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Simon was still trying to shake off his joyous daze as he made his way back to the others. George was next, and as they passed each other, he gave Simon a surreptitious high five.
Simon wondered what George would see inside the light, if it would be as wondrous. He wondered whether, after the ceremony was over, they would compare notes--or if this was the kind of thing you were supposed to keep to yourself. He supposed there was probably some kind of Shadowhunter protocol to follow--the Shadowhunters had a protocol for everything.
We, he corrected himself wryly. We have a protocol for everything.
This would take some getting used to.
George was on his knees inside the circles, the Mortal Cup in his hands. It was strange, being a Shadowhunter while George was still a mundane, as if there was now an invisible divide between them. This is the farthest apart we'll ever be, Simon thought, and silently urged his roommate to hurry up and drink.
The Consul said the traditional words. George swore his oath of loyalty to the Shadowhunters without hesitation, drew in a deep breath, then jauntily raised the Mortal Cup as if giving a toast. "Slainte!" he shouted, and as his friends broke into indulgent laughter, he took a slug.
Simon was still laughing when the screaming began.
The room fell dead silent, but inside Simon's mind, there was a siren of pain. An inhuman, unearthly scream.
George's scream.
On the dais, George and the Consul were engulfed in an impossible flash of blinding darkness. When it faded away, the Consul was on her feet, the Silent Brothers already by her side, all of them peering down at something horrible, something with the shape of a person, but not its face and not its skin. Something with black veins bulging through cracking flesh, something with the Mortal Cup still clenched in its rigid fist, some withered, writhing, crumbling creature with George's hair and George's sneakers, but in place of George's smile, a tortured, toothless rictus leaking something too black to be blood. Not George, Simon thought furiously as the thing stopped jerking and trembling and fell still. And somehow, in Simon's head, George screamed and screamed.
The chamber was a storm of motion--responsible adults hustling students out of the room, gasps and cries and shrieks--but Simon barely registered any of it. He was moving forward, toward the thing that couldn't be George, pressing toward the dais with Shadowhunter strength and Shadowhunter speed. Simon was going to save his roommate, because he was a Shadowhunter now, and that's what Shadowhunters do.
He didn't notice Catarina Loss come up behind him, not until her hands were on his shoulders, her grip light enough that he should have been able to break free--but he couldn't move.
"Let go of me!" Simon raged. The Silent Brothers were kneeling by the thing now, the body, but they weren't doing anything for it. They weren't helping. They were just staring fixedly at the spiderweb of inky veins spreading across flesh. "I have to help him!"
"No." Catarina's hand feathered across his forehead and the screaming in his mind fell silent. She was still holding on; he still couldn't move. He was a Shadowhunter, but she was a warlock. He was helpless. "It's too late."
Simon couldn't watch the black veins eat up skin or the hollow eyes melt into the skull. He focused on the sneakers. George's sneakers. One was untied, as it often was. Just that morning George had tripped over the laces, and Simon had caught him from falling. "The last time you'll save me," George had said with another of his wistful sighs, and Simon had shot back, "Not likely."
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.
