Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  “It’s not about the magic,” said Grimm, his eyes narrow, his face red. “You don’t understand what you might do, and I won’t allow you to harm yourself like that. Put the potion away, Marissa.”

  I felt my hands move of their own accord and watched them put it back in the box. I fought with all my might, but all I could do was induce a tiny tremble. My hands slid the box back into place and he released me.

  He had never done that before. Ever. “You . . .”

  “I’m sorry, my dear. You gave me no other choice.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “You made me.” My voice shook as I said it, and my face felt hot. I was dizzy and nauseous, and my throat felt like I swallowed the desert.

  “Marissa, I don’t enjoy—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t.” I summoned every bit of willpower I had and the cold emotional wall I had used so many times on so many princes. I walled it away, the fear, the feeling of being violated. “I’m going into Kingdom.” My voice was cool and calm, a facade I prayed I could keep up until I was out of his office. “I’m going to go see if Clara left anything behind, Godfather.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I went straight to my car, and found Liam and Ari waiting in the garage. Pink sutures stuck out of Liam’s head like tiny ribbons. I left the Agency, wondering how I’d ever bring myself to come back.

  I spent the next hour fuming in the car as it crawled toward Kingdom. There’s a traffic jam in Kingdom every single day, caused by the bleed over from the Avenue underneath, and we sat in traffic going nowhere when he spoke. I kept my hands on the wheel to keep them from shaking.

  “Did that really happen?” Liam asked.

  “Trolls? Wolves? Portals? Yeah.” Every inch of me wanted to scream at him to leave me alone, and at the same time I wanted to wrap my arms around him and close my eyes and forget about being Grimm’s marionette. I couldn’t do either.

  “No. What the Godmother showed me. Your parents put you up to that deal.”

  I shoved away the fear and the pain, putting on my mask of fearlessness. From behind the wall of cold it was easy to answer now. Easy to see what my life had been, and what I had done. “Yeah, it’s real. All of it.” We sat in silence and inched a half a car length forward.

  “What is it like working for him?”

  I held up the bracelet. “Most days it’s like a job. Some days a good job, but it’s never a choice.”

  “So can he make you do something?”

  I tried the next lane over in hopes it would move faster. It didn’t. “He could. His requests aren’t requests at all. So you do what you have to do, and you tell yourself it’s what you want to do, because in the end it’s the thing you are going to do.” I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Ari staring at me. She knew about not having choices.

  Liam spoke so softly I could barely hear him. “You said you made two mistakes with me. What was the second one?”

  I wanted to tell him. To swing the wheel over and jump across the seat and hold on to him. I thought of what happened in Grimm’s office. What if Grimm didn’t want a relationship cutting into my work time? What I wanted wasn’t a factor in my life. “It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t, I told myself. It didn’t.

  We pulled up at the entrance to the queen’s tower, and I left the car out front. The doorman saw me coming and tried to explain, but I pushed past him and banged on the blank steel elevator panel. The doorman whispered into his phone, and I felt the elevator activate.

  It came down and opened, and inside stood Shigeru. “The royal family is not present.”

  “We’re here as part of another investigation. I’m looking into a murder.”

  Shigeru’s face stayed as emotionless as mine. “I can give you access to Prince Mihail’s floor, but I am not permitted in the living quarters when the royal family is not present. I am confined to my quarters while I await their return.”

  “You search us when we come down. I promise we won’t take anything. Where are the king and queen?” I put my money on out of town, maybe out of the realm.

  “They petition the High King to make war against the fae and recover their son.” Shigeru whispered in Japanese into the elevator. I remembered the queen’s comment about it being alive. Probably a command.

  “So if we can find him and bring the prince back, they’ll back down?”

  He laughed, a sharp, static, almost cough. “You have not spent enough time with Queen Mihail. She will seek war regardless.”

  We crowded into the elevator and rode up. When it opened, we walked out onto the black marble flooring. Ari whistled.

