Cassandra Clare - City of Ashes

"Luke!" She spoke so sharply that he pulled the truck to a stop with a loud screech of brakes. They were just in front of his house, the water of the East River glittering darkly on their left, the sky streaked with soot and shadows. Another, darker shadow crouched on Luke's front porch.

Luke narrowed his eyes. In wolf form, he'd told her, his eyesight was perfect; in human form, he remained nearsighted. "Is that…?"

"Simon. Yes." She knew him even as an outline. "I'd better go talk to him."

"Sure. I'll, ah, run some errands. I have things to pick up."

"What kind of things?"

He waved her away. "Food things. I'll be back in a half hour. Don't stay outside, though. Go in the house and lock up."

"You know I will."

She watched as the pickup sped away, then turned toward the house. Her heart was pounding. She'd talked to Simon on the phone a few times but she hadn't seen him since they'd brought him, groggy and blood-splattered, to Luke's house in the dark early hours of that horrible morning to clean up before driving him home. She'd thought he ought to go to the Institute, but of course that was impossible. Simon would never see the inside of a church or synagogue again.

She'd watched him walking up the path to his front door, shoulders hunched forward as if he were walking against a heavy wind. When the porch light came on automatically, he flinched away from it, and she knew it was because he had thought it was the light of the sun; and she started to cry, silently, in the backseat of the pickup, the tears splashing down onto the strange black Mark on her forearm.

"Clary," Jace had whispered, and he'd reached for her hand, but she'd recoiled from him just as Simon had recoiled from the light. She wouldn't touch him. She'd never touch him again. That was her penance, her payment for what she'd done to Simon.

Now, as she mounted the steps to Luke's porch, her mouth went dry and her throat swelled with the pressure of tears. She told herself not to cry. Crying would only make him feel worse.

He was sitting in the shadows at the corner of the porch, watching her. She could see the gleam of his eyes in the darkness. She wondered if they'd held that sort of light in them before; she couldn't remember. "Simon?"

He stood up in one single smooth graceful movement that sent a chill up her spine. There was one thing Simon had never been, and that was graceful. There was something else about him, something different—

"Sorry if I startled you." He spoke carefully, almost formally, as if they were strangers.

"It's all right, it's just—How long have you been here?"

"Not long. I can only travel after the sun starts going down, remember? I accidentally put my hand about an inch out the window yesterday and nearly charred off my fingers. Luckily I heal fast."

She fumbled for her key, unlocked the door, swung it open. Pale light spilled out onto the porch. "Luke said we should stay inside."

"Because the nasty things," Simon said, pushing past her, "they come out in the dark."

The living room was full of warm yellow light. Clary shut the door behind them and flipped the dead bolts closed. Isabelle's blue coat was still hanging on a hook by the door. She'd meant to take it to a dry cleaner to see if they could get the bloodstains out, but she hadn't had a chance. She stared at it for a moment, steeling herself, before turning to look at Simon.

He was standing in the middle of the room, hands awkwardly in the pockets of his jacket. He was wearing jeans and a frayed I ♥ new york T-shirt that had belonged to his dad. Everything about him was familiar to Clary, and yet he seemed like a stranger. "Your glasses," she said, belatedly realizing what had seemed strange to her out on the porch. "You're not wearing them."

"Have you ever seen a vampire wearing glasses?"

"Well, no, but—"

"I don't need them anymore. Perfect vision seems to come with the territory." He sat down on the couch and Clary joined him, sitting beside him but not too near. Up close she could see how pale his skin looked, blue traceries of veins apparent just beneath the surface. His eyes without the glasses looked huge and dark, the lashes like black ink strokes. "Of course I still have to wear them around the house or my mother would freak out. I'm going to have to tell her I'm getting contacts."

"You're going to have to tell her, period," Clary said, more firmly than she felt. "You can't hide your—your condition forever."

"I can try." He raked a hand through his dark hair, his mouth twisting. "Clary, what am I going to do ? My mom keeps bringing me food and I have to throw it out the window—I haven't been outside in two days, but I don't know how much longer I can go on pretending I have the flu. Eventually she's going to bring me to the doctor, and then what? I don't have a heartbeat . He'll tell her that I'm dead ."

"Or write you up as a medical miracle," said Clary.

"It's not funny."

"I know, I was just trying to—"

"I keep thinking about blood," Simon said. "I dream about it. Wake up thinking about it. Pretty soon I'll be writing morbid emo poetry about it."

"Don't you have those bottles of blood Magnus gave you? You're not running out, are you?"

"I have them. They're in my mini-fridge. But I've only got three left." His voice sounded thin with tension. "What about when I run out?"

"You won't. We'll get you some more," Clary said, with more confidence than she felt. She supposed she could always hit up Magnus's friendly local supplier of lamb's blood, but the whole business made her queasy. "Look, Simon, Luke thinks you should tell your mom. You can't hide it from her forever."

"I can damn well try."

"Think about Luke," she said desperately. "You can still live a normal life."

"And what about us? Do you want a vampire boyfriend?" He laughed bitterly. "Because I foresee many romantic picnics in our future. You, drinking a virgin piña colada. Me, drinking the blood of a virgin."

"Think of it as a handicap," Clary urged. "You just have to learn how to work your life around it. Lots of people do it."

"I'm not sure I'm people. Not anymore."

"You are to me," she said. "Anyway, being human is overrated."

"At least Jace can't call me mundane anymore. What's that you're holding?" he asked, noticing the pamphlet, still rolled up in her left hand.

"Oh, this?" She held it up. " How to Come Out to Your Parents ."

He widened his eyes. "Something you want to tell me?"

"It's not for me. It's for you." She handed it to him.

"I don't have to come out to my mother," said Simon. "She already thinks I'm gay because I'm not interested in sports and I haven't had a serious girlfriend yet. Not that she knows about, anyway."

"But you have to come out as a vampire," Clary pointed out. "Luke thought maybe you could, you know, use one of the suggested speeches in the pamphlet, except use the word 'undead' instead of—"

"I get it, I get it." Simon spread the pamphlet open. "Here, I'll practice on you." He cleared his throat. "Mom. I have something to tell you. I'm undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But I'm here to tell you that the undead are just like you and me." Simon paused. "Well, okay. Possibly more like me than you."

"SIMON."

"All right, all right." He went on. "The first thing you need to understand is that I'm the same person I always was. Being undead isn't the most important thing about me. It's just part of who I am. The second thing you should know is that it isn't a choice. I was born this way." Simon squinted at her over the pamphlet. "Sorry, reborn this way."