Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  An idea lit up my heart for a moment. Had Liam been so sad and desperate to find me that he’d managed to call the Fairy Godfather? “I didn’t give Liam our number. The only number he has doesn’t work anymore.” It didn’t as long as I kept the phone off.

  Grimm’s face remained unchanged, like a statue. “I got a call from the prince’s family. They are old royalty, my dear, and they understand the practical matters of my Agency.”

  Translation—they knew damn well how we worked, and still let us get the job done. Grimm had probably gotten their permission before attempting the setup.

  “He’ll give up on me, I’m sure,” I said, but secretly a hope had woken inside me that he hadn’t. Maybe he had refused Ari, pining for me. The hair on my neck stood up as I wondered what exactly Grimm would do if that happened.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have a problem in that department,” said Grimm, his voice getting louder again. At this point they could probably hear him in the front office. Grimm shouted, “Seeing as how he’s never even met you.” Another crack ran sideways down the mirror, splitting him in two.

  My head spun for a moment while I tried to work it out. “He what?”

  “It seems he’s not upset you broke his heart. He’s not swept off his feet by your charms. He had a lovely stroll on the pier and bought two paintings and was back at his apartment by three in the afternoon.”

  I held up my hands. “That’s not possible. I didn’t spend the last few weeks doing nothing.”

  His eyes flashed brighter, and he practically screamed at me, “Do you have any idea how this makes me look? How it makes you look? If you didn’t want the job, my dear, you should have said so. If you have a problem with our bargain, by all means, speak up.”

  Evangeline edged toward the door, doing her best to keep from getting involved.

  “Something doesn’t add up. I went to the pier, you know that. I met the prince, I did my end of the deal.”

  Grimm faded out of view, and a new picture came in. Raven black hair, sharp features with wide eyes. I knew the man. Prince Mihail, the only person I’d ever met who could make a trip to the Kingdom Post Office worse. “Marissa, are you telling me you had lunch and dinner and dancing with this man? If so, someone is lying to me. I hope for your sake it isn’t you.”

  Nausea crept from my stomach up to my throat, and my mouth felt drier than the desert. I dropped my gaze. I went over that day in my head again and again. The crowds of people at the Pier, Liam. There was no denying it. “No. I must have got the wrong one.”

  The air smelled like ozone every time Grimm got furious. “How in Kingdom did you get the wrong person? I checked the auguries, Marissa. There weren’t two princes on the pier that day. Only one, and he went right past your table, just as planned. But you were already, shall we say, involved?”

  Now that hurt as bad as anything that had happened in the last month. My face grew hot. I knew they would be thinking it was guilt instead of embarrassment. “I went to the pier. I had lunch with a prince, Grimm. I saw the magic on him.”

  Grimm put his hand to his forehead and looked down. “He’s a blacksmith from the south end. Oh I don’t doubt you went down there and had a merry time on my dollar. You blew our best chance at our actual target. The one we are paid for. The man you had your dalliance with is not a prince. He’s an artist who makes wrought-iron trinkets and that sort of thing. The only thing magic about him is that he hasn’t managed to die of food poisoning. I expect better from you, Marissa.”

  I knew that. Grimm expected perfection. Pride made me look back at him, though I know he wanted me to keep my head low. “I have nothing in my life except this job. I have never done less than the best for you.” I knew they could hear me in the lobby, and I didn’t care. Let them hear me in the loading dock for all it mattered. “You said find the prince. You said look for the magic. You taught me what to look for yourself. Why don’t you come out and say I’m lying?”

  Instead he waited in silence for me to calm. “You made a mistake, my dear. You said you were tired of being the wrong woman, and I don’t blame you. You said you wanted him for yourself. So I think you were looking for someone more in line with your ideals than the princess’s. Really, have you looked at that man? He’s not exactly prince material.”

  My face blushed even more because Evangeline was in the room. I knew exactly what she’d thought when Grimm introduced me as his new agent, and I never wanted her to see this. “I saw the magic.”

