Dear Alec and Magnus, How are you? Everything's just fine here. Thanks for you postcard with the picture of the Taj Mahal. It looks nice. Disregard my last few postcards. I see I overdid it. To make it up to you, I'm going to redecorate Magnus's loft for free. -Izzy

Raphael snapped, "This isn't funny." "That's why no one's laughing." Jace stood, hauling Raphael upright, jamming the tip of his knife between Raphael's shoulder blades.

Actually," said Jace, "I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own.

No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it's cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.

If you do not intend to help us," she said, "then leave this house. Dawn is coming." "I am not a vampire." Magnus said. "I shall not disappear with the light" "You will if I kill you before the sun comes up.

Perhaps [James Herondale] loved vice for vice's own sake.

The kitchen was bright, cheerful yellow, the walls decorated with framed chalk and pencil sketches Simon and Rebecca had done in grade school. Rebecca had some drawing talent, you could tell, but Simon's sketches of people all looked like parking meters with tufts of hair.