Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3)

by J. C. Nelson

  She turned the card over and read aloud. “Rosa—arrange premarital counseling, at least eight weeks.”

  “Real relationships take time.” I spun around, examining the remains of my accidental parade. “Does anyone else still think it’s a good idea to follow me through the streets?”

  The thick stench of crushed party hung in the air, and one of the flower girls began to weep.

  The Agency business was built on tears. Not literally—the concrete in our building was normal enough, but I dealt with enough weeping on an average day to dehydrate a dolphin. “Listen—back by the gates, I saw a young girl who looked like she fell and scratched her knee. If you hurry, you could get there in time to serenade her.” The group stampeded down the street, singing at the top of their lungs.

  If there wasn’t a girl who’d scratched her knee near the gates, by the time that crowd pushed their way through, there would be. And I’d be safely in the post office. I just couldn’t wait to get in line.

  Which, incidentally, should have been my first tip-off that something was wrong. I rounded the corner to the post office and saw only an empty marble entrance. On a normal day, the Kingdom Postal Service had a line that snaked out of the door like an anaconda made of pure frustration. I walked right up to the door, threw it open, and nearly choked.

  The air indoors had enough humidity that every minute I spent inside would go down as scuba diving practice. The interior of the building held only darkness, and the odor of mud mixed with a smell like someone scooped up a quarter mile of rain forest and dumped it in Kingdom.

  “Hello?” I pushed through a stand of bamboo just beyond the marble arch, wondering if a spell had gone wrong, or maybe a bomb and a spell.

  With a whoosh, a row of torches flickered to life, leading off into the darkness. A distant drum thumped like the beat of my heart echoed, constant and worried.

  “Is anyone here? I just want a package. That’s all I need, and you—” On the edges of my vision, forms swarmed in the darkness, flickers of shadow, glints of torchlight in sharp steel.

  “Come.” A gnome’s voice echoed from about the height of my knee. I swiped a torch from its holder and swung it in a circle. In the guttering light, gnome eyes gleamed back at me from every angle.

  They’d completely destroyed the interior of the post office. The last time I was there, it had been decorated in “Old-Style Government,” which meant marble floors and ceilings mixed with plastic chairs and cheap plastic “Now Serving” signs. Once, giant chandeliers lit vaulted ceilings. Now vines hung like ropes, and gnomes hung like rope-hang-y things from them, every last one sporting a spear that looked like a guitar pick tied to a chopstick.

  Grimm could get his own package, as far as I was concerned.

  “You know, I think I’ll just come back later.” With a swing of the torch, I cleared a path through the gnomes, took a few steps back, and pushed on the door.

  Only smooth granite met my fingertips, cold and impersonal as a “We tried to drop off your package, but you were unconscious” note.

  “Someone open the door.” I pounded for a moment on the stone, then spun and put my back to it. It might not let me out, but the wall wouldn’t stab me either.

  “Come. Make your sacrifice. See if you live.” I couldn’t tell you which one of the gnomes said it, but the rest took up hooting like a pack of two-foot-tall monkeys. I don’t have a problem with the occasional sacrifice, though I’d had to remind people on more than one occasion that virginity was a state of mind. The whole “See if you live” bit didn’t exactly give me warm cuddles, but at least it wasn’t “And then you die.” That’s almost always bad. So I followed.

  Puddles do not belong on the inside of a government facility. The crocodiles were a complete violation of the Exotic Animal law, but I wasn’t going to ask for their facility permit. Turns out, there’s an easy way to tell if it’s safe to cross a given stream: toss a gnome in first.

  After what felt like an hour of listening to tribal chanting, punctuated by the occasional “I’m being eaten by a crocodile” gnome scream, I finally reached what I believed was once the main service counter.

  Torches on either side lit the window, and a beaten brass gong replaced the service bell. I kicked it like a soccer ball, sending a reverberating crash through the post-forest. “I just want my package. I’ll sign. Eight copies, if you want.”

