Simon blinked. “Are you telling me not to be so hard on the Shadowhunters, because it’s just the way they were raised?”
“Be as hard on the smug little idiots as you like,” said Catarina. “It’s good for them. I’m just telling you so you realize what an effect you’re having—and what an effect you could have. You’re in an almost unique position, Daylighter. I only know of one other student who dropped from the elites to the dregs—not counting Lovelace, who would have been in the dregs from the beginning if the Nephilim didn’t make smug assumptions. But then, smug assumptions are their favorite thing.”
That had the effect Catarina must have known it would. Simon stopped trying to fit his copy of The Shadowhunter’s Codex into his bag and sat down. The rest of the class would take some time to prepare before they actually had the baseball game. Simon could spare a little while.
“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, I recall Ragnor mentioning 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 the 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.