Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  Jess shouldered past her and put one hand on my shoulder in a subtle threat. “Come noon tomorrow there’s going to be a full-on war in Kingdom, and without Grimm, you can’t even set foot in it.”

  I held up the Root. “At least take this thing. You can use it to find out where Fairy Godmother’s mirror is.”

  Jess shook her head. “We’re done asking questions, and it likes you.” They walked out of my apartment like it was a social call. I’d spent six years in that apartment. It never felt so empty. I never felt so alone.

  • • •

  I DROVE A rental car down to the gates of Kingdom. Without Grimm’s magic I couldn’t even see them. I turned the corner more times than I could count. No matter how many times I closed my eyes, or walked, or wished, nothing happened. The shops still sold gloves instead of gauntlets, and the flowers in the flower cart were cut instead of dancing and singing. Being inches from the streets I wanted to be on didn’t change who I was.

  After hours at the gates and dozens of failed attempts, I finally gave up. I walked a few blocks to the pier and ordered a bottle of wine. I listened to the wind and the chimes until nightfall. I looked in my purse, where I had crammed the Root of Lies. That was the real reason I had driven here. I meant to throw it in the water, but honestly, the river was polluted enough already. In less than twenty-four hours, this place would be a war zone of fae killing everyone and Kingdom forces killing the fae. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  So I walked to the carousel and got on board. I found the horse I’d ridden with Liam, and ran my hand down the carved mane. With all the cash in my purse, I paid the operator to keep it running while the world spun away. Memories and wine kept me floating all evening. It was the dead of night when the operator finally shut it down. The pier was empty now, silent and dark. The trash of the day skittered in the sea wind as I walked back up to look at the avenue one last time.

  I didn’t even have a way to reach Fairy Godmother. She’d promised me one more wish, and I figured there couldn’t be anything worse than what she’d already given me. Then I thought of my nightly reading. That Near History of the Fae book described a dozen different ways people used to treaty with the fae. Most of them were bloody, which fit my mood perfectly, but required equipment and victims. For the oldest and least reliable method, I had everything required.

  I knelt in the dark by a puddle and ran my fingers along my eyes. As much as I’d cried in the last month I should have been dehydrated, but I was still plenty drippy. I moved so the moon hung reflected in a puddle, and flicked my tears onto it. The pool rippled and became solid like a mirror.

  I felt the presence. “I’m ready for my third wish. Bring it on.”

  “Marissa, is that you?” said Grimm.

  Thirty-One

  “YES!” I SHOUTED, not caring who noticed.

  “I’m sorry I cannot see you. My current situation has left me weakened. My mirror has been broken.”

  “Grimm, I need your help.”

  He was silent for so long I was sure I had lost him. “I don’t understand what you need my services for. You have enough Glitter in that vial for two happily ever afters.”

  My hand went to my throat, and I felt the vial. I tried to process what he said. I hadn’t even thought about it. I held it up and looked, and sure enough, it shone full. “I thought it was to pay you.”

  “Marissa, I’ve always taken my payment up front, split equally between your debt to me, and your own account. The vial was for your own benefit, when our working relationship ended. I hoped when you left this life, you’d buy a better one.”

  “I didn’t make a deal with Fairy Godmother. She said freedom was her second blow to me.”

  Grimm was quiet again, but when he spoke, I heard pride in his voice. “I want you to go, Marissa. I cannot give you your family or your memory, or any of the things I would have wanted to, but you have to leave. You cannot help here.”

  “Ari and Liam got taken, and Evangeline and Jess are going ballistic without you. Where was your mirror?”

  The puddle rippled as he spoke. “Even I don’t know. It was safer that way.”

  “How’d they find you?”

  “Clara handled my safekeeping, my dear. I thought the knowledge died with her, but apparently not. I want you to know I am sorry for how we parted. Now leave. You are no longer bound to me.”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes. “I pay my debts, Grimm. This is my life. I can’t go home. I don’t think I ever could, but from now on at least I’ll do things my way.”

