What I Did on My Summer Vacation
By Simon Lewis
This summer, I lived in Brooklyn. Every morning I ran through the park. One morning, I met a nixie who lived in the dog pond. She had—
Simon Lewis paused to consult his Chthonian/English dictionary for the word for “blond”—there was no entry. Apparently words relating to hair color were a nonissue for creatures of the demon dimensions. Much like, he’d discovered, words relating to family, friendship, or watching TV. He chewed his eraser, sighed, then bent over the page again. Five hundred words on how he spent his summer were due to his Chthonian teacher by morning, and after an hour of work he had written approximately . . . thirty.
She had hair. And—
—an enormous rack.
“Just trying to help,” Simon’s roommate, George Lovelace, said, reaching over Simon’s shoulder to scrawl in an ending to the sentence.
“And failing miserably,” Simon said, but he couldn’t suppress a grin.
He’d missed George this summer, more than he had expected to. He’d missed all of it more than he’d expected—not just his new friends, but Shadowhunter Academy itself, the predictable rhythms of the day, all the things he’d spent months complaining about. The slime, the dank, the morning calisthenics, the chittering of creatures trapped in the walls . . . he’d even missed the soup. Simon had spent most of his first year at the Academy worrying that he was out of place—that, any minute, someone important would realize they’d made a terrible mistake and send him back home.
It wasn’t until he was back in Brooklyn, trying to sleep beneath Batman sheets with his mother snoring in the next room, that he realized home wasn’t home anymore.
Home, unexpectedly, inexplicably, was Shadowhunter Academy.
Park Slope wasn’t quite the same as he remembered, not with the werewolf cubs frolicking in the Prospect Park dog run, the warlock selling artisanal cheese and love potions at the Grand Army farmers’ market, the vampires lounging on the banks of the Gowanus, flicking cigarette butts at strolling hipsters. Simon had to keep reminding himself that they’d been there all along—Park Slope hadn’t changed; Simon had. Simon was the one who now had the Sight. Simon was the one who flinched at flickering shadows and, when Eric had the misfortune of sneaking up behind him, instinctively yanked his old friend off his feet and slammed him to the ground with an effortless judo flip.
“Dude,” Eric gasped, goggling up at him from the parched August grass, “stand down, soldier.”
Eric, of course, thought he’d spent the year at military school—as did the rest of the guys, as did Simon’s mother and sister. Lying to almost everyone he loved: That was another thing different about his Brooklyn life now, and maybe the thing that made him most eager for escape. It was one thing to lie about where he’d been all year, to make up half-assed stories about demerits and drill sergeants, most of them cribbed from bad eighties movies. It was another thing altogether to lie about who he was. He had to pretend to be the guy they remembered, the Simon Lewis who thought demons and warlocks were confined to the pages of comic books, the one whose closest brush with death involved aspirating a chocolate-covered almond. But he wasn’t that Simon anymore, not even close. Maybe he wasn’t a Shadowhunter, not yet—but he wasn’t exactly a mundane anymore either, and he was tired of pretending to be.
The only person he didn’t have to pretend with was Clary, and as the weeks passed, he’d spent more and more time with her, exploring the city and listening to stories of the boy he used to be. Simon still couldn’t quite remember what they’d been to each other in that other life, the one he’d been magicked into forgetting—but the past seemed to matter less and less.
“You know, I’m not the person I used to be either,” Clary had said to him one day, as they nursed their fourth coffee at Java Jones. Simon was doing his best to turn his blood into caffeine, in preparation for September. The Academy was a coffee-free zone. “Sometimes, that old Clary feels just as far away from me as the old Simon must from you.”
“Do you miss her?” Simon asked, but he meant: Do you miss him? The old Simon. The other Simon. The better, braver Simon, who he was always worried he no longer had it in himself to be.
Clary had shaken her head, fiery red curls bouncing at her shoulders, green eyes glinting with certainty. “And I don’t miss you anymore, either,” she’d said, with that uncanny knack to know what was going on in his head. “Because I have you back. At least, I hope . . .”
He’d squeezed her hand. It was answer enough for both of them.
“Speaking of what you did on your summer vacation,” George said now, flopping back on his sagging mattress, “are you ever going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Simon leaned back in his chair—then, at the ominous sound of cracking wood, abruptly leaned forward again. As second-years, Simon and George had been offered the opportunity to claim a room aboveground, but they’d both decided to stay in the dungeon. Simon had gotten rather attached to the gloomy damp—and he’d discovered there were certain advantages to being far from the prying eyes of the faculty. Not to mention the judgmental glares of the elite-track students. While the Shadowhunter kids in his class had, for the most part, come around to the slim possibility that their mundane peers could have something to offer, there was a whole new class now, and Simon didn’t relish teaching them the lesson all over again. Still, as his desk chair decided whether or not to split in half and something furry and gray scampered past his feet, he wondered if it was too late to change his mind.
“Simon. Mate. Toss me a bone here. Do you know how I spent my summer vacation?”
“Shearing sheep?” George had sent him a handful of postcards over the last two months. The front of each of them had borne a photograph of the idyllic Scottish countryside. And on the back, a series of messages circling a single theme:
Bored.
So bored.
Kill me now.
Too late, already dead.
“Shearing sheep,” George confirmed. “Feeding sheep. Herding sheep. Mucking about in sheep muck. While you were . . . who-knows-what-ing with a certain raven-haired superwarrior. You’re not going to let me live vicariously?”
Simon sighed. George had restrained himself for four and a half days. Simon supposed that was more than he could have asked for.
“What makes you think I was doing anything with Isabelle Lightwood?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because last I saw you, you wouldn’t shut up about her?” George affected an American accent—poorly. “What should I do on my date with Isabelle? What should I say on my date with Isabelle? What should I wear on my date with Isabelle? Oh, George, you bronze Scottish love god, tell me what to do with Isabelle.”
“I don’t recall those words coming out of my mouth.”
“I was paraphrasing your body language,” George said. “Now spill.”
Simon shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”
“Didn’t work out?” George’s eyebrows nearly rocketed off his forehead. “Didn’t work out?”
“Didn’t work out,” Simon confirmed.
“You’re telling me that your epic love story with the hottest Shadowhunter of her generation that spanned multiple dimensions and several incidences of saving the world is over with a shrug and a”—his voice flattened again to an American accent—“ ‘didn’t work out.’ ”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m telling you.” Simon tried to sound casual about it, but he must have failed, because George got up and gently slugged his roommate’s shoulder.
“Sorry, mate,” George said quietly.
Simon sighed again. “Yeah.”
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By Simon Lewis
I screwed up my chances with the most amazing girl in the world.
Not once, not twice, but three times.
She took me on a date to her favorite nightclub, where I stood around like an idiot clod all night and once literally tripped over my own two feet. Then I dropped her off at the Institute and shook her hand good night.
Yes, you read that right: Shook. Her. Hand.
Then I took her on date number two, to my favorite movie theater, where I made her sit through a Star Wars: The Clone Wars marathon and didn’t notice when she fell asleep, then I accidentally insulted her taste because how was I supposed to know she once dated some warlock with a tail and not that I wanted to know that anyway and then: Zoom in on yet another good-night handshake.
Date number three, another of my genius ideas: double date with Clary and Jace. Which maybe would have been fine, except for how Clary and Jace are more in love than any people in love in the history of love, and how I’m pretty sure they were playing footsie under the table, because there was that one time when Jace started rubbing his foot against my leg by accident. (I think by accident?) (It better have been by accident.) And then we got attacked by demons, because Clary and Jace are apparently some kind of demon magnet, and I got knocked down in about thirty seconds and just kind of lay around in a corner while the rest of them saved the day and Isabelle did her amazing warrior goddess thing. Because she’s an amazing warrior goddess—and I’m a weenie.
After that they all went off on some super-awesome cross-country road trip to chase down the demons that sent the other demons after us, and they wouldn’t let me come. (See above re: my weenie-ness.) Then when they came back, Isabelle didn’t call me, probably because what kind of warrior goddess wants to date a cowering-in-the-corner weenie? And I didn’t call her, for the same reason . . . and also because I thought maybe she’d call me.
Which she didn’t.
The End
Simon decided to ask his Chthonian teacher for an extension.