  Grimm’s face softened for a moment, almost sad. “Marissa, I think perhaps you saw what you wanted to see.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up. Grimm probably thought I was going to walk out the door. Grimm was wrong. I walked over to the wall of weapons and picked up a case the size of a cigar box. Engravings covered the outside, except for a tiny brass plate. The carvings showed a rose in a ring of woven thorns, the standard of the Black Queen.

  Evangeline told me about her. She’d been dead for over four hundred years, and folks in Kingdom were still nervous when her name came up. Depending on who you believed, she was either all of the fairy-tale villains in one or the queen of all of them, but whatever she was, she was powerful. Her magic lay in lies so strong they could twist reality itself, becoming almost true.

  Grimm flashed into the stainless steel plating on the wall. “Put that down.”

  I opened it and inside the velvet interior was an odd thing. At first glance it looked like a gnarled tree root, and in fact the name engraved on the plate said “Root of Lies.” That’s not what it was. I knew the truth, and couldn’t see it as anything else.

  The story goes a righteous prince lopped the Black Queen’s head off to put an end to the lies, but she continued to speak. They quartered her, and burned her, and finally scattered her ashes. Some of her wouldn’t burn. The thing in the box, it was a part of her. Her hand, to be specific, and once you knew, the roots looked like fingernails, bones, and tendons, if bones came polished ebony black.

  I put my hand down into the box, and the thing convulsed, gripping me across the palm. Cutting me. Did I mention it was still almost alive, in the box, after all this time? Grimm used it only to force the truth from the most uncooperative of subjects, because the options were tell the truth or die. If you were foolish enough to tell less than the truth while the Root of Lies held you, thorns grew straight from it to your heart, seeking out the lies. Most people told the truth.

  Grimm narrowed his eyes and fixed me with a scowl. “Marissa, don’t say a word, not a single word. Put down the Root and we can talk about what happened. There’s no need for theatrics.” As he spoke I felt a compulsion overcome me. I did want to put it back, but not nearly as much as I wanted to do this.

  I grasped it harder, digging my nails into the blackened bone, and it returned the favor. “I went to the pier.” It rustled under my hand, raking nails along my palm. “I thought he was a prince.” It convulsed underneath me, slicing the top of my hand. “I saw the magic coming from him.” It squeezed my hand so hard I thought it would break, tearing into my skin, then dropped back into the box, rendered lifeless by the truth.

  Evangeline let out her breath. I think if he had had real skin, Grimm would have been sweating. He watched as I returned the Root to its shelf. “Well,” he said, “that definitely complicates matters.”

  Nine

  THE NEXT DAY I dealt with twelve dancing princesses with blisters on their feet (you would be surprised what wonders a gel insole can work). I put yet another frog in the aquarium until Grimm could deal with him. Before ten thirty I sent two kids who ate a gingerbread house to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Grimm was still angry, but at least he wasn’t angry at me. Now it was more about how to actually pull off Ari’s setup.

  I risked a trip into the lion’s den (Grimm’s office—we’d had the actual lion’s den removed a couple of years ago) to question him. “Grimm, we need to talk. What about the fae boy? I thought they wer
e damn near invulnerable. So how did a fae child wind up in a wolf larder?”

  From what I had heard from Evangeline, the fae were only one step down from Grimm. There was a healthy debate about how big a step it actually was. Wolves were great predators, but the fae guards would have blasted the skin from their skulls the moment they set claw on a child.

  “I don’t know,” said Grimm.

  The Fairy Godfather never admitted to not knowing. Ever. If you asked him about something he didn’t know, he’d say “I’ll find out shortly,” which meant that he’d already tried.

  I wondered how long we’d keep the kid. “You get ahold of the, um, parents?”

  He nodded. “I performed the contact ritual this morning. The family will be arriving to retrieve him. You are to be present, but silent. Am I understood?”

  I didn’t like letting someone else tell me when to speak and when not to, but I had a mortal fear of death, and dealing with the fae was tricky, very tricky. The wrong move might cost me my life, the wrong word, my soul. Rumor had it the fae could rip your soul right out of your skin, like peeling a banana. “How about you handle it?”

