Valentine waved him off, laughing, and the others followed suit.
"Tutoring? Is that what they're calling it these days?" Stephen teased. "Seems like she's already aced her O levels in wrapping you around her little finger."
Lucian blushed. "Nothing's happening there, trust me," he said, and it was presumably the truth. Celine, three years younger, with the fragile, delicately pretty features of a porcelain doll, had been trailing their group like a lost puppy. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that she'd fallen hard for Stephen, but he was a lost cause, pledged to Amatis for life. She'd picked Lucian as her consolation prize, but it was just as obvious that Lucian had no romantic interest in anyone but Jocelyn Fairchild. Obvious, that is, to everyone except Jocelyn.
"We don't need you for this one," Valentine told Lucian. "Stay and enjoy yourself."
"I should be with you," Lucian said, the merriment faded from his voice. He sounded pained at the thought of Valentine venturing into dangerous territory without him, and Robert understood. Parabatai didn't always fight side by side--but knowing your parabatai was in danger, without you there to support and protect him? It caused an almost physical pain. And Lucian and Valentine's parabatai bond was even more intense than most. Robert could almost feel the current of power flowing between them, the strength and love they passed back and forth with every glance. "Where you go, I go."
"It's already decided, my friend," Valentine said, and that simply, it was. Lucian would stay on campus with the others. Valentine, Stephen, Michael, and Robert would slip away from campus after dark and venture into Brocelind Forest in pursuit of a werewolf encampment that, supposedly, could lead them to Valentine's father's killer. They'd make up the rest as they went along.
As the others hurried off to the dining hall for lunch, Maryse grabbed Robert's hand and pulled him close.
"You'll be careful out there, yes?" she said sternly. Maryse said everything sternly--it was one of the things he liked best about her.
She pressed her lithe body against his, kissed his neck, and he felt, in that moment, a passing sense of supreme confidence, that this was where he belonged . . . at least, until she whispered, "Come home to me in one piece."
Come home to me. As if he belonged to her. As if, in her mind, they were already married, with a house and children and a lifetime of togetherness, as if the future was already decided.
It was the appeal of Maryse, as it was the appeal of Valentine, the ease with which they could be so sure of what should be, and what was to come. Robert continued hoping that one day it would rub off on him. In the meantime, the less certain he was, the more certain he acted--there was no need for anyone to know the truth.
*
Robert Lightwood wasn't much of a teacher. He gave them a neatly sanitized account of the early days of the Circle, laying out Valentine's revolutionary principles as if they were a list of ingredients for baking a particularly bland cake. Simon, fruitlessly devoting most of his energy to telepathic communication with Isabelle, was barely listening. He found himself cursing the fact that Shadowhunters were so haughty about the whole we-don't-do-magic thing. If he were a warlock, he'd probably be able command Isabelle's attention with the flick of a finger. Or, if he were still a vampire, he could have used his vampy powers to enthrall her--but that was something Simon preferred not to think about, because it raised some unsettling questions about how he'd managed to enthrall her in the first place.
What he did hear of Robert's tale didn't much interest him. Simon had never liked history much, at least as it was relayed to him in school. It sounded too much like a brochure, everything neatly laid out and painfully obvious in retrospect. Every war had its bullet-pointed causes; every megalomaniac dictator was so cartoonishly evil you wondered how stupid the people of the past had to be, not to notice. Simon didn't remember much of his own history-making experiences, but he remembered enough to know it wasn't so clear when it was happening. History, the way teachers liked it, was a racetrack, a straight shot from start to finish line; life itself was more of a maze.
Maybe the telepathy worked after all. Because when the speech ended and the students were given permission to disperse, Isabelle hopped off the stage and strolled right up to Simon. She gave him a sharp nod hello.
"Isabelle, I, uh, maybe we could--"
She flashed him a brilliant smile that, for just a moment, made him think all his worrying had been for nothing. Then she said, "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends? Especially the handsome ones?"
Simon turned to see half the class crowding in behind him, eager for a brush with the famous Isabelle Lightwood. At the front of the pack were George and Jon, the latter practically drooling.
Jon elbowed past Simon and thrust out a hand. "Jon Cartwright, at your service," he said in a voice that oozed charm like a blister oozed pus.
Isabelle took his hand--and instead of jujitsuing him to the ground with a humiliating thump or slicing his hand off at the wrist with her electrum whip, she let him turn her hand over and bring it to his lips. Then she curtsied. She winked. Worst of all, she giggled.
Simon thought he might puke.
Unendurable minutes of torment passed: George blushing and making goofy attempts at jokes, Julie struck speechless, Marisol pretending to be above it all, Beatriz engaging in wan but polite small talk about mutual acquaintances, Sunil bouncing in the back of the crowd, trying to make himself seen, and through it all, Jon smirking and Isabelle beaming and batting her eyes in a display tha
t could only be meant to make Simon's stomach churn.
At least, he desperately hoped it was meant for that. Because the other option--the possibility that Isabelle was smiling at Jon simply because she wanted to, and that she accepted his invitation to squeeze his rock-hard biceps because she wanted to feel his muscles contract beneath her delicate grip--was unthinkable.
"So what do you people do around here for fun?" she asked finally, then narrowed her eyes flirtatiously at Jon. "And don't say 'me.'"
Am I already dead? Simon thought hopelessly. Is this hell?
"Neither the circumstances nor the population here have proven themselves conducive to fun," Jon said pompously, as if the bluster in his voice could disguise the fire in his cheeks.
"That all changes tonight," Isabelle said, then turned on her spiky heel and strode away.
George shook his head, letting out an appreciative whistle. "Simon, your girlfriend--"
"Ex-girlfriend," Jon put in.
"She's magnificent," Julie breathed, and from the looks on the others' faces, she was speaking for the group.
Simon rolled his eyes and hurried after Isabelle--reaching out to grab her shoulder, then thinking better of it at the last moment. Grabbing Isabelle Lightwood from behind was probably an invitation to amputation.
"Isabelle," he said sharply. She sped up. So did he, wondering where she was headed. "Isabelle," he said again. They burrowed deeper into the school, the air thick with damp and mold, the stone floor increasingly slick beneath their feet. They hit a fork, corridors branching off to the left and right, and she paused before choosing the one on the left.
"We don't go down this one, generally," Simon said.
Nothing.
"Mostly because of the elephant-size slug that lives at the end of it." This was not an exaggeration. Rumor had it that some disgruntled faculty member--a warlock who'd been fired when the tide turned against Downworlders--had left it behind as a parting gift.
Isabelle kept walking, slower now, picking her way carefully over seeping puddles of slime. Something skittered loudly overhead. She didn't flinch--but she did look up, and Simon caught her fingers playing across the coiled whip.