Angels Twice Descending (Tales from Shadowhunter Academy 10)

"Seriously, Clary. I know what Ascension means."

The words sat heavily between them, and as always, Clary heard what he didn't say: That this was too big to talk about seriously. That joking was, for the moment, the best he could do.

"Besides, Lewis, I'd say you're buff enough already." She poked his biceps, which, he couldn't help but notice, were very close to bulging. "Any more and you'll have to buy new clothes."

"Never!" he said indignantly, and smoothed out his T-shirt, which had a baker's dozen holes in the soft cotton and read I'M COSPLAYING AS MYSELF in letters nearly too faded to read. "Did you, uh, did you happen to bring Isabelle with you?" He tried to keep the hope out of his voice.

Hard to believe that two years ago, he'd come to the Academy in part to escape Clary and Isabelle, the way they'd looked at him like they loved him more than anyone else in the world--but also like he'd drowned their puppy in a bathtub. They'd loved some other version of him, the one he could no longer remember, and that version had loved them, too. He didn't doubt it; he just couldn't feel it. They'd been strangers to him. Terrifyingly beautiful strangers who wanted him to be someone he wasn't.

It felt like another life. Simon didn't know if he'd ever get all of his memories back--but somehow, despite that, he'd found his way back to Clary and Isabelle. He'd found a best friend who felt like his other half, who would someday soon be his parabatai. And he'd found Isabelle Lightwood, a miracle in human form, who said "I love you" whenever she saw him and, incomprehensibly, seemed to mean it.

"She wanted to come," Clary said, "but she had to go deal with this rogue faerie thing in Chinatown, something about soup dumplings and a guy with a goat head. I didn't ask too many questions and--" She smiled knowingly at Simon. "I lost you at 'soup dumplings,' didn't I?"

Simon's stomach growled loudly enough to answer for him.

"Well, maybe we can grab you some on the way," Clary said. "Or at least a couple slices of pizza and a latte."

"Don't toy with me, Fray." Simon was very touchy these days on the subject of pizza, or the lack thereof. He suspected that any day now his stomach might resign in protest. "On the way where?"

"Oh, I forgot to explain--that's why I'm here, Simon." Clary took his hand. "I've come to take you home."

*

Simon stood on the sidewalk staring up at his mother's brownstone, his stomach churning. Traveling by way of Portal always made him feel a bit like puking up his lower intestine, but this time he didn't think he could blame the interdimensional magic. Not entirely, at least.

"You sure this is a good idea?" he said. "It's late."

"It's eleven p.m., Simon," Clary said. "You know she's still awake. And even if she's not, you know--"

"I know." His mother would want to see him. So would his sister, who, according to Clary, was home for the weekend because someone--presumably a well-meaning, redheaded someone with his sister's cell number--had told her Simon was stopping in for a visit.

He sagged against Clary for a moment, and, small as she was, she bore his weight. "I don't know how to do it," he said. "I don't know how to say good-bye to them."

Simon's mother thought he was away at military school. He'd felt guilty lying to her, but he'd known there wasn't any other choice; he knew, all too well, what happened when he risked telling his mother too much truth. But this--this was something else. He was forbidden by Shadowhunter Law to tell her about his Ascension, about his new life. The Law also forbade him from contacting her after he became a Shadowhunter, and though there was nothing saying he couldn't be here in Brooklyn to say good-bye to her forever, the Law forbade him from explaining why.

Sed lex, dura lex.

The Law is hard, but it is the Law.

Lex sucks, Simon thought.

"You want me to go in with you?" Clary asked.

He did, more than anything--but something told him this was one of those things he needed to do on his own.

Simon shook his head. "But thanks. For bringing me here, for knowing I needed it, for--well, for everything."

"Simon . . ."

Clary looked hesitant, and Clary never looked hesitant.

"What is it?"

She sighed. "Everything that's happened to you, Simon, everything . . ." She paused, just long enough for him to think through how much that everything encompassed: getting turned into a rat and then a vampire; finding Isabelle; saving the world a handful of times, at least so he'd been told; getting locked in a cage and tormented by all manner of supernatural creature; killing demons; facing an angel; losing his memories; and now standing at the threshold of the only home he'd ever known, preparing himself to leave it behind forever. "I can't help thinking it's all because of me," Clary said softly. "That I'm the reason. And . . ."

He stopped her before she could get any further, because he couldn't stand for her to think she needed to apologize. "You're right," he said. "You are the reason. For everything." Simon gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. "That's why I'm saying thank you."

*

"Are you sure you don't want me to heat that up for you?" Simon's mother asked as he shoveled another heaping spoonful of cold ziti into his mouth.

"Mmff? What? No, it's fine."

It was more than fine. It was tangy tomato and fresh garlic and hot pepper and gooey cheese, and better than leftover pasta from the corner pizza place had any right to be. It tasted like actual food, which already put it head and shoulders above what he'd been eating for the last several months. But it wasn't just that. Takeout from Giuseppi's was a tradition for Simon and his mother--after his father died and his sister went away to school, after it was just the two of them knocking around an apartment that felt cavernous with just the two of them left in it, they'd lost the habit of having daily meals with each other. It was easier to just grab food whenever they thought of it, on the way in or out of the apartment, his mother heating up TV dinners after work, Simon picking up some pho or a sandwich on his way to band practice. It was, maybe, easier not to face the empty chairs at the table every night. But they made it a rule to eat together at least one night each week, slurping down Giuseppi's spaghetti and drenching garlic knots in spicy sauce.

These cold leftovers tasted like home, like family, and Simon hated to think of his mother sitting in the empty apartment, week after week, eating them on her own.

Children are supposed to grow up and leave, he told himself. He wasn't doing anything wrong; he wasn't doing anything he wasn't meant to do.

But there was a part of him that wondered. Children were supposed to leave home, maybe. But not forever. Not like this.

"Your sister tried to wait up for you," his mother said, "but apparently she's been up for a week straight studying for exams. She was passed out on the couch by nine."

"Maybe we should wake her up," Simon suggested.

She shook her head. "Let the poor girl sleep. She'll see you in the morning."

He hadn't exactly told his mother he was staying over. But he had let her believe it, which he supposed amounted to about the same thing: yet another lie.

She settled into the chair beside him and stabbed a ziti onto her fork. "Don't tell my diet," she stage-whispered, then popped it into her mouth.

"Mom, the reason I'm here . . . I wanted to talk to you about something."

"That's funny, I've actually--I've been wanting to talk to you about something too."

"Oh? Great! Uh, you go first."

His mother sighed. "You remember Ellen Klein? Your Hebrew school teacher?"

"How could I forget?" Simon said wryly. Mrs. Klein had been the bane of his existence from second grade through fifth. Every Tuesday after school, they'd fought a silent war, all because, in an unfortunate playground incident, Simon had accidentally dislodged her wig and sent it flying into a pigeon's nest. She'd spent the next three years determined to ruin his life.

"You know she was just a nice old lady trying to get you to pay attention," his mother said now with a k

nowing smile.

"Nice old ladies don't throw your Pokemon cards in the trash," Simon pointed out.