Simon did not feel good about any of these observations.
There were people walking in front of the Academy, under the gaze of the pirate angel. There was a tall woman with a mane of strawberry-blond hair, and behind her two girls who Simon figured were Academy students. They both looked about his age.
A twig snapped under Simon’s clumsy foot and all three of the strolling women looked around. The strawberry blonde leaped into action, running full tilt toward them and falling on Catarina as if she was a long-lost blue sister. She seized Catarina by the shoulders and Catarina looked extremely discomposed.
“Ms. Loss, thank the Angel you’re here,” she exclaimed. “Everything is chaos, absolute chaos!”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the . . . pleasure,” Catarina observed, with a significant pause.
The woman collected herself and released Catarina, nodding so her bright hair flew around her shoulders. “I’m Vivianne Penhallow. The, ah, dean of the academy. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”
She might speak formally, but she was awfully young to be spearheading the effort to reopen the Academy and prepare all the new, desperately needed trainees for the Shadowhunter forces. Then again, Simon supposed that was what happened when you were second-cousins-in-law with the Consul. Simon was still trying to work out how Shadowhunter government and also Shadowhunter family trees worked. They all seemed to be related to each other and it was very disturbing.
“What seems to be the problem, Dean Penhallow?”
“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the weeks allotted to renovating the Academy seem to have been, ah . . . ‘wildly insufficient’ are the words that perhaps best describe the situation,” said Dean Penhallow, her words rushing out. “And some of the teachers have already—er—left abruptly. I do not believe they intend to return. In fact some of them informed me of this in very strong language. Also, the Academy is a trifle chilly and, to be perfectly honest, more than a trifle structurally unsound. Moreover, in the interest of thoroughness I must tell you there is a problem with the food supplies.”
Catarina raised an ivory eyebrow. “What’s the problem with the food supplies?”
“There aren’t any food supplies.”
“That is a problem.”
The dean’s shoulders sagged and her chest deflated somewhat, as if holding all that in had been confining her in an invisible corset of distress. “These girls with me are two of the older students and of good Shadowhunter families—Julie Beauvale and Beatriz Velez Mendoza. They arrived yesterday and have really been proving themselves invaluable. And this must be young Simon,” she said, favoring him with a smile.
Simon was briefly startled and not sure why, until he dimly recalled that very few adult Shadowhunters had ever shown any signs of pleasure at having a vampire in their midst. Of course, she had no reason to hate him on sight now. She’d also seemed eager to meet Catarina, Simon thought; maybe she was all right. Or maybe she was just eager to have Catarina help her.
“Right,” said Catarina. “Well, what a surprise that the building left vacant after an upheaval almost two decades ago isn’t running entirely smoothly after a few weeks. You’d best show me some of the worst trouble spots. I can shore them up so we don’t have all the fuss of a baby Shadowhunter breaking their little neck.”
Everyone stared at Catarina.
“The inestimable tragedy, I meant,” Catarina amended, and smiled brightly. “Can one of the girls be spared to show Simon to his room?”
She seemed eager to get rid of Simon. She really did not like him. Simon could not think what he could possibly have done to her.
The dean stared at Catarina for a moment longer, and then snapped out of it. “Oh yes, yes, of course. Julie, would you please see to it? Put him in the tower room.”
Julie’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“Yes, really. The first room as you enter the east wing,” the dean said, her voice strained, and turned back to Catarina. “Ms. Loss, I am once again most thankful you have arrived. Can you truly fix some of these irregularities?”
“There is a saying: It takes a Downworlder to clear up a Shadowhunter mess,” Catarina observed.
“I . . . hadn’t heard that saying,” said Dean Penhallow.
“How odd,” said Catarina, her voice fading as they walked away. “Downworlders say it often. Very often.”
Simon was left abandoned and staring at the remaining girl, Julie Beauvale. He’d liked the look of the other girl better. Julie was very pretty, but her face and nose and mouth were all oddly narrow, giving the impression that her entire head was pursed with disapproval.
“Simon, was it?” she asked, and her prepursed mouth seemed to purse further. “Follow me.”
She turned, her movements sharp as a drill sergeant’s, and Simon followed her slowly across the threshold of the Academy into an echoing hall with a vaulted ceiling. He tilted his head and tried to make out if the greenish cast of the ceiling was bad lighting from the stained-glass window or actual moss.
“Please keep up,” said Julie’s voice, floating from one of the six dark, small doorways cut into the stone wall. Its owner had already vanished, and Simon plunged into the darkness after her.
The darkness turned out to be only a dim stone stairway, which led up into a dim stone corridor. There was still hardly any light, because the windows were tiny slits in the stone. Simon remembered reading about windows like that, made so nobody could fire in at you but so you could fire arrows out.
Julie led him down one passage, down another, up a short flight of stairs, down still another passage, made her way through a small circular room, which was nice for a change but which led to yet another passage. All the dark, close stone and the funny smell, combined with all the corridors, were making Simon think the words “passage tomb.” He was trying not to think of the words, but there they were.
“So you’re a demon hunter,” said Simon, shifting his bag on his shoulders and hurrying after Julie. “What’s that like?”
“Shadowhunter, and that’s what you’re here to find out,” the girl told him, and then stopped at one of many doors, stained oak with black iron fittings, the handle carved to look like an angel’s wing. She clasped the handle, and Simon saw that it must have been turned so often over the centuries that the details of the angel’s wing had been worn almost smooth.
Inside was a small stone room, containing two narrow beds—a suitcase open on one—with carved wooden bedposts, a diamond-paned window blurred with dust, and a large wardrobe tilted to one side as if missing a leg.