The second-year curriculum, it turned out, was much the same as the first—with one exception. This year, as the months ticked down toward Ascension day, the Shadowhunter Academy students were expected to learn current events. Although judging from what they’d learned so far, Simon thought, their current events class could just as easily be titled Why Faeries Suck.
Every day Shadowhunter and mundane second-years crowded into one of the classrooms that had been locked down the year before. (Something about a demonic beetle infestation.) Each squeezed into a rusty chair-desk combo that seemed designed for students half their size, and listened as Professor Freeman Mayhew explained the Cold Peace.
Freeman Mayhew was a scrawny, bald man with a graying Hitler mustache, and though he started most of his sentences with “Back when I was fighting demons . . .” it was difficult to imagine him fighting so much as a cold. Mayhew believed it was his responsibility to persuade his students that faeries were shrewd, untrustworthy, coldhearted, and—not that the “lily-livered politicians” running the Clave would admit it any time soon—worthy of extinction.
The students quickly realized that disagreeing—or even interrupting to ask a question—drove up Mayhew’s blood pressure, an angry red blotch blooming across his skull as he snapped, “Were you there? I don’t think so!”
This morning Mayhew ceded the classroom to a girl a few years older than Simon. Her white-blond hair fell in ringlets around her shoulders, her blue-green eyes sparkled, and her mouth was set in a grim line that suggested she’d rather be anywhere else. Professor Mayhew stood beside her, but Simon noticed the way he kept his distance and was careful not to turn his back on her. Mayhew was afraid.
“Go on,” the professor said gruffly. “Tell them your name.”
The girl kept her eyes on the floor and mumbled something.
“Louder,” Mayhew snapped.
Now the girl lifted her head and faced the class full on, and when she spoke, her voice was loud and clear. “Helen Blackthorn,” she said. “Daughter of Andrew and Eleanor Blackthorn.”
Simon gave her a closer look. Helen Blackthorn was a name he knew well from the stories Clary told him about the Dark War. The Blackthorns had all lost quite a bit in that fight, but he thought Helen and her brother Mark had lost most of all.
“Liar!” Mayhew shouted. “Try again.”
“If I can lie, shouldn’t that prove something to you?” she asked, but it was clear she already knew the answer.
“You know the conditions of your presence here,” he snapped. “Tell them the truth or go home.”
“That’s not my home,” Helen said quietly but firmly.
After the Dark War, she had been exiled—not that anyone officially used that term—to Wrangel Island, an Arctic outpost that was the hub of the world’s protective wards. It was also, Simon had heard, a desolate frozen wasteland. Officially, Helen and her girlfriend, Aline Penhallow, were studying the wards, which had to be rebuilt after the Dark War. Unofficially, Helen was being punished for the accident of her birth. The Clave had decided that despite her bravery in the Dark War, despite her impeccable history, despite the fact that her younger siblings were orphans and had no one to care for them but an uncle they barely knew, she couldn’t be trusted in their midst. The Clave thought that even though her skin could bear the angelic runes, she wasn’t a real Shadowhunter.
Simon thought they were all idiots.
It didn’t matter that she had no weapons, was clad in a pale yellow shirt and jeans, and had no visible runes. It was clear, simply from her posture and the control she exerted over herself, transforming rage into dignity, that Helen Blackthorn was a Shadowhunter. A warrior.
“Last chance,” Mayhew grumbled.
“Helen Blackthorn,” the girl said again, and tucked her hair back, revealing delicate pale ears, each of which tapered to an elfin point. “Daughter of Andrew Blackthorn the Shadowhunter and the Lady Nerissa. Of the Seelie Court.”
At that Julie Beauvale stood up and, without a word, walked out of the classroom.
Simon felt for her, or tried to. During the final hours of the Dark War, a faerie had murdered Julie’s sister right in front of her. But that wasn’t Helen’s fault. Helen was only half-faerie, and it wasn’t the half that counted.
Not that anyone in the Clave—or the classroom—seemed to believe it. The students buzzed, faerie slurs bouncing between them. At the front of the classroom, Helen stood very still, hands clasped behind her back.
“Oh, shut up,” Mayhew said loudly. Simon wondered, not for the first time, why the man had become a teacher when it seemed the only thing he loathed more than young people was the obligation to teach them. “I don’t expect any of you to respect this . . . person. But she’s here to offer you a cautionary tale. You will listen.”
Helen cleared her throat. “My father and his brother were once students here, just like you.” She spoke softly, with flat affect, as if she were talking about strangers. “And perhaps like you, they didn’t realize how dangerous the Fair Folk could be. Which almost destroyed them.”
It was my father, Andrew’s, second year at the Academy—Helen continued—and Arthur’s first. Normally, only second-years would be sent on a mission to the land of the fey, but everyone knew Arthur and Andrew fought best side by side. This was long before the Cold Peace, obviously, when the fey were bound by the Accords. But it didn’t stop them from breaking the rules where they thought they could get away with it. A Shadowhunter child had been taken. Ten students from the Academy, accompanied by one of their teachers, were sent to get her back.
The mission was a success—or would have been, if a clever faerie hadn’t snared my father’s hand in a berry thornbush. Without thinking, he sucked the blood from a small wound—and, with it, took in a bit of the juice.
Drinking something in Faerie bound him to the Queen’s whim, and the Queen bade him stay. Arthur insisted on staying with him—that’s how much the brothers cared for each other.
The Academy teacher quickly made a bargain with the Queen: Their imprisonment would last only one day.
The Academy teachers have, of course, always been rather clever. But the fey were more so. What passed as one day in the world lasted much longer in Faerie.
It lasted for years.
My father and my uncle had always been quiet, bookish boys. They served bravely on the battlefield, but they preferred the library. They weren’t prepared for what happened to them next.
What happened to them next was they encountered the Lady Nerissa, of the Seelie Court, the faerie who would become my mother, a faerie whose beauty was surpassed only by her cruelty.
My father never spoke to me of what happened to him at Nerissa’s hands, nor did my uncle. But upon their return, they both made full reports to the Inquisitor. I’ve been . . . invited to read these reports in full and relay the details to you.
The details are these: For seven long years Nerissa made of my father her plaything. She bound him to her, not with chains but with dark faerie magic. As her servants held him down, she latched a silver choker around his neck. It was enchanted. It made my father see her not as she was, a monster, but as a miracle. It deceived his eyes and his heart, and turned his hatred of his captor into love. Or, rather, the curdled faerie version of love. A claustrophobic worship. He would do anything for her. He did, over those seven years, do everything for her.
And then there was Arthur, his brother, younger than Andrew and young for his age. Kind, they say. Soft.
Lady Nerissa had no use for Arthur, except as a toy, a tool, something with which to torture my father and affirm his loyalty.
Nerissa forced my father to live all those years in love; she forced Arthur to live in pain.
Arthur was burned alive, many times over, as a faerie fire ate away his flesh and bone but would not kill.
Arthur was whipped, a chain of thorns slashing wounds in his back that would never heal.
Arthur was chained to the ground, cuffs binding his wrists and ankles as if he were a wild beast, and forced to watch his worst nightmares play out before his eyes, faerie glamours impersonating the people he loved most dying excruciating deaths before his eyes.
Arthur was left to believe his brother had abandoned him, had chosen faerie love over flesh and blood, and that was the worst torture of all.
Arthur was broken. It took only a year. The faeries spent the next six stomping and giggling over the rubble of his soul.
And yet.
Arthur was a Shadowhunter, and these should never be underestimated. One day, half-mad with pain and sorrow, he had a vision of his future, of thousands of days of agony, decades, centuries passing in Faerie as he aged into a wizened, broken creature, finally returned to his world to discover that only one day had passed. That everyone he knew was young and whole. That they would pray for his death, so they wouldn’t have to live with what had become of him. Faerie was a land beyond time; they could steal his entire life here—they could give him ten lifetimes of torture and pain—and still stay true to their word.
The terror of this fate was more powerful than pain, and it gave him the strength he needed to break free of his bonds. He was forced to fight against his own brother, who’d been enchanted into believing he should protect Lady Nerissa at all costs. Arthur knocked my father to the ground and used Lady Nerissa’s own dagger to slice her open from neck to sternum. With that same dagger, he cut the enchanted silver from my father’s throat. And together, both of them finally free, they escaped Faerie and returned to the world. Both of them still bearing their scars.
