Angels Twice Descending (6 page)

The veins were popping, with a sound like Rice Krispies in milk. The body was starting to ooze.

Now Simon was holding on to Catarina too. He held tight.

“What's the point?” he said in despair, because what was the point of dying like this, not in battle, not for a good cause, not to save a fellow warrior or the world, but for
nothing
?
And what was the point of living as a Shadowhunter, what was the point of skill and bravery and superhuman powers, when you couldn't do anything but stand by and
watch
?

“Sometimes there is no point,” Catarina said gently. “There only is what is.”

What is,
Simon thought, the wave of rage and frustration and horror nearly consuming him. He would not let himself be consumed; he would not waste this moment, if this was all he had. He'd spent two years making himself strong—he would be strong for George, now, in the only way left to him. He would bear witness.

Simon summoned his will.
What is
.

He forced himself not to look away.

What is
: George. Brave and kind and
good
. George, dead. George, gone.

And though he didn't know what the Law had to say about dying by the Mortal Cup, whether the Clave would consider George one of their own and give him Shadowhunter burial rights, he didn't care. He knew what George was, what he was meant to be, and what he deserved.

“
Ave atque vale
, George Lovelace, child of Nephilim,” he whispered. “Forever and ever, my brother, hail and farewell.”

*    *    *

Simon grazed a finger over the small stone plaque, tracing the engraved letters:
GEORGE LOVELACE.

“It's pretty, isn't it?” Isabelle said from behind him.

“Simple,” Clary added. “He would have liked that, don't you think?”

Simon thought that George would have preferred to be interred in the City of Bones, like the Shadowhunter he was. (More to the point, he would have preferred not to be dead at all.) The Clave had refused him. He died in the act of Ascension, which in their eyes marked him as unworthy. Simon was trying very hard not to be angry about this.

He spent a lot of time these days trying not to be angry.

“It was nice of the London Institute to offer a place for him, don't you think?” Isabelle said. Simon could hear in her voice how hard she was trying, how worried she was for him.

They told me a Lovelace is always welcome at the London Institute,
George had said when he heard about his placement.

After his death the Institute made good on their word.

There had been a funeral, which Simon had endured. There had been a variety of reunions, big and small, with his friends from the Academy, Simon and the others telling stories and trading memories and trying not to think about that last day. Jon almost always cried.

Then there had been everything else: Life as a Shadowhunter, mercifully busy with training and experimenting with his newfound physical grace and energy, along with fighting off the occasional demon or rogue vampire. There had been long days with Clary, reveling in the fact that he could now remember every second of their friendship, preparing for their
parabatai
ceremony, which was only days away. There had been numerous training bouts with Jace, usually ending with Simon flat on his back while Jace stood over him, gloating about his superior skill, because that was Jace's way of showing affection. There had been evenings babysitting Magnus and Alec's son, snuggling the little blue boy to his chest and singing him to sleep, and feeling, for a few precious minutes, almost at peace.

There had been Isabelle, who loved him, which made every day glow.

There had been so much to make life worth living, and so Simon had lived, and time had passed—and George was still dead.

He'd asked Clary to Portal him here, to London, for reasons he didn't quite understand. He'd said good-bye to George so many times now, but somehow none of it felt quite final—it didn't feel right.

“I'll take you there,” Clary had said. “But I'm coming with you.”

Isabelle had insisted too, and Simon was glad of it.

A soft breeze blew through the Institute's garden, rustling the leaves and carrying the faint scent of orchids. Simon thought that George would be glad, at least, to spend eternity in a place where there was no threat of sheep.

Simon rose to his feet, flanked by Clary and Isabelle. Each of them slipped her hand into his, and they stood silently, bound together. Now that Simon had regained his past, he could remember all the times he'd almost lost one of them—as he could remember now, vividly, all the people he
had
lost. To battle, to murder, to sickness. Being a Shadowhunter, he knew, meant being on an intimate basis with death.

But then, so did being human.

Someday he would lose Clary and Isabelle, or they would lose him. Nothing could stop that. So what was the point? he'd asked Catarina, but he knew better than that. The point wasn't that you tried to live forever; the point was that you
lived
, and did everything you could to live well. The point was the choices you made and the people you loved.

Simon gasped.

“Simon?” Clary said in alarm. “What is it?”

But Simon couldn't speak; he could only gape at the gravestone, where the air was shimmering, and translucent light was shaping itself into two figures. One was a girl about his age; she had long blond hair, blue eyes, and the old-timey petticoats of a BBC duchess. The other was George, and he was smiling at Simon. The girl's hand was on his shoulder, and there was something kind about the gesture, something warm and familiar.

“George,” Simon whispered. Then he blinked, and the figures were gone.

“Simon,
what
are you staring at?” Isabelle asked in the tight, irritated tone she used only when she was trying not to be afraid.

“Nothing.” What was he supposed to say? That he'd seen George's ghost rise from the mist? That he'd seen not just George, which would have almost made sense, but some beautiful old-fashioned stranger? He knew Shadowhunters could see ghosts when those ghosts wanted to be seen, but he also knew that grieving people often saw what they wanted to see.

Simon didn't know what to think. But he knew what he
wanted
to think.

He wanted a beautiful Shadowhunter spirit from the past, maybe even a long-dead Lovelace, to take George away with her, to wherever it was spirits went. He wanted to believe that George had been welcomed into the arms of his ancestors, where some part of him would live on.

Not likely,
Simon reminded himself. George was adopted, not a Lovelace by blood. And for Shadowhunters—presumably even the dead ones who haunted British gardens—everything came down to blood.

“Simon—” Isabelle pressed her lips to his cheek. “I know how much you . . . I know he was like your brother. I wish I could have known him better.”

Clary squeezed his hand. “Me too.”

Both of them, Simon was reminded, had also lost a brother.

And both of them cared about more than just bloodlines. Both understood that family could be a matter of choice—a matter of love. So did Alec and Magnus, who'd taken someone else's child into their home and their hearts. So did the Lightwoods, who'd adopted Jace when he had no one else.

And so did Simon, who was now a Shadowhunter himself. Who could change what it meant to be a Shadowhunter just by making new choices. Better choices.

He understood now why he'd felt the need to come here, almost as if he'd been summoned. Not to say good-bye to George but to find a way to hold on to a piece of him.

“I think I know what I want my Shadowhunter name to be,” he said.

“Simon Lovelace,” Clary said, as always, knowing his mind as well as he did. “It has a certain ring to it.”

Isabelle's lips quirked. “A sexy ring.”

Simon laughed and blinked away a tear. For one blurry-eyed moment, he thought he saw George grinning through the mist again, and then he was gone. George Lovelace was gone.

But Simon Lovelace was still here, and it was time to make that count.

“I'm ready,” he told Clary and Isabelle, the two wonders who had changed his life, the two warriors who would risk anything and everything for those they loved, the two girls who had become his heroes and his family. “Let's go home.”

All the covers have finally been revealed!

Continue the adventures of the Shadowhunters with Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn in

The first book in Cassandra Clare's new series, The Dark Artifices.