She shook her head. She was so pale under the diffuse lamp-light that she looked almost transparent, as if Simon could have looked right through her. The way, he supposed, he always had.

She had taken him for granted, she thought with surprise and shame, watching the flickering candlelight. She had assumed his kindness was so natural and so innate, she had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each of them from the other. Any effort to accept the loss of his family with equanimity. Any effort to remain cheerful and calm in the face of his own dying.

I swear that woman had a previous career as a death-hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials," said Will. "And I do wish she wouldn't sing about poisoning just after we've eaten.

But how do they get inside?" "They fly," Jace said, and indicated the upper floors of the building. [...] "We don't fly," Clary felt impelled to point out. "No," Jace agreed. "We don't fly. We break and enter." He started across the street toward the hotel. "Flying sounds like more fun," Clary said, hurrying to catch up with him. "Right now everything sounds like more fun.

Well, I'm certainly not Ragnor Fell the exotic dancer.

So you're not going to speak tonight," Tessa said. "At all." "Not unless you instruct me to," said Will. "This evening sounds as if it might be better than I thought.

When somebody tells you there's something wrong with your book they're almost always right, when they tell you how to fix it they're almost always wrong.