  The gnomes began to chant and stomp their feet in a way that passed way beyond normal into flat-out weird. Then a new one approached from behind the counter, a pair of guitar-pick spears across his back, a miniature hockey stick in his fist. “Make your sacrifice.” He pointed behind me with the stick.

  There, a ring of torches illuminated a carven image of the dark jungle god. Goddess. In fact, the longer I looked at it, the more familiar it looked. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Seriously?” I swore at myself again. In the middle of the wreckage that remained, surrounded by a tribe of feral gnomes, I stood before a fourteen-foot statue of myself.

  “Where did you get the picture to carve this from? I don’t look like that most of the time. And while I’m flattered, if I had a bust like that, I wouldn’t be able to stand up, let alone walk. And my hips do not look like that. Do they?” I almost missed the ring of pointy spears.

  “Make a sacrifice.” The young gnome at the counter screamed, leaping up and down like a gorilla in a rampage.

  “Not going to happen. Let me out of here, give me my package, and for the love of god, carve a new face on the statue.” I could send them a picture of Ari’s stepmother, if they wanted to kneel before a monster.

  Something hissed in the darkness, and a stinging fire lit up my arm. I pulled away a dart the size of my fingernail. For one moment, I thought about calling for Grimm. About screaming for help. Without a mirror to catch his reflection, Grimm couldn’t watch, let alone help. A chorus of hissing, a flurry of pinpricks, and my body lit up all over with pain.

  Then one of them lassoed me with a vine as I felt my hip and pulled out another dart. Like a five-foot, eight-inch tree, I collapsed, crushing a gnome or two as I fell, and the world became very fuzzy.

  • • •

  WAKING UP LEFT me in a worse mood than ever. My first urge was to strangle the nearest gnome, but with my hands tied behind my back, I didn’t have a huge number of options.

  “Put her in the pot,” said one gnome, dressed in a purple loincloth to match his purple hat. “Our goddess demands we make a broth of you, with mint, dill, and just a hint of cumin.”

  The gnome before him held up his hands in a convulsion. “She don’t fit. I don’t know what she’s been eating, but our largest pot won’t hold her rear.”

  “Get the saws,” they said in unison.

  Now, their insults to my posterior I could deal with. Their glee at the thought of chopping me up, that I could get past. The thought of being boiled down as an offering to a grotesque misrepresentation of myself bugged me. “I demand a trial.”

  The blank look adorning their faces told me trials weren’t common.

  “I demand the right to defend myself in hand-to-hand combat.” If they wanted to go Lord of the Flies on me, I could spear a piggy or three.

  The two looked at each other, a look of dread passing between them. “She challenges the chief.” The way they said it, I wondered if the bone saws might have been a more kind option.

  “Yes, she does.” I assumed my normal boss tone. “Get him, let me face him in combat.”

  They scampered away, disappearing into the flickering shadows. The drums grew faster, louder, like the pounding heart of a gnome caught in a crocodile stream. Then the chanting began, low and long. A figure emerged, a torch in one hand, a guitar-pick spear in the other.

  “You will sacrifice to our god, or be sacrificed to our god.” The chief kneeled, pointing with his spear to the statue. His skin, covered
in tattoos, shone blue in the torchlight.

  “I have a strict policy against offering sacrifices to myself.” I wrenched a hand loose, picking half a dozen darts from my skin. “Also against being sacrificed to myself.”

  With a cry of rage or excitement, the chief leaped toward me, swinging his torch so close it swept up against my cheek. Now, I made a point, usually, of being nice to the gnomes. But being speared at, darted, sacrificed, and nearly burned was more than I could take. I seized the torch by the burning end, letting the tar and oil drizzle, still flaming, onto my fingers. “That is enough.”

  I think they expected me to burn.

  They expected wrong. See, one of the main problems with being engaged to a half-dragon man was that even the slightest burp or cough could set the bed on fire. Once, Liam had a stomach bug and spent three days in a steel room waiting for the virus to burn itself out.

