They get back home and Hodge rants and rails.  In typical YA fashion, the text treats this as if Hodge is about as relevant as the “WAHWAH” noise that adults make in Charlie Brown.  Nope, sorry, not buying what you’re selling book.  Hodge has every right to yell at you for being total dumbasses, and you should listen to him.  You won’t, though, because you are teenagers.  And yet you’re going to continue to pretend that you’re “just as mature” as any adult, despite very clearly here being as typical as a typical teenager can get.

Then Simon and Jace get put in the infirmary because they are all banged up.

“But you’ll just spend the next few days in the infirmary with Alec and Isabelle fussing around you. You’ll probably even enjoy it.”

Hodge had been two-thirds right: Jace and Simon both wound up in the infirmary, but only Isabelle was fussing over either

WHY IS ISABELLE BEING CAST IN THE HEALER ROLE AGAIN?!  AND WHY IS ALEC BEING EXCLUDED FROM THE ROLE?!  BY GOD, BOOK, YOU’D BETTER EXPLAIN THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW BEFORE I GIVE YOU A 4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS SURPRISE!

Hodge had fixed the swelling bruise on her arm, and twenty minutes in the shower had gotten most of the ground-in asphalt out of her skin, but she still felt raw and aching.

‘Ground in’ means that the bits of asphalt broke the skin and are imbedded inside.  Which means Clary has open wounds (shallow, but open) with bits of dirt and foreign matter stuck in them.  Notice, she didn’t even get all the dirt out, just ‘most’ of it.  But Hodge apparently isn’t concerned with any of that, just with a bruise.  So in addition to Clary’s un-mentioned neck injuries from the bike bouncing and internal injuries from landing on the ground, she’s also going to end up with infection.  Not that the text will realize any of this, of course.

Hey, guys, guess what?  It’s my favorite part of the book!  BANTER!  Because lord knows they haven’t just been through a traumatic experience and might want to deal with that in a realistic manner.  Nope, the author has more funny lines to throw at us!

“I broke a bone in my foot. It was so swollen, Isabelle had to cut my shoe off.”

“Glad she’s taking good care of you.” Clary let a small amount of acid creep into her voice.

Yeah, that bitch.  How dare she be helpful in any manner whatsoever!  The gall!  It’s clear why you hate her, Clary.  I often hate people who care for my friends, take care of their wounds, and literally give me the shirt of their back.  Let’s be sociopath buddies!

Clary leaves, and Alec follows to ask her to go home.  He doesn’t want her around, because she ‘almost got Jace killed’ by wanting to run off and save Simon.

“For your information the whole thing was his idea. He asked Magnus where the lair was. He went to the church to get weapons. If I hadn’t come with him, he would have gone anyway.”

“You don’t understand,” Alec said. “You don’t know him. I know him. He thinks he has to save the world; he’d be glad to kill himself trying. Sometimes I think he even wants to die, but that doesn’t mean you should encourage him to do it.”

Fuck off, Alec.  If Jace wants to commit suicide-by-heroism, that’s not Clary’s fault.  No, really, that’s not Clary’s fault.  I am fucking sick to death of media that tries to put everything off on the woman for daring to ‘tempt’ a man. 

Men, NUT UP!  Temptation is just that: temptation.  If you don’t want to follow it, grab yourself a spine and say ‘no.’  Furthermore, temptation doesn’t count unless it’s deliberate.  A woman does not ‘tempt’ you just by existing, or by doing her own thing regardless of you.  Mostly because – be prepared for a shock – her world doesn’t revolve around you.  Women can do things completely independently of a man, without it being any attempt to manipulate them into anything.  Grow a pair and take some fucking responsibility.

For bonus points, Clary agrees with me, but utterly fails to realize that she applied the same logic just three chapters ago when she blamed Isabelle for Simon’s rat-juice. 

For a special bonus round, Alec fails to realize that if Jace really is that messed up, um…MAYBE HE SHOULDN’T BE FIGHTING DEMONS!  No, really, this should be obvious.  If a guy is running into harm because he wants to die, then remove him from the chance to run into harm.  Surely you have some fairy shrinks back in your magical-invisible-country, right?  These people have been fighting demons for centuries; Jace can’t be the first of them to do this.

“No,” Clary said. “I’m not. I’m Nephilim—just like you.”

His lip curled up at the corner. “Maybe,” he said. “But with no training, no nothing, you’re still not much use, are you? Your mother brought you up in the mundane world, and that’s where you belong.

See?  The special magic angel blood doesn’t even do anything.  Valentine could quietly build up an army of ninjas and take them all out, no cup/child-murder needed.

They continue arguing, and Clary gets mad at everything.

Against Luke for pretending he cared about her when it was all a lie.

You are a fucking moron.  No, really.  How hard is it to understand that Luke was lying about the uncaring, not the caring?  He even told some lies that you know were false, like how he claimed he barely knew you.  This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out!

After the fight, Clary goes back to her room to draw.

And then she drew Jace standing on the roof, looking down at the ten-story drop below. Not afraid, but as if the fall challenged him—as if there were no empty space he could not fill with his belief in his own invincibility.

For someone who can’t draw an arm correctly, she does amazingly nuanced facial expressions. 

It hurt, knowing that the way she’d always seen her mother, all her life, had been a lie. She slid the sketchpad under her pillow, eyes burning.

Now this is some valid angst.  Why couldn’t we have gotten more of that?

Simon comes in and gushes about how she’s awesome and came to save him and she’s so ‘self-contained.’  Simon, babe, there’s a difference between someone who’s self-contained and someone who has no self to contain.  Being independent and not needing anyone is a far cry from simply ignoring things that require help. 

You know, LIKE FINDING HER MOTHER.

“The weird thing is”—Simon wound a curl of her hair around his finger—”I was joking with Isabelle about vampires right before it all happened. Just trying to get her to laugh, you know? “What freaks out Jewish vampires? Silver stars of David? Chopped liver? Checks for eighteen dollars?’”

Great, one more form of racism to add to the pile.  I was so hoping to expand on that disturbing little bit.

Also, the Star of David bit raises a good point.  Wouldthat have any effect on a vampire?  It would go a long way to dispel the disturbing assumption that Christianartifacts are the only ones with power.  (Same God for both religions, so it wouldn’t entirely change the implications, but it would be a start.)  And yet, the book doesn’t think about that, it just throws the idea away on a terrible joke.

Simon looked gratified. “Isabelle didn’t laugh.”

Clary thought of a number of things she wanted to say, and didn’t say them. “I’m not sure that’s Isabelle’s kind of humor.”

Isabelle isn’t anti-Semite and continues to be the nicest character here. 

Simon then straight-up tells her that he took the rat potion voluntarily, without any prompting, and too fast for Isabelle to stop him.  Clary doesn’t bother to revise her earlier rant or to even think about it.

Simon falls asleep on her bed, so Clary wanders around in the halls.  Jace shows up and says he knows it’s her birthday, so he got food for her and proposes a picnic in the greenhouse.