Keeping demons from this world is your mandate, a mandate from heaven. And a mandate from heaven isn't something you can just ignore.

I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours.

She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. " I'ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to 'ate you, there's easy enough ways of making it 'appen. You don't need my help with the poor thing." And with that, she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. "Not for her," he said, under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, "for me..." and he leaned his head against the cold iron gate.

Drowning yourself won't help, she told herself sternly. Now, drowning Will, on the other hand.

His beauty did not blaze like Will's did in fierce colors and repressed fire, but it had its own muted perfection, the loveliness of snow falling against a silver gray sky.

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to.

Words have the power to change us.