Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Read online

  Simon was at a loss. An apology seemed inappropriate.

  “Magnus was kidnapped, and I went into a hell dimension to save him. That was my whole plan. All I wanted to do was rescue him. On the way, Isabelle was badly hurt. My whole life, I always wanted to protect the people I loved, to make sure they were safe. I should have been able to do it. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t able to help either of them. You did. You saved Isabelle’s life. When Magnus’s father was intent on taking him and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing at all, you stepped in. I’d undervalued you, in the past, and you did everything I ever wanted to do, and then you were gone. Isabelle was a wreck. Clary was worse. Jace was so upset. Magnus felt guilty. Everyone was so hurt, and I wanted to help them, and you came back but you didn’t remember what you had done. I’m not really good with strangers, and you were a really complicated stranger. I couldn’t talk to you. It wasn’t that you did anything wrong. It was that there was nothing I could do to make it even between us. I owed you more than I could ever repay, and I didn’t even know how to thank you. It wouldn’t have meant anything. You didn’t even remember.”

  “Oh,” said Simon. “Wow.”

  It was weird to think of faceless strangers thinking of Simon as a hero. It was even weirder to have Alec Lightwood, who he’d thought did not even like him, talk about him as if he was a hero.

  “So you don’t hate me, and you don’t hate Clary. You don’t hate anyone.”

  “I hate people forcing me to talk about my feelings,” said Alec.

  Simon stared at him for a moment, an apology on his lips, but he did not speak it. Instead he grinned, and Alec grinned shyly back.

  “I’ve been doing it way too much since I got to the Academy.”

  “I can imagine,” said Simon.

  He had not been sure what would happen with the baby Alec and Magnus were taking care of, but from everything Isabelle had said, she was sure they were keeping him. That must have required a conversation.

  “I would like,” Alec said, “not to talk about feelings again for about a year. Also maybe to sleep for a year. Do babies ever sleep?”

  “I used to babysit sometimes,” Simon said. “As I recall, babies do sleep a lot, but when you least expect it. Babies: more like the Spanish Inquisition than you think.”

  Alec nodded, though he seemed confused. Simon made a mental note that it was his duty now, as Alec’s established friend, to introduce Alec to Monty Python as soon as possible. The baby crowed as if he were pleased by the comparison.

  “Hey,” said Alec. “I’m sorry that I made you think I was mad at you, just because I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Well,” Simon said. “Here’s the thing. I was helped along in my assumption.”

  Alec stopped playing patty-cake with the baby. He went still all over. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t talk to me a lot, and I was a little worried about it,” Simon explained. “So I asked my friend, between us guys, if you had a problem with me. I asked my good friend Jace.”

  There was a pause as Alec absorbed this news. “You did.”

  “And Jace,” said Simon. “Jace told me that there was a big, dark secret issue between us. He said it wasn’t his place to talk about it.”

  The baby looked at Simon, then back at Alec. His small face looked thoughtful, as if he might shake his head and go: That Jace, what will he do next?

  “Leave this to me,” Alec said calmly. “He’s my parabatai and we have a sacred bond and everything, but now he has gone too far.”

  “That’s cool,” said Simon. “Please exact awful vengeance for both of us, because I’m pretty sure he could take me in a fight.”

  Alec nodded, admitting this very true fact. Simon could not believe he had been so worried about Alec Lightwood. Alec was great.

  “Well,” Alec said. “Like I said . . . I do owe you.”

  Simon waved a hand. “Nah. Call it even.”

  Magnus was so tired, he stumbled into the Shadowhunter Academy dining room and thought about eating there.

  Then he actually looked at the food and came to his senses.

  It was not quite dinnertime, but there were a few students gathered early, even though Magnus did not anticipate there would be a rush on the slime lasagna. Magnus saw Julie and her friends at one table. Julie looked him up and down, taking in the wrecked hair and Alec’s T-shirt, and he read deep disillusionment on her face.

  So a young girl’s dreams died. Magnus admitted, after a sleepless night and wearing one of Alec’s shirts because Isabelle had destroyed several of his own and the baby had been sick on several others, he might not be at his most glamorous.

