Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  I stood in my bathroom, using the sink mirror to call. “Grimm, I know you can hear me. I need to use the Visions Room. Please.”

  He slowly faded into view in the mirror, and if he ever slept I’d say he was worn out. “I’m sorry, my dear. I am a bit occupied at the moment.”

  “I’ve been doing my homework, and I’ve gotten to the point where I need to do lab work.”

  “Fine. You can come in after ten and use it for an hour.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “He is deeply enchanted, my dear. Even worse, it is a type I can’t identify, though I have a theory. I suspect, in fact, it is a salamander charm.”

  “He turns into a lizard?”

  “Amphibian,” said Ari, apparently tired of eavesdropping from the door.

  “A salamander is a creature of fire. It fits the pattern, prince into frog and such. It matches the evidence as well, his home being burned down, but there are aspects of this curse that are baffling.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Ari asked Grimm.

  “Young lady, I don’t understand your question,” said Grimm.

  “He broke your mirror,” said Ari. “Did it hurt?”

  Grimm laughed a gentle, deep laugh. “Young lady, I have had so many broken mirrors in my time I have lost count. Only obsidian may break our portals in a way that hurts. Even that wouldn’t kill me, it would just be quite painful.”

  “How is he?” I asked again, knowing Grimm would know what I meant.

  “He is angry, and sad, and hurt. Everything I’ve ever asked you to make a prince.”

  “I’ll be in tonight. Call if he’s there late, and I’ll make sure to wait.”

  Grimm didn’t leave. He looked at the floor a moment, then back at me. “Marissa, I might have been overly harsh with you. I regret not taking the time to explain more. I’m not punishing you for a mistake, whether you believe that or not. I’m doing what is best for you. You’ve never taken more than a day or two off, and the pressure of this job is hard to handle even if you are a fairy.”

  “See you tonight, Grimm,” I said. I couldn’t decide if I should be happy that Grimm had almost apologized for dismissing me, or upset that he thought I couldn’t handle it. “That was a private conversation,” I said to Ari.

  “Sorry.” Ari had never shown a tendency to apologize for snooping before. “I’m worried about you.”

  • • •

  I CANCELED THE morning run in favor of study time, though my blessings made it impossible to get any sort of spell work under way. We spent the day doing absolutely nothing, which was as much work for me as actually working. That evening, I drove us to the Agency, trying to time it right. Too early, and I’d run into Liam. Too late, and I’d waste precious time. I was relieved to find my bracelet worked, letting me in the back door.

  I took Ari to the back corner of our office. “This is the Visions Room.” It looked like a large closet until you noticed the four-foot-square window in the side. And the blacklights. And the prisms. “It should let me see the same thing you see.”

  “M!” said Evangeline, nearly scaring me to death. She came over and hugged me. Before I’d met Ari I’d always thought of her as my friend. Now I wasn’t so sure. More like a sister who can’t stand you, but knows that killing you would get her grounded.

  “You can take the scarf off around her.” I glanced at Ari, trying to give her warning.

  Evangeline unwrapped herself.

  Ari did well, focusing on her eyes and keeping her mouth shut.

  “You get used to it after a while,” said Evangeline. “Well, maybe you do. I don’t think I ever will. Grimm said you’d be in tonight. Guess you aren’t grounded as much anymore.”

  I hit the power-up button to start the lights. “Going to get a look at my blessings. Try to calm them down.”

  “I don’t think you should talk to them,” said Evangeline. “You want to see something nasty? Check this out.” She punched up the Visions Room monitor and brought up a picture. It was Liam, and I could finally see the curse I had sent after him. It looked like a net of barbed wire, but the loops were curved like scales, and it was tattooed in spirit ink across his entire body. “Never seen anything like it. Jess says she hasn’t either, and she’s old.”