  Grimm shook his head. “The fae requested your presence. In case you are wondering, that’s not a request.”

  So I got ready to go down and party with the fae. It was safer to meet them outside in the cargo bay than risk them coming up in the elevators and meeting someone. I heard once a few came to visit Grimm unannounced. We were sponging down the walls of the elevator for weeks.

  As the hour approached, everyone scurried about. In keeping for the magic kind, noon and midnight were the watch hours of the day. They’d arrive at noon sharp. As much as I wanted to actually see a fae, I detested having to dress up for them. Apparently, having pure magic as the foundation of your world kind of drives down fashion, because they still dressed like “days of yore.” I’m guessing, by the way, that yore is an old English word for “Heavy, itchy, and hard to breath in.”

  I exited from Wardrobe in a funk. Their best efforts had made me look like I did on my dates: average. Ari was waiting for me in the waiting room as I left the office. She smiled at me. I scowled back.

  “That’s a lovely dress,” she said.

  It wasn’t. It looked like I was dressed in a green circus tent. We could make over someone to look like a supermodel, or make the nerdiest prince look dashing and confident, but Grimm had chosen my costume himself. I think it was supposed to represent the medieval messenger pages. That, or a homeless carpet salesman. Ari grabbed my flowery sleeve as I walked by. “Can I speak with you?”

  I shook her hand off, tearing a bit of the magenta lace. “I’m no longer handling your case. Haven’t you talked to Fairy Godfather yet?” Obviously she hadn’t, so I took her to the mirror and rapped on it like a door. “Grimm, what do you want me to do with her?”

  He snapped into view and gained his regal appearance. “Bring the appointed one with you.”

  “Um, to the loading dock?” I asked, totally blowing the mystery aura.

  “Yes, my dear, and hurry. Why must you always be late?”

  Ari didn’t strike me as a candidate for “America’s Most Brilliant,” but without a doubt Grimm was losing all the mystique he worked to maintain.

  “Why are we going to the loading dock?” asked Ari.

  “You’ve heard of the fae? We’re about to get a little visit from them, a whole freaking family. Unless you want to make your innards out-ards, I’d suggest keeping your head down and your mouth shut.”

  She looked a little pale, which pleased me to no end. I ought to have been ashamed about that, and maybe one day I’d get around to it. I enjoyed certain forms of procrastination.

  I stepped out of the loading bay at 11:56 and took my place in the reception line. The portal, hastily drawn under Grimm’s personal instruction, stood at one end, and the makeshift throne we had constructed for the fae child (an office chair covered with a bedsheet) at the other. In between, Grimm had someone roll out a carpet, horrible orange shag.

  The boy sat in the chair, gazing about with unfocused eyes.

  Ari stood at my side, Grimm whispering from his best mirror the whole time about how she was not to speak.

  The portal snapped open like a pop-up tent and vivid colors drifted out like smoke. The Realm of Fae was powerful. The colors were sharper, so vibrant they hurt, and yet so delicious you almost couldn’t look away. Where it interacted with our world it became vaporous, almost unreal. Also, things didn’t tend to go well for our world.

  I tried to keep my eyes on the ground, like Grimm had suggested, but I couldn’t resist sneaking a peak. The fae didn’t come to town every day (Kingdom be blessed). Fortunately for us, they lived a realm away. I wasn’t going to miss a chance to see them. Two figures emerged from the portal and drifted along the carpet. They paid no attention to us.

  The father was unearthly, regal and deadly at the same time, and his drift had absolute purpose as he moved along the line toward the child. He wore a circus tent with lace like mine, but the difference was on him it looked majestic. His feet didn’t touch the carpet as he passed, but the carpet curled up, burned and shriveled, beneath him, and below it, cracks opened in the concrete. Grimm was going to lose his security deposit for sure.