  The gnome chieftain’s eyes grew round as the flame guttered out, and he knelt before me. “Forgive us, please. You didn’t come for so long we thought you abandoned us.”

  His round eyes and the droopy hat triggered a memory. “Petri?”

  “Chief Petri.” He scampered, hopping like a bird, closer and closer, until he stood in front of me. With a deft swipe, he sliced loose the bindings on my body. “Please don’t be angry.”

  “Angry?” I punched at him, narrowly missing his head. “I’m furious. You trapped me in here. You shot me with . . . What exactly are these?” I threw one of them, nearly spearing him to the ground.

  Petri looked over the darts, nodding. “Antibiotics, ketamine, and you won’t be catching rabies or feline distemper anytime soon. We’ve missed you so much.”

  “What happened? The last time I saw you, you were racing monster trucks on the weekend. You were doing so fine.” I used Petri’s spear to cut loose the last of the vines and rose.

  Petri hopped up onto my shoulder, dodging my attempts to grab him in a fist and strangle him until he popped like a tiny sausage in a pointy hat. “Racing got old. Then extreme sports, skydiving without a parachute, and gun-fighting got old. And one day, the shipment of staples didn’t arrive on time.”

  Since Grimm handled all deliveries in Kingdom, I mentally made a note to blame Mikey for everything, which was almost always a good idea. “Staples?”

  “So I killed Jakov and took his staples for my own. A few days later”—he swept his spear in a circle—“we found a new way of living. But you didn’t come to see us. So we carved a Marissa of our own.”

  “You could have at least done a good job on the face. Can you get me Fairy Godfather’s package? I just want to go home. It’s been a bad day.” I stumbled through the jungle, ducking vines, back toward the service desk.

  “It’s a perfect likeness. We made a deal with a demon for a copy of your driver’s license. Sent them my mother-in-law and cousin Karl. Stay here, I’ll get your package myself.” Petri slid down my arm and disappeared into the reeds.

  In his absence, a crowd of amazed gnomes gathered around me. Some kneeled, some chanted, but one approached, bowing his head. “Would you be pleased if I cut the heart from an innocent victim and offered it to you?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  His hat sagged; his shoulders slumped. “In that case, never mind.” He hurled the oozing leather bag in his hand to the floor, then slouched away, weeping.

  After a few moments, a cadre of gnomes returned with a box on their shoulders, following Petri. “Faster! Bring Marissa the package or she will halt the rains for three years.” While I didn’t exactly know how I’d stop the rain, I had to admire his motivational skills.

  Taking the box from their postage-stamp-sized hands, I swung it over my shoulder. “You’ve done well. I give your chief my favor.” Then I knelt beside Petri, whispering, “Which way is out? I have to get back to work.”

  Petri whistled, a cutting sound that made me wince. White light stabbed my eyes as the jungle lit up, the remains of the post office’s ceiling lights giving it the flush of brilliant sun. “This way.” Petri pulled at my hand and dashed ahead. “Mind the crocodiles, step over the bear trap.” He swept back a blanket of vines, and there, in the earthen bank, I saw the form of a door.

  “Bless us with your presence again, soon. Oh, and here.” Petri handed me a copy of my driver’s license. “Think of Karl every time you use it.” Petri pushed the door open, and I stepped out into the crowd, at the emergency exit in the KPS alley. I found a discarded bottle of champagne and rolled it until I got a reflection.

  “Grimm?” With my hand on my bracelet, I called.

  He snapped into view immediately, his power flooding out through the bracelet once more. “Trouble, my dear?”

  “It’s the post office. Same as usual. I got the package.” I nodded to it, a tight leather bundle bound in black thread. “What’s in here?” I knew better than to open Grimm’s packages. We had an intern once who opened a package because he got curious about the noises inside of it. Every time I went in that storage room, I spotted another bit of intern stuck to the walls.

  Grimm shook his head. “You can open the box when you’ve returned to the Agency. Not before.”

  “Never been a big fan of surprises. Just tell me?”

