She opened her mouth to answer, but he was already kissing her. She had kissed him so many times—soft gentle kisses, hard and desperate ones, brief brushes of the lips that said good-bye, and kisses that seemed to go on for hours—and this was no different. The way the memory of someone who had once lived in a house might linger even after they were gone, like a sort of psychicimprint,herbody rememberedJace.Remembered the way he tasted, the slant of his mouth over hers, his scars under her fingers, the shape of his body under her hands.

You're a Shadowhunter," he said. "You know how to deal with injuries." He slid his stele across the table toward her. "Use it.""No," Clary said, and pushed the stele back across the table at him.Jace slammed his hand down on the stele. "Clary—""She said she doesn't want it," said Simon. "Ha-ha.""Ha-ha?" Jace looked incredulous. "That's your comeback?"Alec, folding his phone, approached the table with a puzzled look. "What's going on?""We seem to be trapped in an episode of One Life to Waste," Magnus observed. "It's all very dull.

Is this Clarissa Fray?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar, though not immediately identifiable.Clary twirled the phone cord nervously around her finger. "Yeees?""Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I"m afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to-""SIMON!" Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!""Sure it is. You just don't see the humor.""Jerk." Clary sighed, leaning up against the wall.

I am with you. I'm not going anywhere.""Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought. "Can we travel to Idris? I mean, I guess, can the apartment travel there?""It can't get past the wards." His hand traced a path down her cheek. "You know,I really missed you.""You mean you haven't been going on romantic dates with Sebastian while you've been away from me?""I tried", Jace said, "but no matter how liquored up you get him , he just won't put out.

Stop it." Isabelle tapped a booted foot in the shallow water at the lake's edge. "Both of you. In fact, all three of you. If we don't stick together in the Seelie Court, we're dead.""But I haven't-," Clary started."Maybe you haven't, but the way you let those two act..." Isabelle indicated the boys with a disdainful wave of her hand."I can't tell them what to do!""Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you.

And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.

He grinned. It was a wicked grin, the kind that made the blood in Clary's veins run a little faster. "You want to go on a date?"Caught off guard, she stammered. "A wh-what?""A date," Jace repeated. "Often 'a boring thing you have to memorize in history class,' but in this case, 'an offering of an evening of blisteringly white-hot romance with yours truly.""Really?" Clary was not sure what to make of this. "Blisteringly white-hot?""It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.

Simon's band never actually produced any music. Mostly they sat around in Simon's living room, fighting about potential names and band logos. She sometimes wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument. 'What's on the table?' 'We're choosing between Sea Vegetable Conspiracy and Rock Solid Panda.' Clary shook her head. 'Those are both terrible.' 'Eric suggested Lawn Chair Crisis.' 'Maybe Eric should stick to gaming.' 'But then we'd have to find a new drummer.' 'Oh, is that what Eric does?...

I was trying to make you jealous!" Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fisted at his sides. "You're so stupid, Clary. You're so stupid, can't you see anything?"She stared at him in bewilderment. What on earth did he mean? "Trying to make me jealous? Why would you try to do that?"She saw immediately that this was the worst thing she could have asked him."Because," he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, "I've been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like the time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess you don't.

Imagine if you were the last Shadowhunter left on earth, imagine if all your family and friends were dead, imagine if there were no one left who even believed in what you were. Imagine if you were on the earth in a billion, billion years, after the sun had scorched away all the life, and you were crying out from inside yourself for just one single living creature to still draw breath alongside you, but there was nothing, only rivers of fire and ashes. Imagine being that lonely. and then imagine there was only one way to fix it. Then imagine what you would do to make that thing happen.

Actually," Clary said, "I think he stayed because of me."Jace's glaze flicked up to hers with a flash of gold. "Because of you? Hoping for another hot date, was he?"Clary felt herself flush. "No. And our date wasn't hot. In fact, it wasn't even a date. Anyway, that's not the point. When he came into the Hall, he kept trying to get me to go outside with him so we could talk. He wanted something from me. I just don't know what.""Or maybe he just wanted you," Jace said. Seeing Clary's expression, he added, "Not that way. I mean maybe he wanted to bring you to Valentine.

Maybe I can climb one of those," Simon said, eyeing the fat white pillars that held up the slanted roof of the Hall. Runes were carved on them in overlapping patterns, but otherwise there were no visible handholds. "Work off steam that way.""Oh, come on," Clary said. "You're a vampire, not Spider-Man."Simon's only response was to jog lightly up the steps to the base of a pillar. He eyed it thoughtfully for a moment before putting his hands to it and starting to climb. Clary watched him, open-mouthed, as his fingertips and feet found impossible holds on the ridged stone. "You are Spider-Man!" she exclaimed.

Lost in thought, it took her several moments to realize that Jace had been saying something to her. When she blinked at him, she saw a wry grin spread across his face. "What?" she asked, ungraciously."I wish you'd stop desperately trying to get my attention like this," he said. "It's become embarrassing.""Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt," she told him."I can't help it. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain.""Your pain will be outer soon if you don't get out of traffic. Are you trying to get run over by a cab?""Don't be ridiculous," he said. "We could never get a cab that easily in this neighborhood.

She winced and covered her ears as Eric,onstage, wrestled with his microphone."Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. "Come my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!"Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him."Clary giggled. "Who uses the word 'loins'?""Eric," Simon said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them."'Turgid is my torment!" Eric wailed. "Agony swells within!""You bet it does," Clary said.

But isn't that what love is, Clarissa? Ownership? 'I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine,' as the Song of Songs goes.""No. And don't quote the Bible at me. I don't think you get it...It's not just that someone belongs to you, it's that you give yourself to them. I doubt you've ever given anything to anyone. Except maybe nightmares.""To give yourself to someone?" The thin smile didn't waver. "As you've given yourself to Jonathan?" "What?""You think I haven't seen the way you two look at each other? The way he says your name? You may not think I can feel, but that doesn't mean I can't see feelings in others.