Chapters (16)
“Ugh,” Ty said. He put down the black notebook and picked up the red one in which he kept his timetables. He flipped back a page and said, “That’s three times in four weeks.”
Livvy had worried about what it would be like for her brother, to be so far away from home, but Ty had adapted surprisingly well. He’d drawn up a schedule for himself on the first night, and he followed it faithfully. He laid out his clothes each night for the following morning, and before he fell asleep he checked his alarm clock against the watch he wore around his wrist. Ty kept one of Julian’s old empty lighters in the pocket of his jeans, for when he needed to keep his fingers busy, and he wore his headphones around his neck during classes like a kind of talisman.
After he’d failed to resurrect Livvy from the dead, Ty had thrown his phone into the Pacific Ocean so he wouldn’t be tempted to try other spells from the Black Volume. He had a new phone now, but he hadn’t uploaded his photos. More penance, Livvy thought, although Ty hadn’t said so. Instead, he had a triptych of paintings by Julian on the wall above his desk: one of their parents, one of all the Blackthorn siblings and Diana and Emma, with the ocean behind them. The third painting was of Livvy, and Livvy often found herself staring at it so that she wouldn’t forget her own face. Not being able to see yourself in a mirror was not a big deal, compared to other parts of being dead, but all the same it was not very pleasant.
Ty wrote a letter to Julian every week, and he wrote Dru and Mark and Diana and Tavvy and Helen postcards, but Livvy couldn’t help but notice that he never wrote Kit at all. She knew Kit had been angry at Ty for trying the resurrection spell, but surely Kit had gotten over that by now? If she brought up Kit, though, Ty shrugged and put his headphones on.
In general, though, Ty seemed to be fitting in just fine at the Scholomance. Better than Livvy would have imagined, before her death, had she imagined such a thing. Ty hadn’t made any friends, but he managed everything that the instructors asked of him, and if he was mostly quiet or withdrawn otherwise, no one seemed to think that was strange. There were a lot of Shadowhunter kids at the Scholomance now who were worried or afraid or occasionally went off to cry in a corner. Ty was keeping his head down. No one except for Livvy, and maybe Julian, would have known there was something wrong.
But there was something wrong. And Livvy had no idea how to fix it, especially since she had no idea what was wrong. All she could do was be there. She had promised him that she would always be there. He had saved her from death, and she loved him.