Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Robin Wasserman (3)

“I spy,” George said, “with my little eye, something that begins with S.”

“It’s slime, isn’t it?” Simon said. He was lying on his back on the cot in his dorm room. His roommate, George, was lying on the opposite cot. Both of them were staring up thoughtfully into the darkness, which involved staring at the ceiling, which was unfortunate because the ceiling was gross. “It’s always slime.”

“Not so,” George said. “One time it was mold.”

“I’m not sure we can really make the distinction between slime and mold, and I hate that I have to care about that.”

“It wasn’t ‘slime,’ anyway.”

Simon considered for a moment.

“Is it . . . a snake? Please tell me it’s not a snake.”

Simon curled up his legs involuntarily.

“It’s not a snake, but now that’s all I will be able to think about. Are there snakes in Idris? It seems like the kind of place where they’d drive the snakes out.”

“Isn’t that Ireland?” Simon said.

“I don’t think there are limitations on snake driving. Surely they got rid of the snakes. Must have done. Oh God, this place has to have snakes. . . .”

There was a faint tremor to George’s soft Scottish brogue now.

“Are there raccoons here in Idris?” Simon said, trying to change the subject. He adjusted himself on the hard, narrow bed. There was no point in adjusting. Every position was just as uncomfortable as the last. “We have raccoons in New York. They can get in anywhere. They can open doors. I read online that they even know how to use keys.”

“I don’t like snakes. Snakes don’t need keys.”

Simon paused for a moment to recognize the fact that “Snakes don’t need keys” was a good album name: It sounded deep for a second, but then completely shallow and obvious, which made you go back to the first thought and think it might be deep.

“So what was it?” Simon asked.

“What was what?”

“What did you spy that begins with S?”

“Simon.”

This was the kind of game you played when you lived in a sparsely decorated room located in the basement of the Shadowhunter Academy—or, as they had started to refer to it—the floor of ultimate moisture. George had commented many times how it was a shame they weren’t slugs, because it was perfectly set up for the slug lifestyle. They had come to an uneasy acceptance of the fact that many creatures had made the Academy their home after it was closed down. They no longer panicked when they heard skittering noises in the wall or under the bed. If the noises were in the bed, they allowed themselves some panic. This had happened more than once.

In theory, the mundanes (or dregs, as they were often called) were down in the basement because it was the most secure floor. Simon was sure there was probably some truth to that. But there was probably a lot more truth to the fact that Shadowhunters tended to have a natural snobbery that ran in the blood. But Simon had asked to be here, both with the dregs and in Shadowhunter Academy itself, so there was no point in complaining. With no Wi-Fi, no phones, no television—nights could be long. Once the lights went out, Simon and George often talked to each other across the darkness like this. Sometimes they lay in their respective beds in a companionable silence, each knowing the other was there. It was something. It was everything, really, just to have George in the room. Simon wasn’t sure if he would be able to bear it otherwise. And it wasn’t just the cold or the rats or anything else about the place physically—it was what was in his head, the ever-increasing noises, slices of memories. They came to him like bits of forgotten songs, tunes he couldn’t place. There were remembrances of tremendous joys and fears, but he often couldn’t connect them to events or people. They were just feelings, batting him around in the dark.

“Do you ever notice,” George said, “how even the blankets feel wet, when you know they’re dry? And I come from Scotland. I know wool. I know sheep. But this wool? There’s something demonic about this wool. I cut my knuckles on it making the bed the other morning.”

Simon mmm’ed a reply. There was no need for any real attention. He and George had these same conversations every night. The slime and the mold and the creatures in the walls and the rough blankets and the cold. Every night, these were the topics. Simon’s thoughts drifted. He’d had two visitors recently, and neither of the visits had gone well.

Isabelle and Clary, two of the most important people in his life (as far as he could tell), had both come to the Academy. Isabelle had appeared to stake her claim on Simon, and Simon—in a move that astonished him still—told her to back off. It couldn’t just go back to the way it was. Not like this, not when he couldn’t remember what it was. And then in the training exercise, Isabelle had shown up and slain a vampire that was about to take Simon down, but she had done so coolly. There was a distressing deadness to the way she spoke. Then Clary had popped up. Be careful with her, Clary had said. She’s more fragile than she seems.

Isabelle—with her whip and her ability to slice a demon in half—was more fragile than she seemed.

The guilt had been keeping him awake at night.

“Isabelle again?” George asked.

“How did you know?”

“Educated guess. I mean, she showed up and threatened to cut anyone to ribbons who got near you, and now you don’t seem to be talking, and your friend Clary showed up to talk to you about her, and you also mumble her name when you sleep.”

“I do?”

“On occasion. You’re either saying ‘Isabelle’ or ‘fishy smell.’ Could be either, to be fair.”

“How do I fix this?” Simon asked. “I don’t even know what I’m fixing.”

“I don’t know,” George said. “But morning comes early. Best try to sleep.”

There was a long pause and then . . .

“There must be snakes,” George said. “Isn’t this place everything a snake could want? Cool, made of stone, lots of holes to slither in and out of, lots of mice to eat . . . Why am I still talking? Simon, make me stop talking. . . .”

But Simon let him go on. Even talk of possible nearby snakes was better than what was currently going through his head.

Idris did its seasons properly, in general. It was like New York in that manner—you got each one, distinct and clear. But Idris was more pleasant than New York. The winter wasn’t just frozen garbage and slush; the summer wasn’t just boiling garbage and air-conditioner drippings that always felt like spit coming from overhead. Idris was greenery in the warm weather, crisp and tranquil in the cold, the air always smelling of freshness and burning log fires.

Mostly. Then there were mornings like the ones this week, which were all bluster. Winds with little fishhooks at the end of every gust. Cold that got inside the clothes. Shadowhunter gear, while practical, wasn’t necessarily very warm. It was light, easy to move in, like fighting gear should be. It was not made for standing outside on a boggy stretch at seven in the morning when the sun was barely up. Simon thought of his puffy jacket from home, and his bed, and heating in general. Breakfast, which had been a glue substitute under the banner of porridge, sat heavily in his stomach.

Coffee. That’s what this morning needed. Idris had no coffee places, nowhere to pop in and get a cup of the hot, steaming, and awake-making. The breakfast drink at the Academy was a thin tea that Simon suspected was not tea at all, but the watery runoff of one of the many noxious soups that emerged from the back of the kitchen. He swore he’d found a bit of potato skin in his mug that morning. He hoped it was potato skin.

One cup from Java Jones. Was that so much to want from life?

“Do you see this tree?” shouted Delaney Scarsbury, pointing at a tree.

Of the many questions their physical trainer had put to them over the last few months, this was one of the most logical and direct and yet confusing. Everyone could clearly see the tree. It was the only tree in this particular patch of field. It was tall, slightly tilted to the left.

Mornings with Scarsbury sounded like the name of a call-in radio show for cranks, but it was, in reality, just physical punishment designed to condition and train them to fight. And to be fair, Simon was more in shape now than he had been when he arrived.

“Do you see this tree?”

The question had been so weirdly obvious that no one had replied. Now they all mumbled a yes, they saw the tree.

“Here is what you are going to do,” Scarsbury said. “You are going to climb this tree, walk along that branch”—he pointed to one heavy main branch, maybe fifteen feet from the ground—“and jump off.”

“No, I’m not,” Simon muttered. Similar sounds of discontent rumbled around the class. No one seemed excited about the prospect of climbing up a tree and then deliberately falling out of it.

“Morning,” said a familiar voice.

Simon turned to see Jace Herondale behind him, all smiles. He looked relaxed and rested and utterly comfortable in his gear. Shadowhunters could draw runes for warmth. They didn’t need hypoallergenic down-substitute puffy coats. Jace wasn’t wearing a hat, either, which allowed his perfectly tousled golden hair to wave attractively in the breeze. He was keeping back and had not yet been noticed by the others, who were still listening to Scarsbury yelling over the wind while pointing at the tree.

“How did you get roped into this?” Simon asked, blowing into his hands to warm them.

Jace shrugged. “Just lending a graceful and athletic hand,” he said. “It would be remiss of me to deny the newest generation of Shadowhunters a glimpse of what they could become if they were very, very, very lucky.”

Simon closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re doing this to impress Clary,” he said. “Also checking up on me.”

“By the Angel, he’s gone telepathic,” Jace said, pretending to stagger back. “Basically, everyone’s pitching in since all your teachers ran away. I’m assisting with training. Like it or not.”

“Hmm,” said Simon. “Not.”

“Come on now,” Jace said, clapping him on the arm. “You used to love doing this.”

“Did I?”

“Maybe,” Jace said. “You didn’t scream. Wait. No. Yes, you did. My mistake. But it’s easy. This is just a training exercise.”

“The last training exercise involved killing a vampire. In the training exercise before that, I watched someone get an arrow in the knee.”

