Nothing But Shadows by Cassandra Clare Page B

Academy, 1899
    James Herondale told himself that he was feeling sick only because of the jolting of the carriage. He was really very excited to be going to school.
    Father had borrowed Uncle Gabriel’s new carriage so he could take James from Alicante to the Academy, just the two of them.
    Father had not asked if he could borrow Uncle Gabriel’s carriage.
    â€œDon’t look so serious, Jamie,” Father said, murmuring a Welsh word to the horses that made them trot faster. “Gabriel would want us to have the carriage. It’s all between family.”
    â€œUncle Gabriel mentioned last night that he had recently had the carriage painted. Many times. And he has threatened to summon the constabulary and have you arrested,” said James. “Many times.”
    â€œGabriel will stop fussing about it in a few years.” Father winked one blue eye at James. “Because we will all be driving automobiles by then.”
    â€œMother says you can never drive an automobile,” said James. “She made me and Lucie promise that if you ever did, we would not climb into it.”
    â€œYour mother was just joking.”
    James shook his head. “She made us swear on the Angel.”
    He grinned up at his father. Father shook his head at Jamie, the wind catching at his black hair. Mother said Father and Jamie had the same hair, but Jamie knew his own hair was always untidy. He had heard people call his father’s hair unruly , which meant being untidy with charisma.
    The first day of school was not a good day for James to be thinking about how very different he was from his father.
    During their drive from Alicante, several people stopped them on the road, calling out the usual exclamation: “Oh, Mr. Herondale!”
    Shadowhunter ladies of many ages said that to his father: three words that were both sigh and summons. Other fathers were called “Mister” without the “Oh” prefix.
    With such a remarkable father, people tended to look for a son who would be perhaps a lesser star to Will Herondale’s blazing sun, but still someone shining. They were always subtly but unmistakably disappointed to find James, who was not very remarkable at all.
    James remembered one incident that made the difference between him and his father starkly apparent. It was always the tiniest moments that came back to James in the middle of the night and mortified him the very most, like it was always the almost invisible cuts that kept stinging.
    A mundane lady had wandered up to them at Hatchards bookshop in London. Hatchards was the nicest bookshop in the city, James thought, with its dark wood and glass front, which made the whole shop look solemn and special, and its secret nooks and hidey-holes inside where one could curl up with a book and be quite quiet. James’s family often went to Hatchards all together, but when James and his father went alone ladies quite often found a reason to wander over to them and strike up a conversation.
    Father told the lady that he spent his days hunting evil and rare first editions. Father could always find something to say to people, could always make them laugh. It seemed a strange, wondrous power to James, as impossible to achieve as it would be for him to shape-shift like a werewolf.
    James did not worry about the ladies approaching Father. Father never once looked at any woman the way he looked at Mother, with joy and thanksgiving, as if she was a living wish, granted past all hope.
    James did not know many people, but he was good at being quiet and noticing. He knew that what lay between his parents was something rare and precious.
    He worried only because the ladies approaching Father were strangers James would have to talk to.
    The lady in the bookshop had leaned down and asked: “And what do you like to do, little man?”
    â€œI like—books,” James had said. While standing in the bookshop, with a parcel of books under his arm.