There was silence in her wake, everyone tensely waiting for Isabelle to react.
Her smile didn’t waver, but Simon could feel the heat radiating from her and understood it was taking a great deal of energy for her not to explode—or collapse. He didn’t know which it would be; he didn’t know how she felt about her father once being one of Valentine’s men. He didn’t know anything about her, not really. He admitted that.
But he still wanted to scoop her into his arms and hold her until the storm passed.
“No one has ever accused my father of being fun,” Isabelle said flatly. “But I assume my reputation precedes me. If you meet me here at midnight tomorrow, I’ll show you what you’ve been missing.” She took Jon’s hand in her own and allowed him to pull her off the couch. “Now. Will you show me to my room? This place is simply impossible to navigate.”
“My pleasure,” Jon said, winking at Simon.
Then they were gone.
Together.
The next morning the hall echoed with yawning and the groan of hangovers in (fruitless) search of grease and coffee. As Robert Lightwood launched into his second lecture, some tedious disquisition on the nature of evil and a point-by-point analysis of Valentine’s critique of the Accords, Simon had to keep pinching himself awake. Robert Lightwood was possibly the only person on the planet who could make the story of the Circle drop-dead boring. It didn’t help that Simon had stayed up till dawn, tossing and turning on the lumpy mattress, trying to drive nightmare images of Isabelle and Jon out of his head.
There was something going on with her, Simon was sure of it. Maybe it wasn’t about him—maybe it was about her father or some residual homeschooling issues or just some girl thing he couldn’t fathom, but she wasn’t acting like herself.
She’s not your girlfriend, he kept reminding himself. Even if something was wrong, it was no longer his job to fix it. She can do what she wants.
And if what she wanted was Jon Cartwright, then obviously she wasn’t worth losing a night of sleep over in the first place.
By sunrise he’d almost managed to convince himself of this. But there she was again, up onstage beside her father, her fierce and fiercely intelligent gaze evoking all those annoying feelings again.
They weren’t memories, exactly. Simon couldn’t have named a single movie they watched together; he didn’t know any of Isabelle’s favorite foods or inside jokes; he didn’t know what it felt like to kiss her or twine his fingers with hers. What he felt whenever he looked at her was deeper than that, dwelling in some nether region of his mind. He felt like he knew her, inside and out. He felt like he had Superman vision and could x-ray her soul. He felt sorrow and loss and joy and confusion; he felt a cavemanlike urge to slaughter a wild boar and lay it at her feet; he felt the need to do something extraordinary and the belief that, in her presence, he could.
He felt something he’d never felt before—but he had a sinking sensation that he recognized it anyway.
He was pretty sure he felt like he was in love.
1984
Valentine made it easy for them. He’d induced permission from the dean for an “educational” camping trip in Brocelind Forest—two days and nights free to do as they pleased, as long as it resulted in a few scribbled pages on the curative powers of wild herbs.
By all rights, with his uncomfortable questions and rebellious theories, Valentine should have been the black sheep of Shadowhunter Academy. Ragnor Fell certainly treated him like a slimy creature who’d crawled out from under a rock and should be hastily returned there. But the rest of the faculty seemed blinded by Valentine’s personal magnetism, unable or unwilling to see through to the disrespect that lay beneath. He was endlessly dodging deadlines and ducking out of classes, excusing himself with nothing more than the flash of a smile. Another student might have been grateful for the latitude, but it only made Valentine loathe his teachers more—every loophole the faculty opened for him was only more evidence of weakness.
He had no qualms about enjoying its consequences.
The werewolf pack, according to Valentine’s intel, was holed up in the old Silverhood manor, a decrepit ruin at the heart of the forest. The last Silverhood had died in battle two generations before, and was used as a name to spook young Shadowhunter children. The death of a soldier was one thing: regrettable, but the natural order of things. The death of a line was a tragedy.
Maybe they were all secretly apprehensive about it, this illicit mission that seemed to cross an invisible line. Never before had they struck against Downworlders without the express permission and oversight of their elders; they had broken rules, but never before had they strayed so close to breaking the Law.
Maybe they just wanted to spend a few more hours like normal teenagers, before they went so far they couldn’t turn back.
For whatever reason, the four of them made their way through the woods with a deliberate lack of speed, setting up camp for the night a half mile from the Silverhood estate. They would, Valentine decided, spend the next day staking out the werewolf encampment, gauging its strengths and weaknesses, charting the rhythms of the pack, and attack at nightfall, once the pack had dispersed to hunt. But that was tomorrow’s problem. That night, they sat around a campfire, roasted sausages over leaping flames, reminisced about their pasts, and rhapsodized about their futures, which still seemed impossibly far away.
“I’ll marry Jocelyn, of course,” Valentine said, “and we’ll raise our children in the new era. They’ll never be warped by the corrupt laws of a weak, sniveling Clave.”
“Sure, because by that time, we’ll run the world,” Stephen said lightly. Valentine’s grim smile made it seem less like a joke than a promise.
“Can’t you just see it?” Michael said. “Daddy Valentine, knee deep in diapers. A busload of kids.”
“However many Jocelyn wants.” Valentine’s expression softened, as it always did when he said her name. They’d only been together a couple of months—since his father died—but no one questioned that they were together for good. The way he looked at her . . . like she was a different species than the rest of them, a higher species. “Can’t you see it?” Valentine had confided once, early on, when Robert asked him how he could be so sure of love, so soon. “There’s more of the Angel in her than in the rest of us. There’s greatness in her. She shines like Raziel himself.”
“You just want to flood the gene pool,” Michael said. “I imagine you think the world would be better off if every Shadowhunter had a little Morgenstern in them.”
Valentine grinned. “I’m told false modesty doesn’t suit me, so . . . no comment.”
“While we’re on the subject,” Stephen said, a blush rising in his cheeks. “I’ve asked Amatis. And she said yes.”
“Asked what?” Robert said.