Page 96 of Better in Black
“I take it back,” Krog said. He’d stopped pacing and was glaring at Simon. “You’re the fool. Ajatara is a beautiful queen of ice and damnation, and I am just a demon who looks like a toad half the time. I’m a toad guy! I should have known she was just waiting for someone better to come along.” He glanced back and forth between Simon and Izzy. “Surely you two know how that is.”
Simon flinched, without being able to help himself. Krog was a demon, and not that bright a demon, either. But the words had still hurt.
“That’s enough, Krog!” Izzy snapped, and raised her whip. “You’re coming with us. You’re going to face Ajatara and if you want her to apologize to you, you’re going to say so. And I think it’s probably a good idea if your buddy Iago joins us for this little conversation. Where can we find him?”
“Why do you need to talk to Iago?” Krog said. “He’s a prince.”
“Yeah, I get it, he’s a great guy, blah blah blah. How about some identifying marks?”
“No, he’s aprince—a prince of the Shax demons.”
Simon had that triumphant feeling you sometimes get when you fill in enough of the jigsaw puzzle that the picture finally comes clear. At least, if a jigsaw puzzle had the potential to blow up if you didn’t piece the rest of it together in time.
Simon whipped out his phone and called Jace. “Did you get that Shax demon yet?”
“We’re chasing it now,” Jace said, “or we would be if you hadn’t decided this would be a great time for a chat.”
Through the phone, Simon heard the tinny sounds of the city in the background, and the rhythmic thumps of what were presumably Jace’s feet pounding the pavement. Of course Jace could outrun a demon without even sounding out of breath.
“Find out if its name is Iago,” Simon said.
“We’re Shadowhunters,” Jace said with haughty indignation, as only Jace could. “We kill demons, we don’t ask for their names.”
“Another question,” Simon said. “Are you and Clary fighting?”
Now Jace sounded really puzzled. “We were arguing a little,” he said, “but that’s fine. It just spices things up. You know—”
“Too much information, Jace. Put Clary on.”
There was a groan, and some muffled noises, and then Clary came on the line. “Simon, what’s happening?”
“No time,” he said. “But if that Shax demon’s name is Iago, don’t kill it. Herd it toward the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Clary didn’t ask him to explain the request. That was, he supposed, the beauty of aparabatai—but it was also just Clary. She trusted him implicitly, as he trusted her. If asked, she would do everything in her power to make it so.
There was, though, one follow-up question. “What if its name isn’t Iago?”
Simon grinned, pretty sure the follow-up had come via Jace. “In that case, feel free to kill it.”
—
This time, they took the subway. Simon had spent enough time on New York City subway cars to know that if he boarded one with a giant toad demon, probably no one would look twice. Especially at this time of night. Still, everyone agreed it was probably best for Krog to revert to his human form.
“Not bad,” Izzy admitted, once Krog had reverted to a human form that was surprisingly tall, dark, and handsome. Wearing an elegant gray suit, Krog looked somewhat like a demonic Cary Grant, if Cary Grant had had gleaming red eyes. “For a demon.”
“I am on the rebound,” Krog said. “If Ajatara can lower herself to love a mortal, I suppose I could suppress my repulsion long enough to dally with a Shadowhunter. Especially if it gave Ajatara pain.”
“How tempting,” Izzy said. “I’m going to think hard on it. Over there.” She stalked over to the other side of the car and pretended to study the subway map.
Simon couldn’t blame her for wanting to get away from Krog, but he certainly blamed her for getting away first. Because now it was just the two of them. Man and toad, and twenty more minutes to kill.
“So what’s going on with the two of you?” Krog asked, looking back and forth between Simon and Isabelle.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m picking up on a lot of tension in your relationship.”
“You’re probably imagining things,” Simon said, remindinghimself that things would go very badly if he stabbed this demon in the face. Even if it was the quickest way of getting out of this conversation.