  I spent a moment admiring the man under the curse, wondering what his skin felt like without one of those flannel shirts he always wore. I shook away the thoughts and focused on my current problem. “I gotta get in and see if this works.” I’d taken aspirin in anticipation of the migraine the Visions Room would give me. I opened the door and walked in. The ceiling was low, but this was one case where losing the genetic lottery worked in my favor. All I had to do was stand and wait for the lights to activate. When they did, the light was simultaneously brilliant white and deep purple. The prisms kicked in, splitting the normal light away and bending the magical energy down to the visible spectrum.

  My eyes focused, and I blinked a couple of times to be sure. “You two seeing what I’m seeing?”

  The speaker in the box buzzed and Evangeline spoke. “Kingdom help you, M. We can see them.”

  Ari had said they looked like pixie lights that dashed back and forth, but obviously she needed a pair of magic bifocals to go with the contacts. Across from me sat two creatures, like tiny children, except children don’t have six-inch claws, or three toes and fingers, or a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. They looked more like piranha than people. Their tiny bellies pooched out like they’d swallowed a poodle or two, and they hunched over so that their tiny fish faces hung forward. I smiled at them and they returned the grin with a mouth that could swallow a cat.

  Evangeline buzzed in again. “M, you want out, pull the safety latch.”

  “They’d come with me.” I was sort of wondering if I’d be able to sleep at night knowing what followed me everywhere. “Listen up, you two. I know you can understand me. I also know you aren’t bound to my will. I have two names. I’ll give you each one, and I promise I’ll speak it at least once every day.” I’d done my bit, finishing up curses and spellwork. You didn’t speak of a curse because it gave it power. It fed it.

  I pointed to one. “You. You are Beatus.” As I said the word it shimmered, becoming brighter, and it quivered like the name had stroked it. I looked at the other. “You are Consecro.” If the thing had rolled over on its back it couldn’t have been more pleased. “You are my blessings, and from now on you go with me by my permission.” That was all I needed to do. Simple, and hopefully effective. See, the key to naming something was that it had to accept the name, and know you called it that.

  Beautus and Consecro. Latin for blessing and curse. I’d chosen the names with care, because everything they did for me seemed to cut both directions. I couldn’t remove them, but I had learned about harakathin. Naming them gave them power, but it gave me power over them, as well. Giving them permission to come with me was more symbolic. What mattered was intent, and I was intent on being in control of my own life. I opened the door to the Visions Room and watched as they faded away. “Let’s go, Ari. We’ve got studying to do.”

  Evangeline shook her head and leaned against the Visions Room wall. “M, this is not a good idea, and you are so good at bad ideas. Giving those things names? Giving them permission to come with you? Grimm’s gonna blow a gasket.”

  “I can hear you two,” said Grimm, showing up on the mirror facing the monitor. “Feeding a curse is a terrible idea. Feeding a blessing is only mildly bad. They are connected to you, my dear, and will react violently to separation.”

  I looked at Grimm. “Speaking of violence, what’s going on with the fae?”

  “They are preparing for war, my dear. A war between the realms.”

  “The fae and the goblins? The fae and Avalon?” I had a bad feeling about the way he said it.

  “You know better than that, my dear. Their foray into the wolf village was only the beginning. I don’t know why, since you are going to ask, but the authorities ar
e attempting to negotiate, and the police and the military are doing what they can to prepare.” There wasn’t going to be such a thing as preparing for that. I saw what happened to the wolves.

  “Then there’s the matter of the prince. I wouldn’t expect you to be able to tell,” said Grimm, “but there were traces of fae magic everywhere in his apartment.”

  “Tit for tat?” I asked. “Someone snags a fae child, so they grab the prince?”

  “My dear, it certainly appears so. Though why they’d want Mihail I can’t say. There are half a dozen better targets in Kingdom.”

  “I’d kidnap a kobold before I took Mihail.” The more Grimm explained, the less I understood, but I didn’t like the idea of keeping Ari out any later than absolutely necessary. There were things that came out to play after midnight that even I did my best to avoid. “See you round, Grimm. Evangeline, keep an eye on Liam for me.”

  “Of course. He’s staying at my place.” She didn’t bother looking up.