“I’ve seen worse. Come on. This is a fun exercise.”

“There is no fun here,” Simon said. “This is not Fun Academy. I should know. I was in a band once called Fun Academy.”

“To assist you this morning,” Scarsbury yelled, “we have an expert and highly physically able Shadowhunter—Jace Lightwood Herondale.”

There was an audible gasp and titters of nervous laughter as every head turned in Jace’s direction. There were suddenly a lot of female sighs from the class, and some male ones too. It reminded Simon of standing in line for a rock concert—at any moment, he felt, the crowd might burst into a squeeing noise most unbecoming to future demon hunters.

Jace smiled wider and stepped forward to lead the group. Scarsbury nodded his greeting and stepped back, arms folded. Jace eyed the tree for a moment and then leaned casually against it.

“The trick to falling is not to fall,” Jace said.

“Wonderful,” Simon said under his breath.

“You are not falling. You are choosing to descend using the most direct means possible. You remain in control of your decent. A Shadowhunter doesn’t fall—a Shadowhunter drops. You’ve been trained in the basic mechanics of how to do this . . .”

Simon recalled Scarsbury shouting a few things over the wind several days before that may have been training instructions on falls. Phrases like “avoid rocks” and “not on your back” and “unless you’re a complete idiot, which some of you are.”

“. . . so now we’ll take the theory and put it into practice.”

Jace took hold of the tree and scampered up it with the ease of a monkey, then made his way to the branch, where he stood freely and easily.

“Now,” he called down to the group, “I look at the ground. I choose my landing site. Remember—protect the head. If there’s any way to break momentum, any other surface you can use to lessen the length of the fall, use it—unless it’s dangerous. Don’t aim for sharp rocks or branches that could pierce or break you. Bend the knees. Keep relaxed. If your hands take the impact, be sure to make contact with the entire palm, but avoid this. Feet down, then roll. Keep that momentum going. Spread out the force of the impact. Like so . . .”

Jace delicately stepped off the branch and dropped to the ground, striking with a subdued thud. He instantly rolled and was up on his feet again in a moment.

“Like that.”

He gave his hair a little shake. Simon watched several people flush as he did so. Marisol had to cover her face with her hands for a moment.

“Excellent,” said Scarsbury. “That’s what you will do. Jace will assist.”

Jace took this as his cue to climb the tree again. He made it look so simple, so elegant—just hand over hand, feet firmly gripped the entire way up. At the top, he took a casual seat in the nook of the branch and swung his legs.

“Who’s first?”

There was no movement for a moment.

“Might as well get it over with,” George said in a low voice, before holding up his hand and stepping forward.

Though George was not as nimble as Jace, he did make it up the tree. He used a lot of clutching, and his feet slipped several times. Some of the phrases he used were lost to the wind, but Simon was pretty sure they were obscene. Once George reached the branch, Jace leaned back dangerously to make room. George considered the branch for a moment—the lone, unsupported beam stretching over the ground.

“Come on, Lovelace!” Scarsbury shouted.

Simon saw Jace lean in and offer a few words of advice to George, who was still gripping the trunk of the tree. Then, with Jace nodding, George released the tree and took a few careful steps out onto the branch. He hesitated again, teetering a bit in the wind. Then he looked down, and with a pained expression, he stepped off the branch and fell heavily to the ground. The thud he made was much louder than Jace’s, but he did roll and manage to get back on his feet.

“Not bad,” Scarsbury said as George hobbled back to Simon. He was rubbing his arm.

“You do not want to do that,” he said to Simon as he approached.

Simon had already worked that out. The confirmation didn’t help his spirits.

Simon watched his classmates go up the tree one by one. For some, that took up to ten minutes of grunting and clawing and occasionally falling off halfway up. This got a loud “I told you, not on your back” from Scarsbury. Jace stayed in the tree the entire time, like some kind of rakish bird, at points smiling at the students below. Sometimes he looked elegantly bored and walked up and down the branch for fun.

When there was simply no avoiding it anymore, Simon approached for his turn. Jace smiled at him from above.

“It’s easy,” Jace said. “You probably did it all the time as a child. Just do that.”

“I’m from Brooklyn,” Simon replied. “We don’t climb trees.”

Jace shrugged, suggesting that these things were not to be helped.

The first thing Simon learned about the tree was that while it appeared to lean to the side, it was really just straight up. And while the bark was rough and cut into the meat of the hands, it was also slippery, so every time he tried to get a foothold, he lost it. He tried to do it the way he’d seen Jace and George do it—they seemed to grip the tree very lightly. Simon tried this, realized it was futile, and grabbed the tree in a hug so intimate, he wondered if they were now dating. Using this awkward clutching method and some froglike leg pushes, he managed to get up the trunk, scraping his face along the way. About three-quarters of the way up, he felt his palms slick with sweat and he started to lose his grip. The falling feeling filled him with a sudden panic and he gripped harder.

“You’re doing fine,” Jace said in a voice that suggested Simon was not doing fine, but that was the kind of thing Jace was supposed to say.

Simon made it to the branch using a few desperate moves he knew looked very bad from below. There was almost definitely a moment or two when his butt must have been on display in a less-than-flattering manner. But he made it. Standing up was the next trick, which he accomplished with more fevered gripping of the trunk.

“Good,” Jace said, giving a quirky little smile. “Now just walk to me.”

Jace walked backward down the branch. Backward.

Now that Simon was on the branch, it didn’t look like it was fifteen feet off the ground. It looked like it was in the sky. It was round and uneven and slippery as ever and it wasn’t meant to be walked on, especially not in the sneakers Simon had chosen to wear that morning.

But he’d gotten this far and he wasn’t going to let Jace just do his magic backward walk while he clung to the trunk. He had gotten up there. Climbing down was a bad prospect, so there was really just the one option, and at least it was quick.

Simon took his first step. His body immediately began to shake.

“Look up,” Jace said sharply. “Look at me.”

“I need to see—”

“You need to look up to keep your balance. Look at me.”

Jace had stopped smirking. Simon looked at him.

“Now step again. Don’t look down. Your feet will find the branch. Arms out for balance. Don’t worry about down yet. Eyes on me.”

Somehow, this worked. Simon made it six steps out onto the branch and was amazed to find himself standing there, arms rigid and out like airplane wings, the wind blowing hard. Just out on a tree branch with Jace.

“Now turn to face the Academy. Keep looking out. Use it as a horizon. That’s how you stay balanced—you choose a fixed point to concentrate on. Keep your weight forward—you don’t want to go over backward.”

No. Simon really didn’t want to do that. He moved one foot to meet the other, and then he was standing facing the pile of rocks that formed the Academy, and his fellow students below, all looking up. Most did not look impressed, but George gave him a thumbs-up.

“Now,” Jace said, “bend a bit at the knees. And then I want you to just step off in one large stepping motion. Don’t jump with both feet. Just step. And as you go down, bring your legs together and keep yourself relaxed.”

This should not have been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Simon knew he’d done more. He knew he’d fought demons and come back from the dead. Jumping out of a tree should not have felt this terrifying.

He stepped into the air. He felt his brain react to this new information—There’s nothing there, don’t do it, there’s nothing there—but momentum had already pulled his other leg off the branch and then . . .

The good thing that could be said about the experience was that it was quick. Points to gravity on that one. A few seconds of almost blissful fear and confusion and then a hammering feeling as his feet met the earth. His skeleton juddered, his knees buckled in submission, his aching skull lodged a formal complaint, and he fell over sideways in what would have been a roll if he had rolled and not, in fact, just remained there on the ground in a shrimp position.

“Get up, Lewis!” Scarsbury yelled.

Jace landed beside him, like a large killer butterfly, barely making a noise.

“The first one is always the hardest,” he said, offering Simon a hand. “The first few dozen, really. I can’t remember.”

It hurt, but he didn’t appear to be hurt. The wind was knocked out of his lungs, and he needed a moment to take a few deep breaths. He staggered back to where George was waiting, a sympathetic look on his face. The last two students completed the task, each looking as miserable as Simon, and then they were free to go for lunch. Most of the group was limping as they made their way back across the field.

Since Catarina had buried the soup in the woods, the kitchens of the Academy had been forced to try to come up with some other kind of foodstuff. As usual, an attempt was made to feature food from around the world, to reflect the many nations the students had come from. Today, Simon was informed, featured Swedish cuisine. There were meatballs, a vat of lingonberry sauce, mashed potatoes, smoked salmon, fish balls, beet salad, and at the very end, a strong-smelling item that Simon was informed was a special pickled herring from the Baltic region. Simon got the sense that, prepared by people who knew what they were doing, everything on offer would have looked a lot more delicious—except possibly the pickled herring from the Baltic region. In terms of what a vegetarian could eat, there wasn’t much. He got some potatoes and lingonberry sauce and scraped one portion’s worth of beet salad out of the practically empty container. Some kind Shadowhunter from Alicante had clearly taken pity on the students and provided bread rolls, which were eagerly snatched up. By the time Simon limped up to the basket, it was empty. He turned to make his way to a table and found Jace in his path. He had a roll in his hand and had already taken a bite.

