Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Read online

  “Was he a mundane too?”

  “No, he was a Shadowhunter,” Catarina said. “He went to the Academy more than a century ago. His name was James Herondale.”

  “A Herondale? Another Herondale?” Simon asked. “Herondales without cease. Do you ever get the feeling you are being chased around by Herondales?”

  “Not really,” Catarina said. “Not that I’d mind. Magnus says they tend to be a good-looking lot. Of course, Magnus also says they tend to be strange in the head. James Herondale was a bit of a special case.”

  “Let me guess,” Simon said. “He was blond, smug, and adored by the populace.”

  Catarina’s ivory eyebrows rose. “No, he had dark hair and spectacles. There was another boy at school, Matthew Fairchild, who did answer to that description. They did not get along particularly well.”

  “Really?” said Simon, and reconsidered. “Well then, Team James Herondale. I bet that Matthew guy was a jackass.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Catarina. “I always thought he was a charmer, myself. Most people did. Everybody liked Matthew.”

  This Matthew guy must have been a charmer, Simon thought. Catarina rarely spoke about any Shadowhunters with anything like approval, but here she was smiling fondly over a boy from a hundred years ago.

  “Everybody except James Herondale?” Simon asked. “The Shadowhunter who got thrown out of the Shadowhunter course. Did Matthew Fairchild have anything to do with that?”

  Catarina stepped out from behind her teacher’s desk and went to an arrow-slit window. The rays of the dying sun struck through her hair in brilliant white lines, almost giving her a halo. But not quite.

  “James Herondale was the son of angels and demons,” she said softly. “He was always fated to walk a difficult and painful path, to drink bitter water with sweet, to tread where there were thorns as well as flowers. Nobody could save him from that. People did try.”

  Shadowhunter Academy, 1899

  James Herondale told himself that he was feeling sick only because of the jolting of the carriage. He was really very excited to be going to school.

  Father had borrowed Uncle Gabriel’s new carriage so he could take James from Alicante to the Academy, just the two of them.

  Father had not asked if he could borrow Uncle Gabriel’s carriage.

  “Don’t look so serious, Jamie,” Father said, murmuring a Welsh word to the horses that made them trot faster. “Gabriel would want us to have the carriage. It’s all between family.”

  “Uncle Gabriel mentioned last night that he had recently had the carriage painted. Many times. And he has threatened to summon the constabulary and have you arrested,” said James. “Many times.”

  “Gabriel will stop fussing about it in a few years.” Father winked one blue eye at James. “Because we will all be driving automobiles by then.”

  “Mother says you can never drive an automobile,” said James. “She made me and Lucie promise that if you ever did, we would not climb into it.”

  “Your mother was just joking.”

  James shook his head. “She made us swear on the Angel.”

  He grinned up at his father. Father shook his head at Jamie, the wind catching at his black hair. Mother said Father and Jamie had the same hair, but Jamie knew his own hair was always untidy. He had heard people call his father’s hair unruly, which meant being untidy with charisma.

  The first day of school was not a good day for James to be thinking about how very different he was from his father.

  During their drive from Alicante, several people stopped them on the road, calling out the usual exclamation: “Oh, Mr. Herondale!”

  Shadowhunter ladies of many ages said that to his father: three words that were both sigh and summons. Other fathers were called “Mister” without the “Oh” prefix.

  With such a remarkable father, people tended to look for a son who would be perhaps a lesser star to Will Herondale’s blazing sun, but still someone shining. They were always subtly but unmistakably disappointed to find James, who was not very remarkable at all.

  James remembered one incident that made the difference between him and his father starkly apparent. It was always the tiniest moments that came back to James in the middle of the night and mortified him the very most, like it was always the almost invisible cuts that kept stinging.

