Simon stood stricken. He was such an idiot. He'd thought about it, why mundane kids might come to the Academy. Mundanes would have to choose to give up their parents, their families, their former lives. Unless, of course, they already had no parents and no families. He'd thought about that, but he'd forgotten, obsessing about his own memories and how he would fit in, thinking only about himself. He had a home to go back to, even though it wasn't perfect. He'd had a choice.
"What did the Shadowhunters tell you, when they came to recruit you?"
Marisol stared at him, her gaze clear and cold. "They told me," she said, "that I was going to fight."
She had been taking fencing classes since she could walk, as it turned out. She cut him off at the knees and left him literally in the dust, stumbling as a tiny, swordy whirlwind came at him across the practice grounds, and falling.
He also stabbed himself in the leg with his own sword as he fell, but that was a very minor injury.
"Went a little too easy on her," Jon said, passing by and helping Simon up. "The dregs won't learn if they're not taught, you know."
His voice was kind; his glance at Marisol was not.
"Leave her alone," Simon muttered, but he did not say that Marisol had beaten him fairly. They all thought he was a hero.
Jon grinned at him and walked on. Marisol did not even look at him. Simon studied his leg, which stung.
It was not all stabbing. Some of it was regular stuff, like running, but as Simon tried to run and keep up with people a lot more athletic than he had ever been, he was constantly plagued by memories of how his lungs had never burned for lack of air, how his heart had never pounded from overexertion. He had been fast, once, faster than any of these Shadowhunter trainees, cold and predatory and powerful.
And dead, he reminded himself as he fell behind the others yet again. He didn't want to be dead.
Running was still a lot better than horseback riding. The Academy introduced them to horseback riding on their first Friday there. Simon thought it was supposed to be a treat.
Everyone else acted as if it was a treat. Only those of the elite stream were allowed to go riding, and at mealtimes they had been mocking the dregs for missing out. It seemed to cheer Julie and Jon up, in the face of the endless terrible soup.
Simon, precariously balanced on top of a huge beast that was both rolling its eyes and apparently trying to tap-dance, did not feel this was any sort of treat. The dregs had been sent off to learn elementary facts about Shadowhunting. They had most of their classes apart from the elite, and Jon assured Simon they were boring. Simon felt he could really do with being bored, right about now.
"Si," said George in an undertone. "Quick tip. Riding works better if you keep your eyes open."
"My previous riding experience is the carousel at Central Park," Simon snapped. "Forgive me for not being Mr. Darcy!"
George was, as several of the ladies were remarking, an excellent horseman. He barely had to move for the horse to respond to him, both of them moving smoothly together, sunlight rippling off his stupid curls. He looked right, made it all look easy and graceful, like a knight in the movies. Simon remembered reading books about magic horses that read their rider's every thought, books about horses born of the North Wind. It was all part of being a magical warrior, having a noble steed.
Simon's horse was defective, or possibly a genius that had worked out that Simon could not possibly control it. It went off for a wander in the woods, with Simon on its back alternately pleading, threatening, and offering bribes. If Simon's horse could read his every thought, then Simon's horse was a sadist.
As night drew in and the evening grew cold, the horse wandered back to its stall. Simon had no choice in the matter, but he did manage to tumble off the horse and stagger into the Academy, his fingers and knees gone entirely numb.
"Ah, there you are," said Scarsbury. "George Lovelace was beside himself. He wanted to assemble a search party for you."
Simon regretted his spiteful thoughts about George's horsemanship.
"Let me guess," said Simon. "Everyone else said 'Nah, being left for dead builds character.'"
"I was not concerned you were going to be eaten by bears in the deep dark woods," said Scarsbury, who did not look as if he had ever been concerned about anything in his life, ever.
"Of course you weren't, that would be abs--"
"You had your dagger," added Scarsbury casually, and walked away, leaving Simon to call after him.
"My--my bear-killing dagger? Do you really think me killing bears with a dagger is a plausible scenario? What information do you have about bears in these woods? I think it's your responsibility as an educator to tell me if there are bears in the woods."