After they made their report to the Inquisitor, they left Idris, and left each other. These brothers, once as close as parabatai, couldn’t stand each other’s sight. Each was a reminder of what the other had endured and lost. Neither could forgive the other for where they had failed, and where they had succeeded.
Perhaps they would have reconciled, eventually.
But Arthur went to London, while my father returned home to Los Angeles, where he quickly fell in love with one of the Shadowhunters training at the L.A. Institute. She loved him too and helped him forget those nightmare years. They married. They were happy—and then, one day, their doorbell rang. My mother would have been painting, or developing photographs in her darkroom. My father would have been buried in his books. One of them would have answered the door and discovered two baskets on their doorstep, each of them bearing a sleeping toddler. My brother Mark and me. My father, in his bewitched state, never realized the Lady Nerissa had borne two children.
My father and his wife, Eleanor, raised us like we were full-blooded Shadowhunters. Like we were their own. Like we weren’t half-blooded monsters who’d been slipped into their midst by their enemy. Like we weren’t constant reminders of destruction and torture, of the long nightmare my father had labored so long to forget. They did their best to love us. Maybe they even did love us, as much as anyone could. But I’m assured that Andrew and Eleanor Blackthorn were the best of Shadowhunters. So they would have been smart enough to know, deep down, that we could never truly be trusted.
Trust a faerie at your own risk, because they care for nothing but themselves. They sow nothing but destruction. And their preferred weapon is human love.
This is the lesson I’ve been asked to teach you. And so I have.
“What the hell was that?” Simon exploded as soon as they were dismissed from class.
“I know!” George sagged against the corridor’s stone wall—then quickly reconsidered as something green and sluggish wriggled out from behind his shoulder. “I mean, I knew faeries were little bastards, but who knew they were evil?”
“I did,” Julie said, her face paler than usual. She’d been waiting for them outside the classroom—or, rather, waiting for Jon Cartwright, with whom she now seemed to be somewhat of an item. Julie was even prettier than Jon and almost as big a snob, but still, Simon had thought she had slightly better taste.
Jon put his arm around her, and she curled herself against his muscled torso.
They make it look so easy, Simon thought in wonder. But then, that was the thing about Shadowhunters—they made everything look so easy.
It was slightly disgusting.
“I can’t believe they tortured that poor guy for seven years,” George said.
“And how about his brother!” Beatriz Mendoza exclaimed. “That’s even worse.”
George looked incredulous. “You think being forced to fall in love with a sexy faerie princess is worse than getting burned alive a couple hundred times?”
“I think—”
Simon cleared his throat. “Uh, I actually meant, what the hell was that with Helen Blackthorn, trotting her in here like some kind of circus freak, making her tell us that horrible story about her own mother?” As soon as Helen finished her story, Professor Mayhew had pretty much ordered her out of the room. She’d looked like she wanted to decapitate him—but instead, she’d lowered her head and obeyed. He’d never seen a Shadowhunter behave like that, like she was . . . tamed. It felt sickeningly wrong.
“ ‘Mother’ is a bit of a technicality in this situation, don’t you think?” George asked.
“You think that means this was fun for her?” Simon said, incredulous.
“I think a lot of things aren’t fun,” Julie said coldly. “I think watching your sister get sliced in half isn’t so fun, either. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t care much about this halfling thing or her so-called feelings.” Her voice shook on the last word, and very abruptly she slid out from under Jon’s arm and raced off down the hallway.
Jon glared at Simon. “Nice, Lewis. Really nice.” He took off after Julie, leaving Simon, Beatriz, and George to stand around awkwardly in their hushed wake.
After a tense moment George scratched his stubbled chin. “Mayhew was pretty harsh back there. Acting like she was some kind of criminal. You could tell he was just waiting for her to stab him with a piece of chalk or something.”
“She’s fey,” Beatriz pointed out. “You can’t just let your guard down with them.”
“Half-fey,” Simon said.
“But don’t you think that’s enough? The Clave must have thought so,” Beatriz said. “Why else send her into exile?”
Simon snorted. “Yeah, because the Clave is always right.”
“Her brother rides with the Wild Hunt,” Beatriz argued. “How much more faerie can you get?”
“That’s not his fault,” Simon protested. Clary had told him the whole story of Mark Blackthorn’s capture—the way the faeries had snatched up him during the massacre at the Los Angeles Institute. The way the Clave refused to bother trying to get him back. “He’s there against his will.”
Beatriz was starting to look somewhat cross. “You don’t know that. No one can know that.”
“Where is this even coming from?” Simon asked. “You’ve never bought into any of that anti-Downworlder crap.” Simon might not have remembered his vampire days very well, but he made it his business not to befriend anyone inclined to stake first, ask questions later.
“I’m not anti-Downworlder,” Beatriz insisted, full of self-righteousness. “I don’t have any problem with werewolves or vampires. Or warlocks, obviously. But the fey are different. Whatever the Clave is doing with them, or to them, it’s for our benefit. It’s to protect us. Don’t you think it’s possible they know a little more about it than you do?”
Simon rolled his eyes. “Spoken like a true Shadowhunter.”
Beatriz gave him an odd look. “Simon—do you realize that you almost always say ‘Shadowhunter’ like it’s an insult?”
That stopped him. Beatriz rarely spoke to anyone sharply like that, especially not him. “I . . .”
“If you think it’s so terrible, being a Shadowhunter, I don’t know what you’re doing here.” She took off down the corridor toward her room—which was, like the rest of the second-year elite rooms, high up in one of the turrets with a nice southern exposure and a meadow view.
George and Simon turned the other way, toward the dungeons.
“Not making many friends today,” George said cheerfully, softly slugging his roommate. It was George-speak for don’t worry, it’ll blow over.
They clomped down the corridor side by side. A summer cleaning had done nothing to address the dripping ceilings or puddles of suspicious-smelling slime that cluttered the path to the dungeons—or maybe the Academy’s janitorial ministrations just didn’t extend to dregs’ quarters. Either way, by this point Simon and George could have made it down the hallway blindfolded; they sidestepped puddles and ducked spurting pipes by habit.
“I didn’t mean to upset anyone,” Simon said. “I just don’t think it’s right.”
“Trust me, mate, you made that perfectly clear. And obviously I agree with you.”
“You do?” Simon felt a rush of relief.
“Of course I do,” George said. “You don’t fence off a whole herd just because one sheep’s nibbling at the wrong grass, right?”
“Er . . . right.”
“I just don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about it.” George wasn’t the type to get worked up about much of anything, or at least, not the type to admit it. He claimed apathy was a family credo. “Is it the vampire thing? You know no one thinks about you that way.”
“No, it’s not that,” Simon said. He knew that these days, his friends barely gave a thought to his vampire past—they considered it irrelevant. Sometimes Simon wasn’t so sure. He’d been dead . . . how could that be irrelevant?
But that had nothing to do with this.
This simply wasn’t right, the way Professor Mayhew ordered Helen around like a trained dog, or the way the others talked about the Fair Folk—as if, because some faeries had betrayed the Shadowhunters, all Faeries were guilty, now and forevermore.
Maybe that was it: the question of guilt handed down through bloodlines, the sins of the fathers visited on not just their sons but their friends, neighbors, and random acquaintances who happened to have similarly shaped ears. You couldn’t just indict an entire people—or in this case, Downworlder species—because you didn’t like how a few of them behaved. He’d spent enough time in Hebrew school to know how that kind of thing ended. Fortunately, before he could formulate an explanation for George that didn’t name-check Hitler, Professor Catarina Loss materialized before them.
Materialized, literally, in a rather theatrical puff of smoke. Warlock prerogative, Simon supposed, although showing off wasn’t Catarina’s style. Usually she blended in with the rest of the Academy faculty, making it easy to forget she was a warlock (at least, if you overlooked the blue skin). But he’d noticed that whenever another Downworlder was on campus, Catarina went out of her way to play up her warlockiness.
Not that Helen was a Downworlder, Simon reminded himself.
On the other hand, Simon wasn’t a Downworlder either—or hadn’t been for more than a year now—and Catarina still insisted on calling him Daylighter. According to her, once a Downworlder, always, in some tiny, subconscious, embedded-in-the-soul part, a Downworlder. She always sounded so certain of this, as if she knew something he didn’t. After talking to her, Simon often found himself tonguing his canine teeth, just to make sure he hadn’t sprouted fangs.
