The Lost Herondale

“Enough!” Scarsbury shouted, clapping his hands together. Simon wondered whether there was such a thing as a runed whistle. Maybe he could get Scarsbury one for Christmas. “Lewis, put us all out of our misery and get down from there. The rest of you, hit the weapons room, pick yourself out a sword, then pair up for scrimmage.” His iron grip closed over Simon’s shoulder. “Not so fast, hero. You stay behind.”


Simon wondered whether this was it, the moment that his heroic past was finally overpowered by his hapless present, and he was about to be kicked out of school. But then Scarsbury called out several other names—among them Lovelace, Cartwright, Beauvale, Mendoza—most of them Shadowhunters, all of them the best students in the class, and Simon let himself relax, just a little. Whatever it was Scarsbury had to say, it couldn’t be that bad, not if he was also saying it to Jon Cartwright, gold medalist in sucking up.

“Sit,” Scarsbury boomed.

They sat.

“You’re here because you’re the twenty most promising students in the class,” Scarsbury said, pausing to let the compliment settle over them. Most of the students beamed. Simon willed himself to disappear. More like the nineteen most promising students and the one still coasting on the achievements of his past self. He felt like he was eight years old again, overhearing his mother bully the Little League coach into letting him take a turn at bat. “We’ve got a Downworlder that broke the Law and needs taking care of,” Scarsbury continued, “and the powers that be have decided it’s the perfect opportunity for you boys to become men.”

Marisol Rojas Garza, a scrawny thirteen-year-old mundane with a permanent I will kick your ass expression, cleared her throat loudly.

“Er . . . men and women,” Scarsbury clarified, looking none too happy about it.

Murmurs rippled across the students, excitement mixed with alarm. None of them had expected a real training mission this soon. Behind Simon, Jon faked a yawn. “Boring. I could kill a rogue Downworlder in my sleep.”

Simon, who actually did kill rogue Downworlders in his sleep, along with the terrifying tentacled demons and Endarkened Shadowhunters and other bloodthirsty monsters that crawled through his nightmares, didn’t feel much like yawning. He felt more like throwing up.

George raised his hand. “Uh, sir, some of us here are still”—he swallowed, and, not for the first time, Simon wondered whether he regretted admitting the truth about himself; the Academy was a much easier place to be when you were on the elite Shadowhunter track, and not just because the elites didn’t have to sleep in the dungeon—“mundanes.”

“I noticed that myself, Lovelace,” Scarsbury said dryly. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered some of you dregs are worth something after all.”

“No, I mean . . .” George hesitated, substantially more easily intimidated than any six-foot-five Scottish sex-god (Beatriz Velez Mendoza’s description, according to her bigmouthed best friend) had a right to be. Finally, he squared his shoulders and plowed forward. “I mean we’re mundanes. We can’t be Marked, we can’t use seraph blades or witchlight or anything, we don’t have, like, superspeed and angelic reflexes. Going after a Downworlder when we’ve only had a couple months of training . . . isn’t that dangerous?”

A vein in Scarsbury’s neck began to throb alarmingly, and his good eye bulged so far out of his head Simon feared it might pop. (Which, he thought, could finally explain the mysterious eye patch.) “Dangerous? Dangerous?” he boomed. “Anyone else here afraid of a little danger?”

If they were, they were even more afraid of Scarsbury, and so kept their mouths shut. He let the silence hang, thick and angry, for an agonizing minute. Then he scowled at George. “If you’re afraid of dangerous situations, boy, you’re in the wrong place. And as for the rest of you dregs, best you find out now whether you’ve got what it takes. If you don’t, then drinking from the Mortal Cup will kill you, and trust me, mundies, getting bled dry by a bloodsucker would be a much kinder way to go.” He’d fixed his gaze on Simon, maybe because Simon had once been a bloodsucker, or maybe because he now seemed the most likely to get drained by one.

It occurred to Simon that Scarsbury could be hoping for that outcome—that he’d selected Simon for this mission in hopes of getting rid of his biggest problem student. Though surely no Shadowhunter, even a Shadowhunting gym teacher, would stoop so low?

Something in Simon, some ghost of a memory, warned him not to be so sure.

“Is that understood?” Scarsbury said. “Is there anyone here who wants to go running to mommy and daddy crying ‘please save me from the big, bad vampire’?”

Dead silence.

“Excellent,” Scarsbury said. “You have two days to train. Then just keep reminding yourself how impressed all your little friends will be when you come back.” He chuckled. “If you come back.”