"Where's Simon?" Clary interrupted. Isabelle wobbled. "He's a rat," she said darkly. "Did he do something to you?" Alec was full of brotherly concern. "Did he touch you? If he tried anything-" "No, Alec," Isabelle said irritably. "Not like that. He's a rat"

"If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood,"

"Well, I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death."

"To love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be destroyed."

"A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance novel covers? The-"

"I didn't," said Jace. "At least, I didn't finish it. It's Magnus Bane." He grinned at Alec mockingly. "Rhymes with 'overcareful pain in the ass.'"

"Good idea," said Jace. "I shall be Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein."

"Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me."

"If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have asked."

"I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work." He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned."

"I always thought cab drivers didn't pay attention to traffic, but this is ridiculous,"

"Oh-Simon!" "No, I'm Jace," said Jace patiently. "Simon is the weaselly little one with the bad haircut and dismal fashion sense."

"Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually, he offered to wake you up himself, but since it's five a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."

"He cut his glance toward Jace, who was walking a few paces ahead of them, apparently conversing with the cat. Clary wondered what they were talking about. Politics? Opera? The high price of tuna?"

"I thought it'd be something cooler, like a van with 'Death to Demons' painted on the outside, or . . ."

"He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in a fur bikini, either,"

"Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn't be bothered to call me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wanna-be goth you probably met at Pandemonium. After I spent the past three days wondering if you were dead." "I was not shacking up," Clary said, glad of the darkness as the blood rushed to her face. "And my hair is naturally blond," said Jace. "Just for the record."

"I've never asked, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random teenagers lurking in his shrubbery."

"If you were half as funny as you thought you were, my boy, you'd be twice as funny as you are."

"Well there goes my plan for selling them on eBay," Clary muttered. "Selling them on what?" Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power."

"I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners."

"You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The other ten percent."

"Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie."

"Is there anything I could get for you?" he asked. "Something to drink? Some tea?" "I don't want tea," said Clary, with a muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them." "Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing."

"Do you want to tell me what this is about, or should I just call the police?" "And tell them what?" Jace said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."

"I'll get the coffee if you find us a seat. What do you want?" "Just coffee. Black – like my soul."

"Jesus!" Luke exclaimed. "Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling."

"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!"

"It's a girl," Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one."

"What?" Simon looked alarmed. "I'm not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn't a very attractive woman, for her age."

"Meanwhile," Simon added, "I wanted to tell you that lately I've been cross-dressing. Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know."

"And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way."

"I've given lots of people chances, she said suddenly, as if Marion was still in the room to hear us. But there's only so much faith you can have in people."

"I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her."

"You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop."

"You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place."

"There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand."

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."

"At every wedding someone stays home."

"My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000"

"It was just perfect, just right all at once."

"It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine."

"Maybe not, she said as we came to the car. But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works."

"I started crying again, my voice ragged. He told me to calm down. He told me it was going to be all right. And then, he told he'd be there soon.”"

"He was very quiet for a moment. Where are you?"

"You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.""

"The answer . . . he said slowly."

"Yeah, I said, swallowing and looking out my open door, at the ocean. The answer's yes."

"Mclean? he asked. "Is that you?"

"Yes, I said after his hello."