Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

I worked the corners of my mouth, dealing with my raging sore throat. “Hey.” Given my state it meant a lot more, but my mouth wasn’t cooperating.

  “I went by your apartment and brought you clothes and your purse. Don’t know what happened to whatever you were wearing on the way here, but at least you can cover your butt when you leave.”

  “Thanks.”

  She reached into her pocket and took out something, and my stomach turned as I recognized the cell phone. “Found this on your dresser, M.”

  I coughed and tried to force the words out. “It’s not—Please. Don’t—”

  She held it up and snapped it in two, tearing the screen right off. “I know what it is. I won’t tell Grimm. This can be our secret. Working the wrong man, keeping phones, that stunt with the wolves. Think about what you are doing. Ask yourself what you want. You’re slipping.” She left me alone, and she took what was left of the phone.

  I waited until much later to call. Not just because it felt like I’d drunk a mug of broken glass, but because I didn’t know what I was going to say. It was after midnight when I called him, putting one hand on the bracelet.

  Grimm showed up immediately, his mouth open, his eyes squinting to see me better. “Marissa, what do you need? Can I get you something?” Grimm acting like my nurse. That was actually funny, except that it hurt to laugh.

  “What happened?” Each word took more time to coax from my throat than an entire speech.

  “The Fae Mother gave you a kiss, my dear. Their touch can be deadly.”

  I took another sip of ice water, letting it numb me. “How much of it did you hear?” I trusted Grimm. He’d earned it in most ways.

  “That’s not how it works.” He glanced to the edges of the mirror. “What I heard and what you heard are two entirely different things. The fae speech is not unlike my own, and without this mirror to translate we’d have a lot harder time getting things done.”

  I coughed and swallowed another mouthful of broken glass. “I heard what she said to you. She said you play a dangerous game.”

  “My dear, that’s the best that your mind could do with her words. Our conversation would have taken you three years to transcribe. I told you, what you heard and what I heard are not necessarily the same.”

  I made a mental note to ask Ari what she had heard. “The Fae Mother said something. I heard curse, but the word, it moved.”

  Grimm’s face went impassive the way it did when he was going to tell someone he wouldn’t grant their wish, or he wouldn’t kill someone, or he wouldn’t (we never said couldn’t) bring back the dead. “Harakathin.” The word spat from his mouth like aural vomit, and I shivered.

  “That’s it. My only hope against the Hara—”

  “Don’t say it,” Grimm’s voice came out a sharp hiss. “We don’t call curse children back once they leave.”

  “So I accepted her blessing.”

  He closed his eyes and exhaled. He didn’t say I screwed up. He didn’t need to. I’ve worked with him long enough to know his face, and yes, possibly even his personality.

  “I screwed up, didn’t I?”

  For a moment he looked angry, but then that look of concern took over. “Marissa, dear, I’ve been lax in certain areas of your training, I admit.” Grimm flashed over to the bedside dressing mirror. Guess now that I was breathing on my own he didn’t worry about medical devices. “If you worked for another fairy, you would have learned these things by now. If you had any talent with magic, you would have learned. I’d have seen to it, it’s only proper.” To hear Grimm tell it, sending me to community college had been the apex of learning. Hearing him talk like this felt weird.

  “I’ve told you the word for curse. Do you know the fae word for blessing?”

  I knew the tone, and waited.

  “Harakathin.” Again I felt the word shiver out, but it passed by without the feeling of darkness. “The word is a spell when spoken in magic, my dear. Each one is a living creation, and they do not work in ways one might expect.”

  “So she cursed me?” I said, feeling the weight go out of my arms. I floated in a cloud of despair.

  “It’s about intent. She blessed you, but the blessing won’t simply do what you command, and that might be deadly. Let’s say, for instance, she gave you a blessing to protect you from sorrow. You begin a deep depression. Will the blessing cure your depression, or cause a house fire and kill you? Either ends your suffering. Perhaps she blessed you with good fortune, and you have cancer. Will it make you find out earlier, or hide it so that you die swiftly? Which do you think it will do?”

