City of Broken Hearts #3
“Not that I owe Shadowhunters any explanation,” she said, “but my love potions are good. Always have been. Ask anyone, Hyacinth has whatever you need to soothe the savage heart. It’s just the last couple days they’ve started acting a bit…strangely.”
“Strangely how?” Simon asked.
“Strangely!” the werewolf shouted—then turned to reveal the donkey tail sprouting out of his jeans.
“Uh, give us a moment to discuss,” Simon said, trying not to laugh.
He and Izzy ducked out of an emergency exit, its alarm long since disabled, and found themselves standing outside under the defunct marquee of the theater.
At least it was a little privacy. “I think something’s going on with love,” Simon said.
Izzy snorted. “Now you want to talk about our relationship? By the Angel, Simon, you pick the worst times—”
“No, not our love. Love! The candy, the potions—and something happened at the concert, something that made everyone else sing the wrong lyrics. It sounds crazy, but I think there’s something demonic happening that’s targeting romance?”
“Well, yeah. Obviously,” Izzy said. “That’s definitely happening, and its source is right over there.” She pointed over his shoulder.
Simon turned around—and stared. Red, angry sparks were fountaining into the sky about a mile to the east, each spark turning to a red heart before disappearing behind a gray wall of buildings. As they fell through the sky, each red heart shattered and turned black.
Someone was definitely doing this, and that someone was definitely upset. Simon grabbed his bow. Izzy drew her electrum whip.
And they set off to find out who was trying to put an end to love.
—
Being a Shadowhunter, Simon had learned, was sometimes a lot like being a detective.
Surveillance, stakeouts, lots of piecing together clues, sniffing out sources, following the breadcrumbs left behind by some shadowy big bad, hoping you could figure out what evil was up to before it managed too much evil-ing.
Sometimes it was a lot simpler. Sometimes it was following a massive tower of red sparks—invisible to mundane eyes—through the city of New York until you ended up on the Lower East Side.
At Seward Park, to be specific, a small green space surrounded by tall buildings in the middle of which was an angry demon pacing in circles and muttering to herself.
The demon was shaped like a woman—a stunningly beautiful woman, Simon admitted to himself, if you didn’t mind the burning red eyes and sharklike teeth.
Not to mention the dark sense of foreboding she seemed to have brought with her, which had clearly driven away any wandering mundanes. The area was deserted.
“Demon?” Simon murmured, as they carefully closed in, weapons drawn.
“Greater Demon,” Izzy whispered, and Simon nocked an arrow on his bow. “She’s clearly very powerful. And she’s talking.”
She was talking. “You bastard, Krog,” she was hissing, as red sparks flew from her clawed white hands. “You swore you would stand by me for eternity. Now you leave me with no explanation? Tell me you cannot bear to be in my presence? I will rend you.”
“Maybe she’s not after all romance,” said Isabelle. “Maybe she just wants to rend Krog…”
“Who’s Krog?” said Simon. “Another demon?”
But they had moved too close to the demon-woman in the park. She whirled on them, her long white hair flying around her. She bared her shark’s teeth. “Shadowhunters,” she snarled.
Everyone was always hissing or snarling the word Shadowhunters, Simon thought sadly. Why was no one ever yelling “SHADOWHUNTERS!” in excitement or relief? Or glee, even?
“Are you here to slay me? To put a final blade through the broken heart of the demoness Ajatara?”
“Maybe?” Isabelle said. “It sort of depends on what you’re up to. Is it just the weird lyrics and the candy vandalism? Because—you might not know this—but it seems like you’re causing a lot of fights.”
Ajatara smiled a bitter smile. “I do know it! I have brought this hellstorm of heartbreak down on the city, so that all may suffer as I am suffering!” She was screeching, Simon thought, but she was also—crying? There were tears streaming down her face.
Simon and Izzy exchanged a glance. “Demons can cry?” he asked.
“It’s a trap,” Izzy said. “And an offensive one, thinking she can weaponize the presumption of female vulnerability. She’s not going to fool us into thinking she’s some damsel in distress.”
Simon raised his bow and aimed at Ajatara. But the demon collapsed to her knees, and held out her arms to him. “Kill me, yes,” she said. “Put an end to my torment.”
Simon sighed. He’d never killed a demon who wanted to be killed before. In fact, a demon who wanted to be killed seemed like maybe it was a trap.
He lowered the bow, though not very far. “All right,” he said. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”
—
“For generations, Krog and I have been happy in our love,” Ajatara said. “We have turned my realm into a hellish paradise, every creature great and small a servant to our bliss—”
“Sorry,” Simon interrupted, “but can we maybe start at the beginning, like, who are you? Also, what is a Krog?”
