“I’m a swot,” said James. “I read books all the time and I do not know how to talk to people. If I was a girl living in olden times, people would call me a bluestocking. I wish I could talk to people like you do. I wish I could smile at people and make them like me. I wish I could tell a story and have everybody listen, and have people follow me around wherever I went. Well, no, I don’t, because I am slightly terrified by people, but I wish I could do all that you can do, just the same. I wanted to be friends with Thomas and Christopher, because I liked them and I thought maybe they were—similar to me, and they might like me back. You were jealous I could get kicked out of school? I was jealous of you first. I was jealous of everything about you, and I still am.”

“Wait,” said Matthew. “Wait, wait, wait. You don’t like me because I am so very charming?”

Matthew Fairchild, Nothing But Shadows

Matthew glanced at him and smiled: it was The Smile, gradual and illuminating as sunrise, and James had the sinking feeling that he might not be immune after all.”

Perhaps the training courses were the worst, because Matthew was at his most annoying during them.

“I must regretfully decline to participate,” he told their teacher once. “Consider me on strike like the coal miners. Except far more stylish.”

The next day, he said: “I abstain on the grounds that beauty is sacred, and there is nothing beautiful about these exercises.”

The day after that, he merely said: “I object on aesthetic principles.”

The fourth ebook in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, Nothing But Shadows, is out TODAY! 

Plus it’s a prelude to The Last Hours. 

Double win.

It's hard to be a Shadowhunter when you've got demonic powers. Simon learns about the school-time struggles of half-warlock James Herondale... 

Here’s an extract Cassandra Clare shared on her Tumblr...