“How about you sit with me?”

The Academy cafeteria looked less like a school dining hall and more like a terrible, cheap restaurant that had gotten its furnishings out of Dumpsters. There were big tables, and tiny, intimate ones. Simon, still too sore to make jokes about lunch dates, followed Jace to one of the small, rickety tables on the side of the room. He was aware of everyone watching them go. He gave George a nod, hoping to convey that he just had to do this—no offense in not sitting with him. George nodded back.

Jon, Julie, and the others in the elite course, who had been devastated to miss Falling Out of Trees with Jace Herondale 101, all stared over as if ready to leap up and save Jace from the bad company he’d fallen into, carry him away in a litter made of chocolate and roses, and bear his children.

Once they sat, Jace tucked into his lunch and didn’t say a word. Simon watched him eat and waited, but Jace was all about the food. He had taken large helpings of most things, including the pickled Baltic herring. Now that he was even closer to it, Simon began to suspect that this fish had not been pickled at all. Someone at the famed Shadowhunter Academy kitchens had attempted to pickle fish—something that took skill and precise adherence to instructions—and had probably just invented a new form of botulism. Jace shoveled it back. Then again, Jace was the sort of Man vs. Wild guy who would probably be happy to fish a trout out of a stream with his bare hands and eat it while it was still flopping.

“Did you want to talk to me about something?” Simon finally asked.

Jace forked up a meatball and looked at Simon meditatively. “I’ve been doing research,” he said. “Into my family.”

“The Herondales?” Simon supplied, after a short pause.

“You might not remember, but I have kind of a complicated family history,” Jace said. “Anyway, I only found out I was a Herondale a little while ago. It took me a while to adjust to the idea. They’re kind of a legendary family.”

Back to the food for a few minutes. When his plates and bowls were empty, Jace sat back and regarded Simon for a moment. Simon considered asking if Jace was kind of a big deal, but decided he wouldn’t get the joke.

Jace went on. “Anyway, the whole thing, it started to remind me—well, of you. It’s like there are these important things in my history but I don’t know all of them, and I’m trying to pull together an identity that has all these holes in it. The Herondales—some of them were good people, and some of them were monsters.”

“None of that needs to affect you,” Simon said. “The choices you make are what matter, not your bloodline. But I imagine you have a lot of people in your life to tell you that. Clary. Alec.” He looked at Jace sideways. “Isabelle.”

Jace’s eyebrows went up. “You want to talk about Isabelle? Or Alec?”

“Alec hates me and I do not know why,” Simon said. “Isabelle hates me and I do know why, which is almost worse. So no, I do not want to talk about the Lightwoods.”

“It’s true you have a Lightwood problem,” Jace said, and his golden eyes glinted. “It started with Alec. As you astutely observed, you two have a history. But I shouldn’t get in the middle of that.”

“Please tell me what’s going on with Alec,” Simon said. “You are really freaking me out.”

“No,” Jace said. “There are so many deep feelings involved. There’s so much hurt. It wouldn’t be right. I didn’t come here to stir up trouble. I came here to show potential Shadowhunters how to drop from heights without breaking their necks.”

Simon stared at Jace. Jace stared back with wide, innocent golden eyes.

Simon decided that the next time he saw Alec, he would have to ask Alec himself about the secrets that lay between them. This was obviously something he and Alec had to work out on their own.

“But I will say this about your Lightwood problem,” Jace said, very casually. “Isabelle and Alec both have difficulty showing when they feel pain. But I can see it in both of them, especially when they try to hide it. She’s in pain.”

“And I made it worse,” Simon said, shaking his head. “This is my fault. Me, with my memory wiped out by some kind of demon king. Me, with no concept of what happened in my life. Me, the guy with no special abilities who’s probably going to get killed in school. I’m a monster.”

“No,” Jace said evenly. “No one blames you for not being able to remember. You offered yourself as a sacrifice. You were brave. You saved Magnus. And you saved Isabelle. You saved me. You need to bend your knees more.”

“What?”

Jace was standing up now.

“When you first step off. Bend the knees right away. Otherwise you did pretty well.”

“But what about Isabelle?” Simon asked. “What do I do?”

“I have no idea,” Jace said.

“So you just came here to torture me and talk about yourself?” Simon demanded.

“Oh, Simon, Simon, Simon,” said Jace. “You may not remember, but that’s kind of our thing.”

With that, he walked away, clearly aware of the admiring glances that followed his every step.

After lunch they had a history lecture. Usually they met in a classroom, but today everyone was assembled in the main hall. There was no grandeur to the hall—just some crooked benches, and not enough of them. The chairs from the cafeteria were dragged in to supplement, but there still weren’t enough seats. So some students (the elites) had chairs and benches, and the dregs sat on the floor at the front, like the little kids in middle school. After this morning, though, a few hours of sitting on a bare, cold, stone floor was luxury.

Catarina took her place at the wobbly lectern.

“We have a special guest lecturer today,” she said. “She is visiting us to talk about the role Shadowhunters play in writing history. As you are likely aware, though I don’t want to make any overly optimistic assumptions, Shadowhunters have been involved in many prominent moments in mundane history. Because Shadowhunters must also guard mundanes from knowing about our world, you must also sometimes take control of the writing of that history. By this I mean you have to cover things up. You need to provide a plausible explanation for what’s happened—one that does not involve demons.”

“Like Men in Black,” Simon whispered to George.

“So please give your full attention to our esteemed guest,” Catarina went on. She stepped aside, and a tall young woman took her place.

“I am Tessa Gray,” she said in a low, clear voice. “And I believe in the importance of stories.”

The woman at the front of the room looked like she might be a sophomore in college. She was elegantly dressed in a short black skirt, cashmere sweater, and paisley scarf. Simon had seen this woman once before—at Jocelyn and Luke’s wedding. Clary had said she had played a very important role in Clary’s life when she was a child. She had also informed Simon that Tessa was about a hundred and fifty years old, though she certainly didn’t look it.

“For you to understand this story, you have to understand who and what I am. Like Catarina, I am a warlock—however, my mother was not human but a Shadowhunter.”

A murmur from around the room, which Tessa glossed over.

“I am not able to bear Marks, but I once lived among Shadowhunters—I was a Shadowhunter’s wife, and my children were Shadowhunters. I was witness to much that no other Downworlder ever saw, and now I am almost the only person alive who recalls the truth behind the stories mundanes made up to explain away the times their world brushed ours. I am many things. One is a living record of Shadowhunter history. Here is one story you may have heard of—Jack the Ripper. What can you tell me about that name?”

Simon was ready for this one. He’d read From Hell six times. He’d been waiting all his life for someone to ask him an Alan Moore question. His hand shot up.

“He was a murderer,” Simon burst out. “He killed prostitutes in London in the late 1800s. He was probably Queen Victoria’s doctor, and the whole thing was a royal cover-up to hide the fact that the prince had had an illegitimate child.”

Tessa smiled at him. “You are right that Jack the Ripper is the name given to a murderer—or at least, to a series of murders. What you refer to is the royal conspiracy, which has been disproven. I believe it is also the plot of a graphic novel and film called From Hell.”

Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him. Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.

“I will give you the simple facts,” Tessa said. “Once, I was not called Tessa Gray but Tessa Herondale. In that time, in 1888, in East London, there was a string of terrible murders. . . .”

London, October 1888

“It’s not appropriate,” Tessa said to her husband, Will.

“He likes it.”

“Children like all sorts of things, Will. They like sweets and fire and trying to stick their head up the chimney. Just because he likes the dagger . . .”

“Look how steadily he holds it.”

Little James Herondale, age two, was in fact holding a dagger quite well. He stabbed it into a sofa cushion, sending out a burst of feathers.

“Ducks,” he said, pointing at the feathers.

Tessa swiftly removed the dagger from his tiny hand and replaced it with a wooden spoon. James had recently become very attached to this wooden spoon and carried it with him everywhere, often refusing to go to sleep without it.

“Spoon,” James said, tottering off across the parlor.

“Where did he find the dagger?” Tessa asked.

“It’s possible I took him to the weapons room,” Will said.

“Is it?”

“It is, yes. It’s possible.”

“And it’s possible he somehow got a dagger from where it is secured on the wall, out of his reach,” Tessa said.

“We live in a world of possibilities,” Will said.

Tessa fixed a gray-eyed stare on her husband.

“He was never out of my sight,” Will said quickly.

“If you could manage it,” Tessa said, nodding to the sleeping figure of Lucie Herondale in her little basket by the fire, “perhaps you won’t give Lucie a broadsword until she’s actually able to stand? Or is that asking too much?”

