It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open." Magnus smiled crookedly. "Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn't have a sense of humor.

Stop it," he hissed in her ear. "You'll just make it worse for yourself. It's better if you don't look." "Like you do?" she hissed back. "Shutting your eyes and pretending something's not happening doesn't make it not true, Jace. You ought to know better-

I love you Clary. More then I ever-- God. More than i probably should. You know that, don't you?

How strange to have the power to literally transform yourself into other people, and yet be so unable to put yourself in their place.

He's not in a very good mood," said Luke, pausing in front of a closed door. "I shut him up in Freaky Pete's office after he nearly killed half my pack with his bare hands. He wouldn't talk to me, so"—Luke shrugged—"I thought of you." He looked from Clary's baffled face to Simon's. "What?" "I can't believe he came here," Clary said. "I can't believe you know someone named Freaky Pete," said Simon. "I know a lot of people," said Luke. "Not that Freaky Pete is strictly people, but I'm hardly one to talk.

Strangely, what pierced his heart and mind most sharply was not the memory of her lips under his at the ball, but the way she had leaned into his neck, as if she trusted him utterly. He would have given everything he had in the world and everything he would ever have, just to lie beside her in the narrow infirmary bed and hold her while she slept. Pulling away from her had been like pulling his own skin off, but he'd had to do it.

Years later Magnus would return to London and Camille Belcourt's side, and find it not all that he had dreamed. Years later another desperate Herondale boy with blue, blue eyes would come to his door, shaking with the cold of the rain and his own wretchedness, and this one Magnus would be able to help.