“You met Napoleon?” Jordan, who appeared to be missing most of the conversation, looked impressed. “So it’s true what they say about warlocks, then?”
Alec gave him a very unpleasant look. “What’s true?”
“Alexander,” said Magnus coldly, and Clary met Simon’s eyes across the table. Hers were wide, green, and full of an expression that said Uh-oh. “You can’t be rude to everyone who talks to me.”
Alec made a wide, sweeping gesture. “And why not? Cramping your style, am I? I mean, maybe you were hoping to flirt with werewolf boy here. He’s pretty attractive, if you like the messy-haired, broad-shouldered, chiseledgoodlooks type.”
“Hey, now,” said Jordan mildly.
Magnus put his head in his hands.
“Or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways. Is there anything you aren’t into?”
“Mermaids,” said Magnus into his fingers. “They always smell like seaweed.”
“It’s not funny,” Alec said savagely, and kicking back his chair, he got up from the table and stalked off into the crowd.
Magnus still had his head in his hands, the black spikes of his hair sticking out between his fingers. “I just don’t see,” he said to no one in particular, “why the past has to matter.”
To Simon’s surprise it was Jordan who answered. “The past always matters,” he said.
“That’s what they tell you when you join the Praetor. You can’t forget the things you did in the past, or you’ll never learn from them.”
Magnus looked up, his gold-green eyes glinting through his fingers. “How old are you?”
he demanded. “Sixteen?”
“Eighteen,” said Jordan, looking slightly frightened.
Alec’s age, thought Simon, suppressing an interior grin. He didn’t really find Alec and Magnus’s drama funny, but it was hard not to feel a certain bitter amusement at Jordan’s expression. Jordan had to be twice Magnus’s size— despite being tall, Magnus was slender to the point of skinniness—but Jordan was clearly afraid of him. Simon turned to share a glance with Clary, but she was staring off toward the front door, her face gone suddenly bone white. Dropping her napkin onto the table, she murmured, “Excuse me,”
and got to her feet, practically fleeing the table.
Magnus threw his hands up. “Well, if there’s going to be a mass exodus . . . ,” he said, and got up gracefully, flinging his scarf around his neck. He vanished into the crowd, presumably looking for Alec.
Simon looked at Jordan, who was looking at Maia again. She had her back to them and was talking to Luke and Jocelyn, laughing, flinging her curly hair back. “Don’t even think about it,” Simon said, and got up. He pointed at Jordan. “You stay here.”
“And do what?” Jordan demanded.
“Whatever Praetor Lupus do in this situation. Meditate. Contemplate your Jedi powers.
Whatever. I’ll be back in five minutes, and you better still be here.”
Jordan leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest in a clearly mutinous manner, but Simon had already stopped paying attention. He turned and moved into the crowd, following Clary. She was a speck of red and gold among the moving bodies, crowned with her twist of bright hair.
He caught up to her by one of the light-wrapped pillars, and put a hand on her shoulder.
She turned with a startled exclamation, eyes wide, hand raised as if to fend him off. She relaxed when she saw who it was. “You scared me!”
“Obviously,” Simon said. “What’s going on? What are you so freaked out about?”
“I . . .” She lowered her hand with a shrug; despite her forced look of casual dismissal, the pulse was going in her neck like a hammer. “I thought I saw Jace.”
“I figured,” Simon said. “But . . .”
“But?”
“You look really frightened.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it exactly, or what he was hoping she’d say back. She bit her lip, the way she always did when she was nervous.
Her gaze for a moment was far away; it was a look familiar to Simon. One of the things he’d always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic. Once he had been able to do the same, had been able to inhabit imaginary worlds all the more exciting for being safe—for being fictional. Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal.
He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn’t realize was precious until you lost it.
“He’s having a hard time,” she said in a low voice. “I’m scared for him.”
“I know,” Simon said. “Look, not to pry, but—has he figured out what’s wrong with him? Has anyone?”
“He—” She broke off. “He’s all right. He’s just having a hard time coming to terms with some of the Valentine stuff.
You know.” Simon did know. He also knew she was lying. Clary, who hardly ever hid anything from him. He gave her a hard look.
“He’s been having bad dreams,” she said. “He was worried that there was some demon involvement—”
“Demon involvement?” Simon echoed in disbelief. He’d known that Jace was having bad dreams—he’d said as much—but Jace had never mentioned demons.
“Well, apparently there are kinds of demons that try to reach you through your dreams,”
Clary said, sounding as if she were sorry she’d brought it up at all, “but I’m sure it’s nothing. Everyone has bad dreams sometimes, don’t they?” She put a hand on Simon’s arm. “I’m just going to see how he is. I’ll come back.” Her gaze was already sliding past him, toward the doors that led onto the terrace; he stood back with a nod and let her go, watching her as she moved off into the crowd.
She looked so small—small the way she had in first grade when he’d walked her to the front door of her house and watched her go up the stairs, tiny and determined, her lunch box banging against her knee as she went. He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.
“You look sick,” said a voice at his elbow. Husky, familiar. “Thinking about what a horrible person you are?”
Simon turned and saw Maia leaning against the pillar behind him. She had a strand of the small, glowing white lights wound around her neck, and her face was flushed with champagne and the warmth of the room.
“Or maybe I should say,” she went on, “what a horrible vampire you are. Except that makes it sound like you’re bad at being a vampire.”
“I am bad at being a vampire,” Simon said. “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bad at being a boyfriend, too.”
She smiled crookedly. “Bat says I shouldn’t be so hard on you,” she said. “He says guys do stupid things when girls are involved. Especially geeky ones who previously haven’t had much luck with women.”
“It’s like he can see into my soul.”
Maia shook her head. “It’s hard to stay mad at you,” she said. “But I’m working on it.”
She turned away.
“Maia,” Simon said. His head had started to ache, and he felt a little dizzy. If he didn’t talk to her now, though, he never would. “Please. Wait.”
She turned back and looked at him, both eyebrows raised questioningly.
“I’m sorry about what I did,” he said. “I know I said that before, but I really do mean it.”
She shrugged, expressionless, giving him nothing.
He swallowed past the pain in his head. “Maybe Bat’s right,” he said. “But I think there’s more to it than that. I wanted to be with you because—and this is going to sound so selfish—you made me feel normal. Like the person I was before.”
“I’m a werewolf, Simon. Not exactly normal.”