“It seems a reasonable request,” Will said, with an extravagant bow. “Anything for you, my pearl beyond price. Even withholding weaponry from my only daughter.”

Will knelt down, and James ran to him to show off his spoon. Will admired the spoon as if it were a first edition, his scarred hand large and gentle against James’s tiny back.

“Spoon,” James said proudly.

“I see, Jamie bach,” murmured Will, who Tessa had caught singing Welsh lullabies to the children on their most sleepless nights. To his children, Will showed the same love he had always shown to her, fierce and unyielding. And the same protectiveness he had only ever showed to one other person: the person James had been named after. Will’s parabatai, Jem.

“Uncle Jem would be so impressed,” she told Jamie with a smile. It was what she and Will called James Carstairs around their children, though between the two of them he was just Jem, and in public he was Brother Zachariah, a feared and respected Silent Brother.

“Jem,” echoed James, quite clearly, and her smile grew. Will and James both tilted up their heads as one to look at her, their storm-cloud-black hair framing their faces. Jamie’s was small and round, baby fat obscuring the bones and angles of a face that would one day be as like Will’s as his hair. Two pairs of eyes, one darkly brilliant blue and one celestial gold, looked up at her with absolute trust and more than a little mischief. Her boys.

The long, long London summer days that Tessa was still getting used to, even after several years, were now starting to shorten rather rapidly. No more sunlight at ten at night—now the night was gathering at six, and the fog was heavy, and faintly yellow, and it pressed against the windows. Bridget had drawn the curtains, and the rooms were dim but cozy.

It was a strange thing, being a Shadowhunter and a parent. She and Will had been living lives that constantly involved danger, and then suddenly, two very small children had joined them. Yes, they were two very small children who occasionally got hold of daggers and would one day start training to become warriors—if they wished to do so. But now they were simply two very small children. Little James, wobbling around the Institute with his spoon. Little Lucie napping in her cradle or basket or in one of many pairs of willing arms.

These days Will was, Tessa was glad to note, a bit more careful about taking risks. (Usually. She would really have to make sure there were no more daggers for the children.) Bridget could usually keep the children well in hand, but Tessa and Will liked to be at home as much as they could. Cecily and Gabriel’s little Anna was a year older than James, and had already blazed her way through the Institute. She sometimes made attempts to go for walks on her own in London, but was always blocked by Auntie Jessamine, who stood guard by the door. Whether or not Anna knew that Auntie Jessamine was a ghost was unclear. She was simply the loving, ethereal force by the doorway who shooed her back inside and told her to stop taking her father’s hats. Anna’s younger brother, Christopher, James’s age, was a quiet boy, more given to taking apart the clocks in the parlor than to talking.

It was a good life. There was a feeling of safety about it that reminded Tessa of a more peaceful time, back when she was in New York, back before she knew all the truths about herself and the world she lived in. Sometimes, when she sat with her children by the fire, it all felt so . . . normal. Like there were no demons, no creatures in the night.

She allowed herself these moments.

“What are we having this evening?” Will asked, tucking the dagger into a drawer. “It smells a bit like lamb stew.”

Before Tessa could answer, she heard the door open and Gabriel Lightwood came hurrying in, the smell of the cold fog trailing in his wake. He didn’t bother to remove his coat. From the way he was walking and the look on his face, Tessa could tell that this little moment of domestic tranquility was over.

“Something wrong?” Will asked.

“This,” Gabriel said. He held up a broadsheet newspaper called the Star. “It’s awful.”

“I agree,” Will said. “Those halfpenny rags are terrible. But you seem to be more upset about them than is appropriate.”

“They may be halfpenny rags, but listen to this.”

He stepped under a gaslight, unfolded the paper, and snapped it once to straighten it.

“The terror of Whitechapel,” he read.

“Oh,” Will said. “That.”

Everyone in London knew about the terror in Whitechapel. The murders had been extraordinarily horrible. News of the killings now filled every paper.

“. . . has walked again, and this time has marked down two victims, one hacked and disfigured beyond discovery, the other with her throat cut and torn. Again he has got away clear; and again the police, with wonderful frankness, confess that they have not a clue. They are waiting for a seventh and an eighth murder, just as they waited for a fifth, to help them to it. Meanwhile, Whitechapel is half mad with fear. The people are afraid even to talk with a stranger. Notwithstanding the repeated proofs that the murderer has but one aim, and seeks but one class in the community, the spirit of terror has got fairly abroad, and no one knows what steps a practically defenceless community may take to protect itself or avenge itself on any luckless wight who may be taken for the enemy. It is the duty of journalists to keep their heads cool, and not inflame men’s passions when what is wanted is cool temper and clear thinking; and we shall try and write calmly about this new atrocity.”

“Very lurid,” said Will. “But the East End is a violent place for mundanes.”

“I do not think this is a mundane.”

“Wasn’t there a letter? The killer sent something?”

“Yes, a very odd letter. I have that as well.”

Gabriel went over to a desk in the corner and opened it, revealing a neat stack of newspaper cuttings.

“Yes, here it is. Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope. Ha. Ha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.”

“That’s quite a name he’s given himself,” Tessa said. “And quite horrific.”

“And almost certainly false,” Gabriel said. “A bit of nonsense made up by newspapermen to keep selling the story. And good for us as well, as it gives a human face—or at least the appearance of a human hand—to it. But come, I’ll show you.”

He waved them over to the table in the middle of the room and removed a map from inside his coat. He spread this out.

“I have just come from the East End,” he said. “Something about the stories disturbed me, for more than the obvious reasons. I went there to have a look about for myself. And what happened last night proves my theory. There have been many murders recently—all of women, women who . . .”

“Prostitutes,” Tessa said.

“Quite,” Gabriel said.

“Tessa has such an extensive vocabulary,” Will said. “It is one of the most attractive things about her. Shame about yours, Gabriel.”

“Will, listen to me.” Gabriel allowed himself a long sigh.

“Spoon!” James said, running at his uncle Gabriel and jabbing him in the thigh. Gabriel mussed the boy’s hair affectionately.

“You’re such a good boy,” he said. “I often wonder how you could possibly be Will’s.”

“Spoon,” James said, leaning against his uncle’s leg lovingly.

“No, Jamie,” Will urged. “Your honorable father has been impugned. Attack, attack!”

“Bridget,” Tessa said. “Could you take James to have his supper?”

James was ushered from the room, caught up in Bridget’s skirts.

“The first murder,” Gabriel said, “was here. Buck’s Row. That occurred on August the thirty-first. Very vicious, with a number of long cuts to the abdomen. The second was on Hanbury Street on September eighth. Her name was Annie Chapman, and she was found in the courtyard behind a house. This murder had a very similar set of incisions, but was very much worse. The contents of the abdomen were simply removed. Some organs were placed on her shoulder. Some organs were simply gone. All of the work was done with a surgical precision, and would have taken a skilled surgeon some time to do. This was done in minutes, outdoors, without much light to work by. This was the work that got my attention. And now the last murders, which were only a few nights ago—these were fiendish works indeed. Now, observe closely. The first murder of that night took place here.”

He pointed to a spot on the map marked Dutfield’s Yard.

“This is right off of Berner Street, you see? This was Elizabeth Stride, and she was found at one in the morning. Similar injuries, but seemingly incomplete. Just forty-five minutes later, the body of Catherine Eddowes is found in Mitre Square.”

Gabriel traced his finger along the route from Berner Street to Mitre Square.

“It’s a distance of over half a mile,” he said. “I’ve just walked it several times. This second murder was much more terrible in nature. The body was utterly dismembered and organs were removed. The work was very delicate in nature, very skilled. And it was done in darkness, in no more than a few minutes. Work that would have taken a surgeon much more time and certainly some light. It’s simply not possible, and yet, it happened.”

Tessa and Will considered the map in front of them for a moment while the fire crackled gently behind them.

“He could have had a carriage,” Will said.

“Even with a carriage, there would simply not be time to commit these acts. And they are most certainly acts committed by the same being.”

“Not the work of werewolves?”

“Definitely not,” Gabriel said. “Nor vampires. The bodies have not been drained. They haven’t been consumed or torn. They have been cut, with organs removed and arranged, as if by design. This”—Gabriel tapped the map for emphasis—“is demonic in nature. And it has set London into a panic.”

“But why would a demon target only these poor women?” Will asked.

“There must be something they require. The fiend does seem to take . . . childbearing organs. I propose we patrol the East End, beginning at once. This area.”

Gabriel drew a circle around Spitalfields with his finger.

“This is the center of the activity. This is where it must be. Are we agreed?”

“Where’s Cecily?” Will asked.

“She has already started the work. She is there now, speaking to some of the women on the street. They find it easier speaking to her. We must start at once.”

Will nodded.

“I have one further suggestion. As the beast seems to be attracted to a certain class of woman, we should use glamours . . .”