  The wind kicked up, sending waves through the puddle. My tears could only buy me so much time before the spell broke down. I turned the vial over in my hands. It was a ton of Glitter. Enough to buy me that ever after I always said I wanted, or maybe just enough to go after what mattered to me now.

  “See you soon, Grimm.”

  What I did next was crazy and desperate, and that’s the only reason it worked. I took off the vial and tossed it into the gutter. I couldn’t afford one single speck of hope on me for it to work. I walked to the corner of the Avenue and closed my eyes. I thought about my family. About my mother. My sister. Ari, and the way Liam had looked at me when I’d told him what I did. I wrapped my sorrow and pain like a cloak about me, and I walked forward. I made it fifteen, maybe twenty paces. I tripped on the curb and went flying into the street.

  Rough cobblestones gouged into my hands, and when I opened my eyes I knelt in the filth and the sewage of the Low Kingdom. Only the occasional street lamp flickered while a pixie burned to death. I glanced back at the gates. These were made to keep victims in, not out. Thorns and razor-sharp glass jutted from them.

  A drunken man towered over me like an ogre. “You’ll not be getting out that way, lass.”

  He reached for me, and I tripped him, throwing him into the gutter. In my worst Scottish brogue I answered, “You’ll not be getting me that way, lad.” I checked my running shoes and ran. In the low streets of Kingdom, a chase is like a fox hunt, and soon I had everything from kitsune to a few wolves stalking me. They were used to following city girls who stumbled down the wrong street, not agents with a thousand miles under their soles. Plus, I wasn’t running for the sake for running. For the first time in my life, I was running toward something instead of away from it.

  I rounded corners, splashed through waste piles, and, generally speaking, ran like hell until I found it. Low Kingdom almost exactly mirrored High Kingdom, and the Isyle Witch’s shop lay exactly where I expected. No bond statements on her door, and the cages and jars lined the outside window, but I walked in without fear. Inside, a true cauldron bubbled as she stirred it.

  She looked at me with those yellow, diseased eyes and nearly dropped her ladle. “Handmaiden, it is not yet time.”

  I reached up to my neck, where I knew the vial would be. Like my old Agency bracelet, it was mine and couldn’t be lost or stolen, but now that I was past the gates, nothing would kick me out of Low Kingdom. High Kingdom, on the other hand, remained a problem. “I need to be able to go to High Kingdom.”

  She cackled with glee. “One both blessed and cursed could walk the streets.”

  The thought made me pause. A person torn between blessings and curses could walk the streets of Kingdom. My blessings gave me enough grief trying to help. In a way, I already had a curse. “What does it cost?” I plopped my vial on the magic scale, and it didn’t even move.

  “Harakathin are expensive.”

  Another idea came to me. One that made me frightened and hopeful at the same time. “What if I already had one you could use? One you could change.” The scale swung up, hanging far lower. “Do it.” I watched years of Glitter drain away in seconds. Years of blood, bruises, and broken bones. Years of living someone else’s life.

  The witch swung her hand up in the air and seized something, and I felt it scream as she plunged it into the cauldron. As it boiled, the steam formed a mist that filled the shop. She lifted it up out
of the cauldron, and in the mist I could see how it had been twisted. The teeth no longer fit in its mouth, it had two tails, and when it moved it shook, with fear, rage, or both.

  The witch held out a claw toward me, beckoning. “It must be claimed.”

  I reached for the curse and it swiped at me, baring its teeth. “I claim it. It is mine.” I felt it burn inside me, connecting to a part of me I couldn’t see.

  The witch bowed her head. “I am honored to be of service, handmaiden. You have needs?”

  “Fleshing silver.” I handed her the vial.

  “You dare paint a way to your battle? I see why you are her chosen.” She disappeared into the shop and came out with a flask, made of rusted metal. Only a tiny trace of glitter remained in my vial.

  I took the lid off and the smell curled its way into my nose, the cloying sweet stench of brined cat. “One last thing. I don’t have spirit sight. Can you show me the mark?”

  She held out her hand, with bony knuckles and long nails. “The price is blood.”

  I took her hand without flinching.

