Clary goes on and on about how the person she saw was unmistakably Jace, because he was acting just like Jace.  Then they go on about how Jace wouldn’t be all buddy-buddy with Jonathan unless something was up.  So…it stands to reason that he wasn’t acting “just like” Jace, doesn’t it?  He may have been walking around and making jokes, but there’s more to a person’s personality than just the bare surface of things.  In fact, I’d argue that one’s internal moral compass is a stronger indicator of personality than simply how one makes jokes.  Except in this book, of course, where the morals tend to be whatever’s most convenient for the situation.

“That was what I thought at first. But when he was possessed by Lilith, he was like a robot. He just kept saying the same things over and over.

Okay, that was one data point, one possession.  Do we know if that’s how all possessions work?  Maybe Lilith was just really bad at it, or maybe there’s “automon possession” and “super-secret spy possession so they have to act normal” and Lilith just went for the first to save time.  Why can’t Jace just be a different kind of possessed?  At least let the experts in demon-hunting weigh in, instead of the chick who didn’t know about the existence of demons a mere few months ago.

“It takes months to develop Stockholm syndrome,” Alec objected.

LOL, no.  Stockholm syndrome was named after a bank robbery that happened in Stockholm, Sweden.  Two men took some employees captive, and when the police tried to rescue them, the hostages sided with the bank robbers.  This entire event lasted six days.  That’s how fast it’s set in.  With the right techniques, Jace’s past history of loving abusive parental figures, and a bit of demonic influence, I’d say it’s quite possible for him to develop some very strong Stockholm syndrome in the two weeks that he’s been missing.

“We can’t tell the Clave.” Isabelle’s voice was hard.

“Why not?”

“If they think he’s cooperating with Sebastian, the mandate will be to kill him on sight,” Alec said. “That’s the Law.”

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous now.  The Clave has not been presented in a consistent enough manner for me to believe anything that happens.  They’ll banish Hodge and the Lightwoods instead of killing them after they try to start a genocidal war, but they’ll shoot on sight one teenager who is doing stuff under very suspicious and cloudy circumstances, without a trail?  Not even a “bring in alive if possible”?  The Clave’s laws do not follow any sort of logical sense or continuity.  Nothing they do matches up, either in priorities or severity, with anything else they do.  There’s no clearer way the author could say “Yeah, I don’t fucking care, I just need an excuse to keep the adults out of the way.”

Because when you want to write a story about teenagers saving the world, clearly the logical worldbuilding choice is to include a group of adults that could do it better.

They end up concluding that Jace is playing along with Jonathan in order to get something, and it’s all a ruse, and since the Clave is now spontaneously murder-happy, they’ll keep it all secret.    Then they decide to go to Magnus and ask if he has any ideas.

“He won’t go to the Council. Not if I ask him not to.”

“He’d better not,” said Isabelle indignantly. “Otherwise, worst boyfriend ever.”

Because…the way to show you love and care for someone is to ignore the law?  Because, if Jace really would be killed by the Clave, then the only reason Magnus would have for protecting him is Alec’s asking?  I mean, boyfriend-ing seems like it should be way down on the list here.  If he turns in Jace to be killed, that makes him a shitty person, not a shitty boyfriend.

Stop acting as if romantic relationships are the ultimate definition of everything, book.

They talk about whether or not to go see the Fairy Queen now, and there’s just so much stupid.  Simon brings up the point that they don’t need her anymore ebcause they know where Jace is.  1) No they don’t; they know where he was, but they don’t know where he is and 2) the queen offered assistance in finding him and you haven’t found him yet.

Look back at Ch 1:

“I will assist you in finding him,” said the Queen. “I give you my word that my help would be invaluable. I can tell you, for instance, why all of your tracking spells have been for naught.

That seems worth still enlisting her help.  I mean, nothing you’ve learned so far makes any of that offer useless.

It’s all moot, though, because Clary didn’t get the rings.  And…?  Go get them; the case is open.  Two of you live there.  All the adults are still busy and anyway Clary can still make portals on a whim.  Just go get the damn things.

“It’s a good thing we know the person who’s dating Magnus,” he said. “Otherwise, I get the feeling we’d all just lie around all the time wondering what the hell to do next. Or try to raise the money to hire Magnus by selling lemonade.”

Shut up, you were going to him for every little toothache any of you had well before he and Alec started dating.

