Daylighter’s Comments (group member since Jan 18, 2010)

Daylighter’s comments from the The Infernal Devices group.

Ana wrote: "Shadowhunter Girl wrote: "Wait a sec, I thought Shadowhunters died when they are bitten by vampires. What twith the holy water on all. I think I need to read them again."

I think if I remember cor..."

Yeah basically

Rayzel wrote: "*SPOILERISH* But I swore it already mentioned in one of the books that Will dies eventually since Magnus refers to him in past tense. So I don't think he becomes a vampire... *SPOILER OVER*"

I know what you're talking about, it's from CoFA.

Enelra wrote: "yes with daylighter.
remember Luke? a full pledge shadowhunter bitten by a warewolf turned into a warewolf. so there is also this possibility that Will could become a vampire. (though i dont like ..."

It's not possible, I don't know who came up with that theory.

Shadowhunter Girl wrote: "Wait a sec, I thought Shadowhunters died when they are bitten by vampires. What twith the holy water on all. I think I need to read them again."

The holy water stops the transition, not cause it kills them.

Jade wrote: "Daylighter wrote: "Jade wrote: "where does it actually say silent brothers live forever?"

Silent Brothers don't live forever, they live longer than humans and Shadowhunters."

dont shadowhunters h..."

Yes they do.

But Will isn't immortal, even if he were to be a Silent Brother.

Jade wrote: "where does it actually say silent brothers live forever?"

Silent Brothers don't live forever, they live longer than humans and Shadowhunters.

Shadowhunter Girl wrote: "yeah. Just now:)"

That's amazing =)

Oh never mind, I see what you guys meant now =)

Noor wrote: "Shadowhunter Girl wrote: "“Wo wei ni xie de,” he said, as he raised the violin to his left shoulder, tucking it under his chin. He had told her many violinists used a shoulder rest, but he did not:..."

But she's engaged to the guy... of coarse she's gonna spend more time with him than Will! It doesn't make sense for her to learn Welsh and spend more time with Will!

Inês wrote: "Daylighter wrote: "Inês wrote: "ok.... after think a lot and discuss this with a friend of mine we got a new theory...

The Brother Z is Jem: first we thought that he was will but... Jem discover t..."

Because Cassie said that the 2nd cycle of TMI will have Clary on each cover with another character. So Magnus & Alec is not possible.

Inês wrote: "ok.... after think a lot and discuss this with a friend of mine we got a new theory...

The Brother Z is Jem: first we thought that he was will but... Jem discover that Will and Tessa trully love e..."

Alec and Mganus aren't going to be on the CoHF cover!!

City of Lost Souls: Stephen's Letter to Jace

SPECIAL CONTENT from City of Lost Souls

BARNES AND NOBLE will be carrying their own special edition. It will contain a letter from Stephen Herondale (Jace’s real father) to Jace, written before he died. It will be detachable and affixed to the back of the book.

“To my son,
If you are reading this letter, then I am dead.

I expect to die, if not today, then soon. I expect that Valentine will kill me. For all his talk of loving me, for all his desire for a right-hand man, he knows that I have doubts. And he is a man who cannot abide doubt.
I do not know how you will be brought up. I do not know what they will tell you about me. I do not even know who will give you this letter. I entrust it to Amatis, but I cannot see what the future holds. All I know is that this is my chance to give you an accounting of a man you may well hate.
There are three things you must know about me. The first is that I have been a coward. Throughout my life I have made the wrong decisions, because they were easy, because they were self-serving, because I was afraid.
At first I believed in Valentine’s cause. I turned from my family and to the Circle because I fancied myself better than Downworlders and the Clave and my suffocating parents. My anger against them was a tool Valentine bent to his will as he bent and changed so many of us. When he drove Lucian away I did not question it but gladly took his place for my own. When he demanded I leave Amatis, the woman I love, and marry Celine, a girl I did not know, I did as he asked, to my everlasting shame.
I cannot imagine what you might be thinking now, knowing that the girl I speak of was your mother. The second thing you must know is this. Do not blame Celine for any of this, whatever you do. It was not her fault, but mine. Your mother was an innocent from a family that brutalized her. She wanted only kindess, to feel safe and loved. And though my heart had been given already, I loved her, in my fashion, just as in my heart, I was faithful to Amatis. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae. I wonder if you love Latin as I do, and poetry. I wonder who has taught you.
The third and hardest thing you must know is that I was prepared to hate you. The son of myslef and the child-bride I barely knew, you seemed to be the culmination of all the wrong decisions I had made, all the small compromises that led to my dissolution. Yet as you grew inside my mind, as you grew in the world, a blameless innocent, I began to realize that I did not hate you. It is the nature of parents to see their own image in their children, and it was myself I hated, not you.
For there is only one thing I wan from you, my son — one thing from you, and of you. I want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be. Love where you wish to. Believe as you wish to. Take freedom as your right.
I don’t ask that you save the world, my boy, my child, the only child I will ever have. I ask only that you be happy.

