Simon bristled. She wasn’t his Isabelle, not anymore. He wondered if she ever truly had been. Isabelle didn’t seem like the type of girl to belong to someone. It was one of the things he liked best about her.
“Tobias loved her more than he’d loved anything—his family, his duty, even himself. There, perhaps, the Herondale blood ran true. She was carrying her first child when he was called to the mission in Bavaria—you’ve heard how that story ended.”
Simon nodded, heart clenching all over again at the thought of the punishment visited on Tobias’s wife. Eva. And her unborn child.
“Lazlo Balogh knows only the version of this story as it’s been handed down to him by generations of Shadowhunters. Tobias is no longer a person to them, or an ancestor. He’s nothing but a cautionary tale. There are few of us left to remember him as the kind boy he once was.”
“How did you know him so well?” Simon asked. “I thought back then, warlocks and Shadowhunters weren’t exactly . . . you know. On speaking terms.” Actually, Simon had thought it was more like killing terms; from what he’d learned from the Codex and his history classes, the Shadowhunters of the past had gone after warlocks and other Downworlders the way big-game hunters went after elephants. Sportingly and with bloodthirsty abandon.
“That’s a different story,” Catarina chided him. “I’m not telling you my story, I’m telling you Tobias’s. Suffice it to say, he was a kind boy, even to Downworlders, and his kindness was remembered. What you know, what all Shadowhunters today think they know, is that Tobias was a coward who abandoned his fellows in the heat of battle. The truth is never so simple, is it? Tobias hadn’t wanted to leave behind his wife when she was ill and pregnant, but he went anyway, doing as he was told. Deep in those Bavarian woods, he encountered a warlock who knew his greatest fear, and used it against him. He found the chink in Tobias’s armor, found a way into his mind by convincing him his wife was in terrible danger. He showed him a vision of Eva, bloody and dying and screaming for Tobias to save her. Tobias was held spellbound and stricken, and the warlock hurled vision after vision of all the horrors in the world Tobias could not bear. Yes, Tobias ran away. His mind broke. He abandoned his fellows and fled into the woods, blinded and tormented by waking nightmares. Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse. When he thought Eva was dead, he shattered. I know who I blame for the destruction of Tobias Herondale.”
“They can’t have known he was driven mad!” Simon protested. “No one could punish him for that!”
“They did know,” Catarina told him. “That didn’t matter. What mattered was his treason against his duty. Eva was never in danger, of course—at least, not until Tobias abandoned his post. That was the last cruel irony of Tobias’s life: that he doomed the woman he would have died to save. The warlock had shown him a glimpse of the future, a future that would never have come to pass if Tobias had been able to resist him. He could not resist. He could not be found. The Clave came for Eva.”
“You were there,” Simon guessed.
“I was,” she agreed.
“And you didn’t try to stop them?”
“I did not waste my time trying, no. The Nephilim do not pay heed to interfering Downworlders. Only a fool would try to get between the Shadowhunters and their Law.”
There was something about the way she said it, wry and sorrowful at the same time, that made him ask, “You’re a fool, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “It’s dangerous to call a warlock names like that, Simon. But . . . yes. I tried. I looked for Tobias Herondale, using ways the Nephilim do not have access to, and found him wandering mad in the forest, not even knowing his own name.” She lowered her head. “I couldn’t save him or Eva. But I saved the baby. I managed that much.”
“But how? Where—?”
“I used a certain amount of magic and cunning to make my way into the prison of the Shadowhunters, where you were held once,” said Catarina, nodding to him. “I made the baby come early, and cast a spell to make it seem as if she was still carrying the child. Eva was steel that night, relentless and bright in the darkness that had come upon her. She did not falter and she did not flinch and she did not betray herself by any sign as she walked to meet her death. She kept our secret to the very end, and the Shadowhunters who killed her never suspected a thing. After that, it was almost easy. The Nephilim seldom have any interest in the doings of Downworlders—and Downworlders often find their blindness very convenient. They never noticed when I sailed away to the New World with a baby. I stayed there for twenty years, before I went back to my people and my work, and raised the child until he was grown. He has been dust for years, but I can close my eyes and see his face when he was as young as you are now. Tobias and Eva’s child. He was a sweet boy, kind as his father and fierce as his mother. The Nephilim believe in living by hard laws and paying high prices, but their arrogance means they do not fully understand the cost of what they do. The world would have been poorer without that boy in it. He had a mundane love, and a mundane life filled with small acts of grace, which would have meant very little to a Shadowhunter. They did not deserve him. I left him as a gift to the mundane world.”
“So you’re saying there’s another Herondale out there somewhere? Maybe generations of Herondales that no one knows anything about?” There was a line from the Talmud Simon’s father had always liked to quote: He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.
