"Also because of the rats," he added. He and George had gone on an expedition down this corridor in search of the supposed slug . . . they gave up after the third rat dropped from the ceiling and somehow found its way down George's pants.
Isabelle breathed a heavy sigh.
"Come on, Izzy, hold up."
Somehow, he'd stumbled on the magic words. She spun around to face him. "Don't call me that," she hissed.
"What?"
"My friends call me Izzy," she said. "You lost that right."
"Izzy--Isabelle, I mean. If you'd read my letter--"
"No. You don't call me Izzy, you don't send me letters, you don't follow me into dark corridors and try to save me from rats."
"Trust me, we see a rat, it's every man for himself."
Isabelle looked like she wanted to feed him to the giant slug. "My point, Simon Lewis, is that you and I are strangers now, just like you wanted it."
"If that's true, then what are you doing here?"
Isabelle looked incredulous. "It's one thing for Jace to believe the world revolves around him, but come on. I know you love fantasy, Simon, but the suspension of disbelief can only go so far."
"This is my school, Isabelle," Simon said. "And you're my--"
She just stared at him, as if defying him to come up with a noun that would justify the possessive.
This wasn't going the way he'd planned.
"Okay, then, why are you here? And why are you being so nice to all my, uh, friends?"
"Because my father's forcing me to be here," she said. "Because I guess he thinks some delightful father-daughter bonding time in a slime-covered pit will make me forget that he's a deadbeat adulterer who ditched his family. And I'm being nice to your friends because I'm a nice person."
Now it was Simon who looked incredulous.
"Okay, I'm not," she admitted. "But I've never actually been to school, you know. I figured if I have to be here, I might as well make the best of it. See what I'm missing. Is that enough information for you?"
"I get that you're mad at me, but--"
She shook her head. "You don't get it. I'm not mad at you. I'm not anything at you, Simon. You asked me to accept that you were a different person now, someone who I don't know. So I've accepted that. I loved someone--he's gone now. You're nobody I know, and, as far as I can tell, nobody I need to know. I'll only be here a few days, and then we never need to see each other again. How about we don't make it harder than it has to be?"
He couldn't quite catch his breath.
I loved someone, she'd said, and it was the closest she--or any girl--had ever come to saying I love you to Simon.
Except that it wasn't close at all, was it?
It was a world away.
"Okay." It was the only word he could force out, but she was already walking on down the corridor. She didn't need his permission to be a stranger; she didn't need anything from him. "You're going the wrong way!" he called after her. He didn't know where she wanted to go, but there seemed little chance she wanted to go slug-ward.
"They're all wrong," she called back, without turning around.
He tried to sense some subtext in her words, a glimmer of pain. Something that would give the lie to her claim, betray the feelings she still harbored for him--prove this was as hard and confusing for her as it was for him.
But the suspension of disbelief could only go so far.
*
Isabelle had said she wanted to make the best of her time at the Academy, and she'd proposed they not make it any harder than it needed to be. Unfortunately, Simon soon discovered, these two things were mutually exclusive. Because Isabelle's version of making the best of things involved Isabelle stretched out like a cat on one of the student lounge's musty leather couches, surrounded by sycophants, Isabelle partaking in George's illicit supply of scotch and inviting the others to do so as well, so that soon all of Simon's friends and enemies were drunk and giddy and in much too good a mood for his liking. Making the best of things apparently meant encouraging Julie to flirt with George and teaching Marisol how to smash statuary with a whip and, worst of all, agreeing to "maybe" be Jon Cartwright's date for the end-of-year party later in the week.
Simon wasn't sure whether any of this was harder than it needed to be--who knew what qualified as needed to be?--but it was excruciating.
"So, when does the real fun start?" Isabelle finally said.
Jon waggled his eyebrows. "Just say the word."
Isabelle laughed and touched his shoulder.
Simon wondered whether the Academy would expel him for murdering Jon Cartwright in his sleep.