  I propped myself up on the pillow to try and read his face for cues, but he was blank as a poster. “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. You are tired, and you should sleep. I’ll send a cab to the hospital when they release you.”

  I gathered myself for what came next. Now that I knew what the blessing was, I kept wanting to look around and spot it, see if it was standing there, watching me. “Tell me about the Black Queen.” I heard the hiss of air as he caught his breath.

  “You know about her, or I can get you a children’s book in Kingdom about her. Perhaps one with rhymes and pop-up pages.”

  I’d sat in too many rooms with too many customers to be fooled by that. “Tell me about her. Tell me why the fae think she’s coming. Tell me why she’d come for me.”

  The room shook like an earthquake and across the hospital the doors slammed all at once. Grimm’s face flashed with anger, but not at me. “You have nothing to fear from her.”

  I waited until the tremors died down. “Then tell me.”

  “When you are better, Marissa. I swear on the Root of Lies itself I will tell you about her.”

  I flopped back into my bed. “You don’t have hands to hold it with. That doesn’t mean much.”

  Grimm held up a hand so I could see it. “The Root of Lies could kill even a fairy, my dear. I swear on it, I will tell you, but you must wait for when I think the time is right.”

  I grasped the bed rail and sat up to get a better look at him. “Promise me. Everything you know.”

  “Never. Only what you need. You are young, and the story of her life would twist your own from hearing it.”

  “The Fae Mother said I was twice blessed.” The meaning of that sank in.

  Grimm nodded, like I’d told him I signed for a package. “Well, you’ve never been one to do something by halves.”

  Ten

  AFTER FOUR DAYS in the hospital, I expected more reaction to my return. You would have thought I never left. Rosa didn’t so much as tip her head to me when I walked in. Evangeline, feet up on the conference room’s table, glanced over the paper she was reading, then went back to the sports section.

  “What, no hello? No welcome back from the dead?”

  She folded it up. “There are easier ways to get a few days off.”

  I glanced at Grimm’s mirror. “Hey, Grimm, if I was legally dead, does that cancel my debt?”

  “Debts are canceled at, and only at, the point of embalming,” said Grimm, his normal business self this morning.

  “Ready to serve, Fairy Godfather,” I said, hoping my enthusiasm didn’t sound as fake as it felt.

  Evangeline gave me the “teacher’s pet” look. No one ever got fired for kissing up to the boss.

  “Evangeline, you will need to handle the final arrangements for prince project 2.0,” said Grimm.

  Evangeline and I exchanged glances. Every once in a while, Grimm got the idea it was time to go modern. It never ended well.

  “What’s wrong? Is my new, hip dialogue not appropriate? I searched all the Internets last night and determined where we can arrange a new meeting.” Grimm cocked his head, waiting for our reply.

  “Last time you used a computer it caught fire,” I said.

  Evangeline added, “Then the desk it was on caught fire.”

  “Then the building it was in caught fire,” we finished together.

  The
Agency had good fire sprinklers for a reason. Fairies and technology were a bad mix. “Grimm,” I said, “You always tell me to stick with what you are good at.”

  He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Oh, all right. I’ve studied the auguries, and I have determined another opportunity to arrange a meeting between our princess and her prince.”

  “So we’re going to do it over?” I knew I’d been out a couple of days but I didn’t expect Grimm to move that fast.

  “Hardly, my dear. Evangeline will handle arrangements with Princess Arianna; you will be going into Kingdom. I need you to visit the Isyle Witch and pick up a love potion.”

  Rosa buzzed, and I knew another client needed time with the Fairy Godfather. I grabbed my purse and headed toward the door. “I’m on it.” No more screwups, no more mistakes, and definitely no more blessings.

  • • •

  KINGDOM ON MONDAY morning looked like the leftovers of a ticker-tape parade followed by a massive alcoholic bender. Morning sun didn’t do the magic facades much good. Smoke hung in the air as street sweepers burned off the confetti and crushed down the discarded wineglasses and a few drunks who picked the wrong gutter to sleep in. The rest of the world got to work, including me.

