“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Catarina. “I read the letter a lot during my first year in the Academy, to remind myself what I was doing here and what Ragnor would have wanted. I’ve honored my friend. I’ve almost completed my task. You take them.”
Magnus tucked away the letter and the good-luck charm, sent by one of his dead friends to another.
He and Catarina walked out of Ragnor’s room together. Catarina said she was going to eat dinner, which Magnus thought was extremely reckless of her.
“Can’t you do something safe and soothing, like bungee jumping?” he asked, but she insisted. He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Come by the attics later. The Lightwoods will be there, so I need protection. We’ll have a party.”
He turned and left her, unwilling to enter the dining hall and behold the slime lasagna again. As he made his way up the stairs, he met Simon on his way down.
Magnus looked at Simon consideringly. Simon seemed alarmed by this.
“Come with me, Simon Lewis,” Magnus commanded. “Let’s have a chat.”
Simon stood at the top of one of the towers in Shadowhunter Academy with Magnus Bane, looking out at the gathering twilight and feeling vaguely uneasy.
“I could swear this tower used to be crooked.”
“Huh,” said Magnus. “Perception’s a funny thing.”
Simon was just not sure what Magnus wanted. He liked Magnus. He’d just never had a heart-to-heart with Magnus, and now Magnus was giving him a look that said what is your deal, Simon Lewis? Magnus even made the tatty gray shirt he was wearing look faintly stylish. He was fairly certain Magnus was too cool to care about his deal.
He glanced over at Magnus, who was standing at one of the large, glassless windows in the tower, the night wind blowing his hair back.
“I said to you once,” Magnus offered, “that one day, of all the people we know, the two of us might be the only ones left.”
“I don’t remember,” said Simon.
“Why should you?” Magnus asked. “Barring some freak tornado that sweeps away everyone we love, that is no longer true. You’re mortal now. And even the immortal can be killed. Maybe this tower will collapse and leave everyone to mourn us.”
The view from the tower, the stars over the woods, was beautiful. Simon wanted to get down.
Magnus reached into his pocket and took out an old, carved coin. Simon could not see the inscription on it in the dark, but he could see that there was one.
“This belonged to Raphael once. Do you remember Raphael?” Magnus asked. “The vampire who turned you.”
“Only in bits and pieces,” Simon said. “I remember him telling me Isabelle was out of my league.”
Magnus turned his face away, not quite successfully hiding a smile. “That sounds like Raphael.”
“I remember—feeling him die,” said Simon, his voice sticking in his throat. That was the worst of his stolen memories, that the weight of the memory remained when all else was gone, that he felt loss without knowing what he had lost. “He meant something to me, but I don’t know if he liked me. I don’t know if I liked him.”
“He felt responsible for you,” Magnus said. “It occurred to me today that maybe I should have felt responsible for you in the same way. I was the one who performed the spell that brought you back your memories; I was the one who set you on the path to Shadowhunter Academy. Raphael was the first one to place you in another world, but I placed you in another world as well.”
“I made my own choices,” Simon said. “You gave me the chance to do that. I’m not sorry you did. Are you sorry you restored my memories?”
Magnus smiled. “No, I’m not sorry. Catarina filled me in on a little of what’s been going on at the Academy. It seems like you have been doing just fine making your choices without me.”
“I’ve been trying,” said Simon.
He had been shocked by Alec praising him, and it was not as if he had expected Magnus to do it. But he felt warmed by Magnus’s words, suddenly warm all over, despite the wind sweeping in from the crystalline coldness of the sky. Magnus was not talking about the bits and pieces of his half-forgotten past but about what he was now and what he had done with his time since then.
It wasn’t anything remarkable, but he had been trying.
