Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

by Cassandra Clare

There were impressive stone paths and benches and even a statue of an angel that gave Simon nervous fits, since he was a Doctor Who fan. The angel wasn’t weeping, exactly, but it looked too depressed for Simon’s liking.

At dinner the next day, it was soup again. It had been soup for every meal for many days now. Simon did not remember a life before soup, and he despaired of ever achieving a life after soup.

Little James Herondale, age two, was in fact holding a dagger quite well. He stabbed it into a sofa cushion, sending out a burst of feathers. “Ducks,” he said, pointing at the feathers.

Simon felt the same way as when he and Clary had set a fire in his kitchen by trying to toast grapes and create raisins when they were six: amazed and appalled that things had gone wrong so fast.

You never know when, and you never know who, but someday a stranger will burst through the door of your life and transform it utterly.

“I suppose these things had a use at one time,” he said. “It was probably risqué to take this ride. You’d get a whole four minutes of unsupervised necking.” The word “necking” was bad. Hearing Jace say it was a new kind of bad. “So,” Jace said, “do you want to talk or should I?” “Talk about what?” Jace indicated the tunnel around them, as if this was very obvious. “I’m not going to kiss you,” Simon said. “Ever.” “I’ve never heard anyone say that before,” Jace mused. “It was a unique experience.”

Magnus kept misplacing his baby. This did not seem a good sign for the future. Magnus was sure you were meant to keep a firm grip on their location.

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.