Unthinkable that they had only one last year together before they’d be expected to part. Their parabatai bond would remain after the Academy, of course. They’d always be best friends; they’d always charge into battle side by side. But it wouldn’t be the same. They’d each marry, move into houses of their own, refocus their attention and their love. They would always have a claim on each other’s souls. But after next year, they would no longer be the most important person in each other’s lives. This, Robert knew, was simply how life worked. This was growing up. He just couldn’t imagine it, and he didn’t want to.
As if listening in on Robert’s thoughts, Michael echoed the question he’d dodged earlier. “What really is going on with you and Maryse?” he asked. “Do you think it’s for real? Like, for good?”
There was no need to put on a show for Michael. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t even know what that would feel like. She’s perfect for me. I love spending time with her, I love . . . you know, with her. But does that mean I love her? It should, but . . .”
“Something’s missing?”
“Not between us, though,” Robert said. “It’s like there’s something missing in me. I see how Stephen looks at Amatis, how Valentine looks at Jocelyn—”
“How Lucian looks at Jocelyn,” Michael added with a wry grin. They both liked Lucian, despite his irritating tendency to act like Valentine’s favor had given him insight beyond his years. But after all these years of watching him pine away for Jocelyn, it was hard to take him entirely seriously. The same went for Jocelyn, who somehow managed to remain oblivious. Robert didn’t understand how you could be the center of someone’s world without even realizing it.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, wondering if any girl would ever be the center of his world. “Sometimes I worry there’s something wrong with me.”
Michael clapped a hand to his shoulder and fixed him with an intense gaze. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Robert. I wish you could finally see that.”
Robert shook off the hand, along with the weight of the moment. “How about you?” he said with forced gaiety. “It’s been, what, three dates with Eliza Rosewain?”
“Four,” Michael admitted.
He’d sworn Robert to secrecy about her, saying he didn’t want the other guys to know until he was sure it was real. Robert suspected he didn’t want Valentine to know, as Eliza was a particular thorn in Valentine’s side. She asked nearly as many disrespectful questions as he did, and harbored a similar disdain for the current policies of the Clave, but she wanted nothing to do with the Circle or its goals. Eliza thought that a new, united front with mundanes and Downworlders was the key to the future. She argued—loudly, and to the disgust of most of the faculty and students—that the Shadowhunters should be addressing the problems of the mundane world. She could often be found in the quad, shoving unwanted leaflets in students’ faces, ranting about nuclear testing, Middle East oil tyrants, some trouble no one understood in South Africa, some disease no one wanted to acknowledge in America . . . Robert had heard every lecture in full, because Michael always insisted on staying to listen.
“She’s very odd,” Michael said. “I like it.”
“Oh.” It was a surprise, a not entirely pleasant one. Michael never liked anyone. Until this moment, Robert hadn’t realized how much he had counted on that. “Then you should go for it,” he said, hoping he sounded sincere.
“Really?” Michael looked rather surprised himself.
“Yes. Definitely.” Robert reminded himself: The less certain you feel, the more certain you act. “She’s perfect for you.”
“Oh.” Michael stopped walking and settled under the shadow of a tree. Robert dropped to the ground beside him. “Can I ask you something, Robert?”
“Anything.”
“Have you ever been in love? For real?”
“You know I haven’t. Don’t you think I would have mentioned it?”
“But how can you know for sure, if you don’t know what it would feel like? Maybe you have without even realizing it. Maybe you’re holding out for something you already have.”
There was a part of Robert that hoped this was the case, that what he felt for Maryse was the kind of eternal, soul-mate love that everyone talked about. Maybe his expectations were simply too high. “I guess I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “What about you? Do you think you know what it would feel like?”
“Love?” Michael smiled down at his hands. “Love, real love, is being seen. Being known. Knowing the ugliest part of someone, and loving them anyway. And . . . I guess I think two people in love become something else, something more than the sum of their parts, you know? That it must be like you’re creating a new world that exists just for the two of you. You’re gods of your own pocket universe.” He laughed a little then, as if he felt foolish. “That must sound ridiculous.”
“No,” Robert said, the truth dawning over him. Michael didn’t talk like someone who was guessing—he talked like someone who knew. Was it possible that after four dates with Eliza, he’d actually fallen in love? Was it possible that his parabatai’s entire world had changed, and Robert hadn’t even noticed? “It sounds . . . nice.”
Michael turned his head up to face Robert, his face crinkled with an unusual uncertainty. “Robert, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . needing to tell you, maybe.”
“Anything.”
It wasn’t like Michael to hesitate. They told each other everything; they always had.
“I . . .”
He stopped, then shook his head.
“What is it?” Robert pressed.
“No, it’s nothing. Forget it.”
Robert’s stomach cramped. Is this what it would be like now that Michael was in love? Would there be a new distance between them, important things left unsaid? He felt like Michael was leaving him behind, crossing the border into a land where his parabatai couldn’t follow—and though he knew he shouldn’t blame Michael, he couldn’t help himself.
