Born to Endless Night by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan Read Free Book Online

supposed to let Beatriz down easily.
    Julie cleared her throat. “And just so you know . . . ,” she said, “there have been invasive questions asked about you. Also there was an incident where someone tried to steal one of your used socks and keep it as a trophy.”
    “Who was the sock person?” Simon demanded. “That’s just nasty.”
    “We never tell them anything,” Julie said. “And they may ask once, but they never ask again.” Her lip curled back from her teeth. She looked like a snarling blond tiger. “Because you’re a real person to us, Simon. And you’re our friend.”
    She reached across the table and touched Simon’s hand, then drew it back as if she had been burned. Beatriz snatched Julie’s hand as soon as she’d drawn it back and pulled her out of her chair and toward the corner of the room where the food was laid out.
    Neither of them needed more food. They had barely touched their stew. Simon watched as they went, and then stood talking to each other in fraught whispers.
    “Well, they both seem strangely upset.”
    George rolled his eyes. “Come on, Si, don’t be dense.”
    “You can’t mean . . . ,” began Simon. “They can’t both—like me?”
    There was a long silence.
    “Neither of them like you?” Simon said. “You work out. And! You have a Scottish accent.”
    “Don’t rub it in. Maybe girls fear me, because my keen eyes see too deeply into their souls,” George said. “Or maybe they’re intimidated by my good looks. Or maybe . . . Please don’t make me talk about what a lonely bugger I am anymore.”
    He looked after Julie and Beatriz a little wistfully. Simon could not tell if George was wistful about Julie or Beatriz, or simply wistful about love in general. He’d had no idea his friends were involved in such an emotional tangle.
    He was surprised. He felt awkward. And he didn’t feel anything else.
    He liked Beatriz a lot. Julie was terrible, but Simon thought of Julie telling him about her sister, and he had to admit: Julie was terrible, but he liked her, too. Both of them were beautiful and badass and did not come with a burden of lost memories and tangled emotions.
    He wasn’t even pleased they liked him. He wasn’t even slightly tempted.
    He wished, with single-minded intensity, that Isabelle was here—not a letter, not a voice on the phone, but here.
    He looked at George’s sad face and offered: “Want to talk about when Magnus and Alec go, and we steal their suite and make our own meals in our own little kitchen?”
    George sighed. “Could we really, Simon, or is that too beautiful a dream? Every day would be a song. All I want is to make a sandwich, Simon. Just a humble sandwich, with ham, cheese, maybe a little dab of . . . oh my God.”
    Simon wondered what a dab of “oh my God” would taste like. George had frozen, spoon to his lips, eyes fixed on a point over Simon’s shoulder.
    Simon turned around in his seat and saw Isabelle framed in the doorway of the Academy dining hall. She was wearing a long dress the color of irises and her arms were spread wide, bracelets gleaming. Time seemed to slow, like a movie, like magic, like she was a genie who could appear in a puff of glittering smoke to grant wishes, and every wish would be her.
    “Surprise,” said Isabelle. “Miss me?”
    Simon jumped to his feet. He might have knocked his bowl clear across the table and into George’s lap. He was sorry, but he would make it up to him later.
    “Isabelle,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
    “Congratulations, Simon, that’s a very romantic question,” Isabelle told him. “Am I meant to take it as ‘No, I didn’t miss you, and I’m seeing other girls’? If so, don’t worry about it. Why worry, when life is short? Specifically, your life, because I am going to cut off your head.”
    “I’m confused by what you’re saying,” Simon told her.
    Isabelle raised her eyebrows and opened her lips, but before she could speak