“I also heard you had a little adventure in Faerieland,” said Magnus. “We’ve been having trouble in New York with faerie fruit sellers as well. Part of the faeries running wild is the Cold Peace itself. People who are not trusted become untrustworthy. But there is something else wrong as well. Faerie is not a land without rules, without rulers. The Queen who was Sebastian’s ally has vanished, and there are many dark rumors as to why. None of which I would repeat to the Clave, because they would only impose harsher punishments on the faeries. They become harsher, and the fey wilder, and the hate between both sides grows day by day. There are storms behind you, Simon. But there is another and a greater storm coming. All the old rules are falling away. Are you ready for another storm?”
Simon was silent. He didn’t know how to answer that.
“I’ve seen you with Clary, and with Isabelle,” Magnus continued. “I know you are on the path to Ascension, to having a parabatai and a Shadowhunter love. Are you happy with it? Are you certain?”
“I don’t know about being certain,” Simon said. “I don’t know about being ready, either. I can’t say I haven’t had doubts, that I haven’t thought about turning back and being a kid in a band in Brooklyn. I think sometimes it’s too hard to believe in yourself. You just do the things you’re not sure you can do. You just act, in spite of not being certain. I don’t believe I can change the world—it sounds stupid to even talk about it—but I’m going to try.”
“We all change the world, with every day of living in it,” Magnus said. “You just have to decide how you want to change the world. I brought you into this world, the second time around, and though your choices are your own I do take some responsibility. Even if you are committed, you have other choices. I could arrange for you to be a vampire again, or a werewolf. Both are risky, but none as risky as Ascension.”
“Yes. I want to try changing the world as a Shadowhunter,” said Simon. “I really do. I want to try and change the Clave from the inside. I want that particular power to help people. It’s worth the risk.”
Magnus nodded.
He had meant it, Simon thought, when he said that Simon’s choices were his own. He had left it up to Simon, that day in Brooklyn when he and Isabelle had approached Simon outside his school. He did not question Simon now, even though Simon was afraid that choosing to be a Shadowhunter and not a Downworlder might have offended him. He didn’t want to be like the Shadowhunters who acted as if they were better than Downworlders. He wanted to be an entirely different kind of Shadowhunter.
Magnus did not look offended. He stood on the tower top, on stone in starlight, turning the coin that had belonged to the dead over and over in his fingers. He looked thoughtful.
“Have you thought about your Shadowhunter name?”
“Um . . . ,” Simon said shyly. “A little bit. I was wondering, actually—what’s your real name?”
Magnus sent him a sidelong glance. Nobody gave side-eye like someone with cat’s eyes. “Magnus Bane,” he said. “I know you’ve forgotten a lot, Smedley, but really.”
Simon accepted the subtle reproof. He understood why Magnus would object to the implication that the name he had chosen to define himself by, kept over long years and made both infamous and illustrious, was not real.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that my mind does keep coming back to names. If I survive Ascension, I’ll have to pick a Shadowhunter name. I don’t know how to pick the right one—I don’t know how to pick one that will mean something, mean more than any other name would.”
Magnus frowned.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this wise-advice business. Maybe I should wear a fake white beard to convi
nce myself I am a sage. Pick the one that feels right, and don’t worry too much,” Magnus said eventually. “It’s going to be your name. You’re going to live with it. You’re going to give it meaning, not the other way around.”
“I’m going to try,” said Simon. “Is there any reason why ‘Magnus Bane’ was the one that felt right?”
“Magnus Bane felt right for a lot of reasons,” Magnus said, which was not really an answer. He seemed to sense Simon’s disappointment and take pity on him, because he added: “Here’s one.”
Magnus flipped the coin over and under his fingers, the circle of metal moving faster and faster. Blue lines of magic seemed to spring from his rings, a tiny storm rising in Magnus’s palm and catching the coin in a net of lightning.
Then Magnus threw the coin off the tower, into the night wind. Simon could see the falling coin, still touched with blue fire, going beyond the limits of the Academy grounds.
“There’s a scientific phenomenon to describe something that happens when an object is in motion. You think you know exactly what path it will take and where it will end up. Then suddenly, for no reason you can see . . . the arc changes. It goes somewhere you would never have expected.”