  “What a setup.” Liam squeaked a boot on marble tiles.

  “I’m glad you like it,” said a voice I knew all too well. From behind the elevator came Prince Mihail, a gun in his hand. He was missing his shirt, his pants were unbuttoned, and on one arm hung a woman who was more silicon than flesh. You can buy magical breast enhancements, to be sure, but silicon is cheaper.

  “Is this her?” asked the bimbo, and I saw a gleam of dryad green in her hair.

  Mihail walked over to me, keeping the gun carefully pointed at my chest. “No. She’s a girl who keeps getting in the way. This is her.” He pointed the gun toward Ari, and she turned red.

  “Her?” asked the dryad. “You were going to marry her? She’s fat and flat. I have handmaidens who would make better princesses.”

  “Yes, I was going to marry her,” said Mihail, “and once I was done wiping myself with her, I was going to throw her out that window.”

  “Do it now,” said the dryad.

  I felt Ari gathering her power, and this time she was furious. She threw a blast of light from her hand, and the dryad screamed as it burned across her.

  “Run,” said Mihail, shoving her.

  She did, right across the room, toward the dressing mirror. She stepped into it and disappeared. Liam’s breathing became ragged, and his face turned the color of blood. Wisps of smoke curled out of his clothes.

  “You, you’re the one who stole my curse,” said Mihail.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was supposed to receive it. Had a nice nullification potion on board so I didn’t burn down my favorite restaurant. The problem with transformation curses is you can’t take them. They have to be sent, and that one required ‘A fair maiden, with love’s first bloom in sight.’”

  Ari rolled her eyes. “What idiot came up with that idea?”

  Mihail looked offended. “That’s the curse’s purpose. To separate two lovers. All you had to do was think of the right person. Me, and the curse comes to me. Instead you think of this lout and give it to him.”

  “You cursed me?” said Liam, looking at me.

  Ari spat at Mihail. “You would have made a great salamander.”

  He laughed a deep, natural laugh that told me we were in trouble. He looked at Liam. “Turn around or I shoot them both. Then lie down on your face.”

  Liam did, and Prince Mihail knelt on his back. He gestured with the gun. “You two, over there.”

  “What did you do with Clara?” I asked.

  Mihail gave me a vapid grin, trying his princely charms. Didn’t work. “You know, I never did like her sitting around. She wasn’t afraid of Mother, and she asked so many inconvenient questions. She had the gall to look around in my things. So I sent her away.”

  “Where?”

  “Through the mirror, of course. There’s someone on the other side who would love to meet you. To know all your little secrets. I don’t need any more taste testers for apples, but I’m sure my friend could find something entertaining to do with you.”

  “Playing with fairies is bad for your life expectancy. Your mother would not approve.”

  The prince glowed at the mention of his mother. “I’d bring you along but really, I hate traveling with companions. Too much like flying coach for my tastes.” He looked around at his many, many portraits. “I’ve always enjoyed matching decor. When the solst
ice comes, this whole city will be ashes, just like you.” He pulled the bracelet from Liam’s arm and ran for the mirror.

  Twenty-Nine

  I DIDN’T WATCH him leave. I was focused on Liam, who groaned and convulsed. Without Grimm’s bracelet to restrain the curse, he was changing. His clothes caught fire and burned right off of him, leaving his skin untouched. Liam began to change, and I understood. The fires. The waking up miles from where he went to sleep, the strength. His arms grew longer and his skin turned reddish green and hardened into scales.

  “Get away,” he said, flailing at me as his fingers shortened and widened into claws. The rest of his words became hisses and gurgles. Grimm had told me once that when a prince got changed into a frog, his nervous system was the last thing to change. They felt the entire process. Most required counseling afterward.

  Ari pulled me by the hair until I followed her. I looked back once more, and I knew why Grimm hadn’t been able to find Liam. The curse wasn’t turning him into a salamander.

  He was a dragon.

  Ari pulled me toward the kitchenette. “Come on.”

