Maybe I should ask for blessings on my mission against all those who wear white after Labor Day. - Cassandra Clare

"I was thinking about the first time I ever saw you," he said, "and how after that I couldn't forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn't stop myself. I forced Hodge to let me be the one who came to find you and bring you back to the Institue. And even back then, in that stupid coffee shop, when I saw you sitting on that couch with Simon, even then that felt wrong to me — I should have been the one sitting with you. The one who made you laugh like that. I couldn't get rid of that feeling. That it should have been me. And the more I knew you, the more I felt it — it had never been like that for me before. I'd always wanted a girl and then gotten to know her and not wanted her anymore, but with you the feeling just got stronger and stronger until that night when you showed up at Renwick's and I knew."

We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt — I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted — and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.

Above her another window opened, and Alec leaned out. 'What's going on?' His gaze landed on Clary and the others, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. 'What is this? Early caroling?' 'I don't carol,' said Simon. 'I'm Jewish. I only know the dreidel song.'