Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3)

by J. C. Nelson

  Finally, I could take Liam to me, his powerful body gliding over me, just as he always did, ramming my thighs. The noise I made wasn’t a moan of pleasure, I’ll tell you that for sure, but by now I’d become so frantic I didn’t care. Liam smoked, his sweat boiling from his body, and only the asbestos weave in my sheets kept the bed from catching fire as I forced myself on him.

  Twenty minutes later we lay in a puddle of sweat and fire, nursing bruises and scratches.

  “That was—” I searched for words.

  “Painful. I think I bent something.”

  I had bruises of my own and no sympathy. “Well, if you’d stop imitating a jackhammer you’d feel different.” Faint bloodstains marked the edge of the asbestos sheets. “Are you bleeding?”

  “Your nails are like daggers. You know you don’t have to carve me like a goose.”

  I sat up, frowning. “Well, I’d like to remind you that big breasts are still attached breasts, despite your attempts to pull them off.”

  “I was trying to arouse you. And what’s with the noises? It’s like being in bed with a pack of Chihuahuas.” Liam sat up in bed, putting his arm around me.

  “Says the man who oinks at the end. I thought you were part dragon, not one of the three little pigs.” The moment I said it, I regretted it. Truth was, I’d seen less fumbling at a Jets game sponsored by Astroglide. Sex was something learned, that grew. This was more awkward than the time Grandma got up on the Thanksgiving table and did a striptease, begging us for tips.

  “I’m going to take the bolt cutters back.” Liam steamed as he put on a bathrobe and stomped out. I searched without success for a bra that would fit my new body, stretching my sports bra until I looked like a sausage about to burst.

  When Liam came back, I was waiting in the living room. “I’m sorry.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. I put one hand on his chest, careful not to scratch him. “We’ll get better.”

  “I loved you the way you were.” Liam looked up at me, biting his lip.

  “And now?”

  “I still love you. I may not be able to wear briefs for a couple days, but I still love you.” He followed me back to bed, where I spent the night discovering I couldn’t roll onto my stomach anymore. So I spooned him, feeling the pulse of his heart.

  Eighteen

  THE NEXT MORNING I went shopping before going to work. Forget underwire—I went with under-girder, and found a set of black blouses that didn’t strain to restrain me. I made it into the Agency, rode up to the front door, and walked into a mutiny.

  In the lobby, on crutches, stood Rosa, surrounded by our cargo workers and most of the Agency temp staff. Grimm stood in the lobby mirror, his hands folded behind his back, a look of concern knitting his brows together.

  Rosa looked at me, and her eyes widened. “Out.” Rosa swore at me in Spanish, her face turning red along with the normal brown. “Get her out.”

  “Do we have a problem?” I took a few steps toward Rosa, suddenly appreciating how the sway of my hips kept eyes focused on me.

  Rosa couldn’t hide the fear on her face. The tremble in her hands or the way she glanced to Grimm as if he’d help her. “I won’t work with her anymore.”

  Grimm spoke quickly in fluent Spanish, his Rs rolling like the purr of a cat.

  I’d taken Spanish lessons for the last four years for a reason. I kept my gaze on Rosa. “Of course I’m not dangerous. You trust the Fairy Godfather’s judgment, right?” The thought of finally slapping her rude face made me smile. The thought of what my nails might do made my smile a grin.

  The look of fear on Rosa’s face spread, like a contagion, through our staff, faster than the flu. Rosa always treated me like rotten fish, but the others—I signed their payroll checks on time and we got along. The staff door opened, and Mikey emerged from the back, standing a head taller than everyone else.

  He walked around the crew, sniffing the air. “I knew I smelled fear. That or too much cardamom in my stew. What’s everyone afraid of? Marissa’s fine by me.” He leaned down and sniffed me. “You smell different. You get a haircut?”

  Before I could berate him for not noticing that my hair was the least of my changes, someone else spoke. “Working with a handmaiden of the Black Queen is suicide. I’m off the job while she’s on.” Big Bill, our head hostage negotiator. And a chorus of other echoes as the people I’d taken care of turned on me like a pack of wolves. I could deal with wolves, with only a flamethrower and a clip of silver bullets. The clamor rose until Grimm reached forward, clawing his nails along the mirror.

