Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

  Livvy had not felt the water of Dimmet Tarn, but she had sunk into it all the same, slowly, until her head was beneath the surface, darkness below her, the suggestion of the winter sky above shrinking until it was gone altogether and she saw and felt nothing. She had sunk down and down into that void, that blackness, that nothingness, until it was not clear to her whether she was still sinking at all. Nothingness was all around her. Only that strand that connected her to Ty remained, as thin as it could be and yet stronger than the strongest metal.

  She and Ty had theorized that perhaps since she was now, as a ghost, uncanny herself, she might be able to discover the secret of Dimmet Tarn. Livvy had liked the idea she might have a superpower of some kind, be useful in some way, and Ty liked the idea that there might be a local mystery that they could solve. But if Dimmet Tarn was keeping an occult secret, Livvy had not discovered it.

  “They’re going to ring the bell for dinner soon,” Livvy said.

  “I hope it’s not olive loaf,” Ty said.

  “It is,” Livvy said. “Can’t you smell it?”

  “Ugh,” Ty said. He put down the black notebook and picked up the red one in which he kept his timetables. He flipped back a page and said, “That’s three times in four weeks.”

  Livvy had worried about what it would be like for her brother, to be so far away from home, but Ty had adapted surprisingly well. He’d drawn up a schedule for himself on the first night, and he followed it faithfully. He laid out his clothes each night for the following morning, and before he fell asleep he checked his alarm clock against the watch he wore around his wrist. Ty kept one of Julian’s old empty lighters in the pocket of his jeans, for when he needed to keep his fingers busy, and he wore his headphones around his neck during classes like a kind of talisman.

  After he’d failed to resurrect Livvy from the dead, Ty had thrown his phone into the Pacific Ocean so he wouldn’t be tempted to try other spells from the Black Volume. He had a new phone now, but he hadn’t uploaded his photos. More penance, Livvy thought, although Ty hadn’t said so. Instead, he had a triptych of paintings by Julian on the wall above his desk: one of their parents, one of all the Blackthorn siblings and Diana and Emma, with the ocean behind them. The third painting was of Livvy, and Livvy often found herself staring at it so that she wouldn’t forget her own face. Not being able to see yourself in a mirror was not a big deal, compared to other parts of being dead, but all the same it was not very pleasant.

  Ty wrote a letter to Julian every week, and he wrote Dru and Mark and Diana and Tavvy and Helen postcards, but Livvy couldn’t help but notice that he never wrote Kit at all. She knew Kit had been angry at Ty for trying the resurrection spell, but surely Kit had gotten over that by now? If she brought up Kit, though, Ty shrugged and put his headphones on.

  In general, though, Ty seemed to be fitting in just fine at the Scholomance. Better than Livvy would have imagined, before her death, had she imagined such a thing. Ty hadn’t made any friends, but he managed everything that the instructors asked of him, and if he was mostly quiet or withdrawn otherwise, no one seemed to think that was strange. There were a lot of Shadowhunter kids at the Scholomance now who were worried or afraid or occasionally went off to cry in a corner. Ty was keeping his head down. No one except for Livvy, and maybe Julian, would have known there was something wrong.

  But there was something wrong. And Livvy had no idea how to fix it, especially since she had no idea what was wrong. All she could do was be there. She had promised him that she would always be there. He had saved her from death, and she loved him.

  Anyway, she didn’t have anywhere else to be.

  Sometimes, while Ty was studying or sleeping, she went exploring. To the library, where the great silvery tree grew through the broken ceiling like a promise that no wall or hardship (or promise) endured forever.

  Sometimes she lingered by a student reading by themselves in the library, or perched on a window ledge, looking out at Dimmet Tarn. She would press all her attention upon them, testing them, to see if she could make herself known. “Can you see me? Can you see me?”

  But no one saw her. Once, late at night, Livvy came across two girls kissing in an alcove, one with curly black hair and the other fair. They were only a year or two older than she, and Livvy wondered if this was their first kiss. The fair-headed one drew back at last and said, “It’s late. I should get back to my room. Books aren’t going to read themselves.”

