Ty had been at the Scholomance for four months now. And where Ty went, Livvy went too. Four months at the Scholomance, and six months since Livvy had come back as a ghost when the catalyst Ty was using in his attempt to resurrect her had failed him, and the spell from the Black Volume of the Dead had gone awry. At first Livvy had not been entirely herself. There were pages in Ty’s notebook about the gaps in her memory, the ways in which she did not seem to be the same person. But, gradually, she had come back to herself. Ty had written in his notebook: Jet lag, when one travels between coasts or countries and experiences a change in time zones, is part of the human condition. It is possible that Livvy is experiencing some version of this. A writer once called Death “that unknown country.” Presumably Livvy had to travel, at least psychically, quite far to come back to me.

All in all, the last few months had been a time of great and alarming changes—Livvy’s ghostly return from the dead had been neither the greatest nor the most alarming. The Cohort and their supporters were now shut off in Idris, while supporters of the Clave had been exiled to all the corners of the globe. No one could get into Idris and none could get out. “What do you think they’re eating?” Ty had asked Livvy. “Each other, hopefully,” Livvy replied. “Or zucchini. Lots of zucchini.” She felt sure that no one honestly enjoyed zucchini.

The Scholomance, too, had changed. Historically it was the institution where Centurions were trained, and Livvy had heard the Centurions who descended on the L.A. Institute speak of the place. It had become a recruiting ground for the Cohort, and it had sounded thoroughly horrible. Those Cohort sympathizers were now in Idris, and that was no great loss as far as Livvy could see. Every member of the Cohort she had ever met had been a bully, a bigot, or a petty-minded bootlicker. The zucchini of the Shadowhunter world. Who missed them? The real problem now was not that they were gone but that they were not gone enough. There they were, lurking inside the wards of Idris, planning and plotting only the Angel knew what.

Some of the Scholomance’s instructors had gone to Idris with the Centurions, and now Jia Penhallow, the former Consul, was in charge here. She’d decided to step down as Consul so that she could have time to rest, but once her health improved, she wanted something useful to do. Her husband, Patrick, was with her, and Ragnor Fell had stepped in too, to teach and offer guidance. Catarina Loss was a frequent presence as well. She spent more time at the new Academy on Luke Garroway’s farm in upstate New York, but she would stop by the Scholomance now and then to restock the infirmary or heal unusual magical maladies.