Текст книги "Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clare

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 4 страниц)

“I was born in the City of Glass,” said Julie. “I am a Shadowhunter and I can handle the demonic. But I was also raised in a nice house that was not infested with filthy wildlife!”

“Well, I’m from Brooklyn,” said Simon, “and not to bad-mouth my beloved city or call it a verminous garbage heap with good music or anything, but I know rodents. Also, I believe I was a rodent, but that was only for a little while—I don’t remember it clearly and I don’t want to discuss it. I think I can handle a possum . . . which again, I’m sure is not demonic.”

“I saw it and you guys didn’t!” exclaimed the guy on the stool. “I’m telling you, it was suspiciously large! Fiendishly large.”

There was another rustle, and some menacing snuffling. Simon sidled over to the open suitcase on the other bed. There were a lot more rugby shirts in there, but on top of them was something else.

“Is that a weapon?” Julie asked.

“Uh, no,” said Simon. “It’s a tennis racket.”

The Shadowhunters needed more extracurricular activities.

He suspected the racket was going to be a truly terrible weapon, but it was what he had. He edged back toward the wardrobe, and threw the door open. There, in the splintered, gnawed-on recesses of the wardrobe, was a possum. Its red eyes shone and its small mouth opened, hissing at Simon.

“How disgusting,” said Julie. “Kill it, Simon!”

“Simon, you’re our only hope!” said the boy on the stool.

The possum made a movement, as if to dart forward. Simon brought the racket down with a thwack against the stone. The possum hissed again and moved in a different direction. Simon had the wild idea that it was feinting, just before it actually ran between his legs. Simon let out a sound that was too close to a squawk, stumbled back, and hit wildly in several directions, striking flagstones every time. The other two screamed. Simon spun to try to locate the possum, seeing a flash of fur out of the corner of his eye and spinning again. The boy on the stool—either looking for reassurance or in a misguided effort to be helpful—grabbed at Simon’s shoulders and tried to turn him, using a handful of his shirt for leverage.

“There!” he yelled in Simon’s ear, and Simon whirled of his own accord, was turned against his will, and walked backward into the stool.

He felt the stool tip and tilt against his legs, and the boy on it snatched at Simon’s shoulders again. Simon, already dizzy, lurched and then saw the possum’s furry little body creeping over his own sneaker and made a fatal mistake. He hit his own foot with the racket. Very hard.

Simon, the stool, the boy on the stool, and the racket all went tumbling onto the stone floor.

The possum streaked out of the doorway. Simon thought it cast him a red-eyed look of triumph as it went.

Simon was in no condition to give chase, since he was in a jumble of chair legs and human legs, and had knocked his head against the bedpost.

He was trying to sit up, rubbing his head and feeling a little dizzy, when Julie jumped off the bed. The bedpost swayed with the force of her movement, and knocked against the back of Simon’s head once more.

“Well, I’ll leave you guys before the creature returns to his nest!” Julie announced. “Er . . . I mean, I’ll leave you guys . . . to it.” She paused in the doorway, staring in the direction the possum had gone. “Bye now,” she added, and bolted in the opposite direction.

“Ow,” Simon said, giving up on sitting up straight and leaning back on his hands. He grimaced. “Very ow. Well . . . that was . . .”

He gestured to the stool, the open doorway, the disgusting wardrobe, and his supine self.

“That was . . . ,” he continued, and found himself shaking his head and laughing. “Just such an impressive display from three future awesome demon hunters.”

The boy no longer on the stool looked startled, no doubt because he thought his new roommate was deranged and giggled over possums. Simon could not help it. He could not stop laughing.

Any of the Shadowhunters he knew back in New York would have dealt with the situation without blinking an eye. He was sure Isabelle would have cut off the possum’s head with a sword. But now he was surrounded by people who panicked and screamed and stood on stools, flailing disasters of human beings who could not cope with a single rodent, and Simon was one of them. They were all just normal kids.

It was such a relief, Simon felt dizzy with it. Or maybe that was because he’d hit his head.

He kept laughing, and when he looked over at his roommate again, the other boy met his eyes.

“What a shame our teachers didn’t see that awesome performance,” Simon’s new roommate said seriously. Then he burst out laughing too, hand against his mouth, laugh lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, as if he laughed all the time and his face had just grown used to it. “We are gonna slay.”

After the slight burst of possum-related hysterics, Simon and his new roommate got up off the floor and got to unpacking and introducing themselves.