“Or shape-shifters,” Tessa said.

“. . . to attract the demon.”

Will’s eyes caught blue fire. “You are suggesting using my wife and my sister to lure the thing out?”

“It is the best way,” Gabriel said. “And your sister is my wife. Both Tessa and Cecily are more than capable, and we would be there as well.”

“It is a good plan,” Tessa said, forestalling Will and Gabriel’s next argument. (They would always have time for another one.)

Gabriel nodded. “Again, are we agreed?”

Tessa looked into her husband’s bright blue eyes.

“Agreed,” she said.

“Agreed,” said Will. “On one condition.”

“And what condition is—” Gabriel broke off with a sigh. “Ah,” he said. “Brother Zachariah.”

“This monster is violent,” said Will. “We might need a healer. Someone with the power of a Silent Brother. This is a special situation.”

“I cannot recall a situation you did not think was special and required his presence,” said Gabriel dryly. “You have been known to call upon Brother Zachariah for a broken toe.”

“It was turning green,” said Will.

“He’s right,” said Tessa. “Green doesn’t suit him. Makes him look bilious.” She smiled at Gabriel. “There is no reason for Jem not to accompany us. We may yet need him and it does no harm to have him there.”

Gabriel opened his mouth and then closed it again with a click. He hadn’t known Jem Carstairs that well before Jem had become a Silent Brother, but he had liked him. Still, unlike his wife, Gabriel was one of the people who (clearly) thought it odd that even though Tessa had once been engaged to Jem, she and Will considered him part of their family and tried to include him in everything they did.

There were few people in the world who understood how much Will and Jem had loved each other, did love each other, and how much Will missed him. But Tessa did.

“If we might be able to save one of these poor women, we must try,” said Tessa. “If Jem can help, that would be wonderful. If not, Cecily and I will do all we can. I hope you do not think either of us lack the courage.”

Will stopped glaring at Gabriel, and turned to Tessa. He looked at her and his face softened: The traces of the wild, broken boy he had been vanished, replaced with the expression often worn by the man he was now, who knew what it was to love and be loved. “Dear heart,” he said. He took her hand and kissed it. “Who knows your courage better than I?”

“That October,” Tessa Gray said, “there were no Ripper murders reported. The London Institute made sure to patrol every evening, right through until sunrise. It was believed that this kept the demon at bay.”

It had gotten dark outside, even though it was only around three in the afternoon. The hall had gotten considerably colder as the sun had faded, and all of the students were hunkered down in the seats, arms wrapped around themselves to keep warm, but utterly alert. Tessa had been talking for some time, showing maps of London, describing truly horrific murders. It was the kind of thing that kept you awake.

“I think,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “that it is time for a short break. We’ll resume in half an hour.”

During long lecture classes, the Academy was merciful enough to allow one bathroom break every few hours, along with some more of the murky tea, which was put out in one of the large halls in steaming, ancient urns. Simon was cold enough to take a cup. Again, some benevolent Shadowhunter had provided a tray of small cakes. Simon was able to get a fleeting look at them before they were snatched up by elites, who were excused first. Some sad little biscuits were left on the side. They looked like they were made of packed sand.

“Good stuff today,” George said, picking up a dry biscuit. “Well, not good, but more interesting than usual. I like the new teacher as well. You wouldn’t think she was—how old is she?”

“I think a hundred and fifty or something. Maybe older,” said Simon. His mind was elsewhere. Tessa Gray had mentioned two names: Jem Carstairs and Brother Zachariah. Apparently they were the same person. Which was interesting, because somewhere in Simon’s shifting memories, he knew those names. And he remembered Emma Carstairs, facing Jace—he couldn’t remember why, but he knew it had happened—and saying, The Carstairs owe the Herondales.

Simon glanced over at Jace, who was seated in an armchair, being waited on hand and foot by students.

“Miss Gray looks very good for a hundred and fifty,” said George, looking over at where Tessa was examining the tea suspiciously. As she moved away from the table, she cast a quick glance toward Jace. There was a wistful sadness in her expression.

At that moment Jace stood up from his chair, scattering hangers-on. The elites all moved to make way for him, and there was a quiet chorus of “Hi, Jace” and a few wheezing sighs as he made his way over to Simon and George.

“You did really well today,” he said to George, who was flushed and appeared speechless.

“I . . . oh. Right. Yeah. Thanks, Jace. Thanks.”

“Are you still sore?” Jace asked Simon.

“Mostly my pride.”

“That’s supposed to goeth before a fall anyway.”

Simon winced at the joke. “Really?”

“I’ve been waiting to say that for a while.”

“That’s not possible.” Jace’s expression showed that it was indeed possible. Simon sighed. “Look, Jace, if I could talk to you for a second—”

“Anything you want to tell me can be said around my good buddy George here.”

You’re going to regret that, Simon thought. “Fine,” he said. “Go talk to Tessa.”

Jace blinked. “Tessa Gray? The warlock?”

“She used to be a Shadowhunter,” said Simon carefully. “Look, she was telling us a story—more a piece of history, really—and do you remember what Emma said? About the Carstairs owing the Herondales?”

Jace put his hands in his pockets. “Sure, I remember. I’m surprised you remember.”

“I think you should talk to Tessa,” said Simon. “I think she could tell you about the Herondales. Things you don’t know already.”

“Hm,” Jace said. “I’ll think about it.”

He walked off. Simon looked after him, frustrated. He wished he could remember enough about how he and Jace interacted normally to know whether this meant Jace was going to ignore his advice or not.

“He treats you like a friend,” George said. “Or an equal. You really did know each other. I mean, I knew that, but . . .”

Unsurprisingly, Jonathan Cartwright sidled up to them.

“Just talking to Jace, huh?” he said.

“Are you a detective?” Simon replied. “Your powers of observation are amazing.”

Jonathan acted like Simon had never spoken.

“Yeah—Jace and I will catch up later.”

“Are you really going to keep up the pretense that you know Jace?” Simon asked. “Because you know that’s not going to work now, right? Eventually Jace will just come over and say he doesn’t know you.”

Jonathan looked glum. Before he could say anything, though, the signal was given for everyone to return to the hall, and Simon shuffled in with the others. They took their seats again, and settled in to listen to Tessa.

“We continued to do nightly patrols of the area,” Tessa began. “Our duty as Shadowhunters is to protect the mundane world from the influence of demons. We walked, we watched, and we warned all those we could. As much as it was possible, women working in the East End tried to take more care and not walk alone as much. But for women in that profession, safety was rarely a consideration. I had always assumed their lives were hard, but I had no idea. . . .”

London, November 9, 1888

Tessa Herondale certainly knew what poverty was, that it existed. In the time when her aunt had died and she was a young girl left friendless and defenseless in New York, she had felt the cold breath of poverty like a monster stalking at her back. But in the month she and Cecily spent walking the streets of East London under the guise of prostitutes, she knew what it would have been if poverty had caught her and torn at her with its claws.

They dressed the part—old, tattered clothes, heavy rouge on the cheeks. They had to use glamours for the rest, for the true mark of the prostitute was want. Missing teeth. Jaundiced skin. Bodies tight from malnourishment and bent from disease. Women who walked and walked all night long because there was nowhere to sleep, nowhere to sit. They sold themselves for pennies to buy gin because the gin kept them warm, took away the pain for an hour, numbed them to the terrible, brutal reality of their lives. If these women could get the money to have a place to sleep for the night, that didn’t mean a bed. It could mean a spot on a floor, or even just a bit of wall to sit against, with a rope run around the room to keep the sleepers from falling over. By the crack of dawn, they’d be tossed out on the street again.

Walking among them, Tessa felt dirty. She felt the remains of her supper in her belly. She knew that her bed in the Institute was warm and contained someone who loved her and would protect her. These women had bruises and cuts. They fought over corners and bits of cracked mirror and scraps of cloth.

And there were children as well. They sat in the fetid streets, no matter their age. Their skin was so dirty as to never be clean. She wondered how many of them had ever had a hot meal in their lives, served on a plate. Had they ever known a home?

Over it all, the smell. The smell was what really ground itself into Tessa’s soul. The tang of urine, the night soil, the vomit.

“I’m getting tired of this,” said Cecily.

“I think everyone here is tired,” Tessa replied.

Cecily sighed sadly.

“One carriage ride away and the streets are quiet and spotless. It’s a different world in the West End.”

A drunken man approached them and made an overture. Since they had to play the part, Cecily and Tessa smiled and led him to an alley, where they inserted him into an empty oyster barrel and left him.

“A month of this and no sign,” Tessa said as they walked away from the flailing, upturned legs of the man. “Either we’re keeping it away, or . . .”

“Or this simply isn’t working.”

“Magnus Bane would be useful at a time like this.”

“Magnus Bane is enjoying New York,” Cecily replied. “You’re a warlock.”