Simon was dreaming he was back in Brooklyn, playing a gig with Rilo Kiley to a club full of screaming fans, when suddenly his mother wandered onto the stage in her bathrobe and said, in a flawless Scottish accent, “You’re going to miss all the fun.”
Simon blinked himself awake, confused, for a moment, why he was in a dungeon that smelled of dung rather than his Brooklyn bedroom—then, once he got his bearings, confused all over again about why he was being awoken in the middle of the night by a wild-eyed Scotsman.
“Is there a fire?” Simon asked. “There better be a fire. Or a demon attack. And I’m not talking about some puny lower-level demon, mind you. You want to wake me up in the middle of a dream about rock superstardom, it better be a Greater Demon.”
“It’s Isabelle,” George said.
Simon leaped out of bed—or gallantly tried to, at least. He got a bit tangled in his sheets, so it was more like he tumbled-twisted-thudded out of bed, but eventually he made it to his feet, ready to charge into action. “What happened to Isabelle?”
“Why would anything have happened to Isabelle?”
“You said—” Simon rubbed his eyes, sighing. “Let’s start over again. You’re waking me up because . . . ?”
“We’re meeting Isabelle. Having an adventure. Ring a bell?”
“Oh.” Simon had done his best to forget about this. He climbed back into bed. “You can tell me about it in the morning.”
“You’re not coming?” George asked, as if Simon had said he was going to spend the rest of the night doing extra calisthenics with Delaney Scarsbury, just for fun.
“You guessed it.” Simon tugged the blanket over his head and pretended to be asleep.
“But you’re going to miss all the fun.”
“That is precisely my intention,” Simon said, and squeezed his eyes shut until he was asleep for real.
This time he was dreaming of a VIP room backstage at the club, filled with champagne and coffee, a gaggle of groupies tr
ying to break down the door so that—in the dream, Simon somehow knew this was their intent—they could tear off his clothes and ravish him. They pounded at the door, screaming his name, Simon! Simon! Simon—
Simon opened his eyes to creeping tendrils of gray, predawn light, a rhythmic pounding at his door, and a girl screaming his name.
“Simon! Simon, wake up!” It was Beatriz, and she didn’t sound much in the mood for ravishing.
Sleepily, he padded to the door and let her in. Female students were most definitely not allowed in male students’ rooms after curfew, and it was unlike Beatriz to break a rule like that, so he gathered it must be something important. (If the pounding and shouting hadn’t already tipped him off.)
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong is it’s nearly five a.m. and Julie and the others are still off somewhere with your stupid girlfriend and what do you think is going to happen if they don’t come back before the morning lecture starts and who knows what could have happened to them out there?”
“Beatriz, breathe,” Simon said. “Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” She was nearly vibrating with fury. “She talked them into sneaking out—for all I know, they drank their weight of Lake Lyn and they’ve all gone mad. They could be dead for all we know. Don’t you care?”
“Of course I care,” Simon said, noting that he was alone in the room. George also had not returned. His brain, muddled with sleep, was functioning below optimal speeds. “Next year I’m bringing a coffeemaker,” he mumbled.
“Simon!” She clapped her hands sharply, inches from face. “Focus!”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little alarmist about this?” Simon asked, though Beatriz was one of the most levelheaded girls he’d ever met. If she was alarmed, there was probably a good reason—but he couldn’t see what it might be. “They’re with Isabelle. Isabelle Lightwood—she’s not going to let anything bad happen.”
“Oh, they’re with Isabelle.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I feel oh so relieved.”
“Come on, Beatriz. You don’t know her.”
“I know what I see,” Beatriz said.
“And what’s that?”
“An entitled rich girl who doesn’t have to follow the rules, and doesn’t have to worry about consequences. What does she care if Julie and Jon get kicked out of here?”
“What do I care if Julie and Jon get kicked out?” Simon muttered, too loudly.
“You care about George,” Beatriz pointed out. “And Marisol and Sunil. They’re all out there somewhere, and they trust Isabelle as much as you seem to. But I’m telling you, Simon, it doesn’t seem right to me. What she said about the Academy wanting us to screw up and get into trouble. More like she wants us to get in trouble. Or she wants something. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t like it.”
Something about what she said rang true more than he would have liked—but Simon wouldn’t let himself go there. It felt disloyal, and he’d been disloyal enough. This week was his chance to prove himself to Isabelle, show her that they belonged in each other’s lives. He wasn’t going to screw that up by doubting her, even if she wasn’t here to see it.
“I trust Isabelle,” Simon told Beatriz. “Everyone will be fine, and I’m sure they’ll be back before anyone knows they were gone. You should stop worrying about it.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Something!”
“Well, I am doing something,” Simon said. “I’m going to go back to bed. I’m going to dream of coffee and a shiny new Fender Stratocaster and if George still isn’t back by morning, I’m going to tell Dean Penhallow that he’s sick, so he won’t get in trouble. And then I’ll start worrying.”
Beatriz snorted. “Thanks for nothing.”
“You’re welcome!” Simon called. But he waited until the door had slammed shut behind her to do it.
Simon was right.