“Sorry about all that. I’m not great with scuttling little things. I’m hoping to fight demons a bit higher off the ground. I’m George Lovelace, by the way,” said the boy, sitting on the bed beside his open suitcase.

Simon stared at his own bag, full of its many hilarious T-shirts, and then suspiciously at the wardrobe. He didn’t know if he trusted the possum wardrobe with his T-shirts.

“So you’re a Shadowhunter, then?”

He’d worked out how Shadowhunter names were constructed by now, and he’d already figured George for a Shadowhunter at first sight. Only that had been before Simon thought George might be cool. Now he was disappointed. He knew what Shadowhunters thought of mundanes. It would have been nice to have someone new to all this to go through school with.

It would be nice to have a cool roommate again, Simon thought. Like Jordan. He could not remember Jordan, his roommate when he was a vampire, all that well, but what he remembered was good.

“Well, I’m a Lovelace,” said George. “My family quit Shadowhunting due to laziness in the 1700s, then went and settled outside Glasgow to become the best sheep thieves in the land. The only other branch of the Lovelaces gave up Shadowhunting in the 1800s—I think they had a daughter who came back, but she died, so we were all that was left. Shadowhunters used to come knocking to past generations, and my brave ancestors were all like, ‘Nope, think we’ll stick with the sheep,’ until finally the Clave stopped coming around because they were tired of our layabout ways. What can I tell you? The Lovelaces are quitters.”

George shrugged and made a what can you do? gesture with his tennis racket. The strings were broken. It was still their only weapon in case the possum returned.

Simon checked his phone. Idris had no reception, big surprise, and he tossed it in the suitcase among his T-shirts. “That’s a noble legacy.”

“Can you believe, I didn’t know anything about it until a few weeks ago? The Shadowhunters came to find us again, telling us they needed new, uh, demon hunters in the fight against evil because a bunch of them had died in a war. Can I just say, the Shadowhunters, man, they really know how to win over hearts and minds.”

“They should make flyers,” Simon suggested, and George grinned. “Just a bunch of them looking very cool and wearing black. The flyer could say ‘READY TO BE A BADASS?’ Put me in touch with the Shadowhunter marketing department, I have more gems where that came from.”

“I have some bad news to break to you about most Shadowhunters and their abilities with a photocopier,” George told him. “Anyway, it turned out my parents had known the whole time and just not informed me. Because why would I be interested in a little thing like that? They said my grandma was insane when she talked about dancing with the faeries! I made myself very clear on the subject of keeping intensely cool secrets from me before I left. Dad said, in fairness, that Gran is completely out of her tree. It’s just that faeries are also real. Probably not her four-inch-tall faerie lover called Bluebell, though.”

“I’d bet against it,” said Simon, thinking over all he remembered about faeries. “But I wouldn’t bet a lot.”

“So, you’re from New York?” said George. “Pretty glam.”

Simon shrugged: He didn’t know what to say, when he had been casually comfortable with New York his whole life, and then found that the city and his own soul had turned traitor. When he had been so painfully eager to leave.

“How did you find out about all this? Do you have the Sight?”

“No,” Simon said slowly. “No, I’m just ordinary, but my best friend found out she was a Shadowhunter, and the daughter of this really bad guy. And the sister of this other really bad guy. She has the worst luck with relatives. I got mixed up in it, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really remember everything, because—”

Simon paused and tried to think of some way to explain demon-related amnesia that would not convince George that Simon had the same problems as George’s grandma. Then he saw George was looking at him, his brown eyes wide.

“You’re Simon,” he breathed. “Simon Lewis.”

“Right,” Simon said. “Hey. Is my name on the door, or—is there some sort of register I’m meant to be signing—”

“The vampire,” said George. “Mary Morgenstern’s best friend!”

“Uh, Clary,” said Simon. “Uh, yeah. I like to think of myself as the ex-undead.”

The way George was looking at him, as if he was seriously impressed rather than disappointed or expectant, was a little embarrassing. Simon had to admit, it was also a little nice. It was so different from the way anyone else had looked at him, in his old life or his new one.

“You don’t understand. I arrived in this freezing hellhole full of slime and rodents, and the whole Academy was buzzing with people talking about these heroes who are my age and actually went to a hell dimension. It gave real perspective to the fact that the toilets don’t work here.”

“The toilets don’t work? But what do we—how do we—”

George coughed. “We commune with nature, if you know what I’m saying.”

