New York, 2012

Two years.

Two years since graduating from the Academy in Idris, and Simon found he still wasn't used to the physical grace that came with being a Shadowhunter. It wasn't just the angelic runes his skin could now bear. From the moment he'd drunk from the Mortal Cup, angel blood had sung in his veins, filling him with a newfound nimbleness and seemingly boundless energy. With his memory intact, he could now remember his months as a vampire, the strength he'd had – and still, it couldn't beat being Nephilim. Being one of Raziel's children was like having the body of a superhero.

Said body served him well in fighting demons, and in other, more personal areas of his life.

Isabelle giggled breathlessly as she lay back, tracing the parabatai rune on Simon's bare chest, over his heart. "Stamina runes put to good use, I'd say."

"I'd say so too," Simon agreed breathlessly.

"So, what now, Lord Montgomery?"

Simon stretched lazily and put an arm around Izzy, pulling her to his side. They were both covered in perspiration, and even with his Shadowhunter physical limits, Simon was panting. "Our activity of the past fifteen minutes has taken its toll on poor Lord Montgomery," he announced. "I believe a nap is due."

"Lord Montgomery isn't hungry? Because this fair maiden most certainly is."

Simon groaned. "Izzy, no."

"I'm dead serious." Isabelle sat up in bed, reaching for her bra. The moonlight filtering in through the window shone softly on her white skin, turning it luminescent. Briefly, Simon wished he had back his vampire sight, that he might properly appreciate the way the light of the moon turned her skin to pale crystalline glory. Every day he spent with Isabelle was a day he learned something new about her.

Isabelle had now put on her bra and was pulling on a pair of jeans. Sighing, Simon threw back the covers and reached for a pair of boxers. "What do you feel like eating?" he asked grumpily.

Forty minutes later, the two of them were strolling through the nighttime streets of New York, chewing on pizza slices.

"You know," Simon said through a mouthful of Neapolitan pizza, "maybe this wasn't such a bad idea."

"You should've learned by now that I'm always right," Isabelle responded sweetly. Even with her cheeks full as she munched her greasy pizza, Simon reflected, she managed to look sexy.

It was getting late, and New Yorkers were beginning to go to bed. Simon loved his hometown fiercely – you couldn't have a more New York upbringing than the one he'd had in Brooklyn. He loved everything about the city, everything that everyone else found revolting: the stink of pollution and exhaust, the garbage, the urine, the incessant traffic noises and honking, all this was home to him. New York was part of him just as much as the Angel's blood now was.

"Don't you ever feel like you have the world at your feet in this city?" Simon exclaimed as they discarded their pizza boxes in a nearby garbage can. "Like everything's possible? Like you're in the capital, the centre of the universe?"

Isabelle regarded him thoughtfully with her dark, dark eyes. "Maybe. You grew up a mundane – maybe that's why you feel that way. For me, and for those of us who grew up Nephilim, Alicante is the centre of our world. The city of glass and demon towers will always be the focal point around which our universe revolves."

Simon made a face. "Yeah, Alicante's pretty. But do they do pizza there the way they do here?"

Isabelle laughed. "You'd think they would, since Idris is in Europe, but no, not really…"

They were walking out of Manhattan now, onto Brooklyn Bridge. The dark, swirling waters of the East River churned below them. Once upon a time, Simon and Isabelle might have caught a glimpse of laughing nixies or singing mermaids, playing in the surf. Not anymore. In the years since the Dark War and the Cold Peace that had followed, the water-dwelling faeries of New York had hardly been seen or heard of, retreating into the depths of the water where they couldn't be followed. The Fair Folk as a whole had largely retreated from the mundane world into their own lands, forced into isolation on the fringes of the Shadow World by the Clave. Looking down into the dark water now, Simon had a disturbing thought.

"What if the nixies and mermaids are dead?" he remarked to Isabelle. She snorted and laughed.

"Dead? Why would they be?"

"We haven't heard from them in years. Surely there'd be some evidence of their continued existence if they were alive."

Isabelle sighed in affectionate exasperation, a sigh that told Simon even though he was a Shadowhunter now, he had a long way to go. "When the fey agreed to the Cold Peace, they essentially agreed never to show their faces in polite society again. And they haven't. They're very good at hiding when they need to, faeries. And what they've – "

She broke off abruptly. Simon turned to her in puzzlement, only to find her eyes flashing in alarm. She was looking down at her neck, where her ruby necklace hang. It glinted dully in the weak moonlight. As Simon watched, the ruby pendant pulsed.

Isabelle's head whipped up, the playfulness of her expression gone, her eyes alert and watchful and wary. "Demons," she whispered, even as the stench of a demonic presence hit Simon's nostrils.

Without saying a word, Simon drew a short tube from the inside of his boot. "Michael," he whispered, and the seraph blade blazed to glorious life. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Isabelle begin to unwind her electrum whip from her wrist.

"Hero time," Simon whispered as the two Shadowhunters inched forward.