Nothing but Shadows (6 page)

“The best impression of the worst Shadowhunter,” James repeated. “So you don’t—believe in all that stuff about violence being repulsive, and truth and beauty and Oscar Wilde?”

“No, I do,” Matthew said hastily. “I really like Oscar Wilde. And beauty and truth. I do think it’s nonsense that because we are born what we are, we cannot be painters or poets or create anything—that all we do is kill. My father and Christopher are geniuses, do you know that? Real geniuses. Like Leonardo da Vinci. He was a mundane who—”

“I know who Leonardo da Vinci is.”

Matthew glanced at him and smiled: it was The Smile, gradual and illuminating as sunrise, and James had the sinking feeling that he might not be immune after all.

“’Course you do, James,” said Matthew. “Forgot who I was talking to for a moment there. Anyway, Christopher and my father are truly brilliant. Their inventions have already changed the way Shadowhunters navigate the world, the way they battle demons. And all Shadowhunters everywhere will always look down on them. They will never see what they do as valuable. And someone who wanted to write plays, to make beautiful art, they would throw away like refuse from the streets.”

“Do you—want that?” James asked hesitantly.

“No,” said Matthew. “I can’t draw for toffee, actually. I certainly can’t write plays. The less said about my poetry the better. I do appreciate art, though. I’m an excellent spectator. I could spectate for England.”

“You could, um, be an actor,” James suggested. “When you talk everyone listens. Especially when you tell stories.”

Also there was Matthew’s face, which would probably—go over well onstage or something.

“That’s a nice thought,” said Matthew. “But I think I would rather not get thrown out of my home and still see my father occasionally. Also, I do think violence is terrible and pointless, but—I’m really good at it. In fact, I enjoy it. Not that I’m letting on to our teachers. I wish I was good at something that could add beauty to the world rather than painting it with blood, I really do, but there you have it.”

He shrugged.

James did not think they were going to fight after all, so he sat back down on the step. He felt he wanted a sit-down. “I think Shadowhunters can add beauty to the world,” he said. “I mean, for one thing—we save lives. I know I said it before, but it’s really important. The people we save, any one of them could be the next Leonardo da Vinci, or Oscar Wilde, or just someone who is really kind, who spreads beauty that way. Or they might just be someone who—someone else loves, like you love your father. Maybe you’re right that Shadowhunters are more limited, that we do not get the full range of possibilities mundanes get, but—we get to make the mundanes’ lives possible. That’s what we’re born to. It is a privilege. I’m not going to run away from the Academy. I’m not running away from anything. I can bear Marks, and that makes me a Shadowhunter, and that’s what I will be whether the Nephilim want me or not.”

“You can be a Shadowhunter without going to the Academy, though,” said Matthew. “You can be trained in an Institute, like Uncle Will was. That’s what I wanted, so I could stay with Father.”

“I could. But—” James hesitated. “I didn’t want to be sent home. Mother would have to know why.”

Matthew was silent for a little while. There was nothing but the sound of the falling rain.

“I like Aunt Tessa,” he said. “I never came to London because I worried about leaving Father. I always wished—she could come to Idris more often.”

James had received several shocks this morning that were actually not so bad, but this revelation was unwelcome and inevitable. Of course Mother and Father scarcely ever went to Idris. Of course James and Lucie had been raised in London, a little apart from their families.

Because there were people in Idris, there were arrogant Shadowhunters who thought Mother was not worthy to walk among them, and Father would never have let her be insulted.

Now it would be worse, now people would whisper that she had passed on the taint to her children. People would say horrible things about Lucie, James knew—about his scribbling, laughing little sister. Lucie could never be allowed to come to the Academy.

Matthew cleared his throat. “I suppose I can understand all that. Maybe I will stop being so jealous that you are able to get chucked out of school. Maybe I can understand that your aims are noble. However, I still do not understand why you must make it so clear you detest the sight of me. I know, I know, you’re aloof and you wish to be alone with literature all the time, but it’s particularly horrible with me. It’s very lowering. Most people like me. I told you that. I don’t even have to try.”