George and Simon looked out of their casement window to the forest below, leaves gently swaying in the wind beyond the diamond-shaped panes of glass. George and Simon looked, darkly, sadly, back at each other.

“Seriously, you and your hero group is all anybody talks about,” George said, returning to a more cheerful subject. “Well, that and the fact we have pigeons living in the ovens. You saved the world, didn’t you? And you don’t remember it. That’s got to be weird.”

“It is weird, George, thanks for mentioning that.”

George laughed, tossed his broken racket on the floor, and kept looking at Simon as if he was someone amazing. “Wow. Simon Lewis. I guess I have someone at Spinechilling Academy to thank for getting the cool roommate.”

*    *    *

George led Simon down to dinner, for which Simon was deeply grateful. The dining hall looked a lot like all the other square stone rooms in the Academy, except on one end it had a massive carved mantelpiece, displaying crossed swords and a motto so worn that Simon could not read it.

There were several round tables, with wooden chairs of varying sizes assembled around them. Simon was starting to genuinely believe they had furnished the Academy from an old person’s garage sale. The tables were crowded with kids. Most of them were at least two years younger than Simon. Quite a few were younger than that. Simon had not realized he was on the elderly side for a trainee demon hunter, and it made him nervous. He was deeply relieved when he saw some mildly familiar faces his own age.

Julie of the pursed face, Beatriz, and another boy saw them and waved them over. Simon assumed the wave was for George, but when he sat down Julie actually leaned into him.

“I can’t believe you didn’t say you were Simon Lewis,” she said. “I thought you were just a mundane.”

Simon leaned slightly away. “I am just a mundane.”

Julie laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“She means we all owe you a debt, Simon,” said Beatriz Mendoza, smiling at him. She had a great smile. “We don’t forget that. It’s a pleasure to meet you, and it’s a pleasure to have you here. We might even be able to get sensible conversation out of a boy for once. No chance of that with Jon here.”

The boy, who had biceps the size of Simon’s head, reached across the table and offered a hand. Despite his extreme arm intimidation, Simon shook it.

“I’m Jonathan Cartwright. Pleasure.”

“Jonathan,” Simon repeated.

“It’s a very common name for Shadowhunters,” said Jon. “After Jonathan Shadowhun—”

“Er, no, I know, I have my copy of the Codex,” said Simon. Clary had given him hers, actually, and he’d had fun reading the scribbling of practically everybody in the Institute on the pages. He’d felt he was getting to know them, safely away from them where they could not see him fail and expose his gaps of knowledge. “It’s just . . . I know some people called Jonathan. Not that any of them call themselves Jonathan. Called themselves Jonathan.”

He did not remember much about Clary’s brother, but he knew his name. He did not particularly want to remember more.

“Oh, right, Jonathan Herondale,” said Jon. “Of course you know him. I’m actually pretty good friends with him myself. Taught him a trick or two that probably helped you all out in the demon realms, am I right?”

“Do you mean—Jace?” Simon asked dubiously.

“Yeah, obviously,” said Jon. “He’s probably mentioned me.”

“Not that I recall . . . ,” said Simon. “But I do have demon amnesia. So there’s that.”

Jon nodded and shrugged. “Right. Bummer. He’s probably mentioned me and you forgot, on account of the demon amnesia. Not to brag, but we’re pretty close, me and Jace.”

“I wish I was close to Jace Herondale,” Julie sighed. “He is so gorgeous.”

“He is foxier than a fox fur in a fox hole on fox hunting day,” Beatriz agreed dreamily.

“Who’s this?” asked Jon, squinting at George, who was leaning back in his chair and looking rather amused.

“Speaking of people being foxy, do you mean? I’m George Lovelace,” said George. “I say my surname without shame, because I am secure in my masculinity like that.”

“Oh, a Lovelace,” said Jon, his brow clearing. “Yeah, you can sit with us.”

“I’ve got to say, my surname has never actually been a selling point before, though,” George remarked. “Shadowhunters, go figure.”

“Well, you know,” said Julie. “You’re going to want to hang out with people in your own stream.”

“Come again?” Simon asked.

“There are two different streams in the Academy,” Beatriz explained. “The stream for mundanes, where they inform the students more fully about the world and give them badly needed basic training, and the stream for real Shadowhunter kids, where we’re taught from a more advanced curriculum.”

Julie’s lip curled. “What Beatriz’s saying is, there’s the elite and there’s the dregs.”

Simon stared at them, with a sinking feeling. “So . . . I’m going to be in the dregs course.”