“Might I speak with you for a moment, Daylighter?” she said. “Privately?”
George, who’d been a bit nervous around Catarina ever since she had, very briefly, turned him into a sheep, had clearly been waiting for an excuse to run away. He took it.
Simon found himself surprisingly glad to be alone with Catarina; she, at least, was certain to be on his side. “Professor Loss, you won’t believe what just happened in class with Professor Mayhew—”
“How was your summer, Daylighter?” She gave him a thin smile. “Pleasant, I trust? Not too much sun?”
In all the time he’d known Catarina Loss, she’d never bothered with small talk. It seemed an odd time to start. “You did know Helen Blackthorn was here, right?” Simon said.
She nodded. “I know most everything that goes on around here. I thought you’d figured that out.”
“Then I’m guessing you know how Professor Mayhew was treating her.”
“Like something less than human, I would imagine?”
“Exactly!” Simon exclaimed. “Like something scraped off the bottom of his shoe.”
“In my experience, that’s how Professor Mayhew treats most people.”
Simon shook his head. “If you’d seen it . . . this was worse. Maybe I should tell Dean Penhallow?” The idea seized him only as it was coming out of his mouth, but he liked the sound of it. “She can, I don’t know . . .” It wasn’t like she could give him a detention. “Something.”
Catarina pursed her lips. “You must do what you think is right, Daylighter. But I can tell you that Dean Penhallow has little authority on the subject of Helen Blackthorn’s treatment here.”
“But she’s the dean. She should—oh.” Slowly but surely, the pieces slotted into place. Dean Penhallow was cousin to Aline Penhallow. Helen’s girlfriend. Aline’s mother, Jia, the Consul, was supposedly biased on the subject of Helen, and had recused herself from determining her treatment. If even the Consul couldn’t intercede on Helen’s behalf, then presumably the dean had even less hope of doing so. It seemed hideously unfair to Simon, that the people who cared most for Helen were the ones least involved in deciding her fate. “Why would Helen even come here?” Simon wondered. “I know Wrangel Island must suck, but could it be any worse than getting paraded around here, where everyone seems to hate her?”
“You can ask her yourself,” Catarina said. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you. Helen asked me to send you over to her cabin after your classes end today. She has something for you.”
“She does? What?”
“You’ll have to ask that for yourself too. You’ll find her lodgings at the edge of the western quad.”
“She’s staying on campus?” Simon said, surprised. He couldn’t understand why Helen would come here in the first place, but it was even harder to imagine her wanting to stay. “She must have friends in Alicante she could stay with.”
“I’m sure she does, even now,” Catarina said, something kind and sad in her voice, as if she were, very, very gently, letting down a child. “But, Simon, you’re presuming she had a choice.”
Simon hesitated at the door of the cabin, willing himself to knock. It was his least favorite thing, meeting someone he’d known in his before life, as he’d come to think of it. There was always the fear they would expect something of him he couldn’t deliver, or assume he knew something he’d forgotten. There was, too often, a gleam of hope in their eyes that was extinguished as soon as he opened his mouth.
At least, he told himself, he’d barely known Helen. She couldn’t be expecting much from him. Unless there was something he didn’t know.
And there must be something he didn’t know. . . . Why else would she have summoned him?
Only one way to find out, Simon thought, and knocked at the door.
Helen had changed into a bright polka-dotted sundress and looked much younger than she had in the classroom. Also much happier. Her smile widened substantially when she saw who was at the door.
“Simon! I’m so glad. Come on in, sit down, would you like something to eat or drink? Maybe a cup of coffee?”
Simon settled himself on the small living room’s only couch. It was uncomfortable and threadbare, embroidered with a faded flower pattern that looked like something his grandmother might have owned. He wondered who usually lived here, or whether the Academy simply maintained the ramshackle cabin for visiting faculty. Though he couldn’t imagine there were many visiting faculty members who wanted to live in a broken-down hut on the edge of the woods that looked like somewhere Hansel and Gretel’s witch might have lived before she discovered candy-based architecture.
“No, thanks, I’m fine—” Simon stopped as her last word registered with him. “Did you say coffee?”
Half a week into the new school year, Simon was already in serious caffeine withdrawal. Before he could tell her yes, please, a bucketful, Helen had already placed a steaming mug in his hands. “I thought so,” she said.
Simon swallowed greedily, caffeine buzzing through his system. He didn’t know how anyone was supposed to be human—much less, in the Shadowhunter case, superhuman—without a daily dose. “Where did you get this?”
“Magnus magicked me up a nonelectric coffeemaker,” Helen said, grinning. “Kind of a parting gift before we left for Wrangel Island. Now I can’t live without it. ”
“How is it there?” Simon asked. “On the island?”
Helen hesitated, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Was it rude to ask someone how they were enjoying their exile in a Siberian-like wilderness?
“Cold,” she said finally. “Lonely.”
“Oh.” What could he say to that? “Sorry” didn’t quite seem to cover it, and she didn’t look like she wanted his pity.
“But we’re together, at least. Aline and I. That’s something. That’s everything, I suppose. I still can’t believe she agreed to marry me.”
“You’re getting married?” Simon exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”
“It is, isn’t it?” Helen smiled. “It’s hard to believe how much light you can find in the darkness, when you have someone who loves you.”
“Did she come with you?” Simon asked, looking around the small cabin. There was only one other room, the bedroom, he assumed, its door closed. He couldn’t remember meeting Aline, but from everything Clary had told him, he was curious.
“No,” Helen said sharply. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“What deal?”
Instead of answering, she abruptly changed the subject. “So, did you enjoy my lecture this morning?”
Now it was Simon who hesitated, unsure how to answer. He didn’t want to suggest he’d found her lecture dull—but it seemed equally wrong to suggest he’d enjoyed hearing her terrible story or seeing Professor Mayhew humiliate her. “I was surprised you’d want to give the lecture,” he said finally. “It can’t be easy, telling that story.”
Helen gave him a wry smile. “ ‘Want’ is a strong word.” She got up to pour him another cup of coffee, then began bustling with a stack of dishes in the tiny kitchenette. Simon got the feeling she was just trying to keep her hands busy. And maybe avoid meeting his eye. “I made a deal with them. The Clave.” She ran her hands nervously through her blond hair, and Simon caught a brief glimpse of her pointed ears. “They said if I came to the Academy for a couple days, let them parade me around like some kind of half-faerie show pony, then Aline and I could come back.”
“For good?”
She laughed bitterly. “For one day and one night, to be married.”
Simon thought, suddenly, of what Beatriz had asked him earlier that day. Why he was trying so hard to become a Shadowhunter.
Sometimes he couldn’t quite remember.
“They didn’t even want to let us come back at all,” Helen said bitterly. “They wanted us to have the wedding on Wrangel Island. If you can even call that a wedding, in a frozen hellhole without anyone you love there with you. I guess I should feel lucky I got this much out of them.”
Less lucky than disgusted, or maybe enraged, Simon thought, but it didn’t seem like it would be helpful to say so out loud. “I’m surprised they care so much about one lecture,” he said instead. “I mean, not that it wasn’t educational, but Professor Mayhew could have just told us the story himself.”
Helen turned away from her kitchen busywork and met Simon’s gaze. “They don’t care about the lecture. This isn’t about your education. It’s about humiliating me. That’s all.” She gave herself a little shake, then smiled too brightly, her eyes shining. “Forget about all that. You came here to get something from me—here it is.” Helen slipped an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Simon.
Curious, he tore it open and pulled out a small piece of thick ivory stationery, inscribed with a familiar hand.
Simon stopped breathing.
Dear Simon, Izzy wrote.
I know I’ve developed a habit of ambushing you at school.
This was true. Isabelle had popped up more than once when he’d least expected her. Every time she showed up on campus, they fought; every time, he was sorry to see her go.
I promised myself I’m not going to do that anymore. But there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. So this is me, giving you advance warning. If it’s okay for me to come for a visit, you can let Helen know, and she’ll get word to me. If it’s not okay, you can tell her that, too. Whatever.—Isabelle
Simon read the brief note several times, trying to intuit the tone behind the words. Affectionate? Eager? Businesslike?
Until this week he’d been only an e-mail or a phone call away—why wait until he was back at the Academy to reach out? Why reach out at all?
