Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Then Simon gathered up his courage, turned, and walked over to Isabelle.

Isabelle was the last person he had to say good-bye to; she would be the hardest. She wasn’t like Clary, openly tearful, or like any of the others, sorry to see him go but basically all right. She seemed more indifferent than anyone, so indifferent Simon knew it was not real.

“I’m going to come back,” said Simon.

“No doubt,” Isabelle said, staring off into the distance beyond his shoulder. “You always do seem to turn up.”

“When I do, I’m going to be awesome.”

Simon made the promise, not sure if he could keep it. He felt as if he had to say something. He knew it was what she wanted, for him to return to her the way he had been, better than he was now.

Isabelle shrugged. “Don’t think I’ll be waiting around, Simon Lewis.”

Just like her pretense of indifference, that sounded like a promise of the complete opposite. Simon looked at her for a long moment. She was so overwhelmingly beautiful and impressive, he found it too much to handle. He could barely believe any of his new memories, but the idea that Isabelle Lightwood had been his girlfriend seemed more unbelievable than the fact that vampires were real and Simon had been one. He didn’t have the faintest idea how he had made her feel that way about him once, and so he didn’t have the faintest idea how to make her feel that way about him again. It was like asking him to fly. He’d asked her to dance once, to have coffee with him twice in the months since she and Magnus had come to him and given back as much of his memory as they could, but not enough. Each time Isabelle had watched him carefully, expectantly, waiting for some miracle he knew he could not perform. It meant he was tongue-tied around her all the time, so sure he was going to say the wrong thing and shatter everything that he could scarcely say anything.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I’ll miss you.”

Isabelle’s hand shot out, grasping his arm. She still wasn’t looking at him.

“If you need me, I’ll come,” she said, and released him as abruptly as she had grabbed him.

“Okay,” Simon said again, and retreated to Catarina Loss’s side as she made the Portal to go through to Idris, the country of the Shadowhunters. This parting was so painful and awkward and welcome that he could not quite appreciate how awesome it was to have magic done right in front of him.

He waved good-bye to all these people he barely knew and somehow loved anyway, and he hoped they could not tell how relieved he was to be going.

*    *    *

Simon had remembered snatches about Idris, towers and a prison and stern faces and blood in the streets, but all of it was from the city of Alicante.

This time, he found himself outside the city. He was standing in the lush countryside, on one side a valley and on the other meadows. There was nothing to be seen for miles but different shades of green. There were the jade-green stretches of meadows upon meadows right down to the crystalline dazzle on the horizon that was the City of Glass, its towers blazing in the sunlight. On the other side, there were the emerald depths of a forest, dark green abundance cloaked in shadows. The tops of the trees ruffled in the wind like viridescent feathers.

Catarina looked around, then took one step, so she was standing right on the lip of the valley. Simon followed her, and in that one step the shadows of the forest lifted, as if shadows could become a veil.

Suddenly there were what Simon recognized as training grounds, stretches of clear ground cut into the earth with fences around them, markings indicating where Shadowhunters would run or throw etched so deep in the earth Simon could see them from where he stood. At the center of the grounds and in the very heart of the forest, the jewel to which all the rest was background setting, was a tall gray building with towers and spires. Simon was suddenly searching for architectural words like “buttress” to describe how stone could carry the shape of a swallow’s wings and support a roof. The Academy had a stained-glass window set in its very center. In the window, darkened with age and years, an angel wielding a sword could still be seen, celestial and fierce.

“Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy,” said Catarina Loss, her voice gentle.

They began their descent together. At one point Simon’s sneakers slid in the soft, crumbling earth of the steep slope, and Catarina had to grab hold of his jacket to steady him.

“I hope you brought some hiking boots, city boy.”

“I did not bring hiking boots even slightly,” said Simon. He’d known he was packing wrong. His instincts had not led him astray. Nor had they been at all helpful.

Catarina, probably disappointed by Simon’s demonstrable lack of intelligence, was silent as they walked under the shadow of the boughs, in the green dusk created by the trees, until the trees became sparse and the sunlight flooded back into the space around them and Shadowhunter Academy loomed in the distance before them. As they drew closer, Simon began to notice certain small flaws with the Academy that he had not observed when he was awestruck and far away. One of the tall, ski

Simon did not feel good about any of these observations.

There were people walking in front of the Academy, under the gaze of the pirate angel. There was a tall woman with a mane of strawberry-blond hair, and behind her two girls who Simon figured were Academy students. They both looked about his age.

A twig snapped under Simon’s clumsy foot and all three of the strolling women looked around. The strawberry blonde leaped into action, ru

“Ms. Loss, thank the Angel you’re here,” she exclaimed. “Everything is chaos, absolute chaos!”

*    *    *

“I don’t believe I’ve had the . . . pleasure,” Catarina observed, with a significant pause.

The woman collected herself and released Catarina, nodding so her bright hair flew around her shoulders. “I’m Vivia

She might speak formally, but she was awfully young to be spearheading the effort to reopen the Academy and prepare all the new, desperately needed trainees for the Shadowhunter forces. Then again, Simon supposed that was what happened when you were second-cousins-in-law with the Consul. Simon was still trying to work out how Shadowhunter government and also Shadowhunter family trees worked. They all seemed to be related to each other and it was very disturbing.

“What seems to be the problem, Dean Penhallow?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the weeks allotted to renovating the Academy seem to have been, ah . . . ‘wildly insufficient’ are the words that perhaps best describe the situation,” said Dean Penhallow, her words rushing out. “And some of the teachers have already—er—left abruptly. I do not believe they intend to return. In fact some of them informed me of this in very strong language. Also, the Academy is a trifle chilly and, to be perfectly honest, more than a trifle structurally unsound. Moreover, in the interest of thoroughness I must tell you there is a problem with the food supplies.”

Catarina raised an ivory eyebrow. “What’s the problem with the food supplies?”

“There aren’t any food supplies.”

“That is a problem.”

The dean’s shoulders sagged and her chest deflated somewhat, as if holding all that in had been confining her in an invisible corset of distress. “These girls with me are two of the older students and of good Shadowhunter families—Julie Beauvale and Beatriz Velez Mendoza. They arrived yesterday and have really been proving themselves invaluable. And this must be young Simon,” she said, favoring him with a smile.