Stephen”

City of Lost Souls: DSCS

WELL, HERE ’TIS. THE DSCS.(DIRTY SEXY CLUB SCENE) FROM CITY OF LOST SOULS.
Now keep in mind a version of this does still exist in the books, but it is much less . . . well. You’ll see. I wrote this in Mexico, probably having had too much mezcal, and I was trying to capture a mood of really dark, tipping over the edge sensuality, doing things that are probably a bad idea, you get the picture. I also recall reading bits of this aloud to Holly Black, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ellen Kushner, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Delia Sherman, who never dropped her knitting. So it can’t be that naughty…can it?

I think for those who really hate spoilers you might want to avoid this because the things about it that may be the most shocking are not the sexy bits but the beginning….

“What’s going on?” It was Jace, having fought his way free of the pack of dancers. More of the shimmering stuff had gotten on him, silver drops clinging to the gold of his hair. “Clary?”

“Sorry,” she said, getting to her feet. “I got lost in the crowd.”

“I noticed,” he said. “One second I was dancing with you, and the next you were gone and a very persistent werewolf was trying to get the buttons on my jeans undone.” He took Clary’s hand, lightly ringing her wrist with his fingers. “Do you want to go home? Or dance some more?”

“Dance some more,” she said, breathlessly. “Is that all right?”

“Go ahead.” Sebastian leaned back, his hands braced behind him on the fountain’s edge, his smile like the edge of a straight razor. “I don’t mind watching.”

Something flashed across Clary’s vision: the memory of a bloody handprint. It was gone as soon as it had come and she frowned. The night was too beautiful to think of ugly things. She looked back at her brother only for a moment before she let Jace lead her back through the crowd to its edge, near the shadows, where the press of bodies was lighter. Another ball of colored light burst above their heads as they went, scattering silver, and she tipped her head up, catching the salt-sweet drops on her tongue.

Jace stopped and swung her toward him. She could feel the silver liquid trickling down her face like tears. He pulled her against him and kissed them, as if he were kissing tears away, and his lips were warm on her face and made her shiver. She reached for the zip on his army jacket, ripped it down, slid her hands inside and over the cotton of his shirt, then under the hem, her nails scratching lightly over his ribs. He stopped and cupped the back of her neck with his hand, leaning to whisper in her ear. Neither of them could be said to be dancing any more: the hypnotic music went on around them, but Clary barely noticed it. A couple dancing past laughed and made a derisive comment in Czech: she couldn’t understand it, but suspected the gist was get a room.

Jace made an impatient noise and then he was pulling her after him again, through the last of the crowd and into one of the shadowy alcoves that lined the walls.

This alcove was conical, with a low stone pedestal in the center on which an angel statue, about three feet tall, stood. It was made of black basalt, but its eyes were glass, like doll eyes, and its wings were silver. The floor was slippery and damp. They skidded across it to fetch up against a wall, Jace with his back to it, and then he was kissing her, bruising hard and hungry kisses. He tasted salt-sweet, too, and moaned as she licked the taste off his lips. Her hands threaded through his hair. It was dark in the alcove, so dark Jace was just an outline of shadows and gold. She gripped the edges of his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders; it fell to the ground and he kicked it away. Her hands came up under his shirt, clawing at his back, fingers digging into the skin there, softness layered over hard muscle.

He kissed her harder and she clutched his shoulders as he sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and bit down on it, sending a shock of pleasure mixed with pain through her body. She squirmed to get closer to him and felt his breath quicken; she could taste blood in her mouth, salt and hot. It was as if they wanted to cut each other apart, she thought, to climb inside each other and breathe each other’s breath and share each other’s heartbeats, even if it killed them both. There was blood under her nails where she had clawed his back.

