Angels Twice Descending Read Online Free PDF Page A

it? Before life as a vampire, there’d been death. Cold and bloodless and underground.
    Then, later, there’d been the forgetting, and that was a kind of death too.
    Simon wasn’t even a Shadowhunter yet, and already, this life had taken so much from him.
    â€œSimon. I thought you’d be here.”
    Simon turned around and was reminded that for all the losses, there’d also been some very significant gains. “Isabelle,” he breathed, and then, for quite a while, his lips were too occupied to speak.
    *    *    *
    They went back to Magnus and Alec’s apartment. The couple had taken their new baby on vacation to Bali, which meant Simon and Isabelle could have the place to themselves.
    â€œYou sure it’s okay for us to be here?” Simon asked, looking nervously around the apartment. The last time he’d seen it, the decorating ethos had been part–Studio 54, part-bordello: lots of disco balls, velvet curtains, and some appallingly placed mirrors. Now the living room looked like something puked up by a Babies“R”Us—blankets and diapers and mobiles and stuffed bunnies everywhere you looked.
    He still couldn’t believe Magnus Bane was someone’s dad.
    â€œI’m sure,” Isabelle said, stripping off her dress in one smooth motion to reveal the unending stretches of smooth, pale skin that lay beneath. “But if you want to leave . . .”
    â€œNo,” Simon said, struggling for enough breath to speak. “Definitely. No. Here’s good. Very good.”
    â€œWell, then.” Isabelle swept a family of stuffed kittens off the couch, then stretched across like a very satisfied and very dangerous cat. She looked pointedly at Simon’s shirt, which was still on his body.
    â€œWell. Then.” Simon stood above her, unsure what to do next.
    â€œSimon.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI’m looking pointedly at your shirt.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œWhich is still on your body.”
    â€œOh. Right.” He took care of that. Dropped down beside her on the couch.
    â€œSimon.”
    â€œYes? Oh. Right.” Simon leaned toward her and pulled her close for a kiss, which she indulged for about thirty seconds before extricating herself.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asked.
    â€œYou tell me,” she said. “I, your incredibly sexy girlfriend that you never get to see, am prostrating myself before you half-naked, and you seem like you’d rather be watching a baseball game.”
    â€œI hate baseball.”
    â€œExactly.” Isabelle sat up—though, mercifully, she didn’t put any clothes back on. Not yet. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”
    Simon nodded.
    â€œSo if, hypothetically, you were feeling a little nervous about this whole Ascension thing tomorrow, and wondering whether you still wanted to go through with it, you could talk to me about that.”
    â€œHypothetically,” Simon said.
    â€œJust picking a topic at random,” Isabelle said. “We could also talk about Avatar: The Last Airplane , if you want.”
    â€œIt’s the Air bender ,” Simon said, suppressing a grin, “and I love you even if you are nerd-clueless.”
    â€œAnd I love you, even if you are a mundane,” she said. “Even if you stay a mundane. You know that, right?”
    â€œI . . .” It was easy for her to say, and he thought she probably even meant it. But that didn’t make it true. “You think you would? Really? ”
    Isabelle let out her breath in an irritated puff. “Simon Lewis, are you forgetting that you were a mundane when I started dating you? A rather scrawny mundane with terrible fashion sense, I should point out. And then you were a vampire , and I still dated you. Then you were a mundane again, but this time with freaking amnesia. And still, inexplicably, I fell in love with you