Maybe because it would be easier to reject him for good when he was safely on another continent?
But in that case, why Portal all the way to Idris to do it face-to-face?
“Maybe you need some time to think about it?” Helen said finally.
He’d forgotten she was there. “No!” Simon blurted out. “I mean, no, I don’t need time to think about it, but yes, yes, she can come visit. Of course. Please, tell her.”
Stop babbling, he ordered himself. Bad enough he turned into a driveling fool every time Isabelle was in the room with him these days—was he now going to start doing so at the sound of her name?
Helen laughed. “See, I told you so,” she said loudly.
“Er, you told me what?” Simon asked.
“You heard him, come out!” Helen called, even louder, and the bedroom door creaked open.
Isabelle Lightwood didn’t have it in her to look sheepish. But her face was doing its best. “Surprise?”
When Simon had regained his power of speech, there was only one word available in his brain. “Isabelle.”
Whatever crackled and sizzled between them was apparently so palpable that Helen could sense it too, because she swiftly slid past Isabelle into the bedroom and shut the door.
Leaving the two of them alone.
“Hi, Simon.”
“Hi, Izzy.”
“You’re, uh, probably wondering what I’m doing here.” It wasn’t like her to sound so uncertain.
Simon nodded.
“You never called me,” she said. “I saved you from getting decapitated by an Eidolon demon, and you didn’t even call.”
“You never called me, either,” Simon pointed out. “And . . . uh . . . also, I kind of felt like I should have been able to save myself.”
Isabelle sighed. “I thought you might be thinking that.”
“Because I should have, Izzy.”
“Because you’re an idiot, Simon.” She brightened. “But this is your lucky day, because I’ve decided I’m not giving up yet. This is too important to give up just because of a bad date.”
“Three bad dates,” he pointed out. “Like, really bad dates.”
“The worst,” she agreed.
“The worst? Jace told me you once went out with a merman who made you have dinner in the river,” Simon said. “Surely our dates weren’t as bad as—”
“The worst,” she confirmed, and broke into laughter. Simon thought his heart would burst at the sound of it—there was something so carefree, so joyous in the music of her laugh, it was almost like a promise. That if they could navigate a path through all the awkwardness and pain and burden of expectations, if they could find their way back to each other, something that pure and joyful awaited them.
“I don’t want to give up either,” Simon said, and the smile she rewarded him with was even better than the laughter.
Isabelle settled beside him on the small couch. Simon was suddenly extremely conscious of the inches separating their thighs. Was he supposed to make a move right now?
“I decided New York was too crowded,” she said.
“With demons?”
“With memories,” Isabelle clarified.
“Too many memories is not exactly my problem.”
Isabelle elbowed him. Even that made a spark. “You know what I mean.”
He elbowed her back.
To touch her like that, so casually, like it was no big deal . . .
To have her back, so close, so willing . . .
She wanted him.
He wanted her.
It should have been that easy.
Simon cleared his throat and, without knowing why, rose to his feet. Then, like that wasn’t enough distance, retreated safely to the other side of the room. “So what do we do now?” he asked.
She looked thrown, but only for a moment. Then she barreled ahead. “We’re going on another date,” she said. Not a request; a command. “In Alicante. Neutral territory.”
“When?”
“I was thinking . . . now.”
It wasn’t what he expected—but then, why not? Classes were over for the day, and second-year students were allowed off campus. There was no reason not to go out with Isabelle immediately. Except that he’d had no time to prepare, no time to come up with a game plan, no time to obsess over his hair and his “casually rumpled” look, no time to brainstorm a list of discussion topics in case conversation flagged . . . but then, none of those things had saved their previous three dates from disaster. Maybe it was time to experiment with spontaneity.
Especially since it didn’t seem like Isabelle was giving him much of a choice.
“Now it is,” Simon agreed. “Should we invite Helen?”
“On our date?”
Idiot. He gave himself a mental slap upside the head.
“Helen, you want to crash our romantic date?” Isabelle called.
Helen emerged from the bedroom. “Nothing I would love more than being an awkward third wheel,” she said. “But I’m not actually allowed to leave.”
“Excuse me?” Isabelle’s fingers played at the electrum whip wrapped around her left wrist. Simon couldn’t blame her for wanting to strike something. Or someone. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Catarina laid a circle of protection around the cabin,” Helen said. “It won’t stop you from coming and going, but I’m told it will be rather effective if I try to leave before I’m summoned.”
“Catarina wouldn’t do that!” Simon protested, but Helen put out a hand to quiet him.
“They didn’t give her much of a choice,” Helen said, “and I asked her to just go along. It was part of the deal.”
“That is unacceptable,” Isabelle said with barely concealed fury. “Forget the date, we’re staying here with you.”
She was lit up with a beautiful glow of righteous rage, and Simon wanted suddenly, desperately, to sweep her in his arms and kiss her until the end of the world.
“You will most certainly not forget the date,” Helen said. “You’re not staying here a single second longer. No argument.”
There was, in fact, plenty more argument, but Helen finally convinced them that being stuck there with them, knowing she’d ruined their day, would be even worse than being stuck there alone. “Now please, and I say this with love, get the hell out.”
She gave Izzy a hug, and then embraced Simon in turn. “Don’t screw this up,” she whispered in his ear, then pushed them both out the door and closed it behind them.
There were two white horses neighing by the front path, as if they were waiting for Isabelle. Simon supposed they were; animals in Idris behaved differently from how they did back home, almost as if they could understand what their humans wanted and, if you asked nicely enough, were willing to deliver.
“So, where exactly are we going on this date?” Simon asked. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would ride into Alicante, but of course, this was Idris. No cars. No trains. Nothing but medieval or magical transportation, and he supposed a horse was better than a vampire motorcycle. Marginally.
Isabelle grinned and swung herself up onto the saddle as easily as if she were mounting a bike. Simon, on the other hand, clumsily heaved himself onto his horse with enough grunting and sweating that he was afraid she’d take one look and call the whole thing off.
“We’re going shopping,” Isabelle informed him. “It’s time you get yourself a sword.”
“It doesn’t actually have to be a sword,” Isabelle said as they stepped into Diana’s Arrow. The ride to Alicante had been like something out of a dream, or at least a cheesy romance novel. The two of them astride white stallions, galloping across the countryside, charging across emerald meadows and through a forest the color of flames. Isabelle’s hair streamed behind her like a river of ink, and Simon had even managed not to fall off his horse—never a foregone conclusion. Best of all, between the rush of wind and the thunder of hoofbeats, it had been too loud for conversation. In motion, things felt easy between them—natural. Simon could almost forget that this was one of the most important moments of his life and anything he said or did could screw it up forever. Now, back at ground level, the weight settled back on his shoulders. It was hard to think of anything clever to say with his brain echoing the same four words over and over again.
Don’t. Screw. This. Up.
“They have everything here,” Izzy continued, presumably trying to fill the dull silence Simon’s nerves left in their wake. “Daggers, axes, throwing stars—oh, and bows, of course. All kinds of bows. It’s awesome.”
“Yeah,” Simon said weakly. “Awesome.”
He had, in his year at the Academy, learned to fight almost as well as any beginning Shadowhunter, and had a proficiency with every weapon she’d named. But he’d discovered that knowing how to use a weapon was very different from wanting to. In his pre-Shadowhunter life, Simon had delivered many passionate rants on the subject of gun control, and would have loved nothing more than for every weapon in the city to be dumped into the East River. Not that a gun was the same as a sword, and not that he didn’t love the feel of unleashing an arrow from his bow and watching it fly swiftly and surely into the heart of his target. But the way Isabelle loved her whip, the way Clary talked about her sword, like it was a member of the family . . . the Shadowhunter passion for deadly weapons still took some getting used to.
Diana’s Arrow, a weapons shop on Flintlock Street at the heart of Alicante, was full of more deadly objects than Simon had ever seen in one place—and that included the Academy weapons room, which could have supplied an army. But while the Academy arsenal was more like a storage closet, swords and daggers and arrows piled in haphazard stacks and crowded onto dangerously rickety shelves, Diana’s Arrow reminded Simon of a fancy jewelry store. The weapons were on proud display, shining blades fanned across velvet cases, the better to show off their metallic gleam.