“Yes, you’re very good at Shadowhunting and everybody likes you, Matthew,” said James. “Thanks for clarifying that.”

“You don’t like me!” Matthew exclaimed. “I did try with you! And you still don’t.”

“The thing is,” said James, “I tend to like very modest people? Humble, you know.”

Matthew paused, considered James for a moment, and then burst out laughing. James was amazed by how gratifying that was. It made him feel like he could let out the humiliating truth.

He closed his eyes and said: “I was jealous of you.”

When he opened his eyes, Matthew looked wary, as if expecting a trick. “Of what?”

“Well, you’re not considered an unholy abomination upon this earth.”

“Yes, but—no offense, James—nobody but you is,” Matthew pointed out. “You are our unique feature in the school, like a sculpture of a warrior chicken. If we had one of those. You disliked me before anybody knew you were an unholy abomination, anyway. Well, I suppose you are simply trying to spare my feelings. Decent of you. I under—”

“I’m not aloof,” said James. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“All the aloofness, I think,” Matthew speculated.

“I’m a swot,” said James. “I read books all the time and I do not know how to talk to people. If I was a girl living in olden times, people would call me a bluestocking. I wish I could talk to people like you do. I wish I could smile at people and make them like me. I wish I could tell a story and have everybody listen, and have people follow me around wherever I went. Well, no, I don’t, because I am slightly terrified by people, but I wish I could do all that you can do, just the same. I wanted to be friends with Thomas and Christopher, because I liked them and I thought maybe they were—similar to me, and they might like me back. You were jealous I could get kicked out of school? I was jealous of you first. I was jealous of everything about you, and I still am.”

“Wait,” said Matthew. “Wait, wait, wait. You don’t like me because I am
so very charming
?”

He threw his head back and laughed. He kept laughing. He laughed so much that he had to come and sit beside James on the step, and then he laughed some more.

“Stop it, Matthew,” James grumbled. “Stop laughing. I am sharing my innermost feelings with you. This is very hurtful.”

“I’ve been in a bad mood this whole time,” said Matthew. “You think I’m charming now? You have
no
idea.”

James punched him in the arm. He could not help smiling. He saw Matthew noticing, and looking very pleased with himself.

*    *    *

Sometime later, Matthew ushered James firmly into breakfast and to their table, which James noticed was only Christopher and Thomas, and a rather select table after all.

Christopher and Thomas, in another surprise for James in a morning full of surprises, seemed pleased to see him.

“Oh, have you decided not to detest Matthew any longer?” Christopher asked. “I’m so glad. You were really hurting his feelings. Though we are not supposed to talk about that to you.” He gazed dreamily at the bread basket, as if it were a wonderful painting. “I forgot that.”

Thomas put his head down on the table. “Why are you the way that you are?”

Matthew reached over and patted Thomas on the back, then rescued Christopher from setting his own sleeves on fire with a candle. He gave James the candle and a smile.

“If you ever see Christopher near an open flame, take him away from it, or take it away from him,” Matthew said. “Fight the good fight with me. I must be eternally watchful.”

“That must be difficult, when surrounded by, um, your adoring public,” said James.

“Well,” said Matthew, and paused, “it’s possible,” he said, and paused again, “I may have been . . . slightly showing off? ‘Look, if you don’t want to be friends with me, everybody else does, and you are making a big mistake.’ I may have been doing that. Possibly.”

“Is that over?” Thomas asked. “Thank the Angel. You know large crowds of people make me nervous! You know I can never think of anything to say to them! I am not witty like you or aloof and above it all like James or living in cloud cuckoo land like Christopher. I came to the Academy to get away from being bossed by my sisters, but my sisters make me much less nervous than battering rams flying through the air and parties all the time. Can we please have some peace and quiet occasionally!”

James stared at Thomas. “Does everybody think I’m aloof?”

“No, mostly people think you’re an unholy abomination upon this earth,” Matthew said cheerfully. “Remember?”

Thomas looked ready to put his head back on the table, but he cheered up when he saw James had not taken offense.

“Why would that be?” Christopher asked politely.

James stared. “Because I can turn from flesh and blood into a ghastly shadow?”