Jace pressed her forward, spinning them both around so she was pinned between his body and the wall. As they turned, he caught the edge of the angel statue, toppling it to the ground and shattering apart in a cloud of marble dust. He laughed and dropped to the ground in front of her on his knees among the remnants of broken statuary. She stared down at him in a daze as he ran his hands up her boots, to her bare legs, to the lace that edged the bottom of her slip dress. She sucked in her breath, as his hands slipped like water up and over the silk, to her waist, to grip her hips, leaving streaks of silver on the silk.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “Jace?”

He looked up at her. The peculiar light in the club turned his eyes an array of fractured colors. His smile was wicked. “You can tell me to stop whenever you want,” he said. “But you won’t.”

“Jace…” His hands bunched in the silk of her dress, dragging the hem up, and he bent to kiss her legs, the bare skin where her boots ended, her knees (who knew knees could be so sensitive?) and farther up, where no one had ever kissed her before. The kisses were light, and even as her body tensed that she wanted to tell him she needed more, but didn’t know what, didn’t know what she needed exactly, but it didn’t matter because he seemed to know it. She let her head fall back against the wall, half-closing her eyes, hearing only her heartbeat like a drum in her ears, louder and louder still.

City of Lost Souls: Chapter 12 "The Stuff of Heaven" Deleted Scene

"A little present for trending #weareshadowhunters

A present!
Family stuff prevented me from working on the Will vs. Ducks story today, so instead I’m giving you a cut scene from City of Lost Souls. It isn’t in the final book, but it does … illuminate some of the character dynamics. Spoilery so if you’re avoiding all spoilers, do not click!"__Cassie

Clary was in Jace’s room when he and Sebastian returned to the house. She had found very little during her search. There was nothing in Sebastian’s room that could be considered interesting except some books written in Latin, and her Latin wasn’t good enough to read them. There were pages that looked like they were torn from old guidebooks, illustrated with black and white pen sketches, pinned to the walls, but there seemed no connection between them. In the fireplaces were chunks of ash that looked like the remains of burned photographs, but they crumbled away when she tried to pick them up.
Jace’s room was next, neat as a pin, containing almost nothing of his belongings. There were weapons, but she didn’t recognize them, or the books on the shelves either. His closet was filled with clothes, but like the clothes in the master bedroom, they were largely new: he must have bought them in the past week or so, since price tags still hung from several of them. They were not what she thought of as Jace’s style. He had always dressed simply — things that were plain, solid colors, clothes that fit well but didn’t catch attention. He was gorgeous enough that it didn’t matter, she had always thought; he looked amazing in just jeans and a t-shirt. And he had plenty of those in his closet now, but the shirts had designer labels, the coats and jackets were Burberry and Hugo Boss and Dolce & Gabbana.
Like the clothes in Sebastian’s closet.
Like the expensive clothing Valentine had always worn.
She closed the closet door and sat down on Jace’s bed, telling herself she was being stupid. Designer clothes were nothing to get worked up about. There were other things in the room that spoke of the Jace she had always known — the neatness, the arranging his weapons on top of his dresser in order of size, the books on the nightstand. He always used a thin dagger as a bookmark; that hadn’t changed. The photo of the two of them, stuck to the wall. Even the citrusy soap in his bathroom was the same soap he always used —
She heard steps on the staircase, voices. Sebastian’s rose: “Where is she?”
She barely had time to switch off the light, fling herself down on the bed and curl up with her head on the pillow when the door opened. Jace stood there framed in the hallway glow, Sebastian behind him. She raised herself up on her elbow, blinking sleepily at them despite the racing of her heart. “Did you guys just get back?”
Jace gave Sebastian a look — a look that said clearly: I told you she’d be here. “Didn’t you hear us come upstairs?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, I got tired. I think I’m still exhausted from staying up till dawn the other night.” She looked at Jace demurely. “I was feeling a little lonely, so I thought if I curled up in your bed …”
Do I sound like I mean it? His face had relaxed, but Sebastian was looking at her as if his gaze could piece through her like clear glass, and he was amused at what he saw.
She sat up, shaking her hair back, and reached for the lamp on the nightstand. “Don’t —” Jace began, but she had already flipped it on.
She stiffened. The two boys looked down at her, Jace with some concern and Sebastian with his usual quirky edge of half-amusement. His dark eyes met hers with the message they always held, the one she tried not to read: We know, you and I. We know the truth.
But none of that was what had made her stiffen. It was that both of them were was splattered with blood — there was a smear of it across Jace’s cheek, staining his sleeves, and a rent in his shirt, its edges dark and stiff with dried blood, though the skin underneath was unmarked. Sebastian, though — Sebastian had blood even in his white-silver hair, and on his clothes, and on his hands so thick it looked as if he were wearing red gloves. The silver bracelet he wore around the wrist where his hand had regenerated was spotted with red.
Clary heard her own voice as if from very far away. “What happened?”
“We ran into a little trouble,” Sebastian said. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.” He tilted his head to the side. “You look as pale as a ghost, little sis. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen worse. We’re Shadowhunters. This is what we do.”
“Of course.” Clary spoke mechanically. “I just wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Then you’ve nothing to worry about. Most of this isn’t either of our blood.”
She swallowed against her dry throat. “So whose is it?”

