, and raised the child until he was grown. He has been dust for years, but I can close my eyes and see his face when he was as young as you are now. Tobias and Eva's child. He was a sweet boy, kind as his father and fierce as his mother. The Nephilim believe in living by hard laws and paying high prices, but their arrogance means they do not fully understand the cost of what they do. The world would have been poorer without that boy in it. He had a mundane love, and a mundane life filled with small acts of grace, which would have meant very little to a Shadowhunter. They did not deserve him. I left him as a gift to the mundane world."
"So you're saying there's another Herondale out there somewhere? Maybe generations of Herondales that no one knows anything about?" There was a line from the Talmud Simon's father had always liked to quote: He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.
"It's possible," Catarina said. "I made sure the boy never knew what he was--it was safest that way. If indeed his line lives on, his descendants surely believe themselves mundane. It's only now, with the Shadowhunters so depleted, that the Clave might welcome their lost sons or daughters back to the fold. And perhaps there are those of us who might help that along. When the time is right."
"Why are you telling me this, Ms. Loss? Why now? Why ever?"
She stopped walking and turned to him, silver-white hair billowing in the wind. "Saving that child, that's the biggest crime I've ever committed. At least, according to Shadowhunter Law. If anyone knew, even now . . ." She shook her head. "But it's also the bravest choice I've ever made. The one I'm most proud of. I'm bound by the Accords just like everyone else, Simon. I do my best to live by the rule of Law. But I make my own decisions. There's always a higher law."
"You say that like it's so easy to know what it is," Simon said. "To be so sure of yourself, that you're righ
t, no matter what the Law says."
"It's not easy," Catarina corrected him. "It's what it means to be alive. Remember what I said, Simon. Every decision you make, makes you. Never let other people choose who you're going to be."
*
When he returned to his room, his mind spinning, George was sitting on the ground in the hallway, studying his Codex.
"Um, George?" Simon peered down at his roommate. "Wouldn't it be easier to do that inside? Where there's light? And no disgusting slime on the ground? Well . . ." He sighed. "Less slime, at least."
"She said I have to wait out here," George said. "That you two need your privacy."
"Who said?" But the question was superfluous, because who else? Before George could answer, he was already opening the door and charging inside. "Isabelle, you can't just throw my roommate--"
He stopped short, so suddenly that he nearly tripped over himself.
"It's not Isabelle," said the girl perched on his bed. Her fire-red hair was pulled into a messy bun and her legs were folded beneath her; she looked utterly at home, as if she'd spent half her life lounging around in his bed. Which, according to her, she had.
"What are you doing here, Clary?"
"I Portaled in," she said.
He nodded, waiting. He was glad to see her, but it also hurt. Just as it always did. He wondered when the pain would go and he would be able to feel the joy of friendship that he knew was still there, like a plant under frozen ground, waiting to grow again.
"I heard what happened today. With the vampire. And Isabelle."
Simon lowered himself onto George's bed, across from her. "I'm fine, okay? No bite marks or anything. It's nice of you to worry about me, but you can't just Portal in and--"
Clary snorted. "I can see your ego's unharmed. I'm not here because I'm worried about you, Simon."
"Oh. Then . . . ?"
"I'm worried about Isabelle."
"I'm pretty sure Isabelle can take care of herself."