Magnus snapped his fingers, and the coin zigzagged in the air and returned to them as Simon stared, feeling like he was seeing magic for the first time. He dropped the coin in Simon’s hand and smiled, a blazing rebel’s smile, his eyes as gold as newly discovered treasure.
“It’s called the Magnus effect,” he said.
“Fzzzz,” Clary said, her bright red head hovering over the baby’s small dark-blue one. She pressed little kisses onto the baby’s cheeks, buzzing like a bee as she did so, and the baby chuckled and grasped at her curls. “Fzzzz, fzzz, fzzzz. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have never had a close relationship with any babies. For sixteen years I thought I was an only child, baby. And after that, baby, you don’t want to know what I thought. Please forgive me if I’m doing this wrong, baby. Do you like me, baby? I like you.”
“Give me the baby,” Maryse said jealously. “You’ve had him for four whole minutes, Clarissa.”
It was a party in Magnus and Alec’s suite, and the game of choice was Pass the Baby. Everyone wanted to hold him. Simon had shamelessly tried to curry favor with Isabelle’s father by teaching Robert Lightwood how to use Simon’s digital watch as a timer. Robert was now holding the watch in a death grip and studying it carefully. It would be Robert’s turn with the baby again in sixteen minutes, and he had clasped Simon’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, son,” which Simon took as a blessing to date Robert’s daughter. He did not regret the loss of his watch.
Clary surrendered the baby, and leaned back against the sofa between Simon and Jace. The sofa creaked dangerously as she settled back. Simon might have been safer in the formerly crooked tower, but he was willing to be in danger if he could stay next to Clary.
“He’s so sweet,” Clary whispered to Jace and Simon. “It’s strange to think he’s Alec and Magnus’s, though. I mean, can you imagine?”
“It’s not that strange,” Jace said. “I mean, I can imagine.”
A flush rose on his high cheekbones. He edged into the corner of the sofa as Simon and Clary both turned and stared at him.
Clary and Simon continued to stare judgmentally. It made Simon very happy. Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship.
Then Clary leaned forward and kissed Jace.
“Let’s pick up this conversation in about ten years,” she said. “Maybe longer! I’m going to dance with the girls.”
She went to join Isabelle, who was already dancing to the soft music in the midst of a circle of admirers who had come because they heard she was back. Foremost among them was Marisol, who Simon was pretty sure had determined to be Isabelle when she grew up.
The Lightwood baby celebration was in full swing. Simon smiled, watching Clary. He could remember a couple of times she had been wary around other girls, and they had stuck together instead. It was nice to see Isabelle hold out her hands to Clary, and Clary grasp them without hesitation.
“Jace,” said Simon as Jace watched Clary and smiled. Jace glanced at him and looked annoyed. “Remember when you told me that you wished I could remember?”
“Why are you asking me if I remember things?” Jace asked, sounding definitely annoyed. “I’m not the one who has problems with remembering. Remember?”
“I just wondered what you meant by that.”
Simon waited, giving Jace a chance to take advantage of his demon amnesia and tell him another fake secret. Instead, Jace looked incredibly uncomfortable.
“Nothing,” he said. “What would I mean? Nothing.”
“Did you just mean you wanted me to remember the past generally?” Simon asked. “So I’d remember all the adventures we had and the manly bonds we formed together?”
Jace continued to make an uncomfortable face. Simon remembered Alec saying Jace was so upset.
“Wait, was that actually it?” Simon asked incredulously. “Did you miss me?”
“Obviously not!” snapped Jace. “I would never miss you. I, um, was talking about something specific.”
“Okay. So, what specific thing did you want me to recall?” Simon asked. He eyed Jace suspiciously. “Was it the biting?”
“No!” said Jace.
“Was that a special moment for you?” Simon asked. “One that you wanted me to remember that we shared?”
“Remember this moment,” said Jace. “At the very next opportunity that offers, I am going to leave you to die at the bottom of an evil boat. I want you to remember why.”