  A mundane lady had wandered up to them at Hatchards bookshop in London. Hatchards was the nicest bookshop in the city, James thought, with its dark wood and glass front, which made the whole shop look solemn and special, and its secret nooks and hidey-holes inside where one could curl up with a book and be quite quiet. James’s family often went to Hatchards all together, but when James and his father went alone ladies quite often found a reason to wander over to them and strike up a conversation.

  Father told the lady that he spent his days hunting evil and rare first editions. Father could always find something to say to people, could always make them laugh. It seemed a strange, wondrous power to James, as impossible to achieve as it would be for him to shape-shift like a werewolf.

  James did not worry about the ladies approaching Father. Father never once looked at any woman the way he looked at Mother, with joy and thanksgiving, as if she was a living wish, granted past all hope.

  James did not know many people, but he was good at being quiet and noticing. He knew that what lay between his parents was something rare and precious.

  He worried only because the ladies approaching Father were strangers James would have to talk to.

  The lady in the bookshop had leaned down and asked: “And what do you like to do, little man?”

  “I like—books,” James had said. While standing in the bookshop, with a parcel of books under his arm. The lady had given him a pitying look. “I read—erm—rather a lot,” James went on, dreary master of the obvious. King of the obvious. Emperor of the obvious.

  The lady was so unimpressed that she wandered off without another word.

  James never knew what to say to people. He never knew how to make them laugh. He had lived thirteen years of his life, mainly at the Institute in London, with his parents and his little sister, Lucie, and a great many books. He had never had a friend who was a boy.

  Now he was going to Shadowhunter Academy, to learn to be as great a warrior as his father, and the warrior bit was not half as worrying as the fact he was going to have to talk to people.

  There were going to be a lot of people.

  There was going to be a lot of talking.

  James wondered why the wheels did not fall right off Uncle Gabriel’s carriage. He wondered why the world was so cruel.

  “I know that you are nervous about going to school,” Father said at length. “Your mother and I were not sure about sending you.”

  James bit his lip. “Did you think I would be a disaster?”

  “What?” Father said. “Of course not! Your mother was simply worried about sending away the only other person in the house who has any sense.”

  James smiled.

  “We’ve been very happy, having our little family all together,” Father said. “I never thought I could be so happy. But perhaps we have kept you too isolated in London. It would be nice for you to find some friends your own age. Who knows, you might meet your future parabatai at the Academy.”

  Father could say what he liked about it being his and Mother’s fault for keeping them isolated; James knew it was not true. Lucie had gone to France with Mother and met Cordelia Carstairs, and in two weeks they had become what Lucie described as bosom companions. They sent each other letters every week, reams and reams of paper crossed out and containing sketches. Lucie was as isolated as James was. James had gone on visits too, and never made a bosom companion. The only person who liked him was a girl, and nobody could know about Grace. Perhaps even Grace would not like him, if she knew any other people.

  It was not his parents’ fault that he had no friends. It was some flaw within James himself.


  “Perhaps,” Father went on casually, “you and Alastair Carstairs will take a liking to each other.”

  “He’s older than me!” James protested. “He won’t have any time for a new boy.”

  Father smiled a wry little smile. “Who knows? That is the wonderful thing about making changes and meeting strangers, Jamie. You never know when, and you never know who, but someday a stranger will burst through the door of your life and transform it utterly. The world will be turned upside down, and you will be happier for it.”

  Father had been so happy when Lucie befriended Cordelia Carstairs. Father’s parabatai had once been called James Carstairs, though his official name now that he belonged to the Silent Brothers—the order of blind, runed monks that aided the Shadowhunters in the darkness—was Brother Zachariah. Father had told James a thousand times about meeting Uncle Jem, how for years Uncle Jem had been the only one who believed in him, who saw his true self. Until Mother came.

  “I have spoken to you often of your mother and your uncle Jem and all they did for me. They made me a new person. They saved my soul,” Father said, serious as he rarely was. “You do not know what it is, to be saved and transformed. But you will. As your parents, we must give you opportunities to be challenged and changed. That was why we agreed to send you to school. Even though we will miss you terribly.”