  Liam’s voice was gone, replaced with the guttural hiss of an ancient lizard. As he stood up, I got a good look, and it was bad. He was only half dragon, like a man and a komodo mashed together. He walked on two legs and bounded on four. His head was long and his face ended in a mouth full of teeth. With each step, his claws chipped the marble, and his skin was now covered in bright red scales with a tint of shiny green. Liam raised his head, inhaled, and set the couch on fire with a stream of flame.

  As I ran through the kitchen, I hit a chair. Liam’s serpentine head whipped around to follow me. With a roar, he ran on all fours across the apartment. I picked up a plate and threw it at him, simultaneously whispering an apology. It smashed into his head, and he ignored it.

  As the dragon came through the kitchen, plates and cups flew from the cabinet, smashing on his scales. My blessings objected to me getting roasted, which might have been the first time we agreed on anything. Liam shook bits of glass off of his nose and turned to come for me. He turned too quickly on the kitchen tile, and his hind legs slipped out from under him.

  Ari dragged me into the bathroom. “In here.”

  We slammed the door and threw the lock. I leaned up against it. The dragon shuffled along outside, sniffing at the dense oak door. We were in the prince’s private bathroom. Black marble and white marble, like everything else. The man had a singular sense of style.

  I checked the door to make sure it was locked. Dragons weren’t known for using doors, but somewhere in that thing was Liam. If any of his intelligence remained, a doorknob wouldn’t slow him down.

  Outside, the sounds of crashing and smashing told me the Dragon-Liam was saving his fire for something more edible. As the hours passed, I cracked the door to check from time to time. Every time, he lay a dozen feet away, smoking drool dripping from his mouth. “I can’t believe he’s in there. Grimm’s going to flip.” Thinking of him, I tried the bracelet once more, but we were on the opposite side of where Shigeru said we’d get service.

  “Why didn’t you tell Liam how you felt in the car?”

  I clipped and unclipped my bracelet, twisting it in my fingers as I passed the time. “It doesn’t matter what I want, or what I think, or what I feel. I’m trapped in a bathroom, trapped in a job, and trapped in this life.” I watched as the bracelet snaked itself around my wrist, and clicked into place. “I was going to use a potion on him.”

  “A love potion?”

  I nodded.

  She scowled at me. “Didn’t you read the spell books? A love potion works best when there isn’t any feeling between two people. If you gave it to him, he’d feel love for you all right, mixed with anything else he already felt.”

  Her words were like cold water on me, as I worked it through. “He’d hate me and love me.”

  “I don’t think he hates you. You don’t see how he looks at you. But if you used a potion it wouldn’t ever be real love.”

  “Grimm made me put it back. It was like watching a puppet show from inside the puppet.”

  Ari reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. From outside, I heard something definitely crystal and probably ugly break. Ari looked at the door. “How long does this dragon episode go on?”

  “One of Grimm’s spellbooks said transformation curses lasted about six hours or until the victim went to sleep.” I glanced at my watch, wondering if dragons took catnaps, or just ate cats as snacks.

  “Why doesn’t it push down the door? Or burn it down?”

  Now, I might not have made it all the way through “D” in the Beast Lexicon, but I’d peeked at a few of the more interesting subjects. “Why would he? The dragon part of him has everything it could ever want. A princess, locked in a room in a tower, with no chance of a prince showing up to give it a lance-ectomy. Trust me, he’ll stay there for the rest of our lives.” I propped up a set of bath mats, curled up in the bathtub, and dozed.

  I woke to a humming sound. In the dim light of the bathroom, Ari’s ring had begun to glow, emitting a green and yellow light. I shook her awake. “It’s eleven thirty. Your ring goes off at midnight.” Outside, a clatter of dishes let me know my scaly admirer still roamed the floors.

  Ari peered under the door. “Is there an office building here? I could walk down the stairs there.”

  “I think there is, but the top is about thirty stories below us. Grimm, we could use some help.” I put my hand on the bracelet and thought of him as hard as I could. He didn’t answer.