City of Lost Souls: A Question of Power

SPECIAL CONTENT from City of Lost Souls

Target will be carrying its own special edition: the short story “A Question of Power” in which Alec and Camille talk about Magnus and his father.

“Tell me more,” Alec said, pacing up and down the concrete floor of the abandoned subway station at City Hall. “I need to know,”

Camille looked at the boy in front of her. She was lounging on the scarlet divan she had furnished the small space with. It had a soft velvet nap, though it was worn in places –not the finest furnishing she had ever known, and a transit station below Manhattan hardly matched up to her studio in Paris, her town house in Amsterdam, or the great manor house buy the river near Saint Petersburg that she recalled now only as a dim memory. “Know more about what?” she demanded, though she knew perfectly well the answer.

“About Magnus,” said Alec. He held a witchlight stone in his hand carelessly, as if he had forgotten it was there. So typical of the Nephilim, who took for granted their angel-granted powers and the magic that ran in their blood. The stone cast its light upward, showing clearly the planes and angles of Alec’s face. “He won’t speak to me about his past, and I ca’t stand it. I can’t stand not knowing.”

She looked at the boy. He was pale as milk, his blue eyes startling against so much white skin and the darkness of his hair and eyelashes. He was long-legged, slender as a willow branch, but strong: a very pretty boy, even to her, who looked at human beings and saw mortality and rot.

“You may have to stand it.” She said, trying to keep the boredom out of her voice. “If Magnus has not shared his secrets with you yet, he may choose never to do so. So you may have him and his secrets, or not have him at all.”

“But he shared his secrets with you.”

She shrugged lightly, “We’d known each other a long time. I had a long time to give. A long time to earn his trust. It’s a pity that you don’t. Even Shadowhunters who don’t die young live for such a short span, as all mortals do.” She smiled, feeling the sharp kiss of her fang teeth against her lower lip. She was hungry. She thought about the boy, the pulse in his neck that beat more quickly as he spoke, the widening of his eyes. She wondered if he would cry. Human tears were salt, like their blood.

But he didn’t cry. His expression hardened, and she saw a flicker of his ancestors in the set of his jaw. “Who is his father?”

She let her head fall back against the divan. “And why should I tell you?”

“Because you want me to kill Raphael,” he said. “And because I could make life very unpleasant for you if I want to.” He raised the witchlight, and its cold white rays spread through the room. So he had remembered it after all.

She straightened up, pushing her hair back. “This is the last time Alexander. After this I will not say another word until you come to me with Raphael’s blood on your hands and his heart strung on a chain for me to wear.”

Alec swallowed, “Tell me. Where he was born. Who his father is.”

“You would call it Indonesia,” said Camille, “but when he was born it was the Dutch East Indies. Magnus’s mother was of mixed blood-a white father and Indonesian mother. His father was a Prince of Hell. You know the Princes of Hell, angel boy?”