“So, what kind of thing are you looking for?” The guy behind the counter had a spiky Mohawk and a faded Arcade Fire T-shirt and looked more suited to a comic-book counter than this one. Simon assumed this probably wasn’t Diana.
“How about a bow?” Izzy said. “Something really spectacular. Fit for a champion.”
“Maybe not that spectacular,” Simon said quickly. “Maybe something a little more . . . unobtrusive.”
“People often underestimate the importance of good battle style,” Isabelle said. “You want to intimidate the enemy before you even make a move.”
“You don’t think my intimidating wardrobe will do the job there?” Simon gestured at his own T-shirt, which featured an anime cat spewing green puke.
Isabelle gave him what sounded like a pity laugh, then turned back to not-Diana. “What have you got in daggers?” she asked. “Anything gold plated?”
“I’m not really a gold-plated kind of guy,” Simon said. “Or, uh, a dagger kind of guy.”
“We have some nice swords,” the guy said.
“You do look hot with a sword,” Isabelle said. “As I recall.”
“Maybe?” Simon tried to sound encouraging, but she must have heard the skepticism in his voice.
She turned on him. “It’s like you don’t even want a weapon.”
“Well . . .”
“So what are we doing here?” Isabelle snapped.
“You suggested it?”
Isabelle looked like she wanted to stomp her foot—or stomp his face. “Excuse me for trying to help you behave like a respectable Shadowhunter. Forget it. We can go.”
“No!” he said quickly. “That’s not what I meant.”
With Isabelle, it was never what he meant. Simon had always considered himself a man of words, as opposed to a man of deeds. Or of swords, for that matter. His mother liked to say he could talk her into almost anything. All he could do with Isabelle, it seemed, was talk himself out of a girlfriend.
“I’ll, ah, just give the two of you some space to look around,” the shopkeeper said, backing quickly away from the awkward. He disappeared into the back.
“I’m sorry,” Simon said. “Let’s stay, please. Of course I want your help picking something out.”
She sighed. “No, I’m sorry. Choosing your first weapon is a really personal thing. I get it. Take your time, look around. I’ll shut up.”
“I don’t want you to shut up,” he said.
But she shook her head and zipped her lips shut. Then raised three fingers in the air—Scout’s honor. Which didn’t seem like a Shadowhunter thing, and Simon wondered who had taught her to do that.
He wondered if it had been him.
Sometimes he hated before-Simon and all the things he’d shared with Isabelle, things today-Simon could never understand. It was weird and headache inducing, competing with yourself.
They browsed the store, taking in the options: polearms, athames, seraph blades, elaborately carved crossbows, chakhrams, throwing knives, a full display case of golden whips, over which Isabelle nearly began to drool.
The silence was oppressive. Simon had never had a good date—at least not that he could recall—but he was pretty sure they tended to involve some talking.
“Poor Helen,” he said, testing the heft and balance of a medieval-looking broadsword. At least this was one subject they were sure to agree on.
“I hate what they’re doing to her,” Isabelle said. She was stroking a deadly-looking silver kindjal as if it were a puppy. “How was it, in class? Was it as bad as I imagine?”
“Worse,” Simon admitted. “The look on her face, when she was telling the story of her parents . . .”
Isabelle’s grip tightened around the kindjal. “Why can’t they see how hideous it is to treat her like this? She’s not a faerie.”
“Well, that’s not really the point, is it?”
Isabelle laid the kindjal down carefully in its velvet case. “What do you mean?”
“Whether or not she’s a faerie. It’s beside the point.”
She fixed Simon with a fiery gaze. “Helen Blackthorn is a Shadowhunter,” she spit out. “Mark Blackthorn is a Shadowhunter. If we can’t agree on that, we have a problem.”
“Of course we agree on that.” It made him love her all the more, seeing how angry she got on behalf of her friends. Why couldn’t he just say that to her? Why was everything so hard? “They’re as much Shadowhunters as you are. I just mean that even if they weren’t, if we were talking about some actual faerie, it still wouldn’t be right to treat her like she’s the enemy, because of what she was, right?”
“Well . . .”
Simon was astonished. “What do you mean, ‘well . . .’?”
“I mean that maybe any faerie is potentially an enemy, Simon. Look what they did to us. Look how much misery they caused.”
“They didn’t all cause that misery—but they’re all paying for it.”
Isabelle sighed. “Look, I don’t like the Cold Peace any more than you do. And you’re right, not all faeries are the enemy. Obviously. Not all of them betrayed us, and it’s not fair that they should all be punished for that. You think I don’t know that?”
“Good,” Simon said.
“But—”
“I really don’t see how there can be a ‘but,’ ” Simon cut in.
“But it’s not as simple as you’re trying to make it. The Seelie Queen did betray us. A legion of faeries did join Sebastian in the Dark War. A lot of good Shadowhunters got killed. You’ve got to see why that would leave people angry. And afraid.”
Stop talking, Simon told himself. His mother had once told him you should never discuss religion or politics on a date. He was never quite sure which one of those categories Clave policies fell into, but either way, this was like trying to defend J. J. Abrams to a hard-core Trekkie: hopeless.
But inexplicably, and despite the sincere wishes of his brain, Simon’s mouth kept moving. “I don’t care how angry or scared you get, it’s not right to punish all the faeries for a few faeries’ mistakes. Or to discriminate against people—”
“I’m not saying anyone should discriminate—”
“Actually, that’s exactly what you’re saying.”
“Oh, great, Simon. So the Seelie Queen and her minions screw us over and enable the death of hundreds of Shadowhunters, not to mention the ones they slaughtered themselves, and I’m the terrible person?”
“I didn’t say you were a terrible person.”
“You’re thinking it,” she said.
“Would you stop telling me what I think?” he barked, more harshly than he’d intended.
Her mouth snapped shut.
She took a deep breath.
He counted to ten.
Each waited the other out.
When Isabelle spoke again, she sounded calmer—but also, somehow, angrier. “I told you, Simon. I don’t like the Cold Peace. I hate it, for your information. Not just for what it’s doing to Helen and Aline. Because it’s wrong. But . . . it’s not like I have a better idea. This isn’t about who you or I want to trust; this is about who the Clave can trust. You can’t sign accords with leaders who refuse to be bound by their promises. You simply can’t. If the Clave wanted revenge”—Isabelle looked pointedly around the store, gaze resting on each weapons display in turn—“trust me, they could take it. The Cold Peace isn’t just about the Fair Folk. It’s about us. I may not like it, but I understand it. Better than you do, at least. If you’d been there, if you knew—”
“I was there,” Simon said quietly. “Remember?”
“Of course I do. But you don’t. So it’s not the same. You’re not . . .”
“The same,” he finished for her.
“That’s not what I meant, I just—”
“Trust me, Izzy. I get it. I’m not him. I’ll never be him.”
Isabelle made a noise halfway between a hiss and a yowl. “Would you drop it already with this old Simon/new Simon inferiority complex? It’s getting old. Why don’t you get a little creative and find a new excuse?”
“New excuse for what?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“For you not to be with me!” she yelled. “Because you’re obviously looking for one. Try harder.”
She stomped out of the store, slamming the door shut behind her. It dinged as it closed and not-Diana emerged from the back. “Oh, it’s still just you,” he said, sounding distinctly disappointed. “Have you decided?”
Simon could give up right now; he could stop trying, stop fighting, just let her go. That would be the easiest of decisions. All he’d have to do would be to let it happen.
“I decided a long time ago,” Simon said, and ran out of the shop.
He needed to find Isabelle.
It wasn’t much of a challenge. She was sitting on a small bench across the street, head in her hands.
Simon sat down beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She shook her head without lifting it from her hands. “I can’t believe I was dumb enough to think this would work.”
“It still can,” he said with an embarrassing tinge of desperation. “I still want it to, if you—”
“No, not you and me, idiot.” She finally looked up at him. Mercifully, her eyes were dry. In fact, she didn’t look sad at all—she looked furious. “This stupid weapons-shopping idea. Last time I take dating advice from Jace.”
“You let Jace plan our date?” Simon said, incredulous.
“Well, it’s not like either of us was doing a very good job of it. He took Clary here to buy a sword, and it was this whole disgustingly sexy thing, and I just thought, maybe . . .”
Simon laughed in relief. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re not dating Jace.”
“Um, yeah. Disgusting.”
“No, I mean, you’re not dating a guy who’s anything like Jace.”