Simon smiled to himself. “No, you won’t. You would never leave me to die at the bottom of an evil boat,” he muttered as Alec strolled over to the slanted sofa and Jace looked outraged by what he was hearing.
“Simon, normally it’s a pleasure to talk to you,” Alec said. “But could I have a word with Jace?”
“Oh, right,” Simon said. “Jace, I’d forgotten what I was trying to talk to you about. But now I remember very clearly. Alec and I had a little talk about his problem with me. You know, the one you told me he had. The terrible secret.”
Jace’s golden eyes went blank. “Ah,” he said.
“You think you’re hilarious, don’t you?”
“Though I realize that you are both a little annoyed with me, and this might not be the time to shower myself with praise,” Jace said slowly, “honesty compels me to tell you: Yes. Yes, I do think I am hilarious. ‘There goes Jace Herondale,’ people say. ‘Cutting wit, and also totally cut. It’s a burden Simon could never understand.’ ”
“Alec’s going to kill you,” Simon informed him, and patted Jace on the shoulder. “And I think that’s fair. For what it’s worth, I’ll miss you, buddy.”
He got up from the sofa. Alec advanced on Jace.
Simon trusted Alec to exact terrible vengeance for both of them. He had wasted enough time on Jace’s dumb joke.
George was dancing with Julie and Beatriz, clowning around to try and get them to laugh. Beatriz was already laughing, and Simon thought Julie would soon.
“Come on, dancing with me isn’t so bad,” George told Julie. “I may be no Magnus Bane . . .” He paused and looked over at Magnus, who had changed into a black gauze shirt with blue sequins twinkling underneath. “I definitely could not pull that off,” he added. “But I do work out! And I have a Scottish accent.”
“You know that’s right,” said Simon. He high-fived George and smiled at the girls, but he was already moving past them, on his way to the center of the dancers.
On his way to Isabelle.
He came up behind her and slid his arm around her waist. She leaned back against him. She was wearing the dress she’d worn the day he’d first met her for the second time, reminding him of the starry night over Shadowhunter Academy.
“Hey,” he whispered. “I want to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
Isabelle whispered back.
Simon turned her toward him, and she let him. He thought they should have this conversation face-to-face.
Behind her, he could see Jace and Alec. They were hugging, and Alec was laughing. Jace was patting him on the back in a congratulatory way. So much for terrible vengeance, though Simon couldn’t really say he minded.
“I wanted to tell you before I try to Ascend,” he said.
The smile dropped off Isabelle’s face. “If this is an in-case-I-die speech, I don’t want to hear it,” she said fiercely. “You’re not going to do that to me. You’re not going to even consider dying. You’re going to be fine.”
“No,” Simon said. “You’ve got it all wrong. I wanted to say this now, because if I Ascend, I get my memories back.”
Isabelle looked confused instead of angry, which was an improvement. “What is it, then?”
“It doesn’t matter if I get my memories back or not,” Simon said. “It doesn’t matter if another demon gives me amnesia tomorrow. I know you: You’ll come find me again, you’ll come rescue me no matter what happens. You’ll come for me, and I’ll discover you all over again. I love you. I love you without the memories. I love you right now.”
There was a pause, broken by irrelevancies like the music and the murmur of the people all around them. He could not quite read the look on Isabelle’s face.
Isabelle said in a calm voice: “I know.”
Simon stared at her. “Was that . . . ,” he said slowly. “Was that a Star Wars reference? Because if it was, I would like to declare my love all over again.”
“Go on, then,” said Isabelle. “I mean it. Say it again. I’ve been waiting awhile.”
“I love you,” said Simon.
Isabelle was laughing. Simon would have thought he would be appalled to say those words to a girl and have her laugh at him. But Isabelle was always surprising him. He could not stop looking at her. “Really?” she asked, and her eyes were shining. “Really?”
“Really,” said Simon.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 48
