“She didn’t want to hurt me. She just wanted to go.”

“And what? I should have let her? Is that what you were planning to do? There are more people in the world than you, Simon. She killed children. She ripped out their throats.”

He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know what to feel or think. The vampire girl had been a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer, in every sense of the word. But he’d felt a kinship with her as she’d embraced him, a sort of whispering in the back of his mind that said we are lost children together.

He wasn’t sure there was a place in Isabelle’s life for someone lost.

“Simon?” Isabelle was like a tightly coiled spring. He could see how much effort it was taking her just to keep her voice steady, her face free of emotion.

How can I know that? Simon wondered. Looking at her was like seeing double: one Isabelle a stranger he barely knew, one Isabelle the girl that other, better Simon loved so much he would have sacrificed everything for her. There was a part of him—a part beneath memories, beyond rationality—desperate to close the space between them, to take her in his arms, smooth back her hair, lose himself in her bottomless eyes, her lips, her fierce, protective, overwhelming love.

“You can’t keep doing this!” he shouted, unsure whether he was yelling at her or himself. “It’s not your job to choose for me anymore, to decide what I should do or how I should live. Who I should be. How many times do I have to tell you before you hear me? I’m not him. I will never be him, Isabelle. He belonged to you, I get that. But I don’t. I know you Shadowhunters are used to having everything your way—you set the rules, you know what’s best for the rest of us. But not this time, okay? Not with me.”

With deliberate calm, Isabelle coiled her whip around her wrist. “Simon, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who cares.”

It wasn’t the emotion in her voice that cracked his heart, but the lack of it. Behind the words were nothing: no pain, no suppressed anger, only a void. Hollow and cold.

“Isabelle—”

“I didn’t come here for you, Simon. This is my job. I thought you wanted it to be your job, too. If you still feel that way, I’d suggest you reconsider some things. Like how you speak to your superiors.”

“My . . . superiors?”

“And for the record, since you brought it up? You’re right, Simon. I don’t know this version of you at all. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.” She stepped past Simon, her shoulder brushing against his for the briefest of moments, then slipped out of the building and into the night.

Simon stared after her, wondering if he should follow, but he couldn’t seem to make his feet move. At the sound of the door slamming shut, Jon Cartwright blinked his eyes open and woozily eased himself upright. “We got her?” he asked Simon, catching sight of the small pile of dust where the vampire girl had been.

“Yeah,” he said wearily. “You could say that.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, bloodsucker!” Jon pumped his fist in the air, then made devil fingers. “You mess with a Cartwright bull—you get the horns.”

*    *    *

“I’m not saying she didn’t break the Law,” Simon explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I’m just saying, even if she did, why did we have to kill her? I mean—what about, I don’t know, jail?”

By the time they’d Portaled back to the Academy, dinner was long over. But as a reward for their labors, Dean Penhallow had opened up the dining hall and the kitchen for the twenty returning students. They huddled around a couple of the long tables, gnawing hungrily at stale eggrolls and mercifully flavorless shawarma. The Academy had returned to its traditional policy of serving international food—but unfortunately, all of these foods were prepared by a single chef, who Simon suspected was a warlock, because nearly everything they ate seemed enchanted to taste like dog food.

“Because that’s what we do,” Jon said. “A vampire—any Downworlder—violates the Covenant, someone has to kill it. Have you not been paying attention?”

“So why isn’t there a Downworlder jail?” Simon said. “Why aren’t there Downworlder trials?”

“That’s not how it works, Simon,” Julie said. He’d thought she might be friendlier after their conversation in the corridor the other night, but if anything, her edges had gotten sharper, more liable to draw blood. “This isn’t your stupid mundane law. This is the Law. Handed down from the Angel. Higher than everything else.”

Jon nodded proudly. “Sed lex, dura lex.”

“Even if it’s wrong?” Simon asked.

“How could it be wrong, if it’s the Law? That’s an oxymoron.”

Takes one to know one, he thought childishly, but stopped himself before saying it out loud. Anyway, Jon was more of your garden-variety moron.

“You realize you all sound like you’re in some kind of cult,” Simon complained. He touched the star that was still hanging at his neck. His family had never been particularly religious, but his father had always loved helping him try to figure out the Jewish perspective on questions of right and wrong. “There’s always a little wiggle room,” he’d told Simon, “a little space to figure these things out yourself.” He’d taught Simon to ask questions, to challenge authority, to understand and believe in rules before he followed them. There was a noble Jewish heritage of arguing, his father liked to say, even when it came to arguing with God.

Simon wondered now what his father would think of him, at this school for fundamentalists, swearing fealty to a higher Law. What did it even mean to be Jewish in a universe where angels and demons walked the earth, practiced miracles, carried swords? Was thinking for yourself an activity better suited to a world without any evidence of the divine?

“The Law is hard, but it’s the Law,” Simon added in disgust. “So freaking what? If the Law is wrong, why not change it? Do you know what the world would look like if we were all still following the laws made up back in the Dark Ages?”

“You know who else used to talk like that?” Jon asked ominously.

“Let me guess: Valentine.” Simon scowled. “Because apparently in all of Shadowhunter history only one guy has bothered to ask any questions. Yeah, that’s me, charismatic, evil supervillain about to lead a revolution. Better report me.”

George shook his head warningly. “Simon, I don’t think—”

“If you hate it so much, why are you even here?” Beatriz cut in, an uncharacteristically hostile note in her voice. “You get to pick the life you want to live.” She stopped abruptly, leaving something unspoken hanging in the silence. Something, Simon suspected, like: Unlike the rest of us.

“Good question.” Simon set down his fork and pushed his chair back.

“Come on, you didn’t even finish your . . .” George waved toward the plate, as if he couldn’t bring himself to actually describe it as food.

“I just lost my appetite.”

Simon was halfway to the dungeons when Catarina Loss stopped him in the hallway.

“Simon Lewis,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“Can we do it in the morning, Ms. Loss?” he asked. “It’s been a long day, and—”

She shook her head. “I know about your day, Simon Lewis. We talk now.”

*    *    *

The sky was bright with stars. Catarina’s blue skin glowed in the moonlight, and her hair burned silver. The warlock had insisted that they both needed some fresh air, and Simon had to admit she was right. He felt better already, just breathing in the grass and trees and sky. Idris had seasons, but so far, at least, they weren’t like the seasons he was used to. Or rather, they were like the best possible versions of themselves: each fall day crisp and bright, the air rich with the promise of bonfires and apple orchards, the approach of winter marked by only a startlingly clear sky and a new sharp bite to the air that was almost pleasurable in its icy pain.