Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 19

  James wept, scrubbing his face against Uncle Jem’s robes as if he were littler than Lucie. He knew Mother was brave, but surely courage did not feel like this; he had thought it would be something fine, not a feeling that could tear you into pieces.

  If you saw humanity as I can see it, Uncle Jem said, a whisper in his mind, a lifeline. There is very little brightness and warmth in the world for me. I am very distant from you all. There are only four points of warmth and brightness, in the whole world, that burn fiercely enough for me to feel something like the person I was. Your mother, your father, Lucie, and you. You love, and tremble, and burn. Do not let any of them tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

  “Blinder than a Silent Brother?” James asked, and hiccupped.

  Uncle Jem had been made a Silent Brother very young, and strangely: He bore runes on his cheeks, but his eyes, though shadowed, were not stitched shut. Still, James was never sure what he saw.

  There was a laugh in James’s mind, and he had not laughed, so it must have been Uncle Jem. James clung to him for an instant longer and told himself he could not ask Uncle Jem to take him home after all, or to the Silent City, or anywhere so long as Uncle Jem did not leave him in this academy full of strangers who had never liked him and would hate him now.

  They would have to be even blinder than a Silent Brother, Uncle Jem agreed. Because I can see you, James. I will always look to you for light.

  If James had known how life would be at the Academy from then on, he would have asked Uncle Jem to take him home.

  He had not expected Mike Smith to leap to his feet in stark horror when James approached his table.

  “Come sit with us,” called Clive Cartwright, one of Alastair Carstairs’s friends. “You might be a mundie, but at least you’re not a monster.”

  Mike had fled gratefully. James had seen Esme flinch once when he walked by her in the hall. He did not inflict his presence on her again.

  It would not have been so bad, James believed, if it had been anywhere but the Academy. These were hallowed halls: This was where children were molded to Ascend or grew up learning to serve the Angel.

  And this was a school, and this was how schools worked. James had read books about schools before, had read about someone being sent to Coventry, so nobody talked to them at all. He knew how hate could run like wildfire through a group, and that was only among mundanes facing mundane strangeness.

  James was stranger than any mundane could ever dream, stranger than any Shadowhunter had believed possible.

  He moved out of Matthew’s room, and down into the dark. He was given his own room, because even the mundanes were too scared to sleep in the same room as him. Even Dean Ashdown seemed afraid of him. Everybody was.

  They acted as if they wanted to cross themselves when they saw him, but they knew he was worse than a vampire and it would do no good. They shuddered when his eyes rested on them, as if his yellow demon’s eyes would burn a hole clear through their souls.

  Demon’s eyes. James heard it whispered again and again. He had never thought he would long to be called Goatface.

  He never spoke to anyone, sat at the back of class, ate as quickly as he could, and then ran away so people did not have to look at him while they ate their meals. He crept around the Academy like a loathed and loathsome shadow.

  Uncle Jem had been changed into a Silent Brother because he would have died otherwise. Uncle Jem had a place in the world, had friends and a home, and the horror was that he could not be in the place where he belonged. Sometimes after his visits James would find his mother standing at the window, looking out at the street Uncle Jem had long disappeared from, and he would find his father in the music room staring at the violin nobody but Uncle Jem was allowed to touch.

  That was the tragedy of Uncle Jem’s life; it was the tragedy of his parents’ lives.

  But how would it be if there was nowhere in the world that you belonged? If you could get nobody to love you? What if you could not be a Shadowhunter or a warlock or anything else?

  Maybe then you were worse than a tragedy. Maybe you were nothing at all.

  James was not sleeping very well. He kept slipping into sleep and then startling awake, worried he was slipping into that other world, a world of shadows, where he was nothing but an evil shade among shades. He did not know how he had done it before. He was terrified it was going to happen again.

  Maybe everyone else was hoping it would, though. Maybe they were all praying he would become a shadow, and simply slip away.

  James woke one morning and could not bear the darkness and the feeling of stone above his head, pressing down all around him, for a moment longer. He staggered up the stairs and out onto the grounds.

  He was expecting it to still be night, but the sky was bleached by morning, the stars turned invisible against the near-white of the sky. The only color to be found in the sky was the dark gray of clouds, curling like ghosts around the fading moon. It was raining a little, cold pinpricks against James’s skin. He sat down on the stone step of the Academy’s back door, lifted a palm to the sky, and watched the silvery rain dash down into the hollow of his hand.

  He wished the rain would wash him away, before he had to face yet another morning.

  He was watching his hand as he wished that, and he saw it happen then. He felt the change creeping over him and saw his hand grow darkly transparent. He saw the raindrops pass through the shadow of his palm as if it was not there.

  He wondered what Grace would think, if she could see him now.

  Then he heard the crunch of feet running, pounding against the earth, and his father’s training made James’s head jerk up to see if anyone was being chased, if anyone was in danger.

  James saw Matthew Fairchild running as if he was being chased.