  For the first time since we’d rescued him, the boy looked up, and he leaped out of the chair and ran forward, seizing his father’s cloaks. The father raised his hand, and the boy rose into the air, floating before him. Their laughter made the lights flicker and my nose bleed. The father raised his other hand and they drifted back, blowing like smoke toward the portal.

  “It is a dangerous game you play,” said a voice like bells and thunder. I realized I had lost track of the mother. She stood a few feet away, speaking to Grimm. His best mirror had been brought down and he watched from it. How he appeared to her I cannot say, since I was focusing on my toes.

  “Yours is no safer,” said Grimm, “for those who tread this world.”

  She walked on and stopped at Evangeline. “Your time comes soon, messenger,” she said, and tread on.

  I felt Ari tense and she caught her breath, and that’s when I noticed the lightning playing on Ari’s fingertips. I knew she was a seal bearer, but I’d never seen her use magic. She rubbed her fingertips together, her hands trembling. Maybe Grimm could teach her to control her abilities better under pressure.

  “Princess,” said the Fae Mother, and the word echoed in my head, “you must become what you are.” She stood before me now, smelling like fields after a rain. Her gaze felt like the essence of the sun shining on me. “You dared touch him?”

  I looked up at her. She had silver hair, the ends glowed like soft moonlight, and a sharp nose and chin. Her eyes were gray and shifted like storm clouds before rain. She was tall, taller than me by a foot. I couldn’t tell if it was a frown or a smile on her face. In fact, I couldn’t look away at all.

  I stood trapped between Grimm’s order to keep silent and her question. As the moments ticked by, I realized she would wait my life away, so I answered. “Twice. Once to lead him out, and once to put him into the van.” I stood waiting, knowing if she struck me with magic I might never feel it, or the death might last an eternity. “Is he okay?”

  The color dropped out of the world. I stood in a plane of nothing, gray without sound or color, and only dim shapes like ghosts in the fog.

  “This is your world for one as young as my child.” Now her voice sounded sweet but not deafening. When she said the word child, it changed, and sounded like treasure. “You shed blood to save him. I will reward that.”

  A thought leaped up in my brain. The fae were practically made of Glitter.

  “No. Your freedom comes, but not by my hand.”

  My heart skipped a beat and I felt like I’d swallowed a block of ice. “It’s the only thing I want.”

  “Not so. It is your heart’s greatest longing. You will receive it at the cost of all you love. I give you the bless
ing of the fae, but it is a gift that must be accepted.”

  “I can’t. Grimm would kill me.”

  She closed her eyes. “It may be your only hope against the curse.” The word curse moved as she said it, like a spider in my ear. A curse. A real curse. “She comes for you soon. Our half sister, the Black Queen. Through your hand she will strike the victory blow.”

  I weighed my choices, which seemed completely zero. The Black Queen. A curse. “I accept your blessing.”

  She leaned in to kiss me on the forehead, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “You are twice blessed now to balance the scales. But you will drink from a river of pain.” The world became blurry, and darkness wrapped itself around me in a hug that felt like a mountain on my chest. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe. Somewhere in the darkness I slipped into nothing.

  • • •

  “SHE’S WAKING UP,” said a woman’s voice in the distance. I struggled to speak but my voice didn’t work.

  “Calm down,” said a second voice, another woman. “You can’t talk until the tube is removed.”

  My eyes didn’t work right; everything looked blurry.

  “I’ll call him,” said the first voice, Evangeline.

  “You’re in South General,” said Ari. She took my hand. “You’ve been here three days.”

  I croaked out something that was supposed to sound like “Why?”

  “You stopped breathing. Fairy Godfather used magic to bring you here.”

  Evangeline came back, carrying an oblong mirror. “He says this one is certified to not disrupt electronics.”

  Grimm’s eyes looked out from the tiny square, and he looked honestly concerned. “I’m going to have a nurse remove that tube, and when your throat is feeling better, we need to have a talk.”

  • • •

  IN THE EVENING, when I woke again, only Evangeline waited. She’d covered the mirror with her scarf, and sat backwards across the chair, staring at me.