“I don’t have Magnus’s experience. Anyway, it’s nearly dawn. Another hour and we can go home.”

Will and Gabriel had taken to posting themselves in the Ten Bells pub, which seemed to be the central place for news of the killer. Indeed, many locals said they had seen him there with the victims before the murders. Sometimes Jem would come by with news from the Silent City. It wasn’t unusual for Cecily and Tessa to return exhausted to the pub at the crack of dawn, and find Gabriel gone and Will asleep, wrapped up in Brother Zachariah’s parchment robes, head on the table.

Jem would be reading a book, or quietly looking out the window. He could see, in his own fashion, despite his closed eyes. He was glamoured, so that his appearance would not shock the tavern’s denizens. Tessa could always feel Cecily tense when she first saw Jem: black runes scored his cheeks, and there was a single white streak in his dark hair.

Sometimes, after Cecily and Gabriel left, Tessa would sit with her hand in Jem’s and Will sleeping against her shoulder, listening to the rain on the windows. It never did last for long, though, since she did not like leaving the children alone so much, though Bridget was an excellent nurse.

It was hard on both families. The children would wake to find four exhausted parents who drew endless runes for wakefulness and yet still could barely keep up with Anna, running about in her uncle’s waistcoat, or James, waving his spoon and trying to find the dagger he had seen and loved. Lucie woke at all hours needing milk and embraces.

And here it was, another dawn walking the streets of the East End, and for what? And the dawn was coming later and later. The nights were so very long. As the sun rose over Christ Church in Spitalfields, Cecily turned to Tessa again.

“Home,” she said.

“Home,” Tessa replied wearily.

They had arranged for a carriage to come for them that morning on Gun Street. They met Will and Gabriel there. They looked a bit worse for wear, as they often had to drink gin all night in order to blend in with the locals. There had been no Jem that night, and Will seemed restless.

“Did you find out anything?” Tessa asked.

“The same as usual,” Gabriel said, slurring a little. “All the victims were seen with a man. He varies in stature and all manner of appearance.”

“So likely an Eidolon,” Will said. “It’s so generic that it might even be a Du’sien, but I don’t think a Du’sien could get that close and convince a woman he was an actual human male, no matter how drunk she was.”

“But that tells us nothing,” Cecily said. “If it’s an Eidolon, it could be anyone.”

“It’s being remarkably consistent, though,” Will said. “It always comes as a man and it always takes women. We’re getting nowhere with this.”

“Or we’re getting everywhere,” Gabriel replied. “It hasn’t come back.”

“We can’t do this forever.”

They’d been having this same conversation every night for the past week. This one ended as it usually did, with the two couples leaning against each other in the back of the carriage and falling asleep until they reached the Institute. They greeted their children, who were having their breakfast with Bridget, and they listened with half-closed eyes as Anna rambled on about her many plans for the day and James banged his spoon.

Tessa and Will started the climb up the steps to their bedroom. Cecily waited for Gabriel, who was lingering in the front parlor.

“I’ll be up shortly,” he said, his eyes bloodshot. “I just want to read the morning papers.”

Gabriel always did this—always checked, every morning. So Tessa, Will, and Cecily returned to bed. Once in their bedroom, Tessa cleaned her face in the basin with the hot water Bridget had left. Their fire was burning, and the bed was turned back, waiting for them. They fell into it gratefully.

They had barely fallen asleep when Tessa heard a fevered banging at the door and Gabriel admitted himself.

“It’s happened again,” he said, breathless. “By the Angel, this is the worst one yet.”

The carriage was recalled, and within the hour, they were on their way back to the East End, this time dressed in gear.

“It happened in a place called Miller’s Court, off Dorset Street,” Gabriel said.

Of all the terrible streets in East London, Dorset Street was the worst. It was a short road, just off Commercial Street. Tessa had learned much of the goings-on of Dorset Street in the last few weeks. A pair of abusive slum landlords controlled much of the street. There was so much screaming, so much poverty and stench crowded into a small space that it felt like it could push the air out of the lungs. The houses there were subdivided into tiny rooms, each little space rented away. This was a street where everyone had an empty stare, where the prevailing feeling was of desperation.

On the way, Gabriel told them what he’d managed to find out from the morning papers—the address (number thirteen), the victim’s name (Mary Kelly). There was a parade moving through the city for Lord Mayor’s Day. News of the crime had spread, though, and was making its way along the parade route. Newspaper boys were chanting about the murder and selling papers like mad. Cecily peered out from the curtain of the carriage.

“They seem to be celebrating it,” she said. “They’re smiling and running to buy the newspapers. My God, how can people celebrate such a thing?”

“It’s interesting,” Will said, with a dark grin. “Danger is appealing. Especially to those with nothing to lose.”

“It’s going to be madness down there,” Gabriel said.

Indeed, crowds had already gathered all along the road to Dorset Street. The residents were all out watching the police. The police were attempting to hold people back from a small, dark doorway halfway up the road.

“There,” Gabriel said. “Miller’s Court. We won’t be able to get near it unless you can get in, Tessa. There’s a detective down there called Abberline from Scotland Yard. If we can get him over here, or one of the constables working inside the room . . .”

“I’ll get one of them,” Will said, breaking through the crowd.

He returned a few minutes later with a man of middling age, with a kindly appearance. He did appear to be very busy, and his forehead was creased with consternation. Whatever Will had told him, it was enough to lure him away from the place of the crime.

“Where is it?” he said, following Will. “You’re quite sure . . .”

“Quite sure.”

It was hard to keep people from following them, so Cecily, Tessa, and Gabriel had to block the way while Will led the inspector down an alley. He whistled a few moments later. He was standing in the doorway of a cheap rented room.

“In here,” Will said. The inspector was in the corner, looking quite asleep. His clothes were missing. “He’ll be fine, but he’ll likely wake up soon. Put these on.”

While Tessa took the clothes and changed herself into the form of Abberline, Will filled her in on a few more facts he had gotten from people in the street. Mary Kelly was probably last seen at two thirty in the morning, but one person claimed to have seen her as late as eight thirty. No matter what, whatever had killed her had probably long since vanished.

Once Tessa was ready, Will helped her push her way back through the crowd, down Dorset Street, to the small entryway that was Miller’s Court. Tessa stepped through the dark passageway into a very small courtyard, barely wide enough to turn around in. There were several houses here, cheaply whitewashed. Dozens of faces peered at her from dirty, broken windows.

Room thirteen was barely a room—it was clearly part of a larger space in which a cheap partition had been constructed. It was mostly empty, containing only a few pieces of broken furniture. It was very, very hot, as if a fire had blazed all night.

In all her time fighting demons, Tessa had never seen anything like this.

There was blood.

It was in such a large amount that Tessa wondered how one small body could contain so much. It had turned part of the floor black, and the bed, on which the woman rested, was utterly stained. There was no other color. As for the woman herself—she was no more. Her body was destroyed in a way that could barely be comprehended. This had taken time. Her face—there was nothing much left to speak of. Many parts of her were removed. They could be seen in many places, around her on the bed. Some parts of her were on a table.

A man was leaning over her. There was a doctor’s bag on the floor, so Tessa steadied herself and then spoke.

“Well, doctor?”

The doctor turned.

“I think we’ll have to move her soon. They’re trying to break in. We’ll have to move her carefully.”

“Summarize for me the general situation. I need a concise report.”

The doctor stood and wiped his bloodstained hands on his trousers.

“Well, a very deep cut across the throat. The head is nearly off. You can see the nose is gone, much of the skin. There are so many slashes and incisions in the abdomen I barely know where to start. The abdominal cavity is empty and her hands have been placed inside the opening. You can see he’s left some of the contents here in this room, but some are missing. The heart is gone. The skin on the table I believe to be from the thighs. . . .”

Tessa could not really take in much more of the information. This was enough.

“I see,” she said. “There’s someone I have to speak to.”

“Make the arrangements for her to be moved,” the doctor said. “We can’t keep her here. They’re going to get in. They want to see.”

“Constable,” Tessa said to a policeman by the door, “see to it that a cart is brought.”

Tessa walked away quickly, back down through the crowd, breathing in as deeply as she could to get the smell of blood and entrails out of her nose. She felt a queasiness she had not experienced since her pregnancies. Will took one look at her and embraced her. Cecily came forward and put smelling salts under her nose. They had learned that smelling salts were necessary.

“Bring out the detective,” Tessa said, when she had recovered. “He’s needed.”

The inspector was retrieved and dressed. The smelling salts were applied, and he slowly came around. Once they had him on his feet and assured him that he had simply fainted, they left the area quickly and walked toward White’s Row.

“Whatever it was,” Gabriel said, “it’s likely long gone. It happened hours ago. By having the body indoors, it went unnoticed for some time.”

He took out his Sensor, but it showed no activity.

