How It All Goes Down
The Circle and the Brotherhood
- Jace and Clary take Simon back to the Institute.
- They would give him the grand tour, but the only sightseeing he's interested in is Isabelle.
- She has Simon drooling right away, and it's not because of her cooking, which Jace says is really bad.
- Isabelle's a hot dish (okay, we'll stop with the cooking puns) and Clary is so jealous.
- She can't stand the heat, so she gets out of the kitchen. (Okay, we promise we'll stop for real now.)
- On the way to visit Hodge in the greenhouse, Jace gives Clary a crash course in gender politics, Shadowhunter-style.
- The greenhouse, by the way, is really pretty and colorful and fragrant and wonderful and wow. In books, we don't have allergies, so we totally want to go to there.
- When Clary and Jace give Hodge the scoop on what happened at Luke/Lucian's, Hodge goes pale with the realization that Valentine's Circle is making a comeback.
- He leads them to the library where he pulls out a book containing the loyalty oath of the Circle of Raziel: "I will be ready to risk my life at any time for the Circle, in order to preserve the purity of the bloodline of Idris" (9.138).
- Clary says it best when she says, "It sounds creepy […] like a fascist organization or something" (9.141). Yep. We hear ya, honey.
- She's right, too. Hodge says that the Circle's plan was to wipe out the half-demon Downworlders in order to restore the world's purity. Very original, Emperor Palpatine. Oops, we mean Voldemort. Ack, we mean Valentine.
- As if that wasn't enough, Hodge reveals that he was in the Circle.
- So was Clary's mother.
- And one more parting shot before the curtain falls on Part One:
- Jocelyn was Valentine's wife.