Alec’s winter-pale skin went even paler. “Of course I do,” he said stiffly. “I am a Shadowhunter. But they are…mythic. The greatest angels of Heaven became the greatest princes of Hell. And the greatest of them all is….Lucifer.” He sucked in a breath. “You aren’t saying…”

Camille pealed with laughter. “That Magnus’s father is the Light-Bringer? The Morning Star? Certainly not!”

“But he is a Prince of Hell.”

“You will have to ask Magnus yourself,” said Camille, playing with a tassel on the end of the couch arm.

“Maybe he never told you.” Alec said, “Did he love you enough to tell you? Did you love him?”

“He loved me,” said Camille, thoughtfully, “I did not love him. I was fond of him. But I never loved him. Not like that.” She shifted irritably. “I grow tired of telling you things, little Shadowhunter, especially when you have been of so little use to me.”

Alec’s cheeks flushed the color of pale carnations. Camille could tell by the tension in his slender body that he was holding back both anger and shame, he needed her, she thought with satisfaction, needed her to satisfy the curiosity that consumed him, fed by fear. His need of her was like her need for blood.

“One last thing,” he said in a low voice. “Once last thing, and I will leave you alone.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Am I different?” Alec said. “Is there any way he loves me that is different than the ways he’s loved before?”

She let her lops curl into a slow smile. “The answer to that question, Alexander, will cost you.”

“Cost me what?” What more?”

There was pain in his voice.

“Blood.” She said.

A long silence stretched between them. Finally, in a incredulous tone, he said, “You want to drink my blood?”

She chuckled. “Do you know how long it has been since I drank from a willing human? And Shadowhunter blood has a special quality. Not all of you are like your Jace, of course, carrying daylight in your veins. But still—a vintage of sensual quality.”

The flush in his cheeks deepened. He stared at her as she lay back against the velvet, half-closing her eyes. She knew her beauty could not warm or tempt him, but it did not matter. Beauty was power, but there were other kinds of power.

This close to Alec, she could smell his scent: sandalwood cologne, winter chill, the salt tang of human fear. And they were human, Shadowhunters. Underneath it all, still human, prey to human emotions, human weaknesses, and human fears, for all that they believed they were special.

“Very well,” he said, “Just this once.”

She watched through half-lidded eyes that hid her triumph, the slight trembling in his fingers as he reached for the button that fastened the shirt cuff at his left wrist and flicked it open, then offered her his bare and unprotected skin.