“Who am I? I am Ajatara, lord and mistress of an icy realm of pain and horrors, duchess of sorrow, former consort of Belial. Surely you have heard of me?”
“Uh, sure,” Simon lied. “Keep going.”
“Krog, of course, is my consort. My handsome prince of darkness, despite his occasional toadish ways. Krog is devoted to me. Our black dead hearts are intertwined, as if staked together by blade and barbed wire, and this is how it has been for more than a century, and must be forevermore. Except. Yesterday Krog told me he couldn’t stand the sight of me now that he knows what I’ve done. ”
“Really? What did you do?” Izzy demanded. Simon elbowed her. It seemed slightly ill-advised to be blunt with a Greater Demon.
“I’ve done nothing!” Ajatara wailed. “Nothing that should trouble Krog or make him doubt me!”
“Well, you are a demon,” Simon pointed out. “You’ve probably done a lot of evil things.”
“Of course I have, you pebble-brained Shadowhunter. Krog loves it when I do evil. Last week I burned down an orphanage for his birthday!”
Izzy played with her whip. “Maybe we should just kill her now?” she suggested.
“Kill me if you like,” said Ajatara listlessly.
“I go to my death gladly, knowing the world will suffer the same torments I suffer forever. You think you have seen dreadfulness? It has only begun. My destruction of this realm will follow the path of heartbreak. First, the small cruelties, the doubts that grow. Then the anger that tears, that rends. Whole countries shall be torn apart. Then, at last—desolation.”
Okay, that does sound bad. “To clarify,” Simon said. “If we kill you, this whole desolation thing will keep happening?”
“It will only get worse, Shadowhunter,” Ajatara said. “But go ahead and end my existence in this world. It matters not to me.”
“But why this world?” Simon said. “Why not rain down destruction on some other world?”
“Because Krog is here,” said Ajatara. “He has taken from me my will to live, and for that I will have vengeance on him and everyone around him.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Izzy snapped. “Look at you, you’re a Greater Demon and you’re sitting here whining about some…Krog being mean to you? You’re probably worth a million Krogs. Have a little self-respect. A crappy boyfriend isn’t worth dying over.”
“Spoken like a woman who’s never been in love,” Ajatara said coldly.
It’s not true, Simon thought. Izzy was in love—with him. They loved each other. There was no possibility the demon was seeing something he refused to see, like that maybe Izzy’s feelings weren’t the same as his anymore.
It happened, though. People fell out of love. Simon suddenly felt cold, as icy as Ajatara’s realm, and very alone.
“Ajatara. If we find this Krog and bring him back to you, will all this heartbreak magic stop?” Simon asked.
“You? Bring Krog back to me?” Ajatara said. “But that is not what Shadowhunters do.”
“Well, we aren’t your ordinary Shadowhunters,” Simon said.
“If you bring Krog back to me, and he loves me again,” said Ajatara, sounding a little dubious, “then yes—all this will stop.”
Simon and Izzy exchanged a look. Isabelle gave him a tiny nod.
Simon returned it. Sometimes being a Shadowhunter was like being a detective.
Sometimes it was like being an action hero.
Today, apparently, it was like being a couples therapist. And maybe fixing Ajatara’s relationship issues would take his mind off his own.
“Okay,” he said. “Where is Krog now?”
—
It took forty minutes for their taxi to get to the northern tip of Central Park. Simon and Izzy fought the entire way.
It had started when they first got into the taxi. Izzy shut the door behind them, turned to Simon, and said—rather coldly, he thought—“It’s nice that you’re so willing to help this demon with her romantic problems.”
Simon frowned. “It’s not that I really want to help her with her romantic problems, it’s that I’m trying to prevent—how did she put it?—desolation. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds bad on a global scale.”
Izzy scowled. “Oh, you’re a world-saver now, huh? ‘Simon wants to save the world and then go teach at the Scholomance, because he’s so important.’ ”
Simon stared at her. “Izzy, what the literal f—”
He broke off, because the taxi driver was slamming his fist into the dashboard. He appeared to be engaged in a screaming match with his wife on the phone.
Right.
“Okay, no,” Simon said to Isabelle. “We can’t fight. If we do, we’re just playing into Ajatara’s revenge. We’re being affected by her magic, just like everyone else.”
“Don’t lecture me!” shouted Izzy. “I can’t believe you have more sympathy for some demon’s feelings than you have for mine.”