  The shriek that came out made me wince and grind my teeth, and I took it better than most of them. “That is enough.” Grimm crossed his arms before him, his eyes flashing with rage. I waited for him to start transforming dockworkers into frogs. And waited. He glanced to me and nodded. “Marissa, would you mind going to Arianna’s house and checking on her?”

  “Yes. I’d mind a lot.” I put my hands on my hips. “Rosa, I’m sick of your attitude. I’m sick of you treating me like elf-droppings, and I’m sick of you threatening me. Get the hell out of my Agency. You’re fired.”

  “It’s not yours.” Rosa limped toward me, raising a crutch like a club.

  “Really? Did I ever sign it back to Grimm?” I looked over to Grimm, catching the surprise that washed over him. Rosa, on the other hand, should’ve known better. She helped me sign the ownership papers while Grimm was unavailable. “Get out.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.” Rosa wasn’t a very good liar. She looked through the crowd, then whistled.

  The crowd of dockworkers slowly parted, not the flee-in-fear reaction of people who’ve found something deadly in their midst. The what-in-Inferno-did-you-roll-in response to something that smelled like a demon in a Dumpster.

  Two people in filthy bathrobes walked forward. “We’re here to, ummm, curse you if you don’t leave voluntarily.”

  “I remember you.” What I remembered was that their magical prowess left everything to be desired. “Those are Agency robes you stole, aren’t they?”

  “Would everyone please stop?” Grimm’s mirror surged with light, flashing the room white.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to go visit the Adversary, but the ringing in my ears grew louder. He’d killed all sound.

  “Rosa, there is a call waiting on line two I want you to take. Enchanters, if you leave the building immediately, I won’t transform your underwear into poison oak. Michael, I want express shipments out within the hour. Everyone else, return to your stations or clear out your desks.”

  The crowd began to shuffle out the doors, while Rosa dragged her fat, wounded ass back to her corner counter.

  “Marissa, I understand your sentiment, but now, more than ever, it is vital that the Agency continues to operate. I’m offering you personal leave until I’ve dealt with my daughter. When she is gone, you may make any changes you desire.” He looked to Rosa as he spoke.

  I stormed toward the Agency door, so angry I couldn’t have spoken even if Grimm had let me.

  On the ground floor, as I dashed out of the building front door, I ran into Liam and Ari, who kept Wyatt huddled between them. Liam had gashes on the side of his head and blood running down the front of his shirt. He caught me by the wrist, and without thinking, I tripped him, sending him face-first into the pavement. Only after he crashed to the ground did my actions register. “Oh no.” I held my hand over my mouth.

  The result of a moment of rage, a flash of frustration, and a decade of training. Liam pushed up off the floor, blood welling from his mouth. He didn’t say a word. The silence hurt worse than any words.

  Ari stepped between us. “Wyatt, go with Liam, give him your handkerchief for his nose.” Ari shoved her boyfriend away and took me by the arm, staring at me with witch eyes. “Grimm told me you had a spell cast on you. He didn’t say it was this.
This is awful.”

  She looked back to Liam and Wyatt. “Keep out of trouble. I think I can help.”

  “I want to go to work.” I tried to shake Ari’s hand off and she crackled with static electricity as though shocking me had become a viable option.

  Ari shook her head. “Not like this. This lie wrapped around you, it’s getting comfortable. Settling in. Grimm may be the Fairy Godfather, but this is mostly Seal Magic.” She ran her eyes over me again and clucked her tongue. “This is how you wanted yourself to look?”

  “No.” I swallowed, remembering how I felt when I first saw myself in the mirror. “Maybe.”

  Ari didn’t answer. She just put one hand on my shoulder and pushed me out the front door. We walked for blocks in silence, the dense crowds having enough sense to get out of my way. “I didn’t ask her for this.”

  “Please, Marissa. I’ll bet you didn’t need to ask. Don’t you always say you are happy with who you are?” Ari and I reached the waterfront and began the trudge toward the gates.