  The curly-haired girl sighed but said, “Okay, but that’s true of kisses, too. I’m not going to make out with myself.”

  The other said, “Good point.”

  But this time the curly-haired girl was the one who broke away from the embrace, laughing. She said, “Okay, okay. It’s late and you’ve got the kissing thing down. Top marks. And there’ll be time for more kissing later. So much time for so much kissing. Go read your books. See you at practice tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” the fair-haired girl said, and ducked her head, blushing. Livvy trailed her all the way back to her room. “Can you see me? Can’t you see?” she demanded. “Life is short! Oh, can’t you see? There’s less time than you think, and then it’s gone.”

  Sometimes Livvy wondered if she was going crazy. But it was easier in the day, when Ty was awake. Then she wasn’t so alone.

  * * *

  After dinner, which was indeed olive loaf, while he was getting ready for bed, Ty said, “Everyone keeps talking about Idris. About what might be going on in there.”

  “Jerks being jerks is what’s going on there,” Livvy said.

  “No one can get in because of the wards,” Ty said. “But I was listening to them and I had an idea. No one can get in, but what if you could get in?”

  “Me?” Livvy said.

  “You,” Ty said. “Why not? You can pass through all sorts of things. Walls. Doors. We could at least test it.”

  “Well,” Livvy began, and then was silent. A feeling came over her, and she realized that the feeling was excitement.

  She grinned back at her twin. “You’re right,” she said. “We should at least test it.”

  “Tomorrow, after Volcanoes and the Demons that Dwell in Them,” Ty said. He made a note in his schedule.

  * * *

  But that night, while Ty was sleeping, Livvy found herself pulled toward Dimmet Tarn again, toward the nothingness of its depths. Every time she thought of Idris, and the experiment that she and Ty would try tomorrow, she thought of her own death, of the blow that Annabel had struck. That moment of pain and dislocation. The stricken look on Julian’s face as she fled her body.

  Of course Annabel wasn’t in Idris now. Annabel was dead. And of course, even if Annabel had still been alive, Livvy shouldn’t be afraid of her murderer. A Shadowhunter shouldn’t be afraid. But the thought of her own body on the cold stone of the Accords Hall, the thought of her body burnt upon a pyre, the thought of Lake Lyn, where she had returned, all of these pursued her as she sank into the blackness of Dimmet Tarn and let its nothingness hide her.

  It was almost morning when at last she rose up, pearly light already sliding over the crust of snow around the tarn. And there, too, on the lip of the tarn was a small crumpled heap as if someone had dropped their hat or scarf.

  Livvy drew near and saw that it was a kitten, starved and motionless. Its paws were torn by the ice, and there were marks of bright blood in the snow. Its ears were long, tipped in black, and its coat was spotted with black as well. “You poor thing,” Livvy said, and the kitten opened its eyes. It looked right at Livvy and snarled noiselessly. Then its eyes closed again.

  Livvy fled back to the Scholomance, to Ty.

  “Wake up, Ty!” she said. “Hurry, wake up, wake up!”

  Ty sat bolt upright. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a Carpathian lynx down by Dimmet Tarn,” Livvy said. “A kitten. I think it’s dying. Hurry, Ty.”

  He threw a coat over his pajamas and pulled on his boots. He bundled up a
blanket in his arms. “Show me,” he said.

  The kitten was still alive when they got back to Dimmet Tarn, Ty’s boots breaking through the snow with each step. He sank, sometimes, to his knees. But Livvy, of course, floated above the snow. There were advantages, sometimes, to being dead. Livvy could admit that.

  You could see the small rise and fall of the lynx’s chest. Small wisps of breath rose from its black nose.

  “Is it going to be okay?” Livvy asked. “Will it live?”

  Ty knelt down in the bank of snow beside the lynx. He began to wrap it in the blanket. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if it lives, it will be because you saved it, Livvy.”

  “No,” Livvy said. “I found it. But I can’t save it. You’ll have to be the one who saves it.”

