Jace was standing up now.
“When you first step off. Bend the knees right away. Otherwise you did pretty well.”
“But what about Isabelle?” Simon asked. “What do I do?”
“I have no idea,” Jace said.
“So you just came here to torture me and talk about yourself?” Simon demanded.
“Oh, Simon, Simon, Simon,” said Jace. “You may not remember, but that’s kind of our thing.”
With that, he walked away, clearly aware of the admiring glances that followed his every step.
After lunch they had a history lecture. Usually they met in a classroom, but today everyone was assembled in the main hall. There was no grandeur to the hall—just some crooked benches, and not enough of them. The chairs from the cafeteria were dragged in to supplement, but there still weren’t enough seats. So some students (the elites) had chairs and benches, and the dregs sat on the floor at the front, like the little kids in middle school. After this morning, though, a few hours of sitting on a bare, cold, stone floor was luxury.
Catarina took her place at the wobbly lectern.
“We have a special guest lecturer today,” she said. “She is visiting us to talk about the role Shadowhunters play in writing history. As you are likely aware, though I don’t want to make any overly optimistic assumptions, Shadowhunters have been involved in many prominent moments in mundane history. Because Shadowhunters must also guard mundanes from knowing about our world, you must also sometimes take control of the writing of that history. By this I mean you have to cover things up. You need to provide a plausible explanation for what’s happened—one that does not involve demons.”
“Like Men in Black,” Simon whispered to George.
“So please give your full attention to our esteemed guest,” Catarina went on. She stepped aside, and a tall young woman took her place.
“I am Tessa Gray,” she said in a low, clear voice. “And I believe in the importance of stories.”
The woman at the front of the room looked like she might be a sophomore in college. She was elegantly dressed in a short black skirt, cashmere sweater, and paisley scarf. Simon had seen this woman once before—at Jocelyn and Luke’s wedding. Clary had said she had played a very important role in Clary’s life when she was a child. She had also informed Simon that Tessa was about a hundred and fifty years old, though she certainly didn’t look it.
“For you to understand this story, you have to understand who and what I am. Like Catarina, I am a warlock—however, my mother was not human but a Shadowhunter.”
A murmur from around the room, which Tessa glossed over.
“I am not able to bear Marks, but I once lived among Shadowhunters—I was a Shadowhunter’s wife, and my children were Shadowhunters. I was witness to much that no other Downworlder ever saw, and now I am almost the only person alive who recalls the truth behind the stories mundanes made up to explain away the times their world brushed ours. I am many things. One is a living record of Shadowhunter history. Here is one story you may have heard of—Jack the Ripper. What can you tell me about that name?”
Simon was ready for this one. He’d read From Hell six times. He’d been waiting all his life for someone to ask him an Alan Moore question. His hand shot up.
“He was a murderer,” Simon burst out. “He killed prostitutes in London in the late 1800s. He was probably Queen Victoria’s doctor, and the whole thing was a royal cover-up to hide the fact that the prince had had an illegitimate child.”
Tessa smiled at him. “You are right that Jack the Ripper is the name given to a murderer—or at least, to a series of murders. What you refer to is the royal conspiracy, which has been disproven. I believe it is also the plot of a graphic novel and film called From Hell.”
Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him. Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.
“I will give you the simple facts,” Tessa said. “Once, I was not called Tessa Gray but Tessa Herondale. In that time, in 1888, in East London, there was a string of terrible murders. . . .”
London, October 1888
“It’s not appropriate,” Tessa said to her husband, Will.
“He likes it.”
“Children like all sorts of things, Will. They like sweets and fire and trying to stick their head up the chimney. Just because he likes the dagger . . .”
“Look how steadily he holds it.”
Little James Herondale, age two, was in fact holding a dagger quite well. He stabbed it into a sofa cushion, sending out a burst of feathers.
“Ducks,” he said, pointing at the feathers.
Tessa swiftly removed the dagger from his tiny hand and replaced it with a wooden spoon. James had recently become very attached to this wooden spoon and carried it with him everywhere, often refusing to go to sleep without it.
“Spoon,” James said, tottering off across the parlor.
“Where did he find the dagger?” Tessa asked.
“It’s possible I took him to the weapons room,” Will said.
“Is it?”
“It is, yes. It’s possible.”
“And it’s possible he somehow got a dagger from where it is secured on the wall, out of his reach,” Tessa said.
“We live in a world of possibilities,” Will said.
Tessa fixed a gray-eyed stare on her husband.
“He was never out of my sight,” Will said quickly.
“If you could manage it,” Tessa said, nodding to the sleeping figure of Lucie Herondale in her little basket by the fire, “perhaps you won’t give Lucie a broadsword until she’s actually able to stand? Or is that asking too much?”
“It seems a reasonable request,” Will said, with an extravagant bow. “Anything for you, my pearl beyond price. Even withholding weaponry from my only daughter.”
Will knelt down, and James ran to him to show off his spoon. Will admired the spoon as if it were a first edition, his scarred hand large and gentle against James’s tiny back.
“Spoon,” James said proudly.
“I see, Jamie bach,” murmured Will, who Tessa had caught singing Welsh lullabies to the children on their most sleepless nights. To his children, Will showed the same love he had always shown to her, fierce and unyielding. And the same protectiveness he had only ever showed to one other person: the person James had been named after. Will’s parabatai, Jem.