“Maybe my mom could talk to your mom,” Clary said, sounding worried by his silence.
“Make her understand.”
“Make her understand that I’m a vampire? Clary, I think she does understand that, in a weird kind of way. That doesn’t mean she’s going to accept it or ever be okay with it.”
“Well, you can’t just keep making her forget it, either, Simon,” Clary said. “It’s not going to work forever.”
“Why not?” He knew he was being unreasonable, but lying on the hard floor, surrounded by the smell of gasoline and the whisper of spiders spinning their webs in the corners of the garage, feeling lonelier than he ever had, reasonable seemed very far away.
“Because then your whole relationship with her is a lie. You can’t never go home—”
“So what?” Simon interrupted harshly. “That’s part of the curse, isn’t it? ‘A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be.’”
Despite the traffic noises and the sound of chatter in the background, he could hear Clary’s sudden indrawn breath.
“You think I should tell her about that, too?” he said. “How you put the Mark of Cain on me? How I’m basically a walking curse? You think she’s going to want that in her house?”
The background sounds quieted; Clary must have ducked into a doorway. He could hear her struggling to hold back tears as she said, “Simon, I’m so sorry. You know I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault.” He suddenly felt bone-tired. That’s right, terrify your mother and then make your best friend cry.
A banner day for you, Simon. “Look, obviously I shouldn’t be around people right now.
I’m just going to stay here, and I’ll crash with Eric when he gets home.”
She made a snuffling laughing-through-tears sound. “What, doesn’t Eric count as people?”
“I’ll get back to you on that later,” he said, and hesitated. “I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”
“You’ll see me tomorrow. You promised to come to that dress fitting with me, remember?”
“Wow,” he said. “I must really love you.”
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
Simon clicked off the phone and lay back, holding it against his chest. It was funny, he thought. Now he could say “I love you” to Clary, when for years he’d struggled to say those words and had not been able to get them out of his mouth. Now that he no longer meant them the same way, it was easy.
Sometimes he did wonder what would have happened if there had never been a Jace Wayland. If Clary had never found out she was a Shadowhunter. But he pushed the thought away—pointless, don’t go down that road. You couldn’t change the past. You could only go forward. Not that he had any idea what forward entailed. He couldn’t stay in Eric’s garage forever. Even in his current mood, he had to admit it was a miserable place to stay. He wasn’t cold—he no longer felt either cold or heat in any real way—but the floor was hard, and he was having trouble sleeping. He wished he could dull his senses. The loud noise of traffic outside was keeping him from resting, as was the unpleasant stench of gasoline. But it was the gnawing worry about what to do next that was the worst.
He’d thrown away most of his blood supply and stashed the rest in his knapsack; he had about enough for a few more days, and then he’d be in trouble. Eric, wherever he was, would certainly let Simon stay in the house if he wanted, but that might result in Eric’s parents calling Simon’s mom. And since she thought he was on a school field trip, that would do him no good at all.
Days, he thought. That was the amount of time he had. Before he ran out of blood, before his mother started to wonder where he was and called the school looking for him. Before she started to remember. He was a vampire now. He was supposed to have eternity. But what he had was days.
He had been so careful. Tried so hard for what he thought of as a normal life—school, friends, his own house, his own bedroom. It had been strained, but that was what life was.
Other options seemed so bleak and lonely that they didn’t bear thinking about. And yet Camille’s voice rang in his head. What about in ten years, when you are supposed to be twenty-six? In twenty years? Thirty? Do you think no one will notice that as they age and change, you do not?
The situation he had created for himself, had carved so carefully in the shape of his old life, had never been permanent, he thought now, with a sinking in his chest. It never could have been. He’d been clinging to shadows and memories. He thought again of Camille, of her offer. It sounded better now than it had before. An offer of a community, even if it wasn’t the community he wanted. He had only about three more days before she’d come looking for his answer. And what would he tell her when she did? He’d thought he knew, but now he wasn’t so sure.
A grinding noise interrupted his reverie. The garage door was ratcheting upward, bright light spearing into the dark interior of the space. Simon sat up, his whole body suddenly on the alert.
“Eric?”
“Nah. It’s me. Kyle.”
“Kyle?” Simon said blankly, before he remembered—the guy they’d agreed to take on as a lead singer. Simon almost flopped back down onto the ground again. “Oh. Right. None of the other guys are here right now, so if you were hoping to practice . . .”
“It’s cool. That’s not why I came.” Kyle stepped into the garage, blinking in the darkness, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “You’re whatshisname, the bassist, right?”