City of Lost Souls: Chapter 7 "A Sea Change" Deleted Scene

Outtake from City of Lost Souls

Maia was waiting for them in MacCarren Park, on one of the narrow paths dusted with the skeletons of fallen leaves. She wore a gray leather jacket and a soft pink hat, pulled down over her ears, from which her wildly curling hair escaped in a golden-brown halo. She waved tentatively as they neared her; the first words out of her mouth were:
“Did you hear about Luke?”
They all nodded — Simon had told Isabelle and Jordan what he knew on the L-train ride over — and she fell into step beside Jordan as they went through the park, a moving foursome. Jordan had his hands in his pockets and was talking quietly to Maia, werewolf to werewolf. Simon glanced at Isabelle,walking silently beside him.
Weak November sunlight had come out from behind the clouds and picked out reddish highlights in her hair. She smelled like his own apple shampoo and Shadowhunter. “So,” he said. “Do you want me to ask why you were passed out in my bed last night when I came home, or not?”
“I didn’t pass out in your bed,” she said, as they swung left on Manhattan Avenue. The G train stop was there, and a guy was leaning against the railing, picking out a tuneless song on a guitar. Across the street was a Thrifty store where you could still get ice cream cones for 50 cents. “I passed out in your living room and Jordan put me in your bedroom.”
“He did?”
“Well, if it wasn’t Jordan, someone broke into your house and put me in your bed. Personally I prefer the Jordan theory. Less creepy.”
“It’s not that, it — what were you doing, drunk, with Jordan? He doesn’t drink much.”
“I’d imagine not. He has awful taste in tequila.”
“Iz.” Simon put his hand on her wrist. “I only want to know why you came over.”
She turned her head away from him, her shining black hair slipping across her back. There was a small Mark on the lower left side of her throat, just above her collarbone. It looked vulnerable, somehow. Simon wanted to brush it with his fingertips, but kept his hands in his pockets. “Everything sucks,” she said. “I saw Helen and Aline last night. We had dinner. They’re just so happy, and I keep thinking —” She bit her lip. “My parents are getting divorced, I think,” she said. “Alec is happy but I never see him. Jace is [redacted-sorry guys!]. Max is dead. Clary —”
“I get it,” he said, gently. “You needed someone to talk to and you couldn’t think of anyone else.”
“No!” Isabelle said, frustration clear in her voice. “I wanted to talk to you. I always — I mean, I like to talk to you. Even if things weren’t like this, I would . . . “ She looked at him, sidelong. “I mean, we did date.”
“But it wasn’t — it was never serious,” Simon said awkwardly. “I didn’t think you wanted . . .”
“Did you? Want it to be serious?” Isabelle asked. There was a certain stiffness in her voice — pride, Simon guessed. Isabelle wasn’t the sort of girl who made the first move with guys. She wasn’t the sort of girl who had to.
“Did you?”
Isabelle made an exasperated noise. “Look, I didn’t come by last night because you’re number six on some list and everyone else is unavailable. I came because — I like you. You make me feel better. Maybe it’s something about your face.”
“My face makes you feel better?” So she was saying he was reassuring, sweet, dependable, all of those things; things he knew Clary thought he was; things that hadn’t helped her look at him instead of Jace, not for five minutes. And Isabelle liked her guys dangerous, not . . . reassuring. Reassuring was for stuffed animals. How could you be a vampire and not be sexually threatening? He wasn’t sure, but somehow, he’d managed it.
He was saved more torturous conversation by their arrival at Magnus’ apartment, the lobby of which, as usual, smelled like a combination of cat pee and old pizza. Simon made his way up the stairs after Isabelle — remembering the first time he’d been here, crushed out on Izzy and secretly hoping to make Clary jealous, not that that had worked. Magnus’ apartment had been full of rainbow smoke and Downworlders; now, as they filed in, it was quiet and full of late morning sunlight.
Magnus, Jocelyn and Alec were seated around a long rectangular table. Magnus was clutching a cup of coffee, wearing a dark green jumpsuit with yellow racing stripes, his dark hair an unruly mass of bed-head. Alec looked like . . . Alec. He raised his eyebrows at his sister as she came into the room, but didn’t seem inclined to kill either her, or Simon.
But Jocelyn looked at Simon with eyes as piercing as nails.“Where’s Clary?” she said, tightly.