  “What?” I said, looking at her with horror.

  “Calm down, M. Not like that. Your friend gets a lot of attention from the wrong crowd these days, and it’s a full-time job for me and Jess to keep him from winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She walked over and gave me a hug. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep him safe for you.”

  “Is he any better?”

  “Nah, if anything the curse is working its way deeper into him. And where you are concerned, he’s not any better. He still can’t stand you.”

  Twenty-One

  I STOOD IN my living room. “Blessing, curse, come here. I need you two to stay calm while Ari does practice, okay?” I couldn’t see them, but that didn’t stop me from talking to them. I had a cat for a while. It disappeared one day while I was gone and hadn’t shown up since. I still worried every time I moved the bed that I was finally going to find it. Having a couple of blessings was like having a cat, only I didn’t have to feed them. In that regard, they were my kind of pet.

  Ari touched up the circle and stepped inside. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  “I bought an entire case of lightbulbs. Just in case.”

  She ignored me and I felt that chill as the magic ran through the apartment, gathering about her. Now she held a globe of light in her hand without breaking a sweat.

  “Consecro, Beatus, good job,” I said, hoping to keep them from a rampage. The vase on my table quivered a little but otherwise things were quiet.

  Ari took a deep breath. “Be.” A fountain of light erupted in the apartment, blasting out like a wave from Ari, painting everything it touched with a rainbow of colors. It rushed back into her, collapsing and taking all the light in the apartment with it.

  A pale purple glow lit in the darkness. A globe of light that hovered before her. The globe floated forth like a tiny lightning storm, stopping at the edge of the circle. I walked around it, marveling. It resembled a thundercloud, shimmering with micro-lightning. “That’s amazing, and beautiful. Hey, you okay?”

  Ari looked like she was about to faint from the effort of stepping out of the circle. She stumbled, and I helped her to the recliner. “So tired. Feel like I stayed up all night. And I hurt.” One little glow bug and she was wiped out.

  “What do I do with the foxfire?” It floated against the edge of the circle like a miniature cloud, lights playing across the surface as it tried to reach her.

  She coughed, and her voice came out in a whisper. “Let it go.”

  I stepped on the edge of the circle, and it floated out. The lights flickered and a bolt of static electricity shot out at me. My hand convulsed like I had grabbed an electric fence. “Stop it.” It shocked me again.

  “I can’t,” Ari whispered, the best she could do.

  That was obvious. Lying on the recliner took every bit of strength she had. The table flipped over, the pictures went flying, and the foxfire shrieked. It bled light from wounds that something raked across it. As the fire drained outward like blood, it illuminated the invisible claws and teeth of my blessings. They floated in the air, devouring it like honey-glazed ham, their teeth lit up like tiny electric swords.

  Ari slept the better part of two days, and when she did get up, she looked like she had the flu.

  “No running.” She shuffled to the fridge.

  “Not today.” I sat with a book in my lap. “How you feel?”

  “Tired, but not dead. Need to move.”

  “I think we should put a hold on magic until we can figure out what it is doing to you, but if you are up for a trip, I’m thinking about going into Kingdom.”

  “What do you want there?”

  I held up my book. “Near modern history of the fae. Volume sixteen, but it ends over a thousand years ago. I’m hoping there’s a bookstore with the last volume. Also I need a spirit prism. Tired of not being able to see where my pets are.”

  “They’re on the mantel like usual.” Ari glanced at the fireplace. “I can see them better today. They don’t look like lights. More like hot dogs with legs and arms.”

  “The fae didn’t always keep to themselves, you know that? At one point they nearly took over the entire earth realm. Several times, in fact.”

  Ari took a drink from her coffee. “Have they actually seen this place? Why would they go to war for it? What I saw through that portal made Earth look like a dump.”

  “I think Earth’s like a middle ground. Goblins, fae, even the fairies with their mirrors. They’re all connected here, so I think if you want to get to someplace else, you have to go through Earth.” I closed the book and put it aside. When she was ready, we headed into Kingdom, and since it was a nice day, we took the bus.

