City of Broken Hearts #2
The best part about playing bass was that Simon didn’t have to sing.
Usually. But Eric had decided they should close the show with a fan favorite, “Your Love Is Like a 2 a.m. Pizza.” On that one, the whole band sang.
The crowd roared as they recognized the opening bass line.
Simon leaned in to the mic, and for a moment, some of his worries about Izzy drained away.
He was playing bass in an actual band with actual fans, and in his off time, he was basically an action hero.
He and Izzy had an amazing, solid relationship.
One argument, if it even was an argument, wasn’t going to change that.
They had worked through much worse. Right now he needed to focus on playing.
He really needed to focus on playing, Simon thought, as the band hit the chorus—because he quickly realized he was singing the wrong lyrics.
Either that, or everyone else was. The chorus was supposed to go:
“Your love is like a 2 a.m. pizza
What I need when I need it
My heart is hot and gooey cheese for you
You’re the spicy marinara of my soul.”
Eric, Kirk, and Matt must have rewritten the song and forgotten tell him, Simon thought, because they were singing,
“Your love is like a stab in the eye
Who needs it, nobody does
Stab stab stab in my heart that’s what you do
You’re the spicy marinara of my soul (please die).”
It didn’t quite have the same ring to it, Simon thought, feeling a bit foolish. It was a jerk move, changing the lyrics without telling him. He spotted Izzy at the front of the crowd, next to Jace and Clary. He grinned and made a face like, can you believe this? She turned away.
“Your love is like a stab in the eye,” Simon sang, when the chorus came around again.
Maybe this version of the song made more sense.
—
Jace was exceedingly polite about how good the concert was, which was how Simon knew things must have gone really badly. The only thing that could stop Jace from mocking the Mortal Instruments was pity.
“The new lyrics on that last song were…an interesting choice,” Clary said. “Very creative.”
“Very something,” Simon agreed. When the show ended, he’d complained to Eric about changing the lyrics.
Eric claimed the new words had just come to him in a moment of inspiration when they were onstage.
“I opened my mouth and they just came out,” he’d said, but couldn’t explain how Kirk or Matt were able to sing along.
Maybe they all played together so much that they had some kind of band ESP thing going?
It made Simon a little wistful for the days when he could have spent all his time playing music and hanging out.
But that was a version of himself that didn’t exist anymore.
“What did you think, Izzy?” Simon asked. Usually after he played, Izzy embraced him and whispered something blush-inducing in his ear. But now she was just standing beside Clary, looking at him like he was a stranger.
“Sorry, I was distracted,” Izzy said. She held up her phone. “An alert just went out. There’s a Shax demon tearing things up in midtown.”
“And they say nothing ever happens in midtown after ten p.m.,” said Jace, but his gold eyes were glowing. He loved battle and fighting demons, in a way Simon knew he himself never really would. “Text Alec, tell him Clary and I are on it.”
As Clary and Jace started to gather up their things and get ready to leave, Simon wondered if Isabelle would be amenable to going somewhere more private.
Somewhere they could finish their conversation.
Before he could suggest it, a very short, very pink warlock planted herself in front of them.
(She was wearing pink from head to toe, but it was the hot-pink skin that really tipped him off to the warlock thing.) “Shadowhunters, excellent,” the warlock said, somewhat to Simon’s surprise.
Usually warlocks weren’t that happy to see them. “Your help is desperately required.”
“What else is new,” Jace drawled.
Clary stepped softly on his foot. “What’s the problem?” she asked, more gently. “We’re in the middle of something right now.”
The pink warlock seemed to swell with anger. “Problem? Try emergency! Someone at the Shadow Market sabotaged my wares!”
“Er—what kind of wares, exactly?” Simon asked.
The warlock crossed her arms over her chest and glared at them. “I specialize in candy.”
Jace raised an eyebrow. “You have a candy emergency?”
“Laugh all you want, Shadowhunter. But something dark is afoot.”
Jace sighed and looked over at Simon and Isabelle. “I know you’re off patrol tonight, but…”
“It’s fine,” Izzy said. She still wouldn’t meet Simon’s gaze. “We’ll look into it. You guys go deal with the Shax.”
“Yeah, we got this,” Simon said. “Don’t we, Iz?”
Isabelle gave him a long, dark look before walking off toward the club’s exit. Clary looked worriedly over at Simon. “Is everything okay?”
