Page 94 of Better in Black
“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…Krogbeing 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 soimportant.’ ”
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.”
Simon looked out the window as they entered Central Park, just in time to see a horse and carriage ride past, with a couple of tourists nestled in it trying to share a romantic moment. And failing,probably because of the dozens of angry, magical toads hopping all over their carriage. As Simon watched, one of the toads bit a tourist, who screamed.
Not good,Simon thought. He looked at Izzy, who was wiping away tears, and instead of feeling the way he usually did when he saw her cry, he felt angry.
“This is totally unfair,” Simon said. “What have I ever done to make you think I don’t care about your feelings? And you’ve been mad at me since we left the club—”
“Oh, you mean since you informed me you were moving to the Carpathian Mountains for a year?”
“You made it pretty clear you don’t care whether I go or not!”
“Maybe I don’t,” Izzy snapped. She crossed her arms over her chest. They spent the rest of the ride in silence.
—
Blockhouse No. 1 was a small stone fort at the isolated edge of the park’s North Woods. It had been built in the nineteenth century, but as Simon had learned from a school trip, its foundations probably dated back to the Revolutionary War. New York City was full of this kind of thing, weird artifacts from a distant age that most people didn’t even notice. The remnants of old New York were, in that sense, a little like the Shadow World, Simon sometimes thought. It was amazing what people could teach themselves not to see.
Ajatara had told them that they’d probably find Krog sulking somewhere near the old fort. Izzy had suggested Ajatara just go retrieve him herself, being a Greater Demon and all, why not justmakeKrog forgive her? But Ajatara refused. All appearances to the contrary, she said, she still had her dignity.