  Astonishingly, he was wearing gear that he had not, as far as James knew, been threatened into. Even more astonishingly, he was participating in degrading physical exercise. He was running faster than James had seen anyone run in training—maybe faster than James had ever seen anyone run ever—and he was running grimly, face set, in the rain.

  James watched him run, frowning, until Matthew glanced up at the sky, stopped, and then began trudging back to the Academy. James thought he would be discovered for a moment, thought of jumping up and racing around to another side of the building, but Matthew did not make for the door.

  Instead he went and stood against the stone wall of the Academy, strange and solemn in his black gear, blond hair wild with wind and wet with rain. He tipped his face up to the sky, and he looked as unhappy as James felt.

  It made no sense. Matthew had everything, had always had everything, while James now had less than nothing. It made James furious.

  “What’s wrong with you?” James demanded.

  Matthew’s whole body jerked with shock. He swung to face James, and stared. “What?”

  “You might have noticed life is less than ideal for me at this time,” James said between his teeth. “So give up making a tragic spectacle of yourself over nothing, and—”

  Matthew was not leaning against the wall any longer, and James was not sitting on the step. They were both standing up, and this was not a practice on the training grounds. James thought they were really going to fight; he thought they might really hurt each other.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, James Herondale,” Matthew sneered. “I forgot nobody could do a single thing like speak or breathe in this place without incurring your extremely judgmental judgment. I must be making a spectacle over nothing, if you say so. By the Angel, I’d trade places with you in a second.”

  “You’d trade places with me?” James shouted. “That’s rubbish, that’s absolute swill, you would never. Why would you do that? Why would you even say it?”

  “Maybe it’s the fact you have
everything I want,” Matthew snarled. “And you don’t even seem to want it.”

  “What?” James asked blankly. He was living in opposites land, in which the sky was the earth and the name of every day started with Y. It was the only explanation. “What? What do I have that you could possibly want?”

  “They will send you home any time you like,” Matthew said. “They’re trying to drive you away. And no matter what I do, they won’t chuck me out. Not the Consul’s son.”

  James blinked. Rain slithered down his cheeks and down the neck of his shirt, but he hardly felt it. “You want . . . to be chucked out?”

  “I want to go home, all right?” Matthew snapped. “I want to be with my father!”

  “What?” James said blankly, one more time.

  Matthew might insult the Nephilim, but no matter what he said, he always seemed to be having a marvelous time. James had believed he was enjoying himself at the Academy, as James himself could not. James had never thought he might really be unhappy. He’d never even considered Uncle Henry.

  Matthew’s face twisted as if he was going to cry. He stared off determinedly into the distance, and when he spoke his voice was hard.

  “You think Christopher’s bad, but my father is so much worse,” Matthew said. “A hundred times as bad as Christopher. A thousand. He’s been practicing being terrible for much longer than Christopher. He’s so absentminded, and he can’t—he can’t walk. He could be working on some new device, or writing a letter to his warlock friend in America about a new device, or working out why some old device literally exploded, and he would not notice if his own hair was on fire. I’m not exaggerating, I’m not making a joke—I have put out fires on my own father’s head. My mother is always busy, and my brother, Charles Buford, is always running after her and acting superior. I’m the one who takes care of my father. I’m the one who listens to him. I didn’t want to go away to school and leave him, and I’ve been doing all I can to get chucked out and go back.”

  I don’t take care of my father. My father takes care of me, James wanted to say, but he feared it might be cruel to say that, when Matthew had never had that unquestioning security.

  It occurred to James that one day there might be a time when his father did not seem all-knowing, able to solve everything and be anything. The thought made him uncomfortable.

  “You’ve been trying to get expelled?” James asked. He spoke slowly. He felt slow.

  Matthew made an impatient gesture, as if chopping invisible carrots with an invisible knife. “That is what I’ve been trying to tell you, yes. But they won’t. I have been doing the best impression of the worst Shadowhunter in the world, and yet they won’t. What is wrong with the dean, I ask you? Does she want blood?”

  “The best impression of the worst Shadowhunter,” James repeated. “So you don’t—believe in all that stuff about violence being repulsive, and truth and beauty and Oscar Wilde?”

  “No, I do,” Matthew said hastily. “I really like Oscar Wilde. And beauty and truth. I do think it’s nonsense that because we are born what we are, we cannot be painters or poets or create anything—that all we do is kill. My father and Christopher are geniuses, do you know that? Real geniuses. Like Leonardo da Vinci. He was a mundane who—”

  “I know who Leonardo da Vinci is.”

  Matthew glanced at him and smiled: it was The Smile, gradual and illuminating as sunrise, and James had the sinking feeling that he might not be immune after all.

  “  ’Course you do, James,” said Matthew. “Forgot who I was talking to for a moment there. Anyway, Christopher and my father are truly brilliant. Their inventions have already changed the way Shadowhunters navigate the world, the way they battle demons. And all Shadowhunters everywhere will always look down on them. They will never see what they do as valuable. And someone who wanted to write plays, to make beautiful art, they would throw away like refuse from the streets.”

  “Do you—want that?” James asked hesitantly.