  When we arrived, Ari grabbed her bracelet, the only thing keeping her mother’s banishment at bay, and took my hand. She surged forward, dragging me into High Kingdom.

  This time, instead of a parade, people drifted away from me. Talking beasts fell mute as I passed. After we’d walked several blocks, I had a feeling I knew where we were headed. “Tell me we’re going to a doctor.”

  “Not exactly.” Ari crossed the street, cutting off a Kingdom policeman on horseback without so much as an “excuse me.” The Isyle Witch’s shop lay a few doors down. The occasional passerby reached out to run fingers along the red brick replacing the ruined doorway.

  Standing in front of the shop, Ari stopped and looked both directions. Like anyone could tell if someone was watching in the middle of the crowd. The rush of magic into her left frost on the concrete.

  I wanted to take Ari’s hand, but past experience said interrupting her while casting a spell was a great recipe for getting knocked on my back.

  I didn’t even notice when the spell started.

  Ari always favored lightning bolts, fire, and frost. This magic reached out, gently, subtly. The crowds passing by shied away, completely oblivious, even though they pushed and shoved like a kindergarten class chasing a gerbil made of sugar.

  “Hold on.” Ari seized my arm, then yanked me forward, straight into the brick wall.

  My head jerked back, like I’d slammed into the actual wall, and the world spun. Ari kept on pulling, nearly wrenching my shoulder off, and I slipped through the wall. All in all, the experience was no different from all the other times I’d been buried in wet concrete.

  We emerged in darkness, to the sound of scampering paws and slithering scales. I meant to reach for my gun. Instead I picked up the thorn sword, awkward as always.

  “Be,” Ari whispered, and a burst of light lit up the room, causing a dozen nightmares to retreat to their cages. “I told Grimm this wasn’t closed down right. All of you, back in your cells.” Ari went around the room, latching cages, closing doors, until she looked around and nodded, as if to herself. “Let’s see what I can do.”

  “You’ve been here?”

  “It’s where Grimm took me to train yesterday.” Ari sat the witch’s cauldron upright and shuffled through the ingredients on the back shelf, seeming to toss them at random over her shoulder. “We’ll start with the balance statement from my credit card bill. Nothing says the truth like facing the music. And this, this is skin from a supermodel the morning after a shoot. Pure truth.”

  Ari turned and pointed under the counter. “Hand me that bag.” After I did, she opened it and took out a plastic stick. “Positive pregnancy test. No way to lie your way out of that one. This won’t be easy.”

  “Is anything ever?”

  Ari spun, her hair wheeling out from her head like red spokes. “Listen to me. Grimm told you the lie would become true if you didn’t reject it.”

  “Yes.” I remember him saying that. I also remember being so eager to try out the new me I didn’t care.

  Ari left the cauldron and walked over, appraising me like a chunk of ham. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Reject it.”

  And the feeling inside me, the sick sadness, said everything. Because part of me liked the way I looked. It hurt like hell, and I felt like an alien in someone else’s skin, but at least part of me liked the skin. “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “Liam doesn’t care what you look like.” Ari kicked over a cage, sending leathery bats squealing, and sat on the cage side.

  “I do.” I spent the first six years working for Grimm alongside a woman so beautiful she stopped hearts or tore them out, often literally. I spent six years knowing I was never the most beautiful woman in the room.

  Ari turned and hit the cauldron with a blast of ice three times the thickness of anything I’d ever seen her produce, then followed it up with pure hellfire, leaving the cauldron boiling. Waving her hand, she stirred the brew until it steamed. “That should do it. You know there’s no magic in the ingredients, right? They just help me fold and sculpt the spells.”

  She rose and walked back over to the cauldron, and beckoned. “Come on, M.”

  I went, begrudging every step.

  “Here.” Ari stood across the cauldron from me. With a wave of her hand the water became still. Ari’s reflection showed her dimpled chin, her red hair in ringlets.