  “Then we’ll both have saved it,” Ty said, and smiled at her. If Livvy had had a notebook, she would have written it down. It had been a long time since she’d seen her brother smile.

  * * *

  Ty found a box and put an old sweater in it. From the kitchen he got a plate of chicken casserole and a bowl to fill with water. When the lynx wouldn’t eat or drink, he went to the infirmary and asked Catarina Loss what to do.

  “She says to moisten a piece of cloth—a T-shirt, maybe? Or a hand towel?—and then drip water into its mouth.”

  “Then do it,” Livvy said anxiously. How useless she felt!

  “Catarina gave me a hot water bottle too,” Ty said. He reached into the box and unwrapped the bundle of blanket enough to put the hot water bottle in as well. Then he began to drip water onto the lynx’s mouth until the fur was wet all around its face.

  Ty was more patient than Livvy thought she could have been. He dipped the smallest section of T-shirt sleeve into a bowl of water and then wrung it out gently, until the animal’s mouth opened and a pink tongue poked out. Ty dripped water onto the tongue, and when the lynx swallowed it, he picked up the bowl and tipped it slowly so that the lynx could drink without moving its head. After that, he tore the chicken into small pieces and fed the pieces to it. The lynx ate ravenously, making small, angry noises.

  At last the chicken was gone. “Go get more,” Livvy said.

  Ty said, “No. Catarina said not to let it eat too much at first.” He tucked a towel in around the lynx, and then covered over the box with a jacket. “We’ll let it sleep now. I’ll give it more later.”

  “What about a name? Are you going to give it a name?”

  Ty scratched his head. Livvy saw, with a pang, that he had the faintest beginnings of a beard on his face. But he, of course, would continue to grow older. One day he would be a man, but she would always be a child. Ty said, gaze fixed on one black-tipped ear, all that was visible of the lynx, “But we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  “Then we can give it a gender-neutral name,” Livvy said. “Like Stripes or Hero or Commander Kitty.”

  “Let’s see if it lives first,” Ty said. By mutual agreement, they put off the plan to test Livvy’s capabilities to bypass the boundaries of Idris until the next day. Ty attended his classes, and Livvy watched over the lynx, and in between Ty’s classes he supplied their ever more lively captive with scraps of food and bowls of milk. By the time the dinner bells were ringing, they had ascertained the lynx’s gender and Ty’s arms were bloody with scratches. But the lynx was asleep and purring in his lap.

  There was a makeshift litter box in the closet, and as it turned out, Ty’s fidget toys also made excellent cat toys.

  “Irene,” Ty said. Once again, Livvy saw, he was smiling. “Let’s call her Irene.”

  In the end, he skipped dinner altogether. And that night, Livvy did not go back to Dimmet Tarn. Instead she watched over her brother, Irene curled around his head on the pillow, her glowing eyes closing and opening, always fixed on Livvy.

  There was a new note in Ty’s book. It said, Lynx sees her. Is this because the Lynx (have given her a name, Irene) was close to death? Or because she is a cat, though larger than house cats? Inconclusive. More research needed, though large cats may be hard to come by.

  * * *

  If it hadn’t been for the matter of Idris, Livvy could have spent the whole next day playing with Irene. She and Ty had discovered that if Livvy drew her foot along the ground, back and forth, Irene would try to pounce, over and over. She could not understand why she couldn’t catch Livvy. “Like a laser pointer,” Ty said. “You’re the red dot that always escapes.”

  “That’s me,” Livvy said. “The elusive red dot. So, Idris. How do we do this?”

  Shadowhunters used Portals to go to Idris. Only now, Idris was warded and Portals wouldn’t work. Livvy, being dead, didn’t need Portals. When Ty had come to the Scholomance, he had stepped through a Portal and Livvy had willed herself to go with Ty. To be in the place where Ty was.

  Ty said, “It should be the same as Dimmet Tarn. Or when I’m in class and suddenly you just show up. Hold Idris in your mind, like a picture. Let yourself go there.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Livvy said.

  “Something ought to be easy,” Ty said. “Everything can’t be hard all the time.”