  “Terribly?” James asked, shyly.

  “Your mother says she will be brave and keep a stiff upper lip,” said Father. “Americans are heartless. I will cry into my pillow every night.”

  James laughed. He knew he did not laugh often, and Father looked particularly pleased whenever he could make James do it. James was, at thirteen, a little old for such displays, but since it would be months and months until he saw Father again and he was a little frightened to be going to school, he nestled up against Father and took his hand. Father held the reins in one hand and put his own and James’s linked hands into the deep pocket of his driving coat. James rested with his cheek against Father’s shoulder, not minding the jolting of the carriage as they went down the country roads of Idris.

  He did want a parabatai. He wanted one badly.

  A parabatai was a friend who had chosen you to be their best friend, who had made their friendship permanent. They were that sure about how much they liked you, that sure they would never want to take it back. Finding a parabatai seemed to James the key to everything, the essential first step to a life where he could be as happy as his father was, be as brilliant a Shadowhunter as his father was, find a love as great as the love his father had found.

  Not that he had any particular girl in mind, James told himself, and crushed all thoughts of Grace, the secret girl; Grace, who needed to be rescued.

  He wanted a parabatai, and that made the Academy a thousand times more terrifying.

  James was safe for this little time, resting against his father, but all too soon they reached the valley where the school rested.

  The Academy was magnificent, a gray building that shone among the gathered trees like a pearl. It reminded James of the Gothic buildings from books like The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Castle of Otranto. Set in the gray face of the building was a huge stained-glass window shining with a dozen brilliant colors, showing an angel wielding a blade.

  The angel was looking down on a courtyard teeming with students, all talking and laughing, all there to become the best Shadowhunters they could possibly be. If James could not find a friend here, he knew, he would not be able to find a friend in all the world.

  Uncle Gabriel was already in the courtyard. His face had turned an alarming shade of puce. He was shouting something about thieving Herondales.

  Father turned to the dean, a lady who was unquestionably fifty years old, and smiled. She blushed.

  “Dean Ashdown, would you be so very kind as to give me a tour of the Academy? I was raised in the London Institute with just one other pupil.” Father’s voice softened, as it always did when he spoke of Uncle Jem. “I never had the privilege of attending myself.”

  “Oh, Mr. Herondale!” said Dean Ashdown. “Very well.”

  “Thank you,” said Father. “Come on, Jamie.”

  “Oh no,” said James. “I’ll—I’ll stay here.”

  He felt uneasy as soon as Father was out of his sight, sailing off with the dean on his arm and a wicked smile at Uncle Gabriel, but James knew he had to be brave, and this was the perfect opportunity. Among the crowd of students in the courtyard, James had seen two boys he knew.

  One was tall for almost-thirteen, with an untidy shock of light brown hair. He had his face turned away, but James knew the boy had startling lavender eyes. He had heard girls at parties saying those eyes were wasted on a boy, especially a boy as strange as Christopher Lightwood.

  James knew his cousin Christopher better than any other boy at the Academy. Aunt Cecily and Uncle Gabriel had spent a lot of time in Idris over the past few years, but before that both families had been together often: They had all gone down to Wales together for a few holidays, before Grandma and Grandpa died. Christopher was slightly odd and extremely vague, but he was always nice to James.

  The boy standing beside Christopher was small and thin as a lath, his head barely coming up to Christopher’s shoulder.

  Thomas Lightwood was Christopher’s cousin, not James’s, but James called Thomas’s mother Aunt Sophie because she was Mother’s very best friend. James liked Aunt Sophie, who was so pretty and always kind. She and her family had been living in Idris for the past few years as well, with Aunt Cecily and Uncle Gabriel—Aunt Sophie’s husband was Uncle Gabriel’s brother. Aunt Sophie came to London on visits by herself, though. James had seen Mother and Aunt Sophie walk out of the practice rooms giggling together as if they were girls as little as his sister, Lucie. Aunt Sophie had once called Thomas her shy boy. That had made James think he and Thomas might have a lot in common.