City of Lost Souls: Chapter 4 "And Immortality" Deleted Scene

Deleted scene from the Seelie Court in CoLS

This time, when Clary rang the bell, instead of finding themselves in the dark corridor before the Queen’s chamber, she and Simon landed in a dank, mildew-smelling cave, the walls trickling with cold water, the ground muddy and brown beneath their feet. Several passages led off what seemed to be the main chamber. As she turned, Clary’s boots slipped on the wet stone, and she caught Simon’s arm to steady herself.
He was glancing up, looking around at the walls of the cave, his dark eyes curious. He put a hand to the stone and took it away, showing her the way his palm was shining. “Look,” he said. “Phosphorescent moss.”`
“Faeries used to use it to make torches,” Clary said, remembering her Codex. “That, and trapped will-o-the-wisps in glass.”
“Come on.” Simon tugged her gently forward toward one of the darkened passages that tunneled into the wall.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“When in doubt, head upward,” he said. “I learned that in Boy Scouts. Besides, I can see perfectly well in the dark.”
“So can I, if I make a night vision rune — oh!” Clary gasped, and they both came to a halt as Meliorn appeared before them, his white armor shining like witchlight in the dimness. There was an unpleasant expression in his pale eyes.
“So you have returned to our lands, human and liar,” he said to Clary. “You are either very brave or very stupid to desire to come before the Queen after the trick you attempted to play on her.”
“I wouldn’t say it was an attempt,” said Clary. “Last time I looked, it worked.”
“Yeah,” said Simon. Clary glanced sideways at him, and he shrugged. “Just backing you up.”
“What prevents me killing you here and taking the prize from you?” Meliorn inquired, emotionlessly.
“Two things,” Clary said, ticking them off on her fingers. “One, I don’t have it on me. He does.” She indicated Simon. “Good luck trying to kill him. Two, if you do, the Queen will never find out what I wanted, and you know she’s curious. If she wasn’t, she would have taken the whistle away from me, not let me keep it.”
Meliorn sighed. “You are the worst kind of stupid. The kind that thinks it is clever. Very well, little human Nephilim. Follow me. Perhaps, if you are lucky, the Queen will let you live.” He turned and stalked off down the passage.
“Remember when we thought faeries were little creatures who lived in toadstools and wore buttercup hats?” Clary looked over at Simon as they both began to follow the faerie knight. “Wasn’t that awesome?”
Simon grinned, a flash in the darkness, and squeezed her hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clary shook her head. “There’s more to honesty than … than an arrangement of words. They say faeries can’t lie, but you lie in your intentions, your attitude, your demeanor —”
“And humans do not?” The Queen’s gaze slid across Clary and Simon. “This vampire, this Daylighter you bring everywhere with you — he is the one whose kiss you did not desire, here in my Court, is he not? Do you care for him at all, or is only the Mark of God on him that causes you to bring him with you, like a shield? And you,” she added, turning to Simon, “you who loved her, now you lend your not inconsiderable power to the project of finding the one she loves more? Where is the advantage to you?”
Simon cleared his throat. “Perhaps that is the difference between my kind and yours,” he said. “Sometimes we do things that aren’t to our advantage.”
“Ah,” said the Queen. “Stupidity, you mean.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.” Clary couldn’t help being impressed — the last time they had been here Simon had been too uncomfortable and out of his depth to say more than a few words; now he was holding his ground. “Now, do you want the ___ or not? We have business to attend to.”
“I could take it from you,” said the Queen. “The girl will not be difficult to dispose of, and as for you, Daylighter, those who serve me serve with their lives. A suicide rush could greatly inconvenience you, despite your curse.” She ran her eyes over him lingeringly.
“I am the adopted daughter of Council member Lucian Graymark,” said Clary. “I am close with the Lightwoods of the Insititute. Is it worth earning their wrath and ire just to revenge yourself upon me for tricking you? Besides — I’ve always heard that faeries appreciated cleverness. You wouldn’t want it said that you can’t appreciate a good trick, even at your own expense, would you?”
Clary saw by the narrowing of the Queen’s eyes that she had gambled hard — maybe too hard — on the faerie woman’s pride; but a moment later, the Queen was smiling, and the creatures in the walls shrieked appreciatively. “Tricky like your father,” she said, and Clary felt it like a kick in the stomach. “Very well. What would you like of me in return for the ___? I shall decide if your proposal merits a negotiation.”

City of Lost Souls: Magnus and Alec

A small present

"Up on my site under Extras: a deleted scene from City of Lost Souls with Magnus and Alec.
It’s not particularly spoilery, but of course, you should avoid if you are avoiding all things CoLS."__Cassie

Warlock law was very clear on this point: if you loved a mortal, all well and good, but it was not your place to interfere with their mortality. It took a long time to become used to such a law . . . usually until you realized that being immortal was less a gift than a burden.

Magnus dropped the snuffbox back onto the desk and picked up the phone, hitting the speed-dial button for Alec’s number. When Alec picked up he sounded both harried and hopeful: “Magnus? Have you found anything?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Crushing disappointment made Alec’s voice sound small.

“But I was thinking about parabatai,” said Magnus. “When parabatai are especially close, they can sense if the other is dead, or Changed, or —”

“I know,” said Alec. “I know that. I felt it — for that moment that Jace died, back in Idris. But this isn’t like that.” Magnus could picture him, eyes blue in his pale face, tugging at a snarled lock of his hair. Alec usually looked like he’d fallen out of bed and into a random pile of clothes, rather than as if he’d actually picked out an outfit, and since Jace had gone missing, he’d started to look like he’d stopped brushing his hair, too. “I just feel nothing.”

“Like really nothing? As in . . . nothingness?”

“Right . . .?” Alec sounded confused.

“That actually does give me some ideas,” said Magnus. “I’ll do everything I can to help, you know that, right, Alexander? Not because it’s the Clave, but because it’s you.”

“I know.” Alec was silent for a moment. “It’s good to hear your voice, even if you can’t help,” Alec added, and hung up abruptly.

Magnus placed the phone next to him and sat for a moment, still enough to hear himself breathing. I’m losing him, he thought. I don’t know how or why, but I know that I am.