  And me. Not just one of me; three of me. The me inside, the plain girl who never turned heads, she stood in the middle. On one side, the handmaiden me, lovely and elegant, stacked like a pile of pancakes, with lovely eyes and hair like brown honey. The third me made me ill, a gross exaggeration of both of the others. The third me had filthy brown hair, squinty eyes, bulbous breasts, and teeth like crooked tombstones.

  Ari pointed to the third. “That is the lie she wrapped you in.” She took a silver ladle from beside the cauldron and dipped it into the real reflection. The liquid came out amber, scented like honey, smoke, and cupcakes. “Drink this and reject it.”

  I closed my eyes, my hands clenching the sides of the cauldron, and opened my mouth. Like a sick child being force-fed castor oil, I waited till the ladle brushed my lips.

  The lie smelled like happiness, but tasted like the bitter bile of failure and held the cloying stench of death. I forced my eyes open and clasped the ladle, gulping the vile brew out until it was gone.

  In the cauldron, regular me and beautiful me were gone. Only the lie looked back at me, blinking when I did not, grinning a toothy grin.

  “I reject you.” I spat the words out, letting tears join them as I refused the Black Queen’s offer. The lie screamed, clawing at the surface of the water. I jerked away. Could it break the surface?

  “Hurry,” Ari hissed. “I can’t hold it long. Choose the truth, or live someone else’s lie the rest of your life.”

  I put my hands on the cauldron and leaned over, staring back at it. “I reject you. You are not me, or any part of me.” In my mind, I forced memories of my true face. My true eyes and ears and lips.

  As each took form, the lie shrieked again like I’d stabbed it with a fondue fork. It thrashed, making the surface of the cauldron bubble and boil, but the longer I held to the truth, the weaker it became. I shut my eyes as the false image of me began to bleed into the cauldron, staining Ari’s brew a foul crimson.

  “That’s it.” Ari put a hand on me, and I opened my eyes. The cauldron showed a ragged, bloody lump of flesh, like a placenta, writhing at the bottom. Then I caught a glimpse of myself, the outline.

  I hadn’t changed back.

  Nineteen

  I GRABBED ARI by the wrist, trembling. “Why didn’t it work?” With each second, I became more frantic. Now I couldn’t remember why I thought changing how I looked could ever have been a good thing.
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br />   “I said it was mostly Seal Magic. A tiny part of it is Fairy Magic. That, you have to give back to the caster.” Ari selected a steel flask from the wall, and ladled a measure of the brew into it. “This will prevent her putting another lie in place.”

  Ari drew a copper cover over the cauldron. “I’m going to like it here. Grimm says even if the other queens turn on me after Isolde is gone, I can live out my life here safely. Kingdom always has need of a witch.”

  The thought of Ari trapped behind the glass, sleeping on the straw mattress in the middle of a warehouse, made my stomach turn, and gave my determination an edge like diamond. “No rituals. No killing spells. Not for me. I might look like some killer handmaiden, but I know what I am, thanks to you.” I put one hand on her. “I know who you are too. The Ari I know doesn’t even think about killing with magic.”

  Ari turned away. “I will fix this. I will strip the Black Queen’s title and her right to handmaidens. I’m almost ready.”

  Grimm had spent years training Ari with only mild success. Now Ari wanted me to believe she’d acquired skill equal to Kingdom’s most powerful seal bearers in a matter of days. “You never even passed your driver’s test.”

  “I didn’t want that the way I want this. I’m going to get you out of here. We’re going to go find Liam so you can apologize. Have to remove the wards for a moment.” Ari held out her hand, pointing with three fingers at the shop front. A pile of bricks caved in, letting sunlight filter in from High Kingdom.

  The doorway flickered.

  One moment, it showed High Kingdom, passing crowds in fancy dresses. The next, it showed Low Kingdom, with chain gangs dragging the streets while jeering taskmasters swung whips.

  “That’s freaky.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the jagged opening. The glass doors of the witch’s shop must have served to stabilize it, so that one could leave the appropriate way, but without them, what was left looked like an unguided portal.

  Then Low Kingdom snapped into place, and held.

  “Get down, someone’s approaching.” Ari threw her hair forward, covering her face, and I huddled down behind the counter.