“It’s possible,” Catarina said. “I made sure the boy never knew what he was—it was safest that way. If indeed his line lives on, his descendants surely believe themselves mundane. It’s only now, with the Shadowhunters so depleted, that the Clave might welcome their lost sons or daughters back to the fold. And perhaps there are those of us who might help that along. When the time is right.”
“Why are you telling me this, Ms. Loss? Why now? Why ever?”
She stopped walking and turned to him, silver-white hair billowing in the wind. “Saving that child, that’s the biggest crime I’ve ever committed. At least, according to Shadowhunter Law. If anyone knew, even now . . .” She shook her head. “But it’s also the bravest choice I’ve ever made. The one I’m most proud of. I’m bound by the Accords just like everyone else, Simon. I do my best to live by the rule of Law. But I make my own decisions. There’s always a higher law.”
“You say that like it’s so easy to know what it is,” Simon said. “To be so sure of yourself, that you’re right, no matter what the Law says.”
“It’s not easy,” Catarina corrected him. “It’s what it means to be alive. Remember what I said, Simon. Every decision you make, makes you. Never let other people choose who you’re going to be.”
When he returned to his room, his mind spinning, George was sitting on the ground in the hallway, studying his Codex.
“Um, George?” Simon peered down at his roommate. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do that inside? Where there’s light? And no disgusting slime on the ground? Well . . .” He sighed. “Less slime, at least.”
“She said I have to wait out here,” George said. “That you two need your privacy.”
“Who said?” But the question was superfluous, because who else? Before George could answer, he was already opening the door and charging inside. “Isabelle, you can’t just throw my roommate—”
He stopped short, so suddenly that he nearly tripped over himself.
“It’s not Isabelle,” said the girl perched on his bed. Her fire-red hair was pulled into a messy bun and her legs were folded beneath her; she looked utterly at home, as if she’d spent half her life lounging around in his bed. Which, according to her, she had.
“What are you doing here, Clary?”
“I Portaled in,” she said.
He nodded, waiting. He was glad to see her, but it also hurt. Just as it always did. He wondered when the pain would go and he would be able to feel the joy of friendship that he knew was st
ill there, like a plant under frozen ground, waiting to grow again.
“I heard what happened today. With the vampire. And Isabelle.”
Simon lowered himself onto George’s bed, across from her. “I’m fine, okay? No bite marks or anything. It’s nice of you to worry about me, but you can’t just Portal in and—”
Clary snorted. “I can see your ego’s unharmed. I’m not here because I’m worried about you, Simon.”
“Oh. Then . . . ?”
“I’m worried about Isabelle.”
“I’m pretty sure Isabelle can take care of herself.”
“You don’t know her, Simon. I mean, not anymore. And if she knew I was here, she’d murder me, but . . . can you just try to be a little nicer to her? Please?”
Simon was appalled. He knew that he’d disappointed Isabelle, that his very existence was a constant disappointment to her, that she wanted him to be someone else. But it had never occurred to him that he, the non-vampire, non-heroic, non-sexy iteration of Simon Lewis, could have the power to hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “Tell her I’m sorry!”
“Are you kidding me?” Clary said. “Did you not hear the part about how she’d murder me if she knew I was talking to you about this? I’m not telling her anything. I’m telling you. Be careful with her. She’s more fragile than she seems.”
“She seems like the strongest girl I’ve ever met,” Simon said.
“She’s that, too,” Clary allowed. She shifted uncomfortably then, and hopped to her feet. “Well, I should . . . I mean, I know you don’t really want me around here, so . . .”
“It’s not that, I just—”
“No, I get it, but—”
“I’m sorry—”
“I’m sorry—”
They both laughed, and Simon felt something loosening in his chest, a muscle he hadn’t even known was clenched.
“It didn’t used to be like this, huh?” he asked. “Awkward?”
“No.” She gave him a sad smile. “It was a lot of things, but it was never awkward.”
He couldn’t imagine it, feeling so at ease with a girl, much less a girl like her, pretty and confident and so filled with light. “I bet I liked that.”
“I hope so, Simon.”
“Clary—” He didn’t want her to leave, not yet, but he wasn’t sure what to say to her if she stayed. “Do you know the story of Tobias Herondale?”
“Everyone knows that story,” she said. “And, obviously, because of Jace . . .”
Simon blinked, remembering: Jace was a Herondale. The last of the Herondales. Or so he thought.
If he had family out there, lost for generations, he would want to know, wouldn’t he? Was Simon supposed to tell him? Tell Clary?
He imagined a lost Herondale out there, some golden-eyed girl or boy who didn’t know anything about the Shadowhunters or their sordid legacy. Maybe they would welcome finding out who they really were—but maybe, if Clary and Jace came knocking at their door, telling them stories of angels and demons and a noble tradition of death-defying insanity, they would run screaming in the opposite direction.
