The Lost Herondale Read Free

Internet porn. At the Academy, after-hours options were more limited: There was studying the Codex , and there was sleep. Playing cards were about as close as he could get to gaming, and when he went too long without gaming, Simon got a little itchy. It turned out that when you spent all day training to defeat actual, real-world monsters, Dungeons & Dragons questing lost a bit of its luster—or at least, so claimed George and every other student Simon had tried to recruit for a campaign—which left him with old half-forgotten summer camp standards, Hearts, Egyptian Ratscrew, and, of course, Go Fish. Simon stifled a yawn.
    Jon, Beatriz, and Julie stood beside them, waiting to be acknowledged. Simon hoped if he waited long enough, they’d just go away. Beatriz wasn’t so bad, at least not on her own. But Julie could have been carved out of ice. She had suspiciously few physical flaws—the silky blond hair of a Barbie doll, the porcelain skin of a cosmetics model, better curves than any of the bikini-girl posters papering Erik’s garage—and wore the hawkish expression of someone on a search-and-destroy mission for any weakness whatsoever. All that, and she carried a sword.
    Jon, of course, was Jon.
    Shadowhunters didn’t practice magic—that was a fundamental tenet of their beliefs—so it was unlikely that the Academy would teach Simon a way to make Jon Cartwright vanish into another dimension. But a guy could dream.
    They didn’t go away. Finally, George, congenitally incapable of being rude, set down his cards.
    “Can we help you?” George asked, a sliver of ice cooling his Scottish brogue. Jon’s and Julie’s friendliness had melted away once they learned the truth about George’s mundane blood, and though George never said anything about it, he clearly had neither forgiven nor forgotten.
    “Actually, yes,” Julie said. She nodded at Simon. “Well, you can.”
    Finding out about the imminent vampire-killing mission hadn’t exactly tied a bright yellow ribbon around Simon’s day; he wasn’t in the mood. “What do you want?”
    Julie looked awkwardly at Beatriz, who stared down at her feet. “You ask,” Beatriz murmured.
    “Better if you do,” Julie shot back.
    Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, by the Angel! I’ll do it.” He pulled himself up to his full, impressive height, rested his hands on his hips, and peered down his regal nose at Simon. It had the look of a pose practiced in the mirror. “We want you to tell us about vampires.”
    Simon grinned. “What do you want to know? Scariest is Eli in Let the Right One In , cheesiest is late-era Lestat, most underrated is David Bowie in The Hunger . Sexiest is definitely Drusilla, though if you ask a girl, she’ll probably say Damon Salvatore or Edward Cullen. But . . .” He shrugged. “You know girls.”
    Julie’s and Beatriz’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t think you’d know so many!” Beatriz exclaimed. “Are they . . . are they your friends?”
    “Oh, sure, Count Dracula and I are like this,” Simon said, crossing his fingers to demonstrate. “Also Count Chocula. Oh, and my BFF Count Blintzula. He’s a real charmer . . . .” He trailed off as he realized no one else was laughing. In fact, no one seemed to realize he was joking. “They’re from TV,” he prompted them. “Or, uh, cereal.”
    “What’s he talking about?” Julie asked Jon, perfect nose wrinkling up in confusion.
    “Who cares?” Jon said. “I told you this was a waste of time. Like he cares about anyone but himself?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked, starting to get irritated.
    George cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “Come on, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s his business.”
    “Not when it’s our lives at stake.” Julie was blinking hard, like she had something in her eye or—Simon caught his breath. Was she blinking back tears ?
    “What’s going on?” he asked, feeling more clueless than usual, which