  She muttered, and I felt the power gathering around her like it did when Ari cast a spell. My hand burned, like it was on fire. Welts rose on my hand, traced in excruciating agony, and the blood ran along them. At last, she let go, and I saw the mark. It began at my wrist and followed up along the back of my hand, a rose with a ring of thorns encircling it. “Thank you,” I said.

  “It is not safe on the street. Not all fear our queen yet. Leave by the upper entrance.”

  I looked back, and the doorway had changed. Through it I saw High Kingdom. I walked out, finally able to walk that street by my own will and power. Kingdom soldiers in white lined the streets, and the few people standing outside looked nervous. I turned my back on High Kingdom, and headed down toward Dwarf Town.

  I wandered the streets for hours, lost, looking for one tiny house in a warren of tiny houses. They all looked the same, and without Evangeline to guide me, I would be wasting hours, maybe days I didn’t have.

  I took one more wrong turn, and found myself back on Main Street. Shops stretched back toward the gates, and ahead lay the palace. Off on the right stood the Kingdom Post Office. I bit my tongue, and headed inside, waving to the door gnome, who tried to trip me as I passed. I stood in line, watching the clock tick ever closer to six o’clock. I knew that at six sharp, they’d lock the doors and let out the asps. Exactly where they got buckets of asps, I neither knew nor wanted to.

  At five fifty-seven the crowd began to thin as folks with better survival instincts decided to come back another day. At five fifty-eight, a stampede of people exiting the building nearly crushed the door gnome. Only an old woman stood in line before me.

  She pushed a handful of pennies across the counter. “I’ll take one hundred and seventy-eight stamps, please.”

  The counter gnome picked up a penny and nibbled at it. “These are zinc. Not worth as much as the copper ones, and we don’t accept either.”

  The old lady pulled out her dentures and placed them on the counter. “Ou an ave ees ooo,” she said.

  “No glitter, no stamps,” said the counter gnome. He looked up at the clock. My watch said I had just enough time to not make it out.

  I pulled the vial from my neck and set it down. “I’ll pay. Give her the stamps.”

  He glared at me and handed them over, one at a time. In the background, the door clicked. The clock above the grand hall began to chime. From the corners of the room snakes slithered, emerging from holes near the base of the wall.

  The old woman threw back her hood and stood up straight. “No ordinary woman am I. You look upon the great enchantress Elinda. For your kindness, I will reward you.”

  I hopped over a snake and stood on one of the chairs in the lobby. “I need to find a place in Middle Kingdom.”

  She waved a staff that appeared in her hand in a puff of smoke and began to chant. I felt magic rushing in around me, gathering for her spell. She shrieked and fell over to the side. Asps hung like fringe from her ankles.

  “Seriously? You can find anywhere in Kingdom, but you can’t even summon a pair of asp-proof boots?” I scooted the chair closer and closer to the counter, where the counter gnome grinned at me.

  “No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds,” he said, pushing a pile of stamps at me.

  I considered trying to shove them down his throat, but the security systems here made Grimm’s look like a “Keep out” sign. If I were lucky, I’d lose a hand to a laser beam. If I were unlucky, it would be a mutation spell, and I’d gain a hand or six. “I came to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran over Bernie.”

  Snakes covered the floor of the lobby, so deep they writhed upon each other, crawling back and forth. The counter gnome rang a bell.

  I waited for security to come over and push me from my perch into a pile of poisonous snakes. Instead, gnomes began to gather behind the safety glass. Five, fifteen, and then a hundred of them at least. Tiny gnome faces watched me from across the counter as they crowded in.

  “Go on,” said the counter gnome.

  I’d done a lot of things I was sorry for. I’d also done a lot of things I should have been sorry for, but wasn’t really. Fortunately I’d also told a lot of lies while working for Grimm. “I’m sorry I ran over Bernie. It was my fault; I should have been looking more carefully. In fact, I’m sorry for every gnome I’ve ever hit.”

  Their eyes went wide.

  Too late I closed my mouth and fixed my gaze on the counter.

