Jon, Beatriz, and Julie stood beside them, waiting to be acknowledged. Simon hoped if he waited long enough, they’d just go away. Beatriz wasn’t so bad, at least not on her own. But Julie could have been carved out of ice. She had suspiciously few physical flaws—the silky blond hair of a Barbie doll, the porcelain skin of a cosmetics model, better curves than any of the bikini-girl posters papering Erik’s garage—and wore the hawkish expression of someone on a search-and-destroy mission for any weakness whatsoever. All that, and she carried a sword.
Jon, of course, was Jon.
Shadowhunters didn’t practice magic—that was a fundamental tenet of their beliefs—so it was unlikely that the Academy would teach Simon a way to make Jon Cartwright vanish into another dimension. But a guy could dream.
They didn’t go away. Finally, George, congenitally incapable of being rude, set down his cards.
“Can we help you?” George asked, a sliver of ice cooling his Scottish brogue. Jon’s and Julie’s friendliness had melted away once they learned the truth about George’s mundane blood, and though George never said anything about it, he clearly had neither forgiven nor forgotten.
“Actually, yes,” Julie said. She nodded at Simon. “Well, you can.”
Finding out about the imminent vampire-killing mission hadn’t exactly tied a bright yellow ribbon around Simon’s day; he wasn’t in the mood. “What do you want?”
Julie looked awkwardly at Beatriz, who stared down at her feet. “You ask,” Beatriz murmured.
“Better if you do,” Julie shot back.
Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, by the Angel! I’ll do it.” He pulled himself up to his full, impressive height, rested his hands on his hips, and peered down his regal nose at Simon. It had the look of a pose practiced in the mirror. “We want you to tell us about vampires.”
Simon grinned. “What do you want to know? Scariest is Eli in Let the Right One In, cheesiest is late-era Lestat, most underrated is David Bowie in The Hunger. Sexiest is definitely Drusilla, though if you ask a girl, she’ll probably say Damon Salvatore or Edward Cullen. But . . .” He shrugged. “You know girls.”
Julie’s and Beatriz’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t think you’d know so many!” Beatriz exclaimed. “Are they . . . are they your friends?”
“Oh, sure, Count Dracula and I are like this,” Simon said, crossing his fingers to demonstrate. “Also Count Chocula. Oh, and my BFF Count Blintzula. He’s a real charmer . . . .” He trailed off as he realized no one else was laughing. In fact, no one seemed to realize he was joking. “They’re from TV,” he prompted them. “Or, uh, cereal.”
“What’s he talking about?” Julie asked Jon, perfect nose wrinkling up in confusion.
“Who cares?” Jon said. “I told you this was a waste of time. Like he cares about anyone but himself?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked, starting to get irritated.
George cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “Come on, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s his business.”
“Not when it’s our lives at stake.” Julie was blinking hard, like she had something in her eye or—Simon caught his breath. Was she blinking back tears?
“What’s going on?” he asked, feeling more clueless than usual, which was saying a lot.
Beatriz sighed and gave Simon a shy smile. “We’re not asking you for anything personal or, you know, painful. We just want you to tell us what you know about vampires from, um . . .”
“From being a bloodsucker,” Jon filled in for her. “Which, as you may recall, you were.”
“But I don’t recall,” Simon pointed out. “Or have you not been paying attention?”
“That’s what you say,” Beatriz argued, “but . . .”
“But you think I’m lying?” Simon asked, incredulous. The black hole at the center of his memories was such a central fact of his existence, it had never even occurred to him someone might question it. What would be the point of lying about that—and what kind of person would do so? “You all think that? Really?”
One by one, they began to nod . . . even George, though at least he had the grace to look sheepish.
“Why would I pretend not to remember?” Simon asked.
“Why would they let someone like you in here, if you really didn’t have a clue?” Jon retorted. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Well, I guess it’s a mad, mad, mad world,” Simon snapped. “Because what you see is what you get.”
“A whole lot of nothing, then,” Jon said.
Julie elbowed him, sounding uncharacteristically angry—usually she was happy to go along with whatever Jon said. “You said you’d be nice.”
“What’s the point? Either he doesn’t know anything or he doesn’t want to tell us. And who cares, anyway? It’s just one Downworlder. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Julie said. “Have you ever even been in battle? Have you ever seen anyone get hurt? Die?”
“I’m a Shadowhunter, aren’t I?” Jon said, though Simon noticed that wasn’t much of an answer.
“You weren’t in Alicante for the war,” Julie said darkly. “You don’t know how it was. You didn’t lose anything.”
Jon reared on her. “Don’t you tell me what I’ve lost. I don’t know about you, but I’m here to learn how to fight, so that next time—”
“Don’t say that, Jon,” Beatriz pleaded. “There won’t be a next time. There can’t be.”
Jon shrugged. “There’s always a next time.” He sounded almost hopeful about it, and Simon understood that Julie was probably right. Jon talked like someone who’d been kept very far away from death of any kind.
“I’ve seen dead sheep,” George said brightly, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “That’s about it.”
Beatriz frowned. “I don’t really want to have to fight a vampire. Maybe if it were a faerie . . .”
“You don’t know anything about faeries,” Julie snapped.
“I know I wouldn’t mind killing a couple of them,” Beatriz said.
Julie deflated abruptly as if someone had pricked her and let all the air out. “Me neither. If it were that easy . . .”
Simon didn’t know much about Shadowhunter-Downworlder relations, but he’d figured out pretty quickly that faeries were public enemy number one in Shadowhunterland these days. The actual enemy number one, Sebastian Morgenstern, who’d started the Dark War and Turned a bunch of Shadowhunters into evil Sebastian-worshipping zombies, was long dead. Which left his secret allies, the Fair Folk, to bear his consequences. Even Shadowhunters like Beatriz, who seemed to honestly believe that werewolves were like anyone else, if a little hairier, and had a bit of a fangirl crush on the infamous warlock Magnus Bane, talked about the faeries like they were a roach infestation and the Cold Peace like it was merely a pit stop to extermination.
“You were right this morning, George,” Julie said. “They shouldn’t be sending us out like this, not any of us. We’re not ready.”