"See you at javelin practice bright and early, Lewis," said Scarsbury, and marched on without looking back.
"Are there bears in the woods?" Simon repeated to himself. "It's a simple question. Why are Shadowhunters so bad at simple questions?"
*
The days passed in a blur of horrible violent activity. If it wasn't javelin practice, Simon was getting thrown around a room (George was very apologetic later, but that did not help). If it wasn't dagger work, it was more swordplay and humiliating defeat before the blades of tiny, evil trainee Shadowhunters. If it wasn't swordplay, it was the obstacle course, and Simon refused to speak of the obstacle course. Julie and Jon were growing noticeably cool at mealtimes, and a few comments about mundies were passed.
At last Simon staggered wearily to the next exercise in futility and sharp objects, and Scarsbury placed a bow in his hands.
"I want everyone to try to hit the targets," said Scarsbury. "And, Lewis, I want you to try not to hit any of the other trainees."
Simon felt the weight of the bow in his hands. It had a nice balance, he thought, easy to lift and manipulate. He nocked the arrow, and felt the tautness of the string, ready to release, primed to let it fly along the path Simon wanted.
He drew his arm back, and it was that easy: bull's-eye. He fired once more, and then again, arrows flying to find their targets, and his arms burned and his heart pounded with something like joy. He was glad to be able to feel his muscles working and his heart thumping. He was so glad to be alive again, and able to feel every moment of this.
Simon lowered his bow to find everybody staring at him.
"Can you do that again?" asked Scarsbury.
He'd learned to shoot arrows in summer camp, but standing here holding a bow, he remembered something else. He remembered breathing, his heart beating, Shadowhunters watching him. He'd still been human then, a mundane they all despised, but he'd killed a demon. He remembered: He'd seen something had to be done, and he'd done it.
A guy not so different from who he was now.
Simon felt a smile spread across his face, hurting his cheeks. "Yeah. I think I can."
Julie and Jon were both much more friendly over dinner than they had been for the last few days. Simon told them about killing the demon, what he remembered, and Jon offered to teach him some swordplay tricks.
"I would really love to hear more about your adventures," said Julie. "Whatever you can remember. Especially if they involve Jace Herondale. Do you know how he got that sexy scar on his throat?"
"Ah," said Simon. "Actually . . . yes. Actually . . . that was me."
Everybody stared at him.
"I might have bitten him. A tiny bit. It was more like a nibble, really."
"Was he delicious?" asked Julie, after a thoughtful pause. "He looks like he would be delicious."
"Um," said Simon. "He's not a juice box."
Beatriz nodded earnestly. Both the girls seemed very interested in this discussion. Too interested. Their eyes were glazed.
"Did you maybe climb on top of him slowly and then lower your head to his tender, pulsing throat?" Beatriz said. "Could you feel the heat radiating off his body and into yours?"
"Did you lick his throat before you bit him?" Julie asked. "Oh, and did you
get a chance to feel his biceps?" She shrugged. "I'm just curious about, you know, vampire techniques."
"I imagine Simon was both gentle and commanding during his special moment with Jace," said Beatriz dreamily. "I mean, it was special, wasn't it?"
"No!" said Simon. "I can't stress that enough. I've bitten several Shadowhunters. I bit Isabelle Lightwood and Alec Lightwood; biting Jace was not a tender and unique moment!"
"You bit Isabelle and Alec Lightwood?!" asked Julie, who was starting to sound freaked-out. "What did the Lightwoods ever do to you?"
"Wow," said George. "I imagined the demon realms were fearsome and terrifying, but seems like it was pretty much nonstop nom nom nom."
"That is not how it was!" Simon said.
"Can we stop talking about this?" Jon demanded, his voice sharp. "I'm sure you all did what you had to do, but the idea of Shadowhunters being prey for a Downworlder is disgusting."
Simon did not love the way Jon said "Downworlder," as if the words "Downworlder" and "disgusting" were more or less the same thing. But maybe it was natural for Jon to be disturbed. Simon could remember being disturbed about it himself. Simon hadn't wanted to make his friends into his prey, either.
