With a sigh she reached into her pocket and drew out a small velvet bag, which upended on the table. Two gold rings fell out, landing with a soft clink. Simon looked at them puzzled. "You want to get married?

I think you'll find that one would be self-defeating." Jace said lightly shoving his feet into his boots. "We are bound, he and I. Cut him and I bleed.

Nicely done, brother," said Gabriel from the bed, blinking sleepy green eyes at Gideon. Gideon threw a scone at him.

Without him, [Nate] she was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who cared whether she lived or died. Sometimes the horror of that thought threatened to overwhelm her and plunge her down into bottomless darkness.

What you said was true. we don't live or love in a vacuum. There are people around us who care about us who would be hurt, maybe destroyed if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel.

A lot of people feel like urban fantasy is a shortcut that gets you around world-building, because it's set "in the real world." But it doesn't really work that way, as I found out. You have to come up with just as consistent an internal cosmology and magic system as you would if you were writing high fantasy.

You and your name dropping he said, I knew Michael, I knew Sammael. The angel Gabriel did my hair. Its like I'm with the band with biblical figures.