Anyway, everyone decides that the Fairy Queen is now a no-no and only the main teenaged characters are allowed to know anything, so they’re going to all split up and go see Magnus (honorary teenager, I guess) tomorrow.  (Hey, if the Fairy Queen is so dangerous, why are all you kids just merrily skipping off after failing to get the rings and then also failing to show up for your appointment with her?  Do none of these people understand the concept of not pissing off the highly dangerous magical creatures?)

Alec had lied. It wasn’t Magnus who had something to do that afternoon. It was himself.

Never an editor around when you need one…

The City Hall subway station had been out of use since 1945, though the city still kept it in order as a landmark; the 6 train ran through it on occasion to make a turnaround, but no one ever stood on this platform.

Book, really, just look at yourself.  If the city is keeping it maintained, then the maintenance workers will be standing on the platform at, I’m guessing, a fairly regular basis.  Subway stations do not just magically maintain themselves.

Oh, yeah, and it’s viewable to the public now.  People can stay on after the last stop and ride the train through the turnabout, thereby getting a glimpse of the station.  Even before that was a thing (to be fair, it’s only been going on about a year) there’s still the drivers of those trains.  When you admit that 6 trains come by daily, you admit that at least 6 drivers have eyes on the station.  Every day.  Which would pretty clearly make it a shitty hiding place.

Okay, so that we’ve established that this is the worst secret meeting place ever, Alec is there meeting Camille.  She sent him a note in an earlier chapter; I don’t remember if I mentioned that.  As Alec arrives, he’s busy emoing about how he’s such a worrywort and can’t stop thinking about his fight with Magnus.

It wasn’t his fault he was hundreds of years old, and that he had been in love before. But it corroded Alec’s peace of mind just the same.

…wait, that’s what you’re mad about?  That he’s had relationships before?  Alec, do you realize that if you were dating a fellow 18 year-old, there’s still a good chance he would have been in love at some point in the past?

God, can we please let the “one and only love, ever, the ever of everness” trope die already?  You’re allowed to fall in love more than once.  It happens.  I’m pretty sure that, like, 99.999999999999999% of people have been in love more than once.  Teenagers can fall in love more than once before getting out of high school.  Your target audience has been in love more than once, book.  And just because a love doesn’t last doesn’t mean it’s not real. 

…that’s what this is, isn’t it?  This trope is the child of the idea that “true” love is going to last forever and ever, and if it doesn’t last that long, then something must have been wrong with it.  Therefore, you can date before you meet your soulmate, but you’re not allowed to be in love with any of those others, because you can only have one “real” love.  Is that it?

Well fuck that.  Long term relationships have three distinct stages.  (Distinct from a neurochemical standpoint: three different sections of your brain light up, depending on what stage you’re in.)  The one people are most familiar with is “infatuation” or “lust.”  Most people erroneously believe that this first stage is the definition of love, and that it has to continue on into perpetuity in order for a couple to remain “in love.”  You would fry your brain doing that.  I mean that quite literally.  The brain eventually has to protect itself from the hormone overload and shuts that shit down.  The other two stages, though?  That’s still love.  Every couple will end the infatuation period and stop being disgustingly “hearts and flowers,” unless we’re talking about two people with some seriously jacked up brain chemistry.  If they have something else to keep them together, they’ll stay a couple until the second stage kicks in.  Same thing for the third stage.  It’s all love, all of it, I promise, not just the first stage.  So the idea that you have to stay in infatuation forever is just, literally, brain-breaking.

Oh the other hand, the first stage is still real.  Just because you didn’t progress to the second stage, that doesn’t mean the first one didn’t happen or that it went wrong somehow.   If you had that first initial blush of “puppy love” and then nothing else after it ended, that’s fine, you were still in love. 

So quit it already with this idea that Stage One is all that counts, it only counts once, and also it has to last forever or else you’re a faker. 

Okay, back to the story.  If I can find the story in the midsts of all this padding.  Good lord, get to the point already, book.  There’s only so many times you can distract with emoing and set descriptions and waffly dialogue. 

She blinked slowly. “Alexander Lightwood,” she said. “I recognized your footsteps on the stairs.”

[…]

“How did you know it was me?” he said. “On the stairway.”

Alec, honey, could at least pretend to pay attention?

After they go over the fact that Camille doesn’t know where Jace is, they get to the point.  Alec wants to be immortal so he can live with his boyfriend forever and ever.

Oh, hello Twilight.  I didn’t expect to see you in this book.