  At the big family gatherings when they were all together, James had sneaked a few glances at Thomas, and found him always hanging quiet and uneasy on the fringes of a bigger group, usually looking to one of the older boys. He’d wanted to go over to Thomas and strike up a conversation, but he had not been sure what to say.

  Two shy people would probably be good friends, but there was the small problem of how to reach that point. James had no idea.

  Now was James’s chance, though. The Lightwood cousins were his best hope for friends at the Academy. All he had to do was go over and speak to them.

  James pushed his way through the crowd, apologizing when other people elbowed him.

  “Hullo, boys,” said a voice behind James, and someone pushed past James as if he could not see him.

  James saw Thomas and Christopher both turn, like flowers toward the sun. They smiled with identical radiant welcome, and James stared at the back of a shining blond head.

  There was one other boy James’s age at the Academy who he knew a little: Matthew Fairchild, whose parents James called Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry because Aunt Charlotte had practically raised Father, when she was the head of the London Institute and before she became Consul, the most important person a Shadowhunter could be.

  Matthew had not come to London the few times Aunt Charlotte and his brother, Charles, had visited. Uncle Henry had been wounded in battle years before any of them were born, and he did not leave Idris often, but James was not sure why Matthew did not come visit. Perhaps he enjoyed himself too much in Idris.

  One thing James was certain of was that Matthew Fairchild was not shy.

  James had not seen Matthew in a couple of years, but he remembered him very clearly. At every family gathering where James hung on the edges of crowds or went off to read on the stairs, Matthew was the life and soul of the party. He would talk with grown-ups as if he were a grown-up. He would dance with old ladies. He would charm parents and grandparents, and stop babies from crying. Everybody loved Matthew.

  James did not remember Matthew dressing like a maniac before today. Ma
tthew was wearing knee breeches when everyone else was wearing the trousers of the sane, and a mulberry-colored velvet jacket. Even his shining golden hair was brushed in a way that struck James as more complicated than the way other boys brushed their hair.

  “Isn’t this a bore?” Matthew asked Christopher and Thomas, the two boys James wanted for friends. “Everybody here looks like a dolt. I am already in frightful agony, contemplating my wasted youth. Don’t speak to me, or I shall break down and sob uncontrollably.”

  “There, there,” said Christopher, patting Matthew’s shoulder. “What are you upset about again?”

  “Your face, Lightwood,” said Matthew, and elbowed him.

  Christopher and Thomas both laughed, drawing in close to him. They were all so obviously already friends, and Matthew was so clearly the leader. James’s plan for friends was in ruins.

  “Er,” said James, the sound like a tragic social hiccup. “Hello.”

  Christopher gazed at him with amiable blankness, and James’s heart, which had already been around his knees, sank to his socks.

  Then Thomas said, “Hello!” and smiled.

  James smiled back, grateful for an instant, and then Matthew Fairchild turned around to see who Thomas was addressing. He was taller than James, his fair hair outlined by the sun as he looked down on him. Matthew gave the impression that he was looking down from a much greater height than he actually was.

  “Jamie Herondale, right?” Matthew drawled.

  James bristled. “I prefer James.”

  “I’d prefer to be in a school devoted to art, beauty, and culture rather than in a ghastly stone shack in the middle of nowhere filled with louts who aspire to nothing more than whacking demons with great big swords,” said Matthew. “Yet here we are.”

  “And I would prefer to have intelligent students,” said a voice behind them. “Yet here I am teaching at a school for the Nephilim.”

  They turned and then started, as one. The man behind them had snowy-white hair, which he looked too young to have, and horns poking out among the white locks. The most notable thing about him, however, the thing James noted right away, was that he had green skin the color of grapes.