"Not that kind of fun. I mean, when do we sneak off campus? Go party in Alicante? Go swimming in Lake Lyn? Go . . ." She trailed off, finally noticing that the others were gaping at her like she was speaking in tongues. "Are you telling me you don't do any of that?"
"We're not here to have fun," Beatriz said, somewhat stiffly. "We're here to learn to be Shadowhunters. There are rules for a reason."
Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Haven't you ever heard that rules are meant to be broken? Students are supposed to get into a little trouble at the Academy--at least the best students are. Why do you think the rules are so strict? So that only the best can get around them. Think of it like extra credit."
"How would you know?" Beatriz asked. Simon was surprised by her tone. Usually, she was the quietest among them, always willing to go with the flow. But there was an edge in her voice now, something that reminded him that, gentle as she seemed, she was a born warrior. "It's not like you went here."
"I come from a long line of Academy graduates," Isabelle said. "I know what I need to know."
"We're not all interested in following in your father's footsteps," Beatriz said, then stood up and walked out of the room.
There was silence in her wake, everyone tensely waiting for Isabelle to react.
Her smile didn't waver, but Simon could feel the heat radiating from her and understood it was taking a great deal of energy for her not to explode--or collapse. He didn't know which it would be; he didn't know how she felt about her father once being one of Valentine's men. He didn't know anything about her, not really. He admitted that.
But he still wanted to scoop her into his arms and hold her until the storm passed.
"No one has ever accused my father of being fun," Isabelle said flatly. "But I assume my reputation precedes me. If you meet me here at midnight tomorrow, I'll show you what you've been missing." She took Jon's hand in her own and allowed him to pull her off the couch. "Now. Will you show me to my room? This place is simply impossible to navigate."
"My pleasure," Jon said, winking at Simon.
Then they were gone.
Together.
*
The next morning the hall echoed with yawning and the groan of hangovers in (fruitless) search of grease and coffee. As Robert Lightwood launched into his second lecture, some tedious disquisition on the nature of evil and a point-by-point analysis of Valentine's critique of the Accords, Simon had to keep pinching himself awake. Robert Lightwood was possibly the only person on the planet who could make the story of the Circle drop-dead boring. It didn't help that Simon had stayed up till dawn, tossing and turning on the lumpy mattress, trying to drive nightmare images of Isabelle and Jon out of his head.
There was something going on with her, Simon was sure of it. Maybe it wasn't about him--maybe it was about her father or some residual homeschooling issues or just some girl thing he couldn't fathom, but she wasn't acting like herself.
She's not your girlfriend, he kept reminding himself. Even if something was wrong, it was no longer his job to fix it. She can do what she wants.
And if what she wanted was Jon Cartwright, then obviously she wasn't worth losing a night of sleep over in the first place.
By sunrise he'd almost managed to convince himself of this. But there she was again, up onstage beside her father, her fierce and fiercely intelligent gaze evok
ing all those annoying feelings again.
They weren't memories, exactly. Simon couldn't have named a single movie they watched together; he didn't know any of Isabelle's favorite foods or inside jokes; he didn't know what it felt like to kiss her or twine his fingers with hers. What he felt whenever he looked at her was deeper than that, dwelling in some nether region of his mind. He felt like he knew her, inside and out. He felt like he had Superman vision and could x-ray her soul. He felt sorrow and loss and joy and confusion; he felt a cavemanlike urge to slaughter a wild boar and lay it at her feet; he felt the need to do something extraordinary and the belief that, in her presence, he could.
He felt something he'd never felt before--but he had a sinking sensation that he recognized it anyway.
He was pretty sure he felt like he was in love.
*
1984
Valentine made it easy for them. He'd induced permission from the dean for an "educational" camping trip in Brocelind Forest--two days and nights free to do as they pleased, as long as it resulted in a few scribbled pages on the curative powers of wild herbs.