When Robert Lightwood began his lecture that morning, every member of the student body was there to hear it, including a very bleary-eyed George.
“How was it?” Simon whispered when his roommate slid into the seat beside him.
“Bloody amazing,” George murmured. When Simon pressed him for details, George only shook his head and pressed his finger to his lips.
“Seriously? Just tell me.”
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” George whispered. “But it’s only going to get better. You want in, come along with me tonight.”
Robert Lightwood cleared his throat loudly. “I’d like to begin today’s lecture, assuming that’s all right with the peanut gallery.”
George looked around wildly. “They’re serving peanuts today? I’m starving.”
Simon sighed. George yawned.
Robert began again.
1984
The pack was small, only five wolves. In their deceptively human form: two men, one even bigger than Robert, with muscles the size of his head, and another stooped and aged with scraggly hair spurting from his nose and ears as if his inner wolf were gradually encroaching. One child in blond pigtails. The girl’s young mother, her glossy lips and undulating curves prompting thoughts Robert knew better than to say aloud, at least where Valentine could hear. And finally, one sinewy woman with a deep tan and deeper frown who seemed to be in charge.
It was disgusting, Valentine said, werewolves stinking up a distinguished Shadowhunter mansion. And although the manor was decrepit and long abandoned—vines snaking up its walls, weeds sprouting from its foundation, a once noble estate reduced to rust and rubble—Robert saw his point. The house had a lineage, had been home to a line of intrepid warriors, men and women who risked and eventually gave their lives to the cause of humanity, to saving the world from demons. And here were these creatures, infected by their demonic strain—these rogue creatures who’d violated the Accords and killed with abandon, taking refuge in the home of their enemy? The Clave refused to deal with it, Valentine said. They wanted more evidence—not because they weren’t sure that these wolves were filthy, violent criminals, but because they didn’t want to deal with Downworlder complaints. They didn’t want to have to explain themselves; they didn’t have the nerve to say: We knew they were guilty, and so we dealt with it.
They were, in other words, weak.
Useless.
Valentine said they should be proud to do the job the Clave was unwilling to get done, that they were serving their people, even as they skirted the Law, and with his words, Robert felt that pride bloom. Let the other Academy students have their parties and their petty school melodramas. Let them think growing up meant graduating, marrying, attending meetings. This was growing up, just like Valentine said. Seeing an injustice and doing something about it, no matter the risk. No matter the consequences.
The wolves had a keen sense of smell and sharp instincts, even in their human bodies, so the Shadowhunters were careful. They crept around the decaying mansion, peered in windows, waited, watched. Planned. Five werewolves and four young Shadowhunters—those were odds even Valentine didn’t want to play. So they were patient, and they were careful.
They waited until dark.
It was disconcerting to watch the wolves in human form, impersonating a normal human family, the younger man washing dishes while the elder one made himself a pot of tea, the child sitting cross-legged on the floor racing her model cars. Robert reminded himself that these trespassers were claiming a home and a life they didn’t deserve—that they’d killed innocents and may even have helped slaughter Valentine’s father.
Still, he was relieved when the moon rose and they reverted to monstrous form. Robert and the others clung to the shadows while three members of the pack sprouted fur and fangs, leaping through a broken window and into the night. They went out to hunt—leaving, as Valentine suspected they would, their most vulnerable behind. The old
man and the child. These were odds more to Valentine’s liking.
It wasn’t much of a fight.
By the time the two remaining werewolves registered attack, they were surrounded. They didn’t even have time to transform. It was over in minutes, Stephen knocking the older one unconscious with a blow to the head, the child cowering in a corner, inches from the tip of Michael’s sword.
“We’ll take them both for interrogation,” Valentine said.
Michael shook his head. “Not the kid.”
“They’re both criminals,” Valentine argued. “Every member of the pack is culpable for—”
“She’s a little kid!” Michael said, turning to his parabatai for support. “Tell him. We’re not dragging some child into the woods to throw her at the mercy of the Clave.”
He had a point . . . but then, so did Valentine. Robert said nothing.
“We’re not taking the child,” Michael said, and the look on his face suggested he was willing to back up his words with action.
Stephen and Robert tensed, waiting for the explosion. Valentine didn’t take well to being challenged; he had very little experience with it. But he only sighed, and offered up a charmingly rueful smile. “Of course not. Don’t know what I was thinking. Just the old man, then. Unless you’ve got some objection to that as well?”
No one had any objections, and the unconscious old man was skin and bones, his weight barely noticeable on Robert’s broad shoulders. They locked the child up in a closet, then carried the old man deep into the woods, back to the campsite.
They tied him to a tree.
The rope was woven with silver filament—when the old man woke up, he would wake to pain. It probably wouldn’t be enough to bind him in wolf form, not if he was determined to escape. But it would slow him down. Their silver daggers would do the rest.
“You two, patrol a half-mile perimeter,” Valentine told Michael and Stephen. “We don’t want any of its grubby little friends catching its stench. Robert and I will guard the prisoner.”
Stephen nodded sharply, eager as ever to do as Valentine willed.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 25