  The counter gnome walked to the edge of the counter, his tiny hands balled into fists. “How many of us have you run over?”

  I chewed on my lip for a moment. “How many do you know about?”

  “Just Bernie.”

  I finally let out the breath I’d been holding in; a long, steady sigh. “In that case, he’s the only one. And I’m really sorry.”

  One of the gnomes grimaced at me.

  “I mean, I shouldn’t have been driving at all. It was dark, and I had no business driving when I couldn’t see what, I mean who, might be hiding in a pothole. I am sorry for every mean thing I ever said about gnomes. I’m sorry for the time I used a priority mailbox to send regular mail. I’m sorry I kept a little plastic basket you delivered the mail in. I promise I will never spindle, punch, or fold again.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I made a pickup here a while back. Signed for it to do last-mile delivery myself. I need the address it was going to. You said you kept a copy for your trophy wall. I need the address.”

  “Not good enough,” said the counter gnome, and his audience applauded.

  “I’ll throw in a pile of stamps. Also, I’ll sign anything else. You can all have a signature to put on your wall.”

  “Anything?” asked the counter gnome.

  “Anything. You name it, I’ll sign it. I need that address.”

  He pushed a button, and the glass over the counter slid upward. I leaped over it, happy to be away from the snakes, and followed him back to his office.

  He pointed to the chair. “Sit.”

  The chair was about six inches square. Heck, the gnome’s desk was the size of a clipboard. If it weren’t for government regulations I wouldn’t fit in the room at all. Another gnome came in with a box of pens, and I began to sign, thankful that the arm Evangeline hurt wasn’t the one I wrote with.

  Hours had passed and my hand had cramped into a claw before we were finally done signing things. Every scrap of paper in the place had my scrawl, along with most of the office furniture. I’d signed the counter gnome’s desk seven different times itself. He looked in a mirror to admire my signature on his rear before pulling up his pants, and then walked over to the wall. Behind a glass picture frame I saw a shipping receipt with my name and an address scrawled in Dwarfish. He handed it to me. “Here. Just promise not to drive so fast.”

  I took it gingerly with my bad hand; my good fingers hurt too bad from holding the pen.
“What exactly was Bernie doing in the pothole?”

  A grin spread across the gnome’s face and his eyes lost focus as he daydreamed. “Trying to set a world record for most time spent in a pothole without getting run over. He almost made it too.”

  • • •

  BACK IN DWARF Town I wandered the streets, watching for a match to the puzzling symbols. At last I found it, on a tiny side street near the bottom of Middle Kingdom. The streets of Dwarf Town were empty. The dwarves knew that most of Kingdom was about to become one gigantic no parking zone. I found the house at which we had made our delivery. The symbols matched perfectly.

  See, while I’d always known that fleshing silver could clear up acne and get bloodstains out of cotton, at the ball, I saw Fairy Godmother use it on her mirror. Evangeline and I had dropped off fleshing silver here.

  Since most dwarvish clothing was so filthy it could basically run around on its own, I didn’t think he was using it for cleaning. And acne? Dwarves had such bad acne that if you wanted a cream cheese bagel, all you needed was a plain bagel and a dwarf who would let you squeeze his cheeks. That left only magic mirror repairs.

  I knocked on the door and got no answer. A strange symbol was written on the door, but the color of the paint, bright red, identified it as a warning. I tried the door and it opened.

  “Can you not read?” said a voice behind me.

  I turned and saw a dwarf guard, a heavy hammer in his hand. “The Red Death lies within. Enter if you will, but if you try to leave, I’ll have your head.”

  I pushed the door open and crawled through. Inside, someone had painted the walls brown and black. After a moment, I realized it wasn’t paint. Something had splattered every ounce of blood in a dwarf over the walls. Dwarf blood spread poorly and didn’t cover well. I picked my way through the house and finally up a staircase. The top floor contained only a tiny bed, but what caught my eye was a door. It should have opened a hole in the roof. The house was only two stories high, with a tiny conical roof. This odd door hung on one hinge, splintered. I stepped through it, into a room that could not possibly exist in the same house.