  I unlocked the door slowly and listened. There was no sound in the apartment, but as I cracked open the door, I saw him. Dragon-Liam had swept the furniture out away from the bathroom and lay on the marble, facing the door. He wrapped a long tail around his body, lashing back and forth like a cat. Wisps of smoke drifted from his jaws, and with each breath he rumbled in a way that shook the floor.

  Ari’s ring began to pulse faster. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Spell him. Like you did the bimbo.”

  Her face turned pink, and she shook her head. “I can’t do it on command, and I don’t think I could hurt a dragon either.”

  I looked out again, and saw him sitting with one eye fixed on the door. “I’ll go to the left and lead him around. Get ready.”

  She ignored me, looking in the mirror. Her mouth moved as she worked something through. “I’ve got an idea. I’ve read a lot of history books in the last month. There’s a story that shows up again and again. The princess uses her charms to calm a monster and lull it to sleep.”

  “A dragon?”

  “Not that I’ve read, but the principle is the same. I’m a princess, so it has to listen to me.”

  A memory came to me and I nodded. “Like the hellhound?”

  “Exactly.”

  Dragon-Liam still waited, flipping his tail back and forth lazily as I watched from the bathroom. “I don’t like this plan. It has too much chance for charbroiled princess.”

  “I don’t like the idea of pancaked princess either. Hold the door in case I need to get away.” With that, she stepped out.

  Dragon-Liam heard the door latch and raised his head, fixing her with a glowing red eye and turning from side to side to try and get a better look. Ari hummed as she stepped forward, a soft lullaby. As the tune filled the quiet, he closed those wicked jaws. She took one step, and another, and began to sing softly, something country western.

  Dragon-Liam’s head shot up, and he squinted at her, first with one eye and then the other. A low growl came from him that echoed in the apartment, followed by a tiny squeak of fear from Ari. His lips curled back, revealing long fangs and a forked tongue.

  “Ari,” I yelled, as he filled his lungs. She ran through the door, and I slammed it. Flames burst on the frame and her sleeve was on fire. She flailed in the bathroom while I beat at her with a towel. “Put it out!”

  So I shoved her into the shower and turned it
on. Once she was completely drenched, Ari looked like a half-drowned kitten. Well, one that had taken a nap on a barbeque. “I don’t understand. I’m a princess, it’s supposed to work.”

  We sat in the dark as midnight ticked closer and the ring made a continuous warning hum. I leaned against the door, listening to the sound of claws on marble. “Everybody makes mistakes. I thought he was a prince, remember? I even told Grimm I could see the prince shine on him, and I believed it enough to fool the Root of Lies.”

  She gasped, staring at me like I’d admitted eating the last pint of ice cream. “You have to try it.”

  I glanced at my phone. Twenty minutes and Ari would be taking the express elevator down. “Why not?” I asked, getting up. “When I go out there, I want you to run to the elevator. Don’t stop, don’t look back. Keep going. If I let you get killed, Grimm will resurrect me and kill me twice.” I opened the door and stepped out to face the dragon.

  It raised its head at me, and every nursery rhyme I could think of went out the window, so I just talked.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” I said, taking a step toward it.

  “This is my fault. Don’t punish Ari for it.” She would be out the door, and hopefully headed for the elevator.

  “I’m the one who thought you were a prince, not her.”

  The dragon turned its head to look at me with the other eye.

  “I’m the one who sent the curse for you.”

  It growled and the eyes flickered with flames hot enough to melt marble.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen. They told me to think of the person I loved.” I was so close I could touch it now, or it could tear my head off with a single snap of its jaws.

  “I lied to you in the car. My first mistake was thinking you were a prince, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. My second one I’m not sorry for, and if you need to kill me for it, I understand. I let myself imagine you could be mine. That I would be allowed to love you. That you might love me.” I put my hands on its jaws, running my fingers over the rough scales.