By all rights, with his uncomfortable questions and rebellious theories, Valentine should have been the black sheep of Shadowhunter Academy. Ragnor Fell certainly treated him like a slimy creature who'd crawled out from under a rock and should be hastily returned there. But the rest of the faculty seemed blinded by Valentine's personal magnetism, unable or unwilling to see through to the disrespect that lay beneath. He was endlessly dodging deadlines and ducking out of classes, excusing himself with nothing more than the flash of a smile. Another student might have been grateful for the latitude, but it only made Valentine loathe his teachers more--every loophole the faculty opened for him was only more evidence of weakness.
He had no qualms about enjoying its consequences.
The werewolf pack, according to Valentine's intel, was holed up in the old Silverhood manor, a decrepit ruin at the heart of the forest. The last Silverhood had died in battle two generations before, and was used as a name to spook young Shadowhunter children. The death of a soldier was one thing: regrettable, but the natural order of things. The death of a line was unimaginable.
Maybe they were all secretly apprehensive about it, this illicit mission that seemed to cross an invisible line. Never before had they struck against Downworlders without the express permission and oversight of their elders; they had broken rules, but never before had they strayed so close to breaking the Law.
Maybe they just wanted to spend a few more hours like normal teenagers, before they went so far they couldn't turn back.
For whatever reason, the four of them made their way through the woods with a deliberate lack of speed, setting up camp for the night a half mile from the Silverhood estate. They would, Valentine decided, spend the day staking out the werewolf encampment, gauging its strengths and weaknesses, charting the rhythms of the pack, and attack at nightfall, once the pack had dispersed to hunt. But that was tomorrow's problem. That night, they sat around a campfire, roasted sausages over leaping flames, reminisced about their pasts, and rhapsodized about their futures, which still seemed impossibly far away.
"I'll marry Jocelyn, of course," Valentine said, "and we'll raise our children in the new era. They'll never be warped by the corrupt laws of a weak, sniveling Clave."
"Sure, because by that time, we'll run the world," Stephen said lightly. Valentine's grim smile made it seem less like a joke than a promise.
"Can't you just see it?" Michael said. "Daddy Valentine, knee deep in diapers. A busload of kids."
"However many Jocelyn wants." Valentine's expression softened, as it always did when he said her name. They'd only been together a couple of months--since his father died--but no one questioned that they were together for good. The way he looked at her . . . like she was a different species than the rest of them, a higher species. "Can't you see it?" Valentine had confided once, early on, when Robert asked him how he could be so sure of love, so soon. "There's more of the Angel in her than in the rest of us. There's greatness in her. She shines like Raziel himself."
"You just want to flood the gene pool," Michael said. "I imagine you think the world would be better off if every Shadowhunter had a little Morgenstern in them."
Valentine grinned. "I'm told false modesty doesn't suit me, so . . . no comment."
"While we're on the subject," Stephen said, a blush rising in his cheeks. "I've asked Amatis. And she said yes."
"Asked what?" Robert said.
Michael and Valentine only laughed, as Stephen's cheeks took fire. "To marry me," he admitted. "What do you think?"
The question was ostensibly directed to all of them, but his gaze was fixed on Valentine, who hesitated an impossibly long time before answering.
"Amatis?" he said finally, furrowing his brow as if he'd have to give the matter some serious thought.
Stephen caught his breath, and in that moment, Robert almost thought it was possible that he needed Valentine's approval--that despite proposing to Amatis, despite loving her so deeply and desperately that he nearly vibrated with emotion whenever she came near, despite writing her that abominable love song Robert had once found crumpled under his bed, Stephen would cast her aside if Valentine commanded it.
In that moment, Robert almost thought it was possible that Valentine would command it, just to see what happened.
Then Valentine's face relaxed into a wide smile, and he threw an arm around Stephen, saying, "It's about time. I don't know what you were waiting for, you idiot. When you're lucky enough to have a Graymark by your side, you do whatever you can to make sure it's forever. I should know."