“No, Simon, no!” Jon exclaimed, looking shocked. “Of course you won’t be.”

“But I’m a mundane,” Simon said again.

“You’re not a regular mundane, Simon,” Julie told him. “You’re an exceptional mundane. That means exceptions are going to be made.”

“If anyone tried to put you in with the mundanes, I’d have words with them,” Jon continued loftily. “Any friend of Jace Herondale’s is, naturally, a friend of mine.”

Julie patted Simon’s hand. Simon stared at his hand as if it did not belong to him. He did not want to be put in the stream for losers, but he didn’t feel comfortable about being assured he would not be either.

But he did think he remembered Isabelle, Jace, and Alec saying some sketchy things about mundanes, now and then. Isabelle, Jace, and Alec weren’t so bad. It was just the way they were brought up: They didn’t mean what it seemed like they meant. Simon was pretty sure.

Beatriz, who Simon had liked on sight, leaned in across Julie and said: “You’ve more than earned your place.”

She smiled shyly at him. Simon could not help smiling back.

“So . . . I’m going to be in the dregs course?” George asked slowly. “I don’t know anything about Shadowhunters and Downworlders and demons.”

“Oh no,” said Jon. “You’re a Lovelace. You’ll find it will all come very easily to you: It’s in your blood.”

George bit his lip. “If you say so.”

“Most students in the Academy will be in the elite course,” Beatriz said hastily. “Our new recruits are mostly like you, George. Shadowhunters are searching all over the world for lost and scattered people with Shadowhunter blood.”

“So it’s Shadowhunter blood that gets you into the elite stream,” George clarified. “And not knowledge at all.”

“It’s perfectly fair,” Julie argued. “Look at Simon. Of course he’s in the elite stream. He has proven himself worthy.”

“Simon had to save the world, and the rest of us get in because we have the right surname?” George asked lightly. He winked at Simon. “Hard luck on you, mate.”

There was an uncomfortable silence around the table, but Simon suspected nobody felt as uncomfortable as he did.

“Sometimes those of Shadowhunter blood are put in the dregs stream, if they disgrace themselves,” Julie said shortly. “Mainly, yes, it is reserved for mundanes. That’s the way the Academy always worked in the past; it’s how it will work in the future. We take some mundanes, those with the Sight or with remarkable athletic promise, into the Academy. It’s a wonderful opportunity for them, a chance to become more than they could have ever dreamed. But they cannot keep up with real Shadowhunters. It would hardly be fair to expect them to. They can’t all be Simon.”

“Some of them simply will not have the aptitude,” Jon remarked in a lofty tone. “Some of them won’t live through Ascension.”

Simon opened his mouth, but before he could ask any further questions he was interrupted by the sound of a lone clap.

“My dear students, my present and future Shadowhunters,” said Dean Penhallow, rising from her chair. “Welcome, welcome! To Shadowhunter Academy. It is such a joy to see you all here at the auspicious official opening of the Academy, where we will be training a whole new generation to obey the Law laid down by the Angel. It is an honor to have been chosen to come here, and a joy for us to have you.”

Simon looked around. There were about two hundred students here, he thought, uncomfortably crammed around rickety tables. He noticed again that several of them were very young, and grubby and desolate. Simon’s heart went out to them, even as he wondered exactly what the running water situation at the Academy was.

Nobody looked as if they felt honored to be here. Simon found himself wondering again about the Shadowhunters’ recruiting methods. Julie talked about them as if they were noble, searching for lost Shadowhunter families and offering mundanes amazing opportunities, but some of these kids looked about twelve. Simon had to wonder what your life must be like, if you were ready to leave it all and go fight demons at twelve.

“There have been a few unexpected losses from the staff, but I’m certain we will do splendidly with the excellent personnel we have remaining,” Dean Penhallow continued. “May I introduce Delaney Scarsbury, your training master.”

The man sitting next to her got up. He made Jon Cartwright’s biceps look like grapes held up to a grapefruit, and he actually had an eye patch, like the angel in the stained-glass window.

Simon turned slowly and looked at George, who he hoped would feel him on this one. He mouthed: No way.

George, who obviously did feel him on this one, nodded and mouthed: Pirate Shadowhunter!

“I look forward to crushing you all into a pulp and molding that pulp into ferocious warriors,” announced Scarsbury.

George and Simon exchanged another speaking glance.

A girl at the table behind Simon began to cry. She looked about thirteen.

