“The crowd's murmuring rose to a roar, and for the first time in a week the agony of worry for my son was drowned out as his father strode out onto the sand. Arius.”

“With a quick check, he pulls out onto the road and we roar off in a trail of dust, leaving my stomach still somewhere on his driveway and my heart completely in his hands.”

“And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.”

“It was the first time in years I didn’t wonder if my father was out there, looking at it too.”

“His body walks out onto the darkened stage , and a roar goes up from the crowd. He stands in front of the mic, and he can feel his face twist in a sneer-the Elvis sneer from his dreams-though he never told it to move. He is powerless now, a spectator at his own moment of glory.”

“Valentine whirled. Clary, lying half-conscious in the sand, her wrists and arms a screaming agony, stareddefiantly back. For a moment their eyes met—and he looked at her, really looked at her, and sherealized it was the first time her father had ever looked her in the face and seen her. The first and onlytime.“Clarissa,” he said. “What have you done?”Clary stretched out her hand, and with her finger she wrote in the sand at his feet. She didn’t draw runes.She drew words: the words he had said to her the first time he’d seen what she could do, when she’ddrawn the rune that had destroyed his ship.MENE MENE TEKEL UPSHARIN.”