“I wasn’t aware I was dating anyone at all,” she said, frost in her voice. His heart caught in his throat like it was snagged on barbed wire. But then, ever so slightly, she melted. “Kidding. Mostly.”
“Relieved,” he said. “Mostly.”
Isabelle sighed. “I’m sorry this was such a disaster.”
“It’s not all your fault.”
“Well, obviously it’s not all my fault,” she said. “Not even mostly my fault.”
“Uh . . . I thought we’d moved into the apologies portion of the day.”
“Right. Sorry.”
He grinned. “See, now you’re talking.”
“So, what now? Back to the Academy?”
“Are you kidding?” Simon stood up and extended a hand to her. Miracle of miracles, she took it. “We’re not giving up until we get this right. But we’re not going to get there pretending to be Jace and Clary. That’s our whole problem, isn’t it? Trying to be people we’re not? I can’t be some kind of cool, hipster nightclub hopper.”
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘nightclub hopper,’ ” Isabelle said wryly.
“This proves my point. And you’re never going to be some kind of gamer who wants to stay up all night debating Naruto plot points and battling D&D orcs.”
“Now you’re just making up words.”
“And neither of us is ever going to be Jace and Clary—”
“Thank God,” they said, in sync, then exchanged a grin.
“So what are you suggesting?” Izzy asked.
“Something new,” Simon said, mind racing to come up with an actual concrete, useful idea. He knew he was onto something, he just wasn’t sure what. “Not your world, not my world. A new world, for just the two of us.”
“Please tell me you don’t want us to Portal to some other dimension. Because that didn’t work out so well the last time.”
Simon grinned, an idea dawning. “Maybe we can find a spot slightly closer to home. . . .”
As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, the clouds overhead blushed cotton-candy pink. Their reflections gleamed on the crystalline waters of Lake Lyn. The horses whinnied, the birds chirped, and Simon and Isabelle crunched their peanut brittle and popcorn. This, Simon thought, was the sound of happiness.
“You still haven’t told me how you found this place,” Isabelle said. “It’s perfect.”
Simon didn’t want to admit that it was Jon Cartwright who’d told him about the isolated inlet on the edge of Lake Lyn, its hanging willows and rainbow of wildflowers making it the perfect spot for a romantic picnic. (Even when the picnic consisted of peanut brittle, popcorn, and the handful of other random teeth-decaying, artery-clogging snacks they’d grabbed on their way out of Alicante.) Simon, who had long ago grown tired of hearing about Jon’s romantic exploits, had done his best to tune the jerk out. But apparently a few details had lodged in his subconscious. Enough, at least, to find the place.
Jon Cartwright was a blowhard and a buffoon—Simon would maintain this to his dying day.
But it turned out the guy had good taste in romantic date spots.
“Just stumbled on it,” Simon mumbled. “Good luck, I guess.”
Isabelle gazed out at the impossibly smooth water. “This place reminds me of Luke’s farm,” she said softly.
“Me too,” he said. In that other life, the one he barely remembered, he and Clary had spent many long, happy days at Luke’s summer house upstate, splashing in the lake, lying in the grass, naming the clouds.
Isabelle turned to him. Simon’s jacket was spread out between them as an improvised picnic blanket. It was a small jacket—not very much distance for him to cross, if he wanted to reach her.
He’d never wanted anything more.
“I think about it a lot,” Izzy said. “The farm, the lake.”
“Why?”
Her voice softened. “Because that was where I almost lost you—where I was sure I would lose you. But I got you back.”
Simon didn’t know what to say.
“It doesn’t even matter,” she said, harder now. “Not like you even know what I’m talking about.”
“I know what happened there.” Namely, Simon had summoned the Angel Raziel—and the Angel had actually shown up.
He wished he could remember it; he would like to know how that felt, talking to an angel.
“Clary told you,” she said flatly.
“Yeah.” Isabelle was a little sensitive on the subject of Clary. She definitely didn’t need to hear about all the time he’d had with Clary this summer, the long hours spent lying in Central Park, side by side, swapping stories of their past—Simon telling her what he remembered; Clary telling him what actually happened.
“But she wasn’t even there,” Isabelle said.
“She knows the important stuff.”
Isabelle shook her head. She reached across the picnic blanket and rested a hand on Simon’s knee. He worked very hard to hear her over the sudden buzzing in his ears. “If she wasn’t there, she can’t know how brave you were,” Isabelle said. “She can’t know how scared I was for you. That’s the important stuff.”
There was silence between them, then. But finally, it wasn’t the awkward kind. It was the good kind, the kind where Simon could hear what Isabelle was saying without her having to say it, and where he could answer her in kind.
“What’s it like?” she asked him. “Not remembering. Being a blank slate.”
Her hand was still warm on his knee.
She’d never asked him that before. “It’s not quite a blank slate,” he explained, or tried to. “It’s more like . . . double vision. Like I’m remembering two different things at the same time. Sometimes one seems more real, sometimes the other does. Sometimes everything is blurry. That’s when I usually take some Advil, and a nap.”
“But you’re starting to remember things.”
“Some things,” he allowed. “Jordan. I remember a lot about Jordan. Caring about him. Losing—” Simon swallowed hard. “Losing him. I remember my mom freaking out about me being a vampire. And some stuff before Clary’s mom got kidnapped. The two of us being friends, before all of this started. Normal Brooklyn stuff.” He stopped talking as he realized her face was clouding over.
“Of course you remember Clary.”
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
Simon didn’t think about it. He just did it.
He took her hand.
She let him.
He wasn’t sure how to explain this—it was still all jumbled in his head—but he had to try. “It’s not like the things I remember are more important than the things I can’t remember. Sometimes it seems like it’s random. But sometimes . . . I don’t know, sometimes it feels like the most important things are going to be the hardest to get back. Picture all these memories buried, like dinosaur bones, and me trying to dig them up. Some of them are just lying right beneath the surface, but the important ones, those are miles down.”
“And you’re saying that’s where I am? Miles beneath the surface?”
He held on to her tightly. “You’re basically down there at the molten center of the earth.”
“You are so weird.”
“I try my best.”
She threaded her fingers through his. “I’m jealous, you know. Sometimes. That you can forget.”
“Are you kidding?” Simon couldn’t even begin to understand that one. “Everything you have, all the people in your life—no one would want that taken away.”
Isabelle looked back out at the lake, blinking hard. “Sometimes people get taken away from you whether you want it or not. And sometimes that hurts so much, it might be easier to forget.”
She didn’t have to say his name. Simon said it for her. “Max.”
“You remember him?”
Simon had never realized what a sad sound it was, hope.
He shook his head. “I wish I did, though.”
“Clary told you about him,” she said. Not a question. “And what happened to him.”
He nodded, but her gaze was still fixed on the water.
“He died in Idris, you know. I like being here sometimes. I feel closer to him here. Other times I wish this place would evaporate. That no one could ever come here again.”
“I’m sorry,” Simon said, thinking they had to be the lamest, most useless words in the English language. “I wish I could say something that would help.”
She faced him; she whispered, “You did.”
“What?”
“After Max. You . . . said something. You helped.”
“Izzy . . .”
“Yes?”
This was it, this was The Moment—the moment talking gave way to gazing, which would inevitably give way to kissing. All he had to do was lean slightly forward and give himself over to it.
He leaned back. “Maybe we should start heading back to campus.”
She made that angry cat noise again, then lobbed a chunk of peanut brittle at him. “What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Because I know there’s nothing wrong with me. You would be insane not to want to kiss me, and if this is some stupid playing-hard-to-get thing, you’re wasting your time, because trust me, I know when a guy wants to kiss me. And you, Simon Lewis, want to kiss me. So what is happening here?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, and ridiculous as this was, it was also wholly true.
“Is it the stupid memory thing? Are you seriously still afraid that you can’t live up to some amazing forgotten version of yourself? Do you want me to tell you all the ways you weren’t amazing? For one, you snored.”
“Did not.”
“Like a Drevak demon.”
“This is slander,” Simon said, outraged.
She snorted. “My point, Simon, is that you’re supposed to be past all of this. I thought you figured out that no one is expecting you to be anyone other than who you are. That I just need you to be you. I only want you. This Simon. Isn’t that why we’re here? Because you finally got that through your thick head?”
“I guess.”