  “Fine,” Livvy said. “Here we go.”

  She thought of Idris, of Lake Lyn. Of the moment she was no longer dead. Saw it in her mind and held it there. And then she was no longer in the room with Ty and Irene. Instead she was floating above the great stillness of Dimmet Tarn.

  “Great job, Livvy,” she told herself. But she didn’t go back to Ty. Instead she thought of Idris once more, and imagined, this time, that she was alive again. She thought of how once, when she’d been very young, she had Portaled with her family from the beach outside the L.A. Institute into Idris. Had that been the first time she’d gone to Idris?

  She closed her eyes, opened them, and found herself beside the ocean in L.A. The sun was just coming up, turning the foam atop the waves to fiery lace. And there was the Institute where her family would be waking up soon. Making breakfast. Did they think of her? Dream of her and then wake and think of her again?

  “This isn’t where I want to be,” she said, and knew it wasn’t true. She tried again. “This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.”

  The sun was rising, and she tried to feel its warmth—something other than its brightness. To warm herself. What she would have given to feel that wet velvet crust of the top layer of sand under her feet, to feel the cold grittiness of the sand underneath change in temperature as the warmth of her human feet soaked away. To scream herself hoarse, knowing that no one would hear over the roar of the surf. She squatted and tried with every particle of herself to pick up a piece of beach glass. But it was a useless endeavor. She had no more effect on the world than a fragment of dream. It seemed to her, in fact, that she was shrinking, growing smaller and smaller until she no longer stood on the sand, but was instead slipping between the icy grains, now large as boulders around her.

  “No!” she said. And was no longer on the beach in Los Angeles. Instead she was back at Dimmet Tarn, her bare feet skimming the deep black.

  “Get a grip on yourself,” she told herself sternly. “And try again. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  This time, instead of thinking of Idris, Livvy thought of the way in which it was bounded. She thought of the wards that kept out everyone who was not welcome. She imagined Idris, picturing the terrible dessert they served at least once a month at the Scholomance, in which unidentifiable pieces of fruit were embedded in a vast Jell-O dome. There were certain advantages to being dead: you were not expected to be enthusiastic about terrible desserts simply because they were desserts. But nevertheless, even dead, she remembered the consistency of Jell-O, and she imagined Idris as if it had been encased in gelatin instead of magic. She imagined traveling to Idris, to the shore of Lake Lyn, as if she were pressing up against a Jell-O mold. Doing this, she could almost feel the wards of Idris resisting her: tingling, slippery, and only the slightest bit yielding. Still she persisted, imagin
ing pressing all of her incorporeal self against their magic.

  Livvy closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was in a green meadow where she had never been before. There were sugar-white mountains against the horizon, and insects, buzzing languorously like secrets, in among the blades of grass. She was not in Idris. What was even the point of being a ghost if you didn’t get to infiltrate the bad guys’ lair in order to haunt jerks like the Cohort?

  “This would prove that you fail at life, Livvy, except, you know,” she said to herself. And then was surprised, because it seemed that someone had heard and was answering her.

  “If they failed, would it really matter?” the voice said. A male voice with a strong Spanish accent. Livvy could see no one, but she could hear the voice as if the speaker stood beside her. “Then we could fight. I’m tired of this. We’ve been sitting around on our asses for months now, eating basic rations and arguing about the pettiest of goals.”

  “Shut up, Manuel,” said a voice that Livvy knew. Zara. And now she recognized Manuel’s voice as well. “We have been told to check the wards, and so we will check the wards. Obedience is a virtue in a Shadowhunter. So is patience.”

  “Patience!” Manuel said. “Like you’ve ever practiced patience in your life, Zara.”

  Livvy could see nothing but the meadow around her, the far white peaks of the mountain range. But she found that she could feel Idris, warded against her, pressing against her consciousness. Though she couldn’t penetrate the wards, apparently she could eavesdrop through them. They must be standing right there, Livvy on one side of the wards and Zara and Manuel on the other.

  “I am practicing enormous patience right now in not killing you,” Zara retorted.