“Just a misunderstanding,” Simon said. “It’ll be fine.”
The pink warlock snorted. “Love sucks,” she said.
Simon was inclined, for the moment, to agree.
—
The New York City Shadow Market was housed in a cavernous abandoned theater on Canal Street.
It was one in the morning and, judging from the deserted streets, the city that supposedly never slept was taking a bit of a cat nap.
But the Shadow Market was bustling. Downworlders dashed from one bizarre booth to another.
Some kind of creature had made a nest up in the rafters.
It might have been a bat, but…Simon didn’t think bats usually had three-foot-wide wingspans.
He decided best to stop thinking about it, period.
For a semi-illegal and more-than-semi-dangerous marketplace in the middle of the night, the market had a strangely festive vibe. Simon could imagine that under other circumstances, he might actually enjoy the chance to look around.
But right now he was too worried about things with Isabelle to really focus.
All he wanted was a chance to talk to her.
To explain why taking the job at the Scholomance was actually about him and her.
About their future. About the fact that Izzy and her family had given him so much, and he wanted to give something back.
For a while, he and Izzy had been bobbing along on the current, never really discussing what they were doing in their relationship or what would come next.
He’d hoped this new job might be a way of redirecting the current.
But maybe it was too big a change, too soon.
The problem was, when Simon needed advice, he usually went to Izzy. But he couldn’t go to Izzy about this.
The pink warlock, whose name turned out to be Candy, brought them over to her booth.
It looked like Valentine’s Day had thrown up all over it.
Chocolate hearts, pastel sweets, fussily wrapped gummies, all of them the same shade of hot pink as Candy’s skin.
Simon picked up a lollipop the size of his head.
“You want it?” Candy asked. “That’s fifteen bucks but you get the Shadowhunter discount. So you can have it for twenty-five.”
“For a lollipop?”
“It’s for you and your lady friend to share,” Candy said.
“Twenty-five divided by two is still too much for a lollipop.”
“How about a lollipop that will turn you into exactly who your little girlfriend wants you to be, and vice versa.”
He turned to Izzy. “What do you want me to be?”
Izzy smiled sweetly. “It wasn’t so bad when you were a rat.”
Simon dropped the lollipop back on the table like it was toxic.
“Too soon,” he said, and shuddered. It would always be too soon to laugh about the night he’d spent scrabbling through the Hotel Dumort trying to escape from his vampire captors.
That night had set the course for his entire life, and he did like his life…
but he still begrudged the chaos and loss that had gotten him there.
And he was a little surprised at the way Isabelle had brought it up. She knew it wasn’t his favorite memory, and even when she was mad, Izzy usually wasn’t unkind. Odd.
“Everything here looks fine,” Izzy said, surveying the sweets. “So is this a joke, or is it a trap? And before you answer, I should warn you I’m not really in the mood for either.”
“Fine? Are you blind?” Candy pointed to a display of candy hearts. Simon crouched down to get a better look. Each heart had a little message on it, like the kind he remembered from elementary school, except these messages weren’t exactly heartwarming:
you smell
shut up, jerk
go away
There was a message on the back of that last one.
…and never come back.
“It’s mean,” Simon said, “but it’s not exactly screaming demonic evil.”
“They didn’t say any of that yesterday,” Candy said. “The words changed all on their own. That’s the work of something unnatural.”
Simon thought about what Eric had told him earlier about the new song lyrics. I opened my mouth and they just came out.
Huh.
“I’m not imagining this,” Candy said, “and I’m not the only one!
” She jerked a thumb at a nearby booth, where a slender faerie with pale blue skin and webbed hands was cowering away from a very angry werewolf.
The werewolf admittedly looked pretty scrawny, but even a scrawny werewolf was nothing to mess with.
“Hey!” Simon shouted, and hurried over. “What’s the issue here?”
The faerie tossed back her long, lavender hair. “I don’t need the help of your kind,” she told Simon.
“See?” the werewolf said angrily. “She doesn’t need your help, so get out of my way.” He looked like he was barely out of middle school. “She’s lucky I don’t tear her throat out.”
Izzy approached, and glared at the boy, which had its standard effect. He cowered.
“I told you, it’s not my fault,” the faerie said. “That potion should have worked.”
“You told me it was a love potion,” the werewolf whined. “Not a turn-me-into-a-donkey potion!”
Izzy and Simon wheeled on the faerie, who raised her hands in defense.