Free The Whitechapel Fiend by Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson Page A

dry? And I come from Scotland. I know wool. I know sheep. But this wool? There’s something demonic about this wool. I cut my knuckles on it making the bed the other morning.”
    Simon mmm ’ed a reply. There was no need for any real attention. He and George had these same conversations every night. The slime and the mold and the creatures in the walls and the rough blankets and the cold. Every night, these were the topics. Simon’s thoughts drifted. He’d had two visitors recently, and neither of the visits had gone well.
    Isabelle and Clary, two of the most important people in his life (as far as he could tell), had both come to the Academy. Isabelle had appeared to stake her claim on Simon, and Simon—in a move that astonished him still—told her to back off. It couldn’t just go back to the way it was. Not like this, not when he couldn’t remember what it was. And then in the training exercise, Isabelle had shown up and slain a vampire that was about to take Simon down, but she had done so coolly. There was a distressing deadness to the way she spoke. Then Clary had popped up. Be careful with her, Clary had said. She’s more fragile than she seems.
    Isabelle—with her whip and her ability to slice a demon in half—was more fragile than she seemed.
    The guilt had been keeping him awake at night.
    “Isabelle again?” George asked.
    “How did you know?”
    “Educated guess. I mean, she showed up and threatened to cut anyone to ribbons who got near you, and now you don’t seem to be talking, and your friend Clary showed up to talk to you about her, and you also mumble her name when you sleep.”
    “I do?”
    “On occasion. You’re either saying ‘Isabelle’ or ‘fishy smell.’ Could be either, to be fair.”
    “How do I fix this?” Simon asked. “I don’t even know what I’m fixing.”
    “I don’t know,” George said. “But morning comes early. Best try to sleep.”
    There was a long pause and then . . .
    “There must be snakes,” George said. “Isn’t this place everything a snake could want? Cool, made of stone, lots of holes to slither in and out of, lots of mice to eat . . . Why am I still talking? Simon, make me stop talking. . . .”
    But Simon let him go on. Even talk of possible nearby snakes was better than what was currently going through his head.
    *    *    *
    Idris did its seasons properly, in general. It was like New York in that manner—you got each one, distinct and clear. But Idris was more pleasant than New York. The winter wasn’t just frozen garbage and slush; the summer wasn’t just boiling garbage and air-conditioner drippings that always felt like spit coming from overhead. Idris was greenery in the warm weather, crisp and tranquil in the cold, the air always smelling of freshness and burning log fires.
    Mostly. Then there were mornings like the ones this week, which were all bluster. Winds with little fishhooks at the end of every gust. Cold that got inside the clothes. Shadowhunter gear, while practical, wasn’t necessarily very warm. It was light, easy to move in, like fighting gear should be. It was not made for standing outside on a boggy stretch at seven in the morning when the sun was barely up. Simon thought of his puffy jacket from home, and his bed, and heating in general. Breakfast, which had been a glue substitute under the banner of porridge, sat heavily in his stomach.
    Coffee. That’s what this morning needed. Idris had no coffee places, nowhere to pop in and get a cup of the hot, steaming, and awake-making. The breakfast drink at the Academy was a thin tea that Simon suspected was not tea at all, but the watery runoff of one of the many noxious soups that emerged from the back of the kitchen. He swore he’d found a bit of potato skin in his mug that morning. He hoped it was potato skin.
    One cup from Java Jones. Was that so much to want from life?
    “Do you see this tree?” shouted Delaney Scarsbury, pointing at a tree.
    Of the