Simon stood among the dead leaves and looked up the path; once more the human impulse to take a deep breath came on him. He was in Central Park, near the Shakespeare Garden. The trees had lost the last of their autumn luster, the gold and green and red turning to brown and black. Most of the branches were bare.
He touched the ring on his finger again. Clary?
Again there was no reply. His muscles felt as tense as strung wires. It had been too long since he had been able to raise her using the ring. He told himself over and over that she could be sleeping, but nothing could untie the terrible knot of tension in his stomach. The ring was his only connection to her, and right now it felt like nothing more than a hunk of dead metal.
He dropped his hands to his sides and moved forward, up the path, past the statues and the benches inscribed with verses from Shakespeare’s plays. The path turned a curving right, and suddenly he could see her, sitting up ahead on a bench, looking away from him, her dark hair in a long braid down her back. She was very still, waiting. Waiting for him.
Simon straightened his back and walked toward her, even though every step felt as if it were weighted with lead.
She heard him as he approached and turned around, her pale face going even paler as he sat down beside her. “Simon,” she said on an exhale of breath. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Hi, Rebecca,” he said.
She held out her hand, and he took it, silently thanking the forethought that had made him put on gloves that morning, so that if he touched her she wouldn’t feel the chill of his skin. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her last—maybe four months—but already she seemed like the photograph of someone he’d known a long time ago, even though everything about her was familiar—her dark hair; her brown eyes, the same shape and color as his own; the spatter of freckles across her nose. She wore jeans, a bright yellow parka, and a green scarf with big yellow cotton flowers. Clary called Becky’s style “hippie-chic”; about half her clothes came from vintage stores, and the other half she sewed herself.
As he squeezed her hand, her dark eyes filled with tears. “Si,” she said, and put her arms around him and hugged him. He let her, patting her arms, her back, clumsily. When she pulled back, wiping at her eyes, she frowned. “God, your face is cold,” she said. “You should wear a scarf.” She looked at him accusingly. “Anyway, where have you been?”
“I told you,” he said. “I was staying with a friend.”
She gave a short bark of laughter. “Okay, Simon, that so doesn’t cut it,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Becks…”
“I called home about Thanksgiving,” Rebecca said, staring straight ahead at the trees. “You know, what train I should take, that sort of thing. And you know what Mom said? She said not to come home, there wasn’t going to be any Thanksgiving. So I called you. You didn’t pick up. I called Mom to find out where you were. She hung up on me. Just—hung up on me. So I came home. That’s when I saw the religious weirdness all over the door. I freaked out on Mom, and she told me you were dead. Dead. My own brother. She said you were dead and a monster took your place.”
“What did you do?”
“I got the hell out of there,” said Rebecca. Simon could tell she was trying to sound tough, but there was a thin, frightened edge to her voice. “It was pretty clear Mom had lost it.”
“Oh,” Simon said. Rebecca and his mother had always shared a fraught relationship. Rebecca liked to refer to his mother as “nuts” or “the crazy lady.” But it was the first time he’d had the sense she really meant it.
“Damn right, oh,” Rebecca snapped. “I was frantic. I texted you every five minutes. Finally I get that crap text from you about staying with a friend. Now you want to meet me here. What the hell, Simon? How long has this been going on?”
“How long has what been going on?”
“What do you think? Mom being totally mental.” Rebecca’s small fingers picked at her scarf. “We have to do something. Talk to someone. Doctors. Get her on meds or something. I didn’t know what to do. Not without you. You’re my brother.”
“I can’t,” Simon said. “I mean, I can’t help you.”
Her voice softened. “I know it sucks and you’re just in high school, but, Simon, we have to make these decisions together.”
“I mean I can’t help you get her on meds,” he said. “Or take her to the doctor. Because she’s right. I am a monster.”
Rebecca’s mouth dropped open. “Has she brainwashed you?”
“No—”
Her voice wobbled. “You know, I thought maybe she’d hurt you—the way she was talking—but then I thought, No, she’d never do that, no matter what. But if she did—if she laid a finger on you, Simon, so help me—”
Simon couldn’t take it anymore. He stripped off his glove and held his hand out to his sister. His sister, who’d held his hand on the beach when he was too small to toddle into the ocean unassisted. Who’d mopped blood off him after soccer practice, and tears off him after their father had died and their mother was a zombie lying in her room staring at the ceiling. Who’d read to him in his race-car-shaped bed when he still wore footie pajamas. I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. Who once accidentally shrunk all his clothes in the wash so they were doll-size, when she was trying to be domestic. Who packed his lunch when their mother didn’t have time. Rebecca, he thought. The last tie he had to cut.
“Take my hand,” he said.
She took it, and winced. “You’re so cold. Have you been sick?”
“You could say that.” He looked at her, willing her to sense something wrong with him, really wrong, but she only looked back at him with trusting brown eyes. He bit back a flare of impatience. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know. “Take my pulse,” he said.
“I don’t know how to take someone’s pulse, Simon. I’m an art history major.”
He reached over and moved her fingers up to his wrist. “Press down. Do you feel anything?”
For a moment she was still, her bangs swinging over her forehead. “No. Am I supposed to?”
“Becky—” He pulled his wrist back in frustration. There was nothing else for it. There was only one way. “Look at me,” he said, and when her eyes swung up to his face, he let his fangs snap out.
She screamed.
She screamed, and fell off the bench onto the hard-packed dirt and leaves. Several passersby looked at them curiously, but it was New York, and they didn’t stop or stare, just kept moving.
Simon felt wretched. This was what he’d wanted, but it was different actually looking at her crouching there, so pale that her freckles stood out like ink blots, her hand over her mouth. Just like it had been with his mother. He remembered telling Clary there was no worse feeling than not trusting the people you loved; he’d been wrong. Having the people you loved be afraid of you was worse. “Rebecca,” he said, and his voice broke. “Becky—”
She shook her head, her hand still over her mouth. She was sitting in the dirt, her scarf trailing in the leaves. Under other circumstances it might have been funny.
Simon got down off the bench and knelt down next to her. His fangs were gone, but she was looking at him as if they were still there. Very hesitantly he reached out and touched her on the shoulder. “Becks,” he said. “I would never hurt you. I would never hurt Mom, either. I just wanted to see you one last time to tell you I’m going away and you won’t need to see me again. I’ll leave you both alone. You can have Thanksgiving. I won’t show up. I won’t try to stay in touch. I won’t—”
“Simon.” She grabbed his arm, and then she was pulling him toward her, like a fish on a line. He half-fell against her, and she hugged him, her arms around him, and the last time she’d hugged him like this was the day of their father’s funeral, when he’d cried in that way one cried when it didn’t seem like it was ever going to stop. “I don’t want to never see you again.”
“Oh,” Simon said. He sat back in the dirt, so surprised that his mind had gone blank. Rebecca put her arms around him again, and he let himself lean against her, even though she was slighter than he was. She had held him up when they’d been children, and she could do it again. “I thought you wouldn’t.”
“Why?” she said.
“I’m a vampire,” he said. It was weird, hearing it like that, out loud.
“So there are vampires?”
“And werewolves. And other, weirder stuff. This just—happened. I mean, I got attacked. I didn’t choose it, but it doesn’t matter. This is me now.”
“Do you…” Rebecca hesitated, and Simon sensed that this was the big question, the one that really mattered. “Bite people?”
He thought about Isabelle, then pushed the mental image hastily away. And I bit a thirteen-year-old girl. And a dude. It’s not as weird as it sounds. No. Some things were not his sister’s business. “I drink blood out of bottles. Animal blood. I don’t hurt people.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Is it? Okay, I mean?”
“Yeah. I love you,” she said. She rubbed his back awkwardly. He felt something damp on his hand and looked down. She was crying. One of her tears had splashed onto his fingers. Another one followed, and he closed his hand around it. He was shivering, but not from cold; still, she pulled off her scarf and wrapped it around them both. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “You’re my little brother, you dumb idiot. I love you no matter what.”
They sat together, shoulder to shoulder, looking off into the shadowy spaces between the trees.