“Oh,” said Christopher. His dreamy lavender eyes focused for a moment. “That’s very interesting,” he told James, his voice clear. “You should let me and Uncle Henry perform many experiments on you. We could do an experiment right now.”

“No, we could not,” said Matthew. “No experiments at breakfast time. Add it to the list, Christopher.”

Christopher sighed.

And just like that, as if it could always have been that easy, James had friends. He liked Thomas and Christopher as much as he’d always known he would.

Of all his new friends, though, he liked Matthew the best. Matthew always wanted to talk about the books James had read, or tell James a story as good as a book. He made obvious efforts to find James when James was not there, and obvious efforts to protect James when he was there. James did not have many nice things to write letters home about: he ended up writing letters that were full of Matthew.

James knew Matthew probably only felt sorry for him. Matthew was always looking after Christopher and Thomas, with the same painstaking care he must have looked after his father. Matthew was kind.

That was all right. James would absolutely have wanted to share a room with Matthew, now it was out of the question.

“Why do people call you Demon Eyes, James?” Christopher asked one day when they were sitting around a table studying Ragnor Fell’s account of the First Accords.

“Because I have golden eyes as if lit by eldritch infernal fires,” James said. He had heard a girl whispering that and thought it sounded rather poetic.

“Ah,” said Christopher. “Do you look at all like your grandfather aside from that? The demonic one, I mean.”

“You cannot simply ask whether people look like their demon grandfather!” Thomas wailed. “Next you will ask Professor Fell if he looks like his demon parent! Please, please do not ask Professor Fell if he looks like his demon parent. He has a cutting tongue. Also, he might cut you with a knife.”

“Fell?” Christopher inquired.

“Our teacher,” said Matthew. “Our green teacher.”

Christopher looked genuinely astonished. “We have a teacher who is green?”

“James looks like his father,” said Matthew unexpectedly, then narrowed his laughing dark eyes in James’s direction in a musing fashion. “Or he will, when he grows into his face and it stops being angles pointing in all different directions.”

James slowly raised his open book to hide his face, but he was secretly pleased.

Matthew’s friendship made other friends creep forward, too. Esme cornered James and told him how sorry she was that Mike was being an idiot. She also told him that she hoped James did not take this expression of friendly concern in a romantic way.

“I have rather a
tendresse
for Matthew Fairchild, actually,” Esme added. “Please put in a good word for me there.”

Life was much, much better now that he had friends, but that did not mean anything was perfect, or even mended. People were still afraid of him, still hissing “Demon Eyes” and muttering about unclean shadows.

“Pulvis et umbra sumus,”
said James once, out loud in class, after hearing too many whispers. “My father says that sometimes. We are but dust and shadows. Maybe I’m just—getting a head start on all of you.”

Several people in the classroom were looking alarmed.

“What did he say?” Mike Smith whispered, clearly agitated.

“It’s not a demon language, buffoon,” Matthew snapped. “It’s Latin.”

Despite everything Matthew could do, the whispers rose and rose. James kept expecting a disaster.

And then the demons were let loose in the woods.

*    *    *

“I’ll be partners with Christopher,” said Thomas at their next training exercise, sounding resigned.

“Excellent, I will be partners with James,” said Matthew. “He reminds me of the nobility of the Shadowhunter way of life. He keeps me right. If I am parted from him I will become distracted by truth and beauty. I know I will.”

Their teachers seemed extremely pleased that Matthew was actually participating in training courses now, aside from the courses only for the elites, in which Thomas reported that Matthew was still determined to be hopeless.

James did not know why the teachers were so worried. It was obvious that as soon as anyone was actually in danger, Matthew would leap to their defense.

James was glad to be so sure of that, as they walked through the woods. It was a windy day, and it seemed as if every tree was stooping down to howl in his ear, and he knew that Pyxis boxes had been placed throughout the woods by older students—Pyxis boxes with the smallest and most harmless of demons inside, but still real Pyxis boxes with real demons inside, who they were meant to fight. Pyxis boxes were a little outmoded these days, but they were still sometimes used to transport demons safely. If demons could ever be said to be safe.