“And this is Catarina Loss, a very estimable warlock who will be teaching you a great deal about—history and so on!”

“Yay,” said Catarina Loss, with a desultory wave of her blue fingers, as if she’d decided to try clapping without bothering to lift both hands.

The dean soldiered on. “In past years at the Academy, because Shadowhunters come from all over the globe, every day of the week we would serve a delicious dish from a different nation. We certainly intend to keep up that tradition! But the kitchens are in a slight state of disrepair and for now we have—”

“Soup,” said Catarina flatly. “Vats and vats of murky brown soup. Enjoy, kids.”

Dean Penhallow continued her one-woman applause. “That’s right. Enjoy, everyone. And again, welcome.”

There really was nothing on offer but huge metal vats full of very questionable soup.

Simon lined up for food, and peered into the greasy depths of the dark liquid. “Are there alligators in there?”

“I won’t make you any promises,” said Catarina, inspecting her own bowl.

Simon was exhausted and still starving when he crawled into bed that night. He tried to cheer himself up thinking again about how lately a girl had been on the bed. A girl on his bed for the first time ever, Simon thought, but then memories came like a wisp of cloud over the moon, dimming all certainty. He remembered Clary sleeping in his bed, when they were so little their pajamas had trucks and ponies on them. He remembered kissing Clary, and how she had tasted like fresh lemonade. And he remembered Isabelle, her dark hair flowing over his pillow, her throat bared to him, her toenails scratching his leg, like a sexy vampire movie aside from the bit about the toenails. The other Simon had been not only a hero but a lady-killer. Well, more of a lady-killer than Simon was now.

Isabelle. Simon’s mouth moved to form the shape of her name, pressing it into his pillow. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to think about her, not until he was really getting somewhere in the Academy. Not until he was on his way to being better, being the person she wanted him to be.

He turned so he was flat on his back and stared up at the stone ceiling.

“Are you awake?” George whispered. “Me too. I keep worrying that the possum will come back. Where did it even come from, Simon? Where did it go?”

*    *    *

The trials of transforming himself into a Shadowhunter became apparent to Simon the very next day.

First, because Scarsbury was measuring them for their gear, which was a terrifying experience on its own. Second, because it involved hurtful personal comments about Simon’s physique.

“You have such narrow shoulders,” Scarsbury said thoughtfully. “Like a lady.”

“I’m lithe,” Simon informed him, with dignity.

He looked bitterly over at George, who was lounging on a bench waiting for Simon to finish being measured. George’s gear was sleeveless; Julie had already come over to compliment him on how good the fit was and touch his arms.

“Tell you what,” said Scarsbury. “I have some gear here meant for a girl—”

“Fine,” said Simon. “I mean, terrible, but fine! Give it to me.”

Scarsbury shoved the folded black material into Simon’s arms. “It’s meant for a tall girl,” he said in a voice that was possibly intended to be comforting, and definitely too loud.

Everyone looked around and stared at them. Simon prevented himself from taking a sarcastic bow, and stomped off to put on his gear.

After they got gear, they were given weapons. Mundane students could not wear runes or use steles or most Shadowhunter weapons, so they were all given mundane weapons; it was meant to broaden the Shadowhunter kids’ weapons knowledge. Simon feared his own weapons knowledge was as broad as spaghetti.

Dean Penhallow brought around giant boxes of terrifying knives, which seemed very strange in an academic setting, and asked them to select a dagger that suited them.

Simon picked a dagger completely at random, then sat at his desk waggling it about.

Jon nodded to it. “Nice.”

“Yeah,” Simon said, nodding back and gesturing with it. “That’s what I thought. Nice. Very stabby.”

He stabbed the dagger into the desk, where it got stuck and Simon had to pry it out of the wood.

Simon thought being trained could not possibly be as bad as being prepared to be trained, but as it turned out it was much worse.

*    *    *

The Academy days were half physical activity. It was like half the day was gym. Stabby, stabby gym.

When they were learning the basics of swordplay, Simon was paired up with the girl he’d noticed in the dining hall, the one who had cried when Scarsbury was introduced.

“She’s from the dregs stream, but I understand you’re not particularly experienced with swordplay,” Scarsbury told him. “If she’s not enough of a challenge, let me know.”

Simon stared at Scarsbury instead of doing what he wanted to do, which was saying he could not believe an adult was calling someone “dregs” to their face.

He looked at the girl, her dark head bowed, her sword shining in her trembling hand.

“Hey. I’m Simon.”

“I know who you are,” she muttered.

