Alec and Simon return from their blood drinking adventure and everyone mocks Alec for being uncomfortable about the homoerotic undercurrents of being bitten by a vampire.  Because, you know, gay guys are supposed to be totally cool with any and all male/male encounters of an even vaguely sexual sort?  Uhg, this book continues to treat homosexuality like a either a joke, a porn set up, or both.

Although the lesbians are at least allowed to be a normal couple for a change. 

Clary sat up with a yawn. “Are you sure? Do you need a blood replacement rune?”

They have such a random collection of runes.  There don’t seem to be any rules for what can or can’t be affected by them, so whenever a new one pops up I’m alternately going “really, that too?” and “uhg, whatever.”  They could say there’s a ‘kill people with my mind’ rune and I’d have to just go along with it, because it’s not like there’s any sort of guideline to contradict that.  Which, really, draws a lot of tension out of the whole magic system when you know that literally anything could show up next.

Jace and Alec wander off to talk about how awesome it is to be best friends.  Still missing from the story: any scene where they act like best friends.

Later, Jace and Clary head down to the underground lake they found for some skinney dipping.  They talk in vague terms about whatever she did during the fire, talking about how they can’t tell the others because the others aren’t as practices at keeping secrets from Jonathan and apparently this is something that even a wrong glance could give away.  For once, some secret keeping actually makes sense.

“Last night,” he said. “You saved me. The heavenly fire would have killed me

Wait, that was only a night ago?  Damn.  Lightning fast pace you’ve set for yourself, eh, book?

Then they get down to the skinny dipping and more words are spent on reminding us that Jace is so very, very pretty than were spent on that plot teaser.  Sigh.

There is much kissing and schmoopy time and talking about kissing and shmoopy time and also apparently Jace can touch her without being worried about burning her by accident now.

Jace tells her about his “I’m the king of hell” dream from way back when they first arrived, expecting it to push her away because he’s so ‘tragic and quasi-evil’ despite, you know, not really doing much.  Clary comes up with some armchair psychology to excuse it all and just kisses him more instead.  Because, let’s face it, it wasn’t really worth dwelling over anyway.  Wah, boo hoo, you had a fucking dream, wow, so dark. 

I have creepy dreams when I eat too much cheese, so color me unimpressed.

And then they finally actually have sex.  It’s several pages long and described exactly the same as all their make-out sessions, since the actual coitus part is left pretty vague.  So, actually, sort of a letdown.  Nothing here we haven’t’ seen before.

Back with Simon and Isabelle.  Isabelle wakes up and wants kissy schmoopy time.  Have we switched to a porno channel?

Jia has a short scene at the very end, trying to save the chapter from being 100% sex and sex talk and sex jokes.  It’s two pages long and a poor showing , but hey, good effort.  Mia has sent her a message warning about Jonathan’s impending attack the following night.  (That they got from a deranged cockroach, but hey, better safe than sorry.)