Even though Camille promised him this information in the last book, and even though she sent him a note saying “hey, come get your info” in this book, now she’s spontaneously decided “lolnope” and so they have a fight.  Then at the end of that mess, it was revealed that Camille just wanted to dust off her asskicking skills.  Have none of these people heard of a sparring partner?

The info she gives him is that he can’t become immortal without black magic, but he can take Magnus’s immortality away.

And then there’s a scene shift, because there’s always a scene shift, because fuck you, that’s why.

Back with Clary, who is drawing a new rune that just “came” to her again.  I’m really fucking sick of her Mary Sue power of just knowing things without any effort or skill involved.  Also, this rune that she’s made is “powerful” but entirely useless to the situation at hand.  (We don’t know what it does, because since when has this book ever admitted that readers sometimes need to know things?)  So, by this I think we can guess that the rune will be used at a later point in the book.  Which means that Clary has so little control over this “power” that the runes she makes are nothing more than deus ex machinas that are hand delivered by the author with a little foreshadowing bow placed on top. 

Oh, and also, Clary had some anti-possession ritual done on her when she was little, like all other Shadowhunters.  Just FYI, I guess.

Maia and Jordan are patrolling a hospital, because this book thinks that’s all there is to finding bad guys.  Just “patrol.”  Book, here’s a hint: patrols are a show of force.  They are about the shittiest way you could ever hope to go about actually finding any bad guys.  They don’t work.  Anyone who’s ever been on a patrol will tell you this.  Maybe you’ll find some stupid petty criminals (or the downworlder version of stupid petty criminals), maybe you’ll get lucky and notice patterns or details that will be of use to your intelligence guys, but really, that’s all a maybe.  The main point of a patrol is to be a loud, obvious presence that says “don’t fuck around here or we’ll get you.”  It’s a prevention tactic.  Stop treating patrols as if it’s the best way ever to find the things that go bump in the night.

Also, this “patrolling” thing seems to be the only method they’re using to try and find Jace, as well, which is just doubly stupid.  Do you think he’s going to be hanging out and having a tea party with Jonathan in some abandoned hospital? 

She liked looking at Jordan when he wasn’t looking at her. That way she could watch […] without feeling like he expected anything from her for looking.

Okay, his “I couldn’t help myself” backstory was bad enough, but this isn’t covered by that bit of apologism.  Maia, if you feel like your boyfriend is going to “expect” something from you as…I don’t know, payment for the privilege of staring at his richeous bod or whatever, then get the fuck out.  That’s not something you should be feeling with a kind and respectful boyfriend.  You do not “owe” anyone anything, unless it’s an apology for staring, and anyone who makes you feel otherwise is an emotionally manipulative jerk.

The text continues to be disturbingly fixated on his looks, however, as they walk around talking about how Jace is missing and probably doesn’t want to be found.  And also, Jordan is hot.  No, seriously you guys, Jordan is so hot and he gives Maia the inside tinglies.  He’s just so frikkin hot that I have to resort to Ana Steele speak to tell you how hot he is.  Frikkin hot. 

Uhg, I feel unclean now.

“You know, what you said earlier—that when you ran away you would have liked to think someone was looking for you.” He took a deep breath. “I was looking for you. I never stopped.”

Is that supposed to be sweet?  Because he also tried to rip her throat out and said “you’re mine forever.”  Add it all up and it comes to “creepy as fuck stalker” not “sweet, concerned boyfriend.”

They start to kiss, then Maia finally remembers his “you’re all mine” comment and puts the kibosh on that.  Except the text paints Jordan as this hurt little puppy that Maia just kicked, not a fucker that needs to back up right now or else.  And then it treats Maia like she’s somehow wrong in all this. 

Look, even if, and that’s a big if, but even if you go along with the whole “it wasn’t his fault because he was a new werewolf” thing as being a valid excuse, then it’s still wrong to treat Maia like she’s wrong.  She’s not.  She’s been hurt and she’s been traumatized.  If you go along with the idea that it’s not Jordan’s fault, I still don’t care.  Yeah, it probably hurts him, but I don’t care.  This isn’t about him.  He is not “owed” a relationship with Maia just because he loves her.  He doesn’t get to lay claim to her and then act wronged if she rejects him.  This is not about Jordan, he doesn’t have a claim on another person.  Is it sad?  Yes.  But life’s like that sometimes.  Maia is not “wrong” for wanting to avoid the guy that hurt her, regardless of the circumstances.  The implication here that she needs to just get over her trauma and go snuggle with hot guy simply because he wants her is downright disgusting.