Isabelle's clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a "rack.

Jordan followed, buttoning his jeans and muttering about how there was nothing strange about having a pattern of dancing penguins on your underwear.

He grinned. It was a wicked grin, the kind that made the blood in Clary's veins run a little faster. "You want to go on a date?" Caught off guard, she stammered. "A wh-what?" "A date," Jace repeated. "Often 'a boring thing you have to memorize in history class,' but in this case, 'an offering of an evening of blisteringly white-hot romance with yours truly." "Really?" Clary was not sure what to make of this. "Blisteringly white-hot?" "It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.

He looked back at her, and when she saw the look on his face, she saw his eyes at Renwick’s, when he had watched the Portal that separated him from his home shatter into a thousand irretrievable pieces. He held her gaze for a split second, then looked away from her, the muscles in his throat working.

Waiting for a special occasion to kill me? Christmas is coming.

Will looked up in apparent relief when Charlotte and Tessa came in. "Will," Charlotte said, "You remember Miss Gray?" "My recollection of her," said Will, "is most vivid indeed.

Memories did one no good, not when one knew the truth in the present. Will was beautiful, but he was not hers; he was anybody's. Something in him was broken, and trough that break spilled a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away.