The Evil We Love (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #5)

“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?”