Then everyone was laughing and toasting and plotting bachelor party schemes and teasing Stephen about his short-lived attempts at songwriting, and it was Robert who felt like the idiot, imagining even for a second that Stephen's love for Amatis could waver, or that Valentine had anything but their best interests at heart.
These were his friends, the best he would ever have, or anyone could ever have.
These were his comrades in arms, and nights like these, bursts of joy beneath starry skies, were their reward for the special obligation they'd taken upon themselves.
To imagine otherwise was only a symptom of Robert's secret weakness, his inveterate lack of conviction, and he resolved not to let himself do so again.
"And you, old man?" Valentine asked Robert. "As if I even have to ask. We all know Maryse does what she wants."
"And inexplicably, she seems to want you," Stephen added.
Michael, who had fallen unusually silent, caught Robert's eye. Only Michael knew how little Robert liked to think about the future, especially this part of it. How much he dreaded being forced into marriage, parenting, responsibility. If it were up to Robert, he would stay at the Academy forever. It made little sense. Because of what had happened when he was a kid, he was a couple of years older than his friends--he should have been chafing at the restrictions of youth. But maybe--because of what had happened--part of him would always feel cheated and want that time back. He'd spent so long wanting the life he had now. He wasn't ready to let go of it quite yet.
"Well, this old man is exhausted," Robert said, dodging the question. "I think my tent is calling."
As they extinguished the fire and tidied up the site, Michael shot him a grateful smile, having been spared his own interrogation. The only one of them still single, Michael disliked this line of conversation even more than Robert did. It was one of the many things they had in common: They both enjoyed each other's company more than that of any girl. Marriage seemed like such a misguided concept, Robert sometimes thought. How could he care for any wife more than he did for his parabatai, the other half of his soul? Why should he possibly be expected to?
He couldn't sleep.
When he emerged from the tent into the silent predawn, Michael was sitting by the ashes of the campfire. He turned toward Robert without surprise, almost as if he'd been waiting for
his parabatai to join him. Maybe he had. Robert didn't know whether it was an effect of the bonding ritual or simply the definition of a best friend, but he and Michael lived and breathed in similar rhythms. Before they were roommates, they'd often run into each other in the Academy corridors, sleeplessly roaming the night.
"Walk?" Michael suggested.
Robert nodded.
They traipsed wordlessly through the woods, letting the sounds of the sleeping forest wash over them. Screeches of night birds, skitters of insects, the hush of wind through fluttering leaves, the soft crunch of grass and twigs beneath their feet. There were dangers lurking here, they both knew that well enough. Many of the Academy's training missions took place in Brocelind Forest, its dense trees a useful refuge for werewolves, vampires, and even the occasional demons, though most of those were unleashed by the Academy itself, an ultimate test for particularly promising students. This night the forest felt safe. Or maybe it was simply that Robert felt invincible.
As they walked, he thought not of the mission to come but of Michael, who had been his first true friend.
He'd had friends when he was young, he supposed. The kids growing up in Alicante all knew each other, and he had vague memories of exploring the Glass City with small bands of children, their faces interchangeable, their loyalties nonexistent. As he discovered for himself the year he turned twelve and got his first Mark.
This was, for most Shadowhunter children, a proud day, one they looked forward to and fantasized about the way mundane children inexplicably fixated on birthdays. In some families, the first rune was applied in a quick, businesslike fashion, the child Marked and sent on his way; in others, there was great festivity, presents, balloons, a celebratory feast.
And, of course, in a very small number of families, the first rune was the last rune, the touch of the stele burning the child's skin, sending him into shock or madness, a fever so intense that only cutting through the Mark would save the life. Those children would never be Shadowhunters; those families would never be the same.
No one ever thought it would happen to them.
At twelve Robert had been scrawny but sure-footed, quick for his age, strong for his size, sure of the Shadowhunting glory that awaited him. As his extended family looked on, his father carefully traced the Voyance rune across Robert's hand.