  I was two streets over from Main, which was still in the “good” part of Kingdom. I wondered for a moment what stood in this spot on the low side. I discarded the thought like so much stale wine and went into the store. “Isyle Witch,” said the gold lettering on the door, and below it were all four pages of her binding accreditation. That’s legal speak for “may not transform into toad without consent (and probably payment).”

  Now the outside is your standard magical facade, clean and pastel and shimmery, but step inside and the witch’s shop was like the aquarium section of the pet shop mixed with the heart of the Amazon. Tanks with fish, tanks with spiders, tanks with things that looked like a fish had a kid with a spider. The only thing missing was the cauldron, and that’s because a few years back most of the witches went to using slow cookers so they could watch soap operas and work spells at the same time.

  “What brings the pretty to my home?” asked the witch. She was old. Nobody talked like that anymore. With witches, age brought more and more power, but I felt the Agency bracelet and took courage. I stepped up to the counter. The witch’s eyes were solid yellow, like the iris and pupil had been removed, and what remained was diseased.

  She glanced around with those sightless eyes and gasped. “How dare you bring curse children with you into my home?”

  For a moment I tried to figure out what she meant. It finally came to me. “I can’t afford daycare. They’re actually blessings, I think.”

  “So little difference.” The witch laughed at me, a croaking, choking noise.

  “I’ve come for a love potion.”

  “Of course you have. With looks like that, and your age, I don’t blame you.”

  I glared at her. “I’m twenty-four, and you just said I was pretty.”

  “I got a better look.”

  “Make the potion.” I won’t go into the ingredients—they weren’t rational, or reasonable. About the only thing that made any sense was the Valentine’s candy hearts (for flavoring, of course). Potions tasted like cheap scotch, or so I’d heard.

  The witch held out her claw. “Pay and receive.”

  I tapped the company card and it changed, becoming a vial like my own, but full. Always full. I turned it over and a tiny pile of Glitter swept out, funneled into a tornado that came to rest in the witch’s hand.

  “You pay with hope that does not belong to you, child, buying a potion for someone else’s man.” She set down the flask.

  I snatched it, ready to be gone. “Thanks.”

  She held up her hand, crooked, with liver spots and long yellow nails. On the counter she placed a tiny flask. “The leftovers from my brew. It is time you had something of your own. Consider it a gift for the Queen’s handmaiden.”

  “The term is agent. And he’s the Fairy Godfather these days.” I’m not stupid. Gifts in Kingdom were like snakes. They coiled up around you and struck, and Kingdom only knew what would happen. Gifts from witches were worse, but turning it down would be like turning down the blessing of the fae, certain to bring their wrath. I took the second flask and pocketed it. I had enough enemies already.

  Grimm looked relieved when I got back to the Agency with both the potion and my skin intact. It’s not like I hadn’t given him reason to be worried lately. The thing is, even though I was technically a slave, he’d never treated me like one. He was always polite, and often proper, and on occasion kind. So I mostly trusted him.

  “Excellent work, Marissa.”

  I gave him a scowl for complimenting me on such a basic assignment. The potion I deposited in a safety box.

  “I trust Kingdom is recovering from their weekend hangover?”

  “You know it. The witch didn’t have a single other customer. Speaking of which,” I took the second flask out of my pocket, “you ever known a witch to have ‘leftover’ potion?” My fingers tingled, and I felt the urge to hide the flask someplace dark and safe.

  Grimm took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Never. It would be like wasting Glitter.”

  “She could see the blessings, Grimm.”

  He nodded as if it weren’t important.

  “Can you?”

  “No, my dear. Now tell me, how much did the ‘extra’ flask cost you? I’ll buy it from you for double.”

  That made no sense. Grimm held on to Glitter even tighter than he held on to money. “Double?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Marissa, I trust you, and your Glitter is yours to spend, but such potions are dangerous. Particularly for you.”