  It was probably good for Julie to face reality, though Magnus was determined to, at some point, take a shower, wear a better shirt, and dazzle the baby with his resplendence.

  Magnus had visited Ragnor at the Academy, and he knew how the meals there worked. He squinted, trying to figure out which tables belonged to the elites and which to the dregs, the humans who aspired to be Nephilim but were not accepted by the Nephilim as good enough until they Ascended. Magnus had always thought the dregs showed enormous self-restraint by not rising up against Shadowhunter arrogance, burning down the Academy, and fleeing into the night.

  It was possible that the Clave was right when they called Magnus an insurgent.

  He could not work out, however, which tables belonged to whom. It had been very clear, years ago, but he was certain the blonde and the brunette Simon knew were Nephilim, and almost sure the gorgeous idiot who wanted to raise a baby with Simon in a sock drawer was not.

  Magnus’s attention was attracted by the sound of a throaty, imperious voice coming from a Latina girl who looked all of fifteen. She was a mundane, Magnus knew at a glance. Something else he could tell at a glance: In a couple of years, whether she Ascended or not, she would be a holy terror.

  “Jon,” she was saying to the boy across the table from her. “I am in so much pain from stubbing my toe! I need aspirin.”

  “What’s aspirin?” asked the boy, sounding panicked.

  He was obviously Nephilim, through and through and through. Magnus could tell without seeing his runes. In fact, he was prepared to bet the boy was a Cartwright. Magnus had known several Cartwrights through the centuries. The Cartwrights all had such distressingly thick necks.

  “You buy it in a pharmacy,” said the girl. “No, don’t tell me, you don’t know what a pharmacy is either. Have you ever left Idris in your whole life?”

  “Yes!” said Jon, possibly Cartwright. “On many demon-hunting missions. And once Mama and Papa took me to the beach in France!”

  “Amazing,” said the girl. “I mean that. I’m going to explain all of modern medicine to you.”

  “Please don’t do that, Marisol,” said Jon. “I did not feel good after you explained appendectomies. I couldn’t eat.”

  Marisol made a face at her plate. “So what you’re saying is, I did you a huge favor.”

  “I like to eat,” said Jon sadly.

  “Right,” said Marisol. “So, I don’t explain modern medicine to you, and then a medical emergency occurs to me. It could be solved with the application of a little first aid, but you don’t know that, and so I die. I die at your feet. Is that what you want, Jon?”

  “No,” said Jon. “What’s first aid? Is there a . . . second aid?”

  “I can’t believe you’re going to let me die when my death could so easily be avoided, if you had just listened,” Marisol went on mercilessly.

  “Okay, okay! I’ll listen.”

  “Great. Get me some juice, because I’ll be talking for a while. I’m still very hurt that you even considered letting me die,” Marisol added as Jon scrambled up and made for the side of the room where the unappetizing food and potentially poisonous drinks were laid out. “I thought Shadowhunters had a mandate to protect mundanes!” Marisol shouted after him. “Not orange juice. I want apple juice!”

  “Would yo
u believe,” said Catarina, appearing at Magnus’s elbow, “that the Cartwright kid was the biggest bully in the Academy?”

  “Seems like he met a bigger bully,” Magnus murmured.

  He congratulated himself on the correct Cartwright guess. It was hard to be sure, with Shadowhunter families. Certain traits did seem to run in their family lines, inbred as they were, but there were always exceptions.

  For instance, Magnus had always found the Lightwoods rather forgettable. He’d liked some of them—Anna Lightwood and her parade of brokenhearted young ladies, Christopher Lightwood and his explosions, and now Isabelle—but there had never been a Lightwood who touched his heart, as some Shadowhunters had: Will Herondale or Henry Branwell or Clary Fray.

  Until the Lightwood who was unforgettable; until the Lightwood who had not only touched but taken his heart.

  “Why are you smiling to yourself?” Catarina asked, her voice suspicious.

  “I was just thinking that life is full of surprises,” said Magnus. “What happened to this Academy?”

