“Oh, of course,” Simon drawled. “That would be foolish.”
“We’re going to summon it here in the lounge,” Isabelle clarified. “Then bring it to the party.”
“Then kill it, of course,” Julie put in.
“Of course,” Simon echoed. He wondered if maybe he was having a stroke.
“You’re making it sound like a bigger deal than it is,” George said.
“Yeah, it’s just an imp demon,” Sunil said. “No biggie.”
“Uh-huh.” Simon groaned. “Totally. No biggie.”
“Imagine the look on everyone’s faces when they see what we can do!” Marisol was nearly glowing at the thought of it.
Beatriz wasn’t there. If she had been, maybe she could have talked some reason into them. Or helped Simon tie them up and stuff them in the closet until the end of the semester had safely passed and Isabelle was back in New York where she belonged.
“What if something goes wrong?” Simon pointed out. “You’ve never faced off against a demon in combat conditions, not without the teachers watching your back. You don’t know—”
“Neither do you,” Isabelle snapped. “At least, you don’t remember, isn’t that right?”
Simon said nothing.
“Whereas I took down my first imp when I was six years old,” Isabelle said. “Like I told your friends, it’s no big deal. And they trust me.”
I trust you—that’s what he was meant to say. He knew she was waiting for it. They all were.
He couldn’t.
“I can’t talk you out of this?” he asked instead.
Isabelle shrugged. “You can keep trying, but you’d be wasting all our time.”
“Then I’ll have to find another way to stop you,” Simon said.
“You gonna tell on us?” Jon sneered. “You gonna go be a crybaby and tattle to your favorite warlock?” He snorted. “Once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet.”
“Shut up, Jon.” Isabelle whacked him softly on the arm. Simon probably should have been pleased, but whacking still required touching, and he preferred that Isabelle and Jon never come into physical contact of any sort. “You could try to tell on us, Simon. But I’ll deny it. And then who will they believe—someone like me, or someone like you? Some mundane.”
She said “mundane” exactly like Jon always did. Like it was a synonym for “nothing.”
“This isn’t you, Isabelle. This isn’t what you’re like.” He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince her or himself.
“You don’t know what I’m like, remember?”
“I know enough.”
“Then you know that you should trust me. But if you don’t, go ahead. Tell,” she said. “Then everyone will know what you’re like. What kind of friend you are.”
He tried.
He knew it was the right thing to do.
At least, he thought it was the right thing to do.
The next morning, before the lecture, he went to Catarina Loss’s office—Jon was right, she was his favorite warlock and his favorite faculty member, and the only one he would trust with something like this.
She welcomed him in, offered him a seat and a mug of something whose steam was an alarming shade of blue. He passed.
“So, Daylighter, I take it you have something to tell me?”
Catarina intimidated him somewhat less than she had at the beginning of the year—which was a bit like saying Jar Jar Binks was “somewhat less” annoying in Star Wars: Episode II than he’d been in Star Wars: Episode I.
“It’s possible I know something that . . .” Simon cleared his throat. “I mean, if something were happening that . . .”
He hadn’t let himself think through what would happen once the words were out. What would happen to his friends? What would happen to Isabelle, their ringleader? She couldn’t exactly get expelled from an Academy where she wasn’t enrolled . . . but Simon had learned enough about the Clave by now to know there were far worse punishments than getting expelled. Was summoning a minor demon to use as a party trick a violation of the Law? Was he about to ruin Isabelle’s life?
Catarina Loss wasn’t a Shadowhunter; she had her own secrets from the Clave. Maybe she’d be willing to keep one more, if it meant helping Simon and protecting Isabelle from punishment?
As his mind spun through dark possibilities, the office door swung open and Dean Penhallow poked her blond head in. “Catarina, Robert Lightwood was hoping to chat with you before his session—oh, sorry! Didn’t realize you were in the middle of something?”
“Join us,” Catarina said. “Simon was just about to tell me something interesting.”
The dean stepped into the office, furrowing her brow at Simon. “You look so serious,” she told him. “Go ahead, spit it out. You’ll feel better. It’s like throwing up.”
“What’s like throwing up?” he asked, confused.
“You know, when you’re feeling ill? Sometimes it just helps to get everything out.”
Somehow, Simon didn’t think vomiting up his confession straight to the dean would make him feel any better.
Hadn’t Isabelle proven herself enough—not just to him, but to the Clave, to everyone? She had, after all, pretty much saved the world. How much more evidence would anyone need that she was one of the good guys?
How much evidence did he need?
Simon stood up and said the first thing that popped into his mind. “I just wanted to tell you that we all really enjoyed that beet stew they served for dinner. You should serve that again.”
Dean Penhallow gave him an odd look. “Those weren’t beets, Simon.”
This didn’t surprise him, as the stew had had an oddly grainy consistency and a taste reminiscent of dung.
“Well . . . whatever it was, it was delicious,” he said quickly. “I better get going. I don’t want to miss the beginning of Inquisitor Lightwood’s final lecture. They’ve been so interesting.”
“Indeed,” Catarina said dryly. “They’ve been almost as delicious as the stew.”
1984
For most of his time at the Academy, Robert had watched Valentine from a distance. Even though Robert was older, he looked up to Valentine, who was everything Robert wanted to be. Valentine excelled at his training without visible effort. He could best anyone with any weapon. He was careless with his affection, or at least seemed to be, and he was beloved. Not many people noticed how few he truly loved back. But Robert noticed, because when you’re watching from the sidelines, invisible, it’s easy to see clearly.
It never occurred to him that Valentine was watching him, too.
Not until the day, toward the beginning of this year, that Valentine caught him alone in one of the Academy’s dark, underground corridors and said quietly, “I know your secret.”