“So what are you afraid of? It’s obviously something.”
“How do you know?” he asked, curious how she could be so certain, when he still had no clue himself.
She smiled, and it was the kind of smile you give to someone who can make you want to throttle them and kiss them all at the same time. “Because I know you.”
He thought about gathering her up in his arms, about how it would feel—and that’s when he realized what he was afraid of.
It was that feeling, the hugeness of it, like staring into the sun. Like falling into the sun.
“Losing myself,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Losing myself, in this. In you. I’ve spent this whole year trying to find myself, to figure out who I am, and now there’s you, there’s us, there’s this all-consuming, terrifying black hole of a feeling, and if I give into it . . . I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you know? Like, here’s something bigger, deeper than the human mind is built to fathom. And I’m just supposed to . . . jump in?”
He waited nervously for her reaction, suspecting that girls probably didn’t like it much when you admitted you were afraid of them. Girls like Izzy probably didn’t like it when you admitted you were afraid of anything. Nothing scared her; she deserved someone just as brave.
“Is that all?” Her face lit up. “Simon, don’t you think I’m scared of that too? You’re not the only one on that ledge. If we jump, we jump together. We fall together.”
Simon had spent so long trying to gather together the pieces of himself, to fit the puzzle back together. But the final piece, the most important piece, had been right in front of him the whole time. Losing himself to Izzy—could it be that this was the only way to really find himself?
Could it be that this, here, was home?
Enough bad metaphors, he told himself. Enough delaying.
Enough being afraid.
He stopped thinking about the person he used to be or the relationship they used to have; he stopped thinking about whether he was screwing things up or why he wanted to; he stopped thinking about demon amnesia and Shadowhunter Ascension and the Fair Folk and the Dark War and politics and homework and the unregulated traffic of deadly sharp objects.
He stopped thinking about what could happen, and what could go wrong.
He took her in his arms and kissed her—kissed her the way he’d been longing to kiss her since he first laid eyes on her, kissed her not like a romance novel hero or a Shadowhunter warrior or some imaginary character from the past, but like Simon Lewis kissing the girl he loved more than anything in the world. It was like falling into the sun, falling together, hearts blazing with pale fire, and Simon knew he would never stop falling, knew that now that he’d grabbed hold of her again, he would never let go.
The marriage of true minds admits no impediments—but the make-out sessions of teenagers all too often do. Especially when one of the teenagers was a student at Shadowhunter Academy, with both homework and a curfew. And when the other was a demon-fighting warrior with a stakeout in the morning.
If Simon had had his way, he would have spent the next week, or possibly the next eternity, entangled with Izzy on the grass, listening to the lake lap against the shore, losing himself in the touch of her fingers and the taste of her lips. Instead, he spent a memorable two hours doing so, then galloped at breakneck speed back to Shadowhunter Academy and spent another hour kissing her good-bye, before letting her leap into the Portal with a promise to return as soon as she could.
He had to wait until the next day to thank Helen Blackthorn for her help. He caught her just as she was packing up to leave.
“I see the date went well,” she said as soon as she opened the door.
“How could you tell?”
Helen smiled. “You’re practically radioactive.”
Simon thanked her for relaying Izzy’s message and handed her a small bag of cookies he’d cadged from the dining hall. They were the only thing at the Academy that actually tasted good. “Consider this a small down payment on what I owe you,” he said.
“You don’t owe me anything. But if you really want to pay me back, come to the wedding—you can be Izzy’s plus one.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Simon promised. “So when’s the big day?”
“First of October,” she said, but there was a quavering note in her voice. “Probably.”
“Maybe sooner?”
“Maybe not at all,” she admitted.
“What? You and Aline aren’t breaking up!” Simon caught himself, remembering that he was talking to someone he barely knew. He couldn’t exactly command her to have a happy ending just because he’d suddenly fallen in love with love. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business, but . . . why would you come all this way and take all their crap if you didn’t want to marry her?”
“Oh, I want to marry her. More than anything. It’s just, being back here has made me wonder if I’m being selfish.”
“How could marrying Aline be selfish?” Simon asked.
“Look at my life!” Helen exploded, the day’s—or maybe the year’s—worth of pent-up fury blasting out of her. “They look at me like I’m some kind of freak show—and those are the kind ones, the ones who don’t look at me like I’m the enemy. Aline is already stuck on that godforsaken island because of me. Is she supposed to suffer like that for the rest of her life? Just because she made the mistake of falling in love with me? What kind of person does that make me?”
“You can’t possibly think any of this is your fault.” He didn’t know her very well, but none of this sounded right to him. Not like something she would say or believe.
“Professor Mayhew told me that if I really loved her, I would leave her,” Helen admitted. “Instead of dragging her into this nightmare with me. That holding on to her is just proof I’m more faerie than I think.”
“Professor Mayhew is a troll,” Simon said, and wondered what it would take to get Catarina Loss to turn him into one for real. Or maybe a toad or a lizard. Something that would more befit the reptilian nature of his soul. “If you really loved Aline, you would do everything you can to hold on to her. Which is exactly what you’re doing. Besides, you’re assuming that if you tried to break up with her for her own good, she’d let you. From what I’ve heard about Aline, that’s not likely.”
“No,” Helen said fondly. “She’d fight me tooth and nail.”
“Then why not fast-forward to the inevitable? Accept that you’re stuck with her. The love of your life. Poor you.”
Helen sighed. “Isabelle told me what you said about the fey, Simon. About how you think it’s wrong to discriminate against them. That faeries can be good, just as much as anyone else.”
He didn’t understand where she was going with this, but he wasn’t sorry to have the chance to confirm it. “She was right, I do think that.”
“Isabelle believes that too, you know,” Helen said. “She’s been doing her best to convince me.”
“What do you mean?” Simon asked, confused. “Why would you need convincing.”
Helen kneaded her fingers together. “You know, I didn’t want to come here to tell a bunch of kids the story of my mother and father—I didn’t do that voluntarily. But I also didn’t make it up. That’s what happened. That’s who my mother was, and that’s what half of me is.”
“No, Helen, that’s not—”
“Do you know the poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’?”
Simon shook his head. The only poetry he knew was by Dr. Seuss or Bob Dylan.
“It’s Keats,” she said, and recited a few stanzas for him by memory.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
“Keats wrote about faeries?” Simon asked. If they’d covered this in English class, he might have paid closer attention.
“My father used to recite that poem all the time,” Helen said. “It was his way of telling me and Mark the story of where we came from.”
“He recited you a poem about an evil faerie queen luring men to their deaths as a way of telling you about your mother? Repeatedly?” Simon asked, incredulous. “No offense, but that’s kind of . . . harsh.”
“My father loved us despite where we came from,” Helen said in the way of someone trying to convince herself. “But it always felt like he kept some part of himself in reserve. Like he was waiting to see her in me. It was different with Mark, because Mark was a boy. But girls take after their mothers, right?”
“I’m not really sure that’s scientifically accurate logic,” Simon said.
“That’s what Mark said. He always told me the faeries had no claim on us or our nature. And I tried to believe him, but then, after he was taken . . . after the Inquisitor told me the story of my birth mother . . . I wonder . . .” Helen was looking past Simon, past the walls of her domestic prison cell, lost in her own fears. “What if I’m luring Aline to that cold hill’s side? What if that need to destroy, to use love as a weapon, is just hibernating in me somewhere, and I don’t even know it? A gift from my mother.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about faeries,” Simon said. “Not really. I don’t know what the deal was with your mother, or what it means for you to be half one thing and half another. But I know your blood doesn’t define you. What defines you is the choices you make. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that. And I also know that loving someone—even when it’s scary, even when there are consequences—is never the wrong thing to do. Loving someone is the opposite of hurting her.”
Helen smiled at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “For both our sakes, Simon, I really hope that you’re right.”
In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before . . .
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel.
Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side.
And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her.
And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing.
She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild.
Some nights they heard Arthur’s screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal’s nature.
She did not lie, for she could not lie.
Humans are animals.
Pain is their nature.
For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn’t know; the lady didn’t care; and so they were happy.
Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other.
The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie.
The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself.
The lady subjected herself to the useless brother’s attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her.
The lady let her lover renounce her and run away.
And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him.
As she had given him his story, she gave him his children.
She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer.
This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know.
This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction.
I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that.
I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever.
This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.