  The mundane girl could not bully the Cartwright boy unless the boy cared about what happened to her—unless he saw her as a person, and did not dismiss her the way Magnus had seen countless Nephilim dismiss mundanes and Downworlders, too.

  Catarina hesitated. “Come with me,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  She took his hand and led him out of the Academy cafeteria, her blue fingers intertwined with his blue-ringed hands. Magnus thought of the baby and found himself smiling again. He had always thought blue was the loveliest color.

  “I’ve been sleeping in Ragnor’s old room,” Catarina said.

  She mentioned their old friend briskly and practically, with no hint of feeling. Magnus held her hand a little tighter as they went up two flights of stairs and down through stone corridors. The walls bore tapestries illustrating Shadowhunters’ great deeds. There were holes in several of the tapestries, including one that left the Angel Raziel headless. Magnus feared sacrilegious mice had been at the tapestries.

  Catarina opened a large, dark oak wood door and led him into a vaulted stone room where there were a few pictures on the walls Magnus recognized as Ragnor’s: a sketch of a monkey, a seascape with a pirate ship on it. The carved oak bed was covered in Catarina’s severe white hospital sheets, but the moth-eaten curtains were green velvet, and there was a green leather inlay on a desk placed under the room’s single large window.

  There was a coin on it, a circle of copper turned dark with age, and two yellowed pieces of paper, turning up at the edges.

  “I was going through the papers in Ragnor’s desk when I found this letter,” Catarina said. “It was the only really personal thing in the room. I thought you might like to read it.”

  “I would,” said Magnus, and she put it into his hands.

  Magnus unfolded the letter and looked at the spiky black writing set deep into the yellow surface, as if the writer had been annoyed by the page itself. He felt as if he were listening to a voice he had thought silenced forever.

  To Ragnor Fell, preeminent educator at Shadowhunter Academy, and former High Warlock of London:

  I am sorry but not surprised to hear the latest crop of Shadowhunter brats are just as unpromising as the last lot. The Nephilim, lacking imagination and intellectual curiosity? You astonish me.

  I enclose a coin etched with a wreath, a symbol of education in the ancient world. I was told a faerie placed good luck on it, and you are certainly going to need luck reforming the Shadowhunters.

  I am as ever impressed by your patience and dedication to your job, and your continuing optimism that your students can be taught. I wish I could have your bright outlook on life, but unfortunately I cannot help looking around at the world and noticing that we are surrounded by idiots. If I were teaching Nephilim children, I imagine I would sometimes feel forced to speak to them sharply and occasionally feel forced to drain them entirely of blood.

  (Note to any Nephilim illegally reading Mr. Fell’s letters and invading his privacy: I am, naturally, joking. I have a very droll personality.)

  You ask how life in New York is and I can only report the usual: smelly, crowded, and populated almost entirely by maniacs. I was almost knocked over by a party of warlocks and werewolves on Bowery Street. One particular warlock was in the front, waving a glittering purple ladies’ feather boa over his head like a flag. I am so embarrassed to know him. Sometimes I pretend to other Downworlders that I do not. I hope they believe me.

  The main reason I am writing to you is, of course, so that we may continue your Spanish lessons. I enclose a fresh list of vocabulary words, and assure you that you are coming along very well. If you should ever make the terrible decision to accompany a certain badly dressed warlock of our acquaintance to Peru again, this time you will be prepared.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Raphael Santiago

  “Ragnor would not have known the Academy was going to be shut down after Valentine’s Circle attacked the Clave,” Catarina said. “He kept the letter so he could learn the Spanish, and then he was never able to come back for it. From the letter, though, it seems like they wrote to each other quite frequently. Ragnor must have burned the others, since they contained comments that would have gotten Raphael Santiago into trouble. I know Ragnor was fond of that sharp-tongued little vampire.” She leaned her cheek against Magnus’s shoulder. “I know you were, as well.”

  Magnus shut his eyes for a moment and remembered Raphael, who he had once done a favor; Raphael, who had died for him in return. He had known him when he was first turned, a snippy child with a will of iron, and known him through the years as Raphael led a vampire clan in all but name.