Right, apparently Simon was a celebrity. If he had all his memories, maybe this would seem normal to him. Maybe he would know that he deserved it, instead of knowing he did not.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Marisol,” she told him reluctantly. She was not shaking anymore, he noted, now that Scarsbury had retreated.

“Don’t worry,” he said encouragingly. “I’ll go easy on you.”

“Hmm,” said Marisol. She did not look like she was going to cry now; her eyes were narrowed.

Simon was not used to much younger kids, but they were both mundanes. Simon had an awkward fellow feeling. “You settling in okay? Do you miss your parents?”

“I don’t have parents,” Marisol said in a small, hard voice.

Simon stood stricken. He was such an idiot. He’d thought about it, why mundane kids might come to the Academy. Mundanes would have to choose to give up their parents, their families, their former lives. Unless, of course, they already had no parents and no families. He’d thought about that, but he’d forgotten, obsessing about his own memories and how he would fit in, thinking only about himself. He had a home to go back to, even though it wasn’t perfect. He’d had a choice.

“What did the Shadowhunters tell you, when they came to recruit you?”

Marisol stared at him, her gaze clear and cold. “They told me,” she said, “that I was going to fight.”

She had been taking fencing classes since she could walk, as it turned out. She cut him off at the knees and left him literally in the dust, stumbling as a tiny, swordy whirlwind came at him across the practice grounds, and falling.

He also stabbed himself in the leg with his own sword as he fell, but that was a very minor injury.

“Went a little too easy on her,” Jon said, passing by and helping Simon up. “The dregs won’t learn if they’re not taught, you know.”

His voice was kind; his glance at Marisol was not.

“Leave her alone,” Simon muttered, but he did not say that Marisol had beaten him fairly. They all thought he was a hero.

Jon grinned at him and walked on. Marisol did not even look at him. Simon studied his leg, which stung.

It was not all stabbing. Some of it was regular stuff, like running, but as Simon tried to run and keep up with people a lot more athletic than he had ever been, he was constantly plagued by memories of how his lungs had never burned for lack of air, how his heart had never pounded from overexertion. He had been fast, once, faster than any of these Shadowhunter trainees, cold and predatory and powerful.

And dead, he reminded himself as he fell behind the others yet again. He didn’t want to be dead.

Running was still a lot better than horseback riding. The Academy introduced them to horseback riding on their first Friday there. Simon thought it was supposed to be a treat.

Everyone else acted as if it was a treat. Only those of the elite stream were allowed to go riding, and at mealtimes they had been mocking the dregs for missing out. It seemed to cheer Julie and Jon up, in the face of the endless terrible soup.

Simon, precariously balanced on top of a huge beast that was both rolling its eyes and apparently trying to tap-dance, did not feel this was any sort of treat. The dregs had been sent off to learn elementary facts about Shadowhunting. They had most of their classes apart from the elite, and Jon assured Simon they were boring. Simon felt he could really do with being bored, right about now.

“Si,” said George in an undertone. “Quick tip. Riding works better if you keep your eyes open.”

“My previous riding experience is the carousel at Central Park,” Simon snapped. “Forgive me for not being Mr. Darcy!”

George was, as several of the ladies were remarking, an excellent horseman. He barely had to move for the horse to respond to him, both of them moving smoothly together, sunlight rippling off his stupid curls. He looked right, made it all look easy and graceful, like a knight in the movies. Simon remembered reading books about magic horses that read their rider’s every thought, books about horses born of the North Wind. It was all part of being a magical warrior, having a noble steed.

Simon’s horse was defective, or possibly a genius that had worked out that Simon could not possibly control it. It went off for a wander in the woods, with Simon on its back alternately pleading, threatening, and offering bribes. If Simon’s horse could read his every thought, then Simon’s horse was a sadist.

As night drew in and the evening grew cold, the horse wandered back to its stall. Simon had no choice in the matter, but he did manage to tumble off the horse and stagger into the Academy, his fingers and knees gone entirely numb.

“Ah, there you are,” said Scarsbury. “George Lovelace was beside himself. He wanted to assemble a search party for you.”

Simon regretted his spiteful thoughts about George’s horsemanship.

“Let me guess,” said Simon. “Everyone else said ‘Nah, being left for dead builds character.’”

“I was not concerned you were going to be eaten by bears in the deep dark woods,” said Scarsbury, who did not look as if he had ever been concerned about anything in his life, ever.

“Of course you weren’t, that would be abs—”