“I suggest we return to the Institute,” he said. “We’ve learned what we can here. It’s time to apply ourselves to the problem in a different way. We have to look at the clues it leaves behind.”

“The people,” Tessa said.

“The people,” Gabriel corrected himself.

They were more awake now. Tessa wondered if she would ever sleep again. She found the transition from East to West London more repugnant this time—the clean buildings, the space, the trees, the parks, the lovely carriages, and the lovely clothes and shops. And just a mile or so away . . .

“What is done cannot be undone,” Will said, taking her hand.

“You didn’t see her.”

“But we will catch the thing that attacked her.”

As soon as they turned onto Fleet Street, Tessa felt something wasn’t right. She couldn’t figure out what it was. The street was utterly quiet. One of the servants from a neighboring property was sweeping leaves from the step. There was a coal cart and a wagon from a greengrocer delivering vegetables. She sat upright, every nerve tense, and when the carriage stopped, she swung the door open quickly and bounded out. Seeing her reaction, the other three followed in a similar fashion.

The first thing that confirmed her fears was that Bridget did not greet them at the door.

“Bridget?” Tessa called.

Nothing.

She looked up at their windows—clean, unbroken, dark. The curtains had been drawn. Will pushed open the door.

They found Bridget at the foot of the staircase. Cecily rushed to her.

“Unconscious,” she said. “But breathing. The children! Who is with the children?”

As one, they raced up the stairs. Every light was out, every door closed, every curtain drawn. They all went in separate directions, running to the nursery, to the bedrooms, to every room on the upper floors. Nothing.

“Shadowhunters . . .”

The voice was neither male nor female, and it seemed to come from everywhere. Will and Tessa met in the corridor, and Will held a witchlight high.

“What are you?” he yelled. “Where are the children?”

“Shadowhunters . . .”

“Where are the children? You can’t have an interest in them. Show yourself.”

“Shadowhunters . . .”

Gabriel and Cecily appeared, seraph blades ready. Will and Tessa reached for theirs. They walked down the steps, watching in every direction.

“I follow you,” hissed the voice, which now seemed to come from below them. “Shadowhunters. I follow you home. Play my game.”

“What is your game?” Will called back. “I’ll play any game you like if you show yourself.”

“The game is to hide. I like to hide. I like to take . . . the pieces. I hide. I take the pieces.”

“I know you have form,” Will said. “You’ve been seen. Show yourself.”

“Spoon!”

The cry came from the direction of the dining room. All four ran toward the voice. When they opened the door, they found James standing at the far end of the room, spoon held aloft.

“James!” Tessa cried. “Come to Mama! Come now, James!”

James laughed and, instead of running to Tessa, turned in the direction of the great fireplace, within which a tremendous fire burned high. He ran directly into it.

“James!”

Will and Tessa both ran for him, but halfway there, the fire flared up in a multitude of colors: blue and green and black. Heat poured from it, sending them stumbling back.

It subsided as quickly as it had arisen. They dashed again for the fireplace, but there was no sign of James.

“No, no!” Tessa screamed. “Jamie!”

She lunged for the fire; Will caught her and hauled her back. Everything seemed to have gone dark and silent in Tessa’s ears. All she could think about was her baby. His soft laugh, his storm-black hair like his father’s, his sweet disposition, the way he put his arms around her neck, his lashes against his cheeks.

Somehow, she had fallen to the floor. It was hard against her knees. James, she thought desperately.

A cool hand closed about her wrist. There were words in her head, soft and silent, cool as water. I am here.

Her eyes flew open. Jem was kneeling over her. The hood of his robes was thrown back, his black-and-silver hair disarrayed. It’s all right. That was not James. That was the demon itself, tricking you. James is in the house.

Tessa gasped. “My God! Is that the truth?”

Strong arms were suddenly around her, hugging her tight. “It’s true. Jem’s had a tracking spell on Lucie and James since they were born. They’re alive, they just need us to find them. Tess—Tessa—” She felt Will’s tears against her shoulder.

Jem was still holding her hand. I called for James, she thought, and he came.

Tessa stayed where she was. It was the first time in her life, she thought, that her legs had felt so weak that she couldn’t rise. Will had his arms around her and her hand was in Jem’s. That was enough to keep her breathing. The Silent City believes the demon to be a sort of trickster. It means for you to chase it around the Institute. Its motives are unclear, but they seem to be those of a child.

“If it is a child . . . ,” Tessa began, almost to herself.

The others turned to her.

“If it’s a child, it thinks it’s playing a game. It plays with women. I think it wants . . . a mother.”

Suddenly it was as if a great wind shook the room.

“I will play,” called a different voice.

“Jessamine!” Will said. “She’s inside the house.”

“I will play with you,” said Jessamine’s voice, louder now. It seemed to come from every room. “I have toys. I have a dollhouse. Play with me.”

There was a long silence. Then all of the gas jets flared, sending columns of blue flame almost to the ceiling. Just as quickly, they were sucked back down to the jets and the room was dark again. The fire went out.

“My dollhouse is wonderful,” Jessamine’s voice went on. “It is very small.”

“Very small?” came the reply.

“Bring the children and we shall play.”

There was another great whoosh of wind through the room.

“Jessamine’s room,” Will said.

They made their way carefully to Jessamine’s room, where the door stood open. There was Jessamine’s dollhouse, her pride and joy, and next to it, the transparent, gossamer figure of Jessamine. A moment later, something came down the chimney, a kind of fog that splintered into pieces and floated about the room like bits of cloud. Jessamine was busy moving about the dolls in one of the rooms and paid attention to no one.

“We need more of us to play,” she said.

“It is very small. So many pieces.”

The fog drifted toward the dollhouse, but Jessamine suddenly flared. She became like a web, wrapping herself around the dollhouse.

“We need more of us to play,” Jessamine hissed. “The children.”

“They are in the walls.”

“In the walls?” Gabriel said. “How can they . . .”

“The chimneys,” Cecily said. “It uses the chimneys.”

They ran from room to room. Each child was found, sound asleep, tucked up into a chimney. Anna was in one of the empty Shadowhunter rooms. James was in the kitchen, Christopher in the parlor. Lucie was in Cecily and Gabriel’s bedroom. Once they were secured, along with Bridget, the two sets of parents returned to Jessamine’s room, where the shimmering figure of Jessamine was playing with a small girl. Jessamine appeared to be utterly engrossed in the game until she saw the others, who nodded to her.

“Now we will play a new game,” Jessamine said.

The small girl turned toward Jessie, and Tessa caught sight of her face. It was pale and smooth, a child’s face, but her eyes were entirely black, with no whites to them at all. They looked like specks of ash. “No. This game.”

“You must close your eyes. It is a very good game. We are going to hide.”

“Hide?”

“Yes. We shall play hide-and-seek. You must close your eyes.”

“I like to hide.”

“But first you must seek. Close your eyes.”

The demon child, a small girl, barely five years of age in appearance, closed her eyes. As she did, Will brought the seraph blade down on her and the room was splattered with ichor.

“And it was gone,” Tessa said. “The problem, of course, was that the rest of London couldn’t be told that it was over. Jack the Ripper had been conjured up out of thin air, and now there was no Jack the Ripper to put in the dock. There would be no capture, no trial, no public hanging. The killings simply stopped. We considered trying to stage something, but there was so much scrutiny by that point that we felt this might complicate matters. But as it turned out, we didn’t need to do anything. The public and the newspapers carried the story. New things were published every day, even though we knew there was nothing to report. It turned out people were willing to make up many theories of their own, and they’ve continued to do so since 1888. Everyone wants to catch the uncatchable killer. Everyone wants to be the hero of the story. And this has remained true in many cases since. In the absence of facts, the media will often make up stories of their own. It can save us a lot of work. In many ways, modern media is one of our greatest assets when it comes to covering up the truth. Do not discount mundanes. They weave their own stories, to make sense of their world. Some of you mundanes will help us make better sense of ours. Thank you for your attention this afternoon,” Tessa finished. “I wish you all the luck in the world as you continue your training. What you do is brave and important.”

“A round of applause for our esteemed guest,” Catarina said.

This was given, and Tessa stepped down and went over to a man, who kissed her lightly on the cheek. He was slender, and very elegant, dressed in black and white. His black hair had one single white streak in it, completing the dichromatic look.

Memories assailed Simon, some easy to access, some hidden behind the frustrating web of forgetfulness. Jem had been at Luke and Jocelyn’s wedding as well. The way that he smiled at Tessa, and she back at him, made it clear what their relationship was—they were in love, of the realest, truest kind.

Simon thought of Tessa’s story, of the Jem who had been a Silent Brother, and had been a part of her life so long ago. Silent Brothers did live a long time, and Simon’s foggy memory did recall something about one who had been returned to normal mortal life by heavenly fire. Which meant that Jem had lived in the Silent City for more than a hundred years, until his service was over. He had returned to life to live with his immortal love.