Today had gone pretty well. Simon didn't want to ruin it. He decided he was in a good enough mood to let it go.
Simon felt better about the Academy until that night, when he woke from a doze to a deluge of memory.
The memories hit like that sometimes, not in sharp tiny jabs but in an insistent and terrible cascade. He had thought of his former roommate before. He'd known he'd had a friend, a roommate, named Jordan, and that Jordan had been killed. But he hadn't recalled the feelings of it--the way Jordan had taken him in when his mother had barred her door, talking about Maia with Jordan, hearing Clary laugh that Jordan was cute, talking to Jordan, patient and kind and always seeing Simon as more than a job, more than a vampire. He remembered seeing Jordan and Jace snarl at each other and then play video games like idiots, and Jordan finding him sleeping in a garage, and Jordan looking at Maia with such regret.
And he remembered holding Jordan's Praetor Lupus pendant in his hands, in Idris, after Jordan was dead. Simon had held that pendant again since then, once he had regained some of his memories, feeling the weight of it and wondering what the Latin motto meant.
He had known Jordan was his roommate, and known he was one of the many casualties of the war.
He had never truly felt the weight of it, until now.
The sheer weight of memory made him feel as if stones were being piled on his chest, crushing him. Simon couldn't breathe. He erupted from his sheets, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, his feet hitting the stone floor with a shock of cold.
"Wuzz--wuzzit?" mumbled George. "Did the possum come back?"
"Jordan's dead," Simon said bleakly, and put his face in his hands.
There was a silence.
George did not ask him who Jordan had been, or why he suddenly cared. Simon would not have known how to explain the tangle of grief and guilt in his chest: how he hated himself for forgetting Jordan, even though he could not have helped it, how this was like finding out Jordan was dead for the first time and like having a scarred-over wound reopened, both at once. There was a bitter taste in Simon's mouth, like old, old blood.
George reached out and put a hand on Simon's shoulder. He kept it there, grip firm, hand warm and steady, something to anchor Simon in the cold, dark night of memory.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. Simon was sorry too.
*
At dinner the next day, it was soup again. It had been soup for every meal for many days now. Simon did not remember a life before soup, and he despaired of ever achieving a life after soup. Simon wondered if the Shadowhunters had runes to protect against scurvy.
Their usual group was clustered around their usual table, chatting, when Jon said: "I wish we were being taught about demons by someone with less of an agenda, if you know what I mean."
"Uh," said Simon, who mostly sat through their classes on demons through the ages in deep relief that he was not being asked to move. "Don't we all have the same . . . demon-hunting . . . agenda?"
"You know what I mean," Jon said. "We've got to be taught about the past crimes of warlocks as well. We have to fight the Downworlders, too. It's naive to pretend they're all tame."
"The Downworlders," Simon repeated. The soup turned to ashes in his mouth, which was actually an improvement. "Like vampires?"
"No!" said Julie hastily. "Vampires are great. They have, you know, class. Compared to the other Downworlders. But if you're talking about creatures like werewolves, Simon, you must see they're not exactly our kind of people. If you can call them people at all."
She said "werewolves" and Simon could not help but think of Jordan, flinching as if he'd been struck and unable to keep his mouth shut a moment longer.
Simon pushed his bowl of soup away and shoved his chair back.
"Don't tell me about what I must, Julie," he said coldly. "I must inform you there are werewolves worth a hundred of your and Jon's Shadowhunter asses. I must say that I am sick to the teeth of you insulting mundanes and telling me I'm your special pet exception, as if I want to be the pet of people who bully kids younger and weaker than they are. And I must tell you, you'd better hope this Academy works out and mundanes like me Ascend, because from all I can see of you, the next generation of Shadowhunters is going to be nothing without us."
He looked toward George, the way he looked to George to share jokes in class and over meals, to see if George agreed with him at all.
George was staring at his plate.
"Come on, man," he muttered. "Don't--don't do this. They'll make you move rooms. Just sit down, and everybody can apologize, and we can go on as we were."