  “No,” said Matthew. “I can’t draw for toffee, actually. I certainly can’t write plays. The less said about my poetry the better. I do appreciate art, though. I’m an excellent spectator. I could spectate for England.”

  “You could, um, be an actor,” James suggested. “When you talk, everyone listens. Especially when you tell stories.”

  Also there was Matthew’s face, which would probably—go over well onstage or something.

  “That’s a nice thought,” said Matthew. “But I think I would rather not get thrown out of my home and still see my father occasionally. Also, I do think violence is terrible and pointless, but—I’m really good at it. In fact, I enjoy it. Not that I’m letting on to our teachers. I wish I was good at something that could add beauty to the world rather than painting it with blood, I really do, but there you have it.”

  He shrugged.

  James did not think they were going to fight after all, so he sat back down on the step. He felt he wanted a sit-down. “I think Shadowhunters can add beauty to the world,” he said. “I mean, for one thing—we save lives. I know I said it before, but it’s really important. The people we save, any one of them could be the next Leonardo da Vinci, or Oscar Wilde, or just someone who is really kind, who spreads beauty that way. Or they might just be someone who—someone else loves, like you love your father. Maybe you’re right that Shadowhunters are more limited, that we do not get the full range of possibilities mundanes get, but—we get to make the mundanes’ lives possible. That’s what we’re born to. It is a privilege. I’m not going to run away from the Academy. I’m not running away from anything. I can bear Marks, and that makes me a Shadowhunter, and that’s what I will be whether the Nephilim want me or not.”

  “You can be a Shadowhunter without going to the Academy, though,” said Matthew. “You can be trained in an Institute, like Uncle Will was. That’s what I wanted, so I could stay with Father.”

  “I could. But—” James hesitated. “I didn’t want to be sent home. Mother would have to know why.”

  Matthew was silent for a little while. There was nothing but the sound of the falling rain.

  “I like Aunt Tessa,” he said. “I never came to London because I worried about leaving Father. I always wished—she could come to Idris more often.”

  James had received several shocks this morning that were actually not so bad, but this revelation was unwelcome and inevitable. Of course Mother and Father scarcely ever went to Idris. Of course James and Lucie had been raised in London, a little apart from their families.

  Because there were people in Idris, there were arrogant Shadowhunters who thought Mother was not worthy to walk among them, and Father would never have let her be insulted.

  Now it would be worse, now people would whisper that she had passed on the taint to her children. People would say horrible things about Lucie, James knew—about his scribbling, laughing little sister. Lucie could never be allowed to come to the Academy.

  Matthew cleared his throat. “I suppose I can understand all that. Maybe I will stop being so jealous that you are able to get chucked out of school. Maybe I can understand that your aims are noble. However, I still do not understand why you must make it so clear you detest the sight of me. I know, I know, you’re aloof and you wish to be alone with literature all the time, but it’s particularly horrible with me. It’s very lowering. Most people like me. I told you that. I don’t even have to try.”

  “Yes, you’re very good at Shadowhunting and everybody likes you, Matthew,” said James. “Thanks for clarifying that.”

  “You don’t like me!” Matthew exclaimed. “I did try with you! And you still don’t.”

  “The thing is,” said James, “I tend to like very modest people? Humble, you know.”

  Matthew paused, considered James for a moment, and then burst out laughing. James was amazed by how gratifying that was. It made him feel like he could let out the humiliating truth.

  He closed his eyes and said: “I was jealo
us of you.”

  When he opened his eyes, Matthew looked wary, as if expecting a trick. “Of what?”

  “Well, you’re not considered an unholy abomination upon this earth.”

  “Yes, but—no offense, James—nobody but you is,” Matthew pointed out. “You are our unique feature in the school, like a sculpture of a warrior chicken. If we had one of those. You disliked me before anybody knew you were an unholy abomination, anyway. Well, I suppose you are simply trying to spare my feelings. Decent of you. I under—”

  “I’m not aloof,” said James. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

  “All the aloofness, I think,” Matthew speculated.

  “I’m a swot,” said James. “I read books all the time and I do not know how to talk to people. If I was a girl living in olden times, people would call me a bluestocking. I wish I could talk to people like you do. I wish I could smile at people and make them like me. I wish I could tell a story and have everybody listen, and have people follow me around wherever I went. Well, no, I don’t, because I am slightly terrified by people, but I wish I could do all that you can do, just the same. I wanted to be friends with Thomas and Christopher, because I liked them and I thought maybe they were—similar to me, and they might like me back. You were jealous I could get kicked out of school? I was jealous of you first. I was jealous of everything about you, and I still am.”

  “Wait,” said Matthew. “Wait, wait, wait. You don’t like me because I am so very charming?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. He kept laughing. He laughed so much that he had to come and sit beside James on the step, and then he laughed some more.

  “Stop it, Matthew,” James grumbled. “Stop laughing. I am sharing my innermost feelings with you. This is very hurtful.”

  “I’ve been in a bad mood this whole time,” said Matthew. “You think I’m charming now? You have no idea.”