  “She said it was a gift. Double nothing is still nothing.” My fingers cramped around the bottle, and it hurt to let go. My fingers felt like they were on fire as I thought of all the possibilities. A potion. One of my own, which would leave a man so taken with me he’d die before letting me go. I knew I should make a counteroffer. Triple my month’s pay, or more. Grimm looked like he wanted it bad, but the thought of giving it away made my stomach turn.

  He looked at my hand, and I knew he had seen me clutch it. “Then it is yours, my dear. Tell me, can you even bring yourself to put it down, or have you already begun to imagine using it?”

  I focused on my fingers, peeling them back one at a time, until the vial fell out of my hands and rolled on the desk. I held one hand in the other, resisting the urge to snatch the potion.

  “May I offer to keep it safe for you?”

  My stomach turned as I looked at the tiny flask, but in the revulsion I also felt desire to take it back. I knew what it held was magic, dangerously close to black magic, but part of me didn’t care. I was afraid of that part. “I don’t want to touch it again. The big one didn’t do that to me.”

  “It wasn’t yours. Your desires make it that much stronger. I’ll have Rosa put it away. She has a husband and six children, so it won’t affect her the way it does you.”

  “I didn’t want to make any more enemies.” I sat down in a chair and put my head down on his desk.

  He shook his head. “A gift from a witch. You’re certainly not making any friends.”

  Eleven

  THE NEW PLAN came together quickly. This time, however, we’d work as a team—Evangeline and I—because potions were not to be trifled with. Grimm knew where Prince Mihail would be having lunch, and Ari herself would deliver the punch.

  “I’m not ready for this,” said Ari, looking more than a little green.

  “We’ll get you dressed when we get there. There are barf bags in the seat pockets,” said Evangeline. Given the way she drove, we often needed them.

  “You do have the wine,” said Grimm, looking out from the rearview mirror. He was personally overseeing the operation this time around.

  Evangeline patted a bag in the console beside her seat as she floored the accelerator and took ano
ther corner at near takeoff speeds. “Of course I do. Port, 1938, exactly as you ordered.”

  “His favorite,” said Grimm. “Now, young lady, do you understand what you need to do?”

  Ari took her head away from the bag for a moment. “I take the wine, walk along the sidewalk, he’ll say hello. How do you know what he’ll say?”

  Grimm gave a sigh. “Does the sign on my office say ‘Fairy Janitor’? I know. He says hello, you say hello, he says he was about to have a drink, and you, you look like someone who would like to have a drink with him. Does he like old port? He does, and he drinks it, looks at you, and you are golden, young lady.”

  Ari giggled. “It’s magic.”

  Evangeline and I exchanged nauseated glances, which had nothing to do with the fact that Evangeline treated curbs as an extra lane, and considered any space larger than a loaf of bread an opening to squeeze into. I, for one, was used to her driving, which resembled a demolition derby crossed with a Formula One race.

  “The potion expires at noon now that it is tuned to Princess Arianna,” said Grimm. “So you only have a tiny window to make sure it gets delivered. Fortunately, he’s going to look up at exactly eleven forty-two, giving you plenty of time for banter and toasts.”

  As we drove along Ari turned about the same shade of green as the plastic plants in our lobby. Her grip on the bag turned her knuckles white. “I feel terrible.”

  I reached over to feel her head, and as I touched her something like a static spark jumped between us. She pitched forward, gagging into her bag. Her skin felt so hot it hurt, and her face looked feverish. I held her hair out of her face and let her finish. “Grimm, you got magic for this?”

  “Not necessary, my dear. There’s a drugstore on the way. We’ll get something there.”

  Ari sloshed against the window as we made another near ninety-degree turn and let out a low groan.

  I took her hand. “Hold on. We’re going to get you fixed up.” That was the point where the tire blew out. Anyone else driving, and we’d have rolled for sure, but Evangeline cut the wheel perfectly to counter the skid. We slammed into a curb, blowing out both tires on the other side. She looked in her mirrors. “We hit something. Either a gnome or a two-foot-tall homeless guy.”