  Magnus had never known Ragnor when Ragnor was young. Ragnor had been older than Magnus and, by the time Magnus met him, had become perpetually cranky. Ragnor had been yelling at kids to get off his lawn before lawns were invented. He had always been kind to Magnus, willing to fall in with any of Magnus’s schemes as long as he could complain throughout while they did it.

  Still, in spite of Ragnor’s dark outlook on life in general and Shadowhunters in particular, Ragnor had been the one who came to Idris to teach Shadowhunters. Even after the Academy was closed, he had stayed in his little house outside the City of Glass and tried to teach the Nephilim who were willing to learn. He had always hoped, even when he refused to admit it.

  Ragnor and Raphael. They were both supposed to be immortal. Magnus had thought they would last forever, as he did, down the centuries, that there would always be another meeting and another chance. But they were gone, and the mortals Magnus loved lived on. It was a lesson, Magnus thought, to love while you could, love what was fragile and beautiful and imperiled. Nobody was guaranteed forever.

  Ragnor and Magnus had not gone to Peru again, and never would now. Of course, Magnus was banned from Peru, so he could not go anyway.

  “You came to the Academy for Ragnor,” Magnus said to Catarina. “For the sake of Ragnor’s dreams, to see if you could teach the Shadowhunters to change. It seems a pretty different place, this time around. Do you think you succeeded?”

  “I never thought I would,” said Catarina. “This was always Ragnor’s dream. I did it for him, and not the Shadowhunters. I always thought Ragnor teaching was foolish. You cannot teach people anything if they do not want to learn.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “I didn’t change my mind,” said Catarina. “This time, they did want to learn. I could not have done this alone.”

  “Who helped you?” asked Magnus.

  Catarina smiled. “Our former Daylighter, Simon Lewis. He’s a sweet boy. He could have skated by on being a hero of the war, but he declared himself a member of the dregs, and he kept speaking up even though he had nothing to gain from it. I tried to help him along, but that was all I could do, and I could only hope it would be enough. One by one, the students followed his lead and started to fall from strictly Nep
hilim ways, like a set of rebellious dominoes. George Lovelace moved to the dregs dormitory with Simon. Beatriz Velez Mendoza and Julie Beauvale sat with them at mealtimes. Marisol Rojas Garza and Sunil Sadasivan started fighting with the elite kids at every opportunity. The two streams became a group, became a team—even Jonathan Cartwright. It was not all Simon. These are children who know Shadowhunters fought side by side with Downworlders when Valentine attacked Alicante. These are children who saw Dean Penhallow welcome me to their Academy. They are the children of a changing world. But I think they needed Simon here, to be their catalyst.”

  “And you here, to be their teacher,” said Magnus. “Do you think you have found a new vocation in teaching?”

  He gazed down at her, slim and sky blue in their friend’s old stone-and-green room. She made a terrible face.

  “Hell no,” said Catarina Loss. “The only thing more terrible than the food is all the horrible, whiny teenagers. I’ll see Simon safely Ascended and then I am out of here, back to my hospital, where there are easy problems to deal with like gangrene. Ragnor must have been crazy.”

  Magnus lifted Catarina’s hand, which he was still holding, to his lips. “Ragnor would have been proud.”

  “Oh, stop it,” said Catarina, shoving him. “You’re so mushy since you fell in love. And now you’re going to be even worse, because you have a baby. I remember what it was like. They’re so small, and you put so much hope into them.”

  Magnus glanced at her, startled. She almost never mentioned the child she had raised, Tobias Herondale’s child. Partly because it was not safe: It was not a secret the Nephilim could ever know, not a sin they would ever forgive. Partly, Magnus had always suspected, Catarina did not speak of him because it hurt too much.

  Catarina caught the glance. “I told Simon about him,” she said. “My boy.”

  “You must really trust Simon,” Magnus said slowly.

  “Do you know?” said Catarina. “I really do. Here, take these. I want you to have them. I’m done with them.”

  She picked up the old coin on the desk and put it in Magnus’s palm, in the hand that already held Raphael’s letter to Ragnor. Magnus looked at the coin and the letter.