Cassandra Clare

If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?

“By the Angel, it’s like the ninth circle of Hell down here—”

“The ninth circle of Hell is cold,” Tessa said automatically.

Will stared at her. “What?”

“In the Inferno,” she told him. “Hell is cold. It’s covered in ice.”

He stared at her for another long moment, the corners of his mouth twitching, then held out his hand. “Give me the witchlight.” At her blank expression he made an impatient noise. “The stone. Give me the stone.”

The moment his hand closed about the stone, light blazed up from it again, raying out through his fingers. For the first time Tessa saw that he had a design on the back of his hand, drawn there as if in black ink. It looked like an open eye. “As for the temperature of Hell, Miss Gray,” he said, “let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who’s trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”

Will, blood still dripping from his chin, looked at Jem with his eyebrows raised. “Nice throw,” he said.

Jem shook his head. “You bit de Quincey,” he said. “You fool. He’s a vampire. You know what it means to bite a vampire.”

“I had no choice,” said Will. “He was choking me.”

“I know,” Jem said. “But really, Will. Again?”

“You never laugh,” she said. “You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention.”

For a moment he was silent. Then, “You,” he said, half-reluctantly. “You make me laugh. From the moment you hit me with that bottle.”

“Do reasons matter when there’s nothing that can be done to change things?”

It was Jem who broke away and ran up the stairs to her. As he reached her, she saw that he had high color in his face, and his eyes were bright and hot. She wondered how much of the drug Will had let him take, so that he would be ready to fight.

“Tessa—,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to say good-bye,” she said quickly. “But—it seems odd to let you leave without saying anything at all.”

He looked at her curiously. He did something that surprised her then, and took her hand, turning it over. She looked down at it, at her bitten fingernails, the still-healing scratches along the backs of her fingers.

He kissed the back of it, just a light touch of his mouth, and his hair—as soft and light as silk—brushed her wrist as he lowered his head. She felt a shock go through her, strong enough to startle her, and she stood speechless as he straightened, his mouth curving into a smile.

“Mizpah,” he said.

She blinked at him, a little dazed. “What?”

“A sort of good-bye without saying good-bye,” he said.

“You think she’s pretty?” Will was surprised; Jem rarely opined on this sort of thing.
“Yes, and you do too.”

ou think she’s pretty?” Will was surprised; Jem rarely opined on this sort of thing.
“Yes, and you do too.”

e. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel! I seek scandal and low companionship."

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. It’s a line from Horace. ‘We are dust and shadows.’