Sometimes, Simon wondered what would have happened if Magnus had never found him, never offered him the chance to reenter the Shadowhunter world. He would have been living a lie, sure . . . but it would have been a happy lie. He would have gone to college, kept playing with his band, flirted with some non-terrifying girls, lived on the surface of things, never guessing at the darkness that lay beneath.
He guessed that in his other life, telling Clary what he knew wouldn’t even have been a question; he guessed that they were the kind of friends who told each other everything.
They weren’t any kind of friends now, he reminded himself. She was a stranger who loved him, but she was still a stranger.
“What do you think of it?” he asked her. “What the Clave did to Tobias’s wife and child?”
“What do you think I think?” Clary asked. “Given who my father was? Given what happened to Jace’s parents, and how he survived it? Isn’t it obvious?”
It may have been obvious to someone who knew them and their stories, but not to Simon.
Her face fell. “Oh.”
His confusion must have been visible. As was her disappointment—like she was remembering all over again who he was, and who he wasn’t.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that I do think the Law matters—but it’s not the only thing that matters. I mean, if we followed the Law without thinking, would you and I ever have—”
“What?”
She shook her head. “No, I promised myself I wasn’t going to keep doing this. You don’t need a bunch of stories about what happened to us, who you used to be. You have to figure out who you are now, Simon. I want that for you, that freedom.”
It amazed him, how well she understood. How she knew what he wanted without him having to ask.
It gave him the nerve to ask her something he’d been wondering ever since he got to the Academy. “Clary, back when we were friends, before you knew about Shadowhunting or anything, were you and I . . . the same?”
“The same how?”
He shrugged. “You know, into weird music and comics and, like, really not into gym.”
“You mean, were we both klutzy nerds?” Clary asked, laughing again. “That’s affirmative.”
“But now you’re—” He waved a hand at her, indicating the taut biceps, the graceful, coordinated way she moved, everything he knew of her past and present. “You’re like this Amazon warrior.”
“Thanks? I think? Jace is a good trainer. And, you know, there was incentive to get up to speed pretty quick. Fending off the apocalypse and all. Twice.”
“Right. And I guess it’s in your blood. I mean, it makes sense that you’d be good at all this stuff.”
“Simon—” She narrowed her eyes, suddenly seeming to understand what he was getting at. “You do realize Shadowhunting isn’t just about how big your muscles are, right? They don’t call it Bodybuilding Academy.”
He rubbed his aching biceps ruefully. “Maybe they should.”
“Simon, you wouldn’t be here if the people in charge didn’t think you had what it takes.”
“They think he had what it takes,” Simon corrected her. “The guy with the vampy superstrength and—whatever else it is vampires bring to the table.”
Clary got close enough to poke him in the chest, and then she did. Hard. “No, you. Simon, do you know how we got as far as we did in that demon dimension? How we managed to get ourselves close enough to Sebastian to take him down?”
“No, but I’m guessing it involved a lot of demon killing?” Simon asked.
“Not as much as there might have been, because you came up with a better strategy,” Clary said. “Something you figured out from all those years playing D&D.”
“Wait, seriously? Are you telling me that stuff actually worked in real life?”
“I’m telling you that. I’m telling you that you saved us, Simon. You did it more than once. Not because you were a vampire, not because of anything you’ve lost. Because of who you were. Who you still are.” She stepped away then and took a deep breath. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,” she said fiercely. “I promised.”
“No,” he said. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad you came.”
“I should get out of here,” Clary said. “But try to remember about Izzy, okay? I know you can’t understand this, but every time you look at her like she’s a stranger, it’s like . . . it’s like someone pressing a hot iron to her flesh. It hurts that much.”
She sounded so certain, like she knew.
Like maybe they weren’t just talking about Isabelle anymore.
Simon felt it then, not the twinge of fondness he often experienced when Clary smiled at him, but a forceful rush of love that nearly swept him off his feet and into her arms. For the first time, he looked at her, and she wasn’t a stranger, she was Clary—his friend. His family.
The girl he’d sworn always to protect. The girl he loved as fiercely as he loved himself.
“Clary—” he said. “When we were friends, it was great, right? I mean, I’m not just imagining things, feeling like this is where we belong? We got each other, we supported each other. We were good together, right?”
Her smile turned from sad to something else, something that glowed with the same certainty that he felt, that there was something real between them. It was as if he’d switched on a light inside her. “Oh, Simon,” she said. “We were absolutely amazing.”
The Whitechapel Fiend
By Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
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.
—The Whitechapel Fiend
“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.”
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 10