Page 92 of Better in Black
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’sthe 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 alovepotion,” the werewolf whined. “Not a turn-me-into-a-donkey potion!”
Izzy and Simon wheeled on the faerie, who raised her hands in defense.
“Not that I oweShadowhuntersany 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, notourlove. 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.