Now that was a complicated relationship. It made a little memory loss and former vampire status seem almost normal.

Dinner that night was a new culinary terror: Mexican food. There were roast chickens, or pollo asado, with the feathers still on, and square tortillas.

Jace didn’t appear. Simon didn’t have to look around for him, as the entire cafeteria was on alert. Had there been a sighting of his mighty blond head, Simon would have heard the intake of breath. Dinner was followed by two hours of mandatory study in the library. After all that, Simon and George returned to their room, only to find Jace standing by the door.

“Evening,” he said.

“Seriously,” Simon said. “How long have you been lurking here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” Jace had his hands stuffed in his pockets and was leaning against the wall, looking like an advertisement for a fashion magazine. “Alone.”

“People will say we’re in love,” Simon said.

“You could come into our room,” George said. “If you want to talk. If it’s private, I can put earplugs in.”

“I’m not going in there,” Jace said, glancing in the open doorway. “That room is so damp you could probably hatch frogs on the walls.”

“Ah, that’ll be in my head now,” George said. “I hate frogs.”

“So what do you want?” Simon said.

Jace smiled lightly.

“George, go inside the room,” Simon said, a bit apologetically. “I’ll be right in.”

George ducked into their bedroom and shut the door behind him. Simon was now alone with Jace in a long corridor, which was a situation he felt like he’d been in before.

“Thank you,” Jace said, surprisingly directly. “You were right about Tessa.”

“She’s related to you?”

“I went to talk to her.” Jace looked shyly pleased, as if a small light inside him had been turned on. It was the sort of expression that would, Simon suspected, have slain adolescent girls in their tracks. “She’s my great-great-great-something-grandmother. She was married to Will Herondale. I’ve learned about him before. He was part of stopping a massive demon invasion into Britain. She and Will were the first Herondales to run the London Institute. I mean, it isn’t anything I didn’t know, historically, but it’s— Well, as far as I know, there isn’t anyone alive who shares blood with me. But Tessa does.”

Simon leaned back against the wall of the corridor. “Did you tell Clary?”

“Yeah, I was on the phone with her for a couple of hours. She said Tessa hinted at some of this stuff during Luke and Jocelyn’s wedding, but she didn’t come right out and say it. She didn’t want me to feel burdened.”

“Do you?” Simon said. “Feel burdened, that is.”

“No,” Jace said. “I feel like there’s someone else who understands what it means to be a Herondale. Both the good parts and the bad. I worried because of my father—that maybe being a Herondale meant I was weak. And then I learned more and thought maybe I was expected to be some kind of hero.”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “I know what that’s like.”

They shared a small moment of bizarre, companionable silence—the boy who’d forgotten everything about his history, and the boy who’d never known it.

Simon broke the silence. “Are you going to see her again? Tessa?”

“She says she’s going to take me and Clary on a tour of the Herondale house in Idris.”

“Did you meet Jem, too?”

“We’ve met before,” said Jace. “In the Basilias, in Idris. You don’t remember, but I—”

“Stopped him being a Silent Brother,” said Simon. “I do remember that.”

“We talked in Idris,” said Jace. “A lot of what he said makes more sense to me now.”

“So you’re happy,” Simon said.

“I’m happy,” said Jace. “I mean, I’ve been happy, really, since the Dark War ended. I’ve got Clary, and I’ve got my family. The only dark spot’s been you. Not remembering Clary, or Izzy. Or me.”

“So sorry to mess up your life with my inconvenient amnesia,” Simon muttered.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Jace said. “I meant I wish you remembered me because—” He sighed. “Forget it.”

“Look, Herondale, you owe me one now. Wait out here.”

“For how long?” Jace looked aggrieved.

“As long as it takes.” Simon ducked into his room and shut the door. George, who had been lying in bed studying, looked glum when Simon informed him that Jace was lurking in the hall.

“He’s making me nervous now,” George said. “Who’d want Jace Herondale following them around, being all mysterious and taciturn and blond. . . . Oh, right. Probably loads of people. Still, I wish he wouldn’t.”

Simon didn’t bother to lock the bedroom door, partially because there were no locks at Shadowhunter Academy, and partially because if Jace decided to come in and stand over Simon’s bed all night, he was going to do that, lock or no.

“He must want something?” George said, stripping off his rugby shirt and throwing it into the corner of the room. “Is this a test? Are we going to have to fight Jace in the middle of the night? Si, not to bag on our awesome demon-fighting prowess, but I do not think that is a fight we can win.”

“I don’t think so,” Simon said, dropping down onto his bed, which dropped much farther than it should have. That was definitely at least two springs breaking.

They got ready for bed. As usual, in the dark, they talked about the mold and the many zoological possibilities crawling around them in the dark. He heard George turn toward the wall, the signal that he was about to sleep and the nightly chat was over.

Simon was awake, hands behind his head, body still achingly sore from the fall out of the tree.

“Do you mind if I turn on a light?” he asked.

“Nae, go ahead. I can barely see it anyway.”

They still said “turn on a light” like they were flicking a switch. They had candles at the Academy—nubby little candles that seemed to have been specially made to produce as little light as possible. Simon fumbled around on the small stand next to his bed and found his matches and lit his candle, which he pulled into the bed with him, balancing it on his lap in a way that was probably unsafe. One good thing about the floor of ultimate moisture was that it was unlikely to catch fire. He could still be burned, if the candle overturned in his lap, but it was the only way he would be able to see to write. He reached again for some paper and a pen. No texting here. No typing. Real pen to paper was required. He made a makeshift desk out of a book and began to write:

Dear Isabelle . . .

Should he start with “dear”? It was the way you started letters, but now that he saw it, it looked weird and old-fashioned and maybe too intimate.

He got a new piece of paper.

Isabelle . . .

Well, that looked stark. Like he was angry, just saying her name like that.

Another paper.

Izzy,

Nope. Definitely not. They were not at pet names yet. How the hell did you start a letter like this? Simon considered a casual “Hey . . .” or maybe just forgetting the salutation and getting right to the message. Texting was so much easier than this.

He picked up the paper that started with “Isabelle” again. It was the middle choice. He would have to go with that.

Isabelle,

I fell out of a tree today.

I’m thinking of you while I’m in my moldy bed.

I saw Jace today. He may develop food poisoning. Just wanted you to know.

I’m Batman.

I’m trying to figure out how to write this letter.

Okay. That was a possible start, and true.

Let me tell you something you already know—you’re amazing. You know it. I know it. Anyone can see that. Here’s the problem—I don’t know what I am. I have to figure out who I am before I can accept that I’m someone who deserves someone like you. It’s not something I can accept just because I’ve heard it. I need to know that guy. And I know I am that guy you loved—I just have to meet him.

I’m trying to figure out how that happens. I guess it happens here, in this school where they try to kill you every day. I think it takes time. I know things that take time are annoying. I know it’s hard. But I have to get there the hard way.

This letter is probably stupid. I don’t know if you’re still reading. I don’t know if you’re going to rip this up or slice it in half with your whip or what.

All of that came out in one solid flow. He tapped the pen against his forehead for a minute.

I’m going to give this to Jace to give to you. He’s been trailing me around all day like some kind of Jacey shadow. He’s either here to make sure I don’t die, or to make sure I die, or maybe because of you. Maybe you sent him.

I don’t know. He’s Jace. Who knows what he’s doing? I’m going to give this to him. He may read it before it gets to you. Jace, if you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure you’re going to get food poisoning. Do not use the bathrooms.

It wasn’t romantic, but he decided to leave it in. It might make Isabelle laugh.

If you are reading this, Jace, stop now.

Izzy—I don’t know why you would wait for me, but if you do, I promise to make myself worth that wait. Or I’ll try. I can promise I am going to try.

—Simon

Simon opened the door and was not surprised to find Jace standing outside of it.

“Here,” Simon said, handing him the letter.

“Took you long enough,” Jace said.

“Now we’re even,” said Simon. “Go party in the Herondale house with your weird family.”

“I plan to,” said Jace, and smiled a sudden, strangely endearing smile. He had a chipped tooth. The smile made him seem like he was Simon’s age, and maybe they were friends after all. “Good night, Wiggles.”

“Wiggles?”

“Yes, Wiggles. Your nickname? It’s what you always made us call you. I almost forgot your name was Simon, I’m so used to calling you Wiggles.”

“Wiggles? What does that . . . even mean?”

“You would never explain,” Jace said with a shrug. “It was the big mystery about you. As I said, good night, Wiggles. I’ll take care of this.”

He held up the letter and used it to make a salute.

Simon shut the door. He knew most people on the hall had probably done everything they could to make sure they heard that exchange. He knew that in the morning he would be called Wiggles and there was nothing he would ever be able to do about it.

But it was a small price to pay to get a letter to Isabelle.