  “I’ve kept the contents safe for four hundred years, stored at the postal service, but the contents are now yours. It is your uniform, you might say. An outfit most appropriate for the handmaiden.” With those words, he dashed whatever hope I’d held that what happened earlier was all the result of a bad head injury.

  Seven

  I SAW ARI the moment I opened the Agency door, and gave my best tryout for the Jets, nearly tackling her. I might not have knocked her down, but it would still get me on the team. Alternating between squeezing her until she coughed and wanting to wring her neck, I buried her in a hug. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.” I pushed her back and looked her in the face.

  Ari didn’t speak. She just looked at me with her witch eyes and trembled. Her voice, when it came, whispered like plastic bags in the autumn wind. “I was supposed to defeat her. I listened to the Fae Mother. She said I would be the last to challenge the Black Queen. She said I could save you.”

  I wanted to shake Ari until those yellow eyes rolled back in her head. As Grimm pointed out, the Fae speech was almost as bad as Grimm’s native tongue. Let ten people listen to the same words, and they’d give you eleven different versions of the same thing.

  “Come on. This is no place to talk.” I grabbed Ari by the arm, wanting to leave the crowded lobby for a place where every ear wasn’t latched on to our conversation. We almost made it, too, before the building’s emergency alarm went off, flashing red lights and a fire alarm siren that threatened to split my skull. For the second time in one day, we’d have to evacuate the building. Three more times, and we might match the record.

  “Everyone out,” said Rosa, pointing to the door.

  I left Ari to guard the door while I ushered whining people out into the hall and pointed to the stairs. “Stay away from the elevators.” When the last of them left, I pulled the stairwell door closed and sprinted back to the Agency.

  Grimm waited in the lobby mirror. “Marissa, there’s no reason for the alarms to be going off. No cupcakes, no birthday candles of any sort.” The way Grimm’s jaw set and his eyebrows furrowed said the Fairy Godfather did not appreciate surprises. “Rosa, bring up the entrance cameras. Something tripped my short-term danger indicators.”

  Rosa flipped a few switches, and the monitor that usually played Spanish soap operas all day switched to a split screen, showing every entrance to our building along with a Spanish soap opera.

  “There.” I pointed to the corner. Against the throng of people surging out of the building, four figures threaded their way inward. Their leather cloaks, fur trimmings, and hoods gave away exactly what gro
up had made a fatal decision to attack us. “Huntsmen.”

  Kingdom’s bounty hunters, usually tasked with killing anything that wasn’t human and dared attract attention. Their repeating crossbows could pin a man to the concrete or, with a different arrow, punch his heart out through the back of his ribs.

  “Picking a fight with Grimm on his turf is suicide.” Ari began to crackle as lightning jumped from hand to hand. Anytime Ari was upset or angry, you could power a small city with the sparks she gave off.

  A wave of fear washed down my scalp like a blast of cold air. “They’re not heading into the Agency proper.” Grimm’s major mojo stopped at the boundaries. “They’re headed into cargo.”

  “Mikey.” We spoke as one. Mikey, grandson of the greatest leader the wolves ever knew, survived a huntsman’s attack a few years earlier, and gave the huntsman an overbite that no amount of orthodontics could fix. I thought the other huntsmen had enough sense to let it go. The silver crossbows on their backs said I thought wrong.

  “I’m going to go help Michael,” said Rosa. “He’s such a good boy.”

  My jaw just about dropped. Rosa grabbed her sawed-off shotgun from behind the desk, loaded a couple of slugs, and limped slowly out the door.

  I ran ahead, and Ari trailed me down the stairs, out the side door, and around toward the cargo bay. As I passed the entrance to our underground garage, something came flying out of the darkness, wrapping around my legs. I crashed to the concrete.

  “The hunt is over.” From the shadows of the garage, a huntsman emerged, older, grayer than the one Mikey tore apart when they last attacked the Agency. Under the enchanted fur armor, he wore a leather vest decorated with animal teeth. In each hand, he twirled silver daggers sporting honed points on the guards.