Simon took a deep breath, absorbed the disappointment, and said: "I don't want things to go on as they were. I want things to change."
He turned away from the table, from all of them, marched over to where the dean and Scarsbury were sitting, and announced at the top of his voice: "Dean Penhallow, I want to be placed in the stream for mundanes."
"What?" Scarsbury exclaimed. "The dregs?"
The dean dropped her spoon into her soup with a noisy splash. "The mundane course, Mr. Scarsbury, if you please! Do not refer to our students in that manner. I'm glad you came to me with this, Simon," she said after a moment of hesitation. "I understand you may be having difficulties with the course, given your mundane nature, but--"
"It's not that I'm having difficulty," said Simon. "It's that I'd rather not associate with the elite Shadowhunter families. I just don't think they're my kind of people."
His voice rang out against the stone ceiling. There were a lot of young kids staring at him. One was little Marisol, regarding him with a startled, thoughtful expression. Nobody said anything. They just looked.
"Okay, I've said all I had to say, I'm feeling bashful, and I'm gonna go now," Simon said, and fled the room.
He almost walked right into Catarina Loss, who had been watching from the doorway.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"Don't be," Catarina said. "In fact, I'm going to come with you. I'll help you pack."
"What?" Simon asked, hurrying after her. "I actually have to move?"
"Yeah, they put the dregs in the underground level," Catarina said.
"They put some kids in the dungeons, and nobody has ever pointed out that this is a disgusting system before now?"
"Is it?" asked Catarina. "Do tell me more about the Shadowhunters, and their occasional tendency to be unfair. I will find it fascinating and surprising. Their excuse is that the lower levels are easier to defend, for the kids who cannot fight as well as their fellow students."
She strode into Simon's room and looked around for his things.
"I actually haven't unpacked very much," Simon said. "I was afraid of the possum in the wardrobe."
"The what?"
"George and I found
it very mysterious too," Simon told her earnestly, picking up his bag and stuffing in the few things he had left lying out. He wouldn't want to forget his lady gear.
"Well," Catarina said. "Whatever about possums. The point I want to make is . . . I may have gotten you wrong, Simon."
Simon blinked. "Oh?"
Catarina smiled at him. It was astonishing, like a blue sunrise. "I was not looking forward to coming to teach here. Shadowhunters and Downworlders do not get along, and I try to keep myself more separated from the Nephilim even than most others of my kind. But I had a dear friend called Ragnor Fell, who used to live in Idris and taught in the Academy for decades before it was closed. He never had the greatest opinion of Shadowhunters, but he was fond of this place. I--lost him recently, and I knew this place could not operate without teachers. I wanted to do something in memory of him, even though I hated the idea of teaching a pack of arrogant Nephilim brats. But I loved my friend more than I hate Shadowhunters."
Simon nodded. He thought of his remembrance of Jordan, thought of how it hurt to even look at Isabelle and Clary. Without memory, they were lost. And nobody wanted someone they loved to be lost.
"So I may have been a little cranky about coming," Catarina admitted. "I may have been a little cranky about you, because--from all I know, you didn't think much of being a vampire. And now you're cured, what a miracle, and the Shadowhunters are so quick to pull you into the fold. You truly get to be one of them, what you always wanted. You had the stain of being one of us wiped away."
"I didn't . . . ," Simon said, and swallowed. "I can't remember it all. So it's like defending the actions of someone else sometimes."
"Must be frustrating."
Simon laughed. "You have no idea. I don't--I didn't want to be a vampire, I don't think. I wouldn't want to be made one again. Being stuck at age sixteen when all my friends and my family would've grown up without me; having the urge to--to hurt people? I didn't want any of that. But--look, I don't remember much, but I remember enough. I remember I was a person back then, just as much as I am now. Becoming a Shadowhunter won't change that, if I ever do become a Shadowhunter. I've forgotten enough. I will not forget that."
He lifted his bag onto his shoulder, and gestured for Catarina to lead the way to his new room. She did, descending down stone steps Simon had figured were to the basement. He had not figured they kept kids in the basement.