  Kingdom on a Wednesday was about as close as it ever came to normal. Whole place ran on a seven-day cycle, becoming more and more magical as the weekend approached. Noon on Wednesday was the peak of normal, which meant it looked a lot like any street in the city: weird.

  Ari looked a lot better now; the air and the movement were doing her good. “Any idea where we are going?”

  “There’s a bookstore up at 116th and Cross.” I pointed it out on the map of Kingdom Grimm had given me the first time I came here.

  We walked along the high streets of Kingdom, under the watchful eyes of a number of cops, all the way to the bookstore. As I passed the Isyle Witch’s shop a shiver ran down my spine. I left Ari at a singing flower stand while I went inside the bookstore and found my book. It was tiny, less than three hundred pages long, but the cost left me nearly choking. Three weeks’ worth of work in a tiny golden pile.

  “Get the book?” asked Ari as I joined her outside.

  “I got it, cost me three weeks’ worth of Glitter, but I got it. Let’s find an artifact shop and get out of here before I spend every ounce of Glitter I’ve got. I need to find a spirit prism and we can go have lunch.” I hefted my book, bound in brown paper and tied up in ball twine for safekeeping.

  “This way,” said Ari.

  Walking down the streets of Kingdom toward the exit was a lot easier. All the magic in the place pushed me out toward the normal world, and if I wandered, I knew I’d find myself at the gates every time. Ari, on the other hand, would inevitably wind up at the castle. She cut over a couple of streets, and I followed, resisting the temptation to open my book and read.

  Ari stopped. “Mother—I mean Gwendolyn went here for all her spells.”

  Dread washed over me, making my skin prickle. “Anywhere else. I’ll pay double to buy it anywhere else.” We stood outside the Isyle Witch’s shop.

  “No, you won’t.” She walked right in. The stench of toads wafted out of the door as she opened it, and the bell rang as it closed.

  I held my nose and went inside, wishing I’d have asked where we were going first. Inside, my eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. “Ari. Ari, where are you?”

  “I’m right here,” she said, standing at the counter.

  The witch saw me and grinned, showing rotten teeth. “Hand
maiden. You honor me with your presence.”

  Ari gave me a look that said I’d have trouble explaining this later, then she turned back to the witch, and when she spoke, it was a command. “Get me a spirit prism.”

  “For what? Your eyes are like my own. You see.” The witch leered at her in a way.

  If my skin was crawling before, it was ready to run at this point, and drag me with it out of the shop.

  Ari looked right back into those yellow eyes without a hint of fear. “None of your business.”

  The witch snarled at her. “Witchling, you should watch your tongue in the presence of your elders. I could teach you much if you’d learn respect.”

  “The prism,” said Ari. “I’m not a witch, I am a princess, and the seal bearer of the third Family.”

  The witch laughed. “Where do you think witches come from? You have fresh wounds from wild magic on your soul. It won’t be long now.” She wandered into the back of the shop.

  Ari glanced at me. “What does she mean by handmaiden?” She sounded a lot less sure of herself now.

  “Not now, please. I told you I’d go anywhere but here.”

  The witch emerged from the backroom with a black cloth bag I knew contained a prism. “Pay and be done.”

  I did, trying not to care about what it cost me. That tiny pile represented an entire month helping a little old man spin used dental floss into gold. By the time I’d finished that assignment, my smile shone bright white.

  She weighed the Glitter. “Are you pleased with my work, handmaiden?”

  “It didn’t affect the man, so I think not.” I walked over to the counter to stand beside Ari.

  The witch’s hair flared up in clumps like gray tentacles, and the safety bonds on her wrists glowed bright red. In Low Kingdom she would’ve already thrown a spell or two at me. “I swear by the low streets, by my own casket twice buried, that the potion was good. If it did not work, then some other power opposes you. And my gift to you, did you use it to win his heart?”

  “She said it didn’t work,” said Ari. “Are you deaf as well as blind?”