Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy #1)(5)

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 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, the wood 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

There was also already a boy in there, standing on a stool. He revolved slowly on the stool to face them, regarding them from on high as if he were a statue on a plinth.

He did not look unlike a statue, if someone had dressed a statue up in jeans and a colorful red-and-yellow rugby shirt. The lines of his face were clean and statue-reminiscent, and he was broad-shouldered and athletic-looking, as most Shadowhunters were. Simon suspected the Angel did not choose the asthmatic or anyone who had ever gotten hit in the face by a volleyball in gym. The boy had a golden summer tan, dark brown eyes, and curly light-brown hair tumbling over his brow. The boy smiled at the sight of them, a dimple creasing one cheek.

Simon did not consider himself much of a judge of male beauty. But he heard a small sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder.