Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  “Once you strike at me, and thrice I return it. Few receive my third gift.”

  I managed a couple more steps. Just a little farther to the door. The mirrors went blank, and then lit up. It was like looking out a window on a hurricane. They no longer reflected the Seal. Instead, black clouds boiled in them, and an eerie green light filled the room. “Come,” said Fairy Godmother. I felt the floor change. The next step, my foot sank into the glass an inch, and I pushed the Seal toward Ari. The next step I sank up to my knee. When I raised my foot, glass pulled like taffy along with it.

  Ari leaned in and snagged the Seal. It clung to her like a child, zipping in circles around her and sending bolts of lightning off. In the reflection of the mirror, I saw my harakathin drawn to it over and over, but each time they approached, a glow surrounded Ari and pushed them away. The glow drifted off from Ari like a cloud, but as the Seal orbited her, the glow drew inside her until her skin shone like she was on fire.

  “Take it to the fae,” I said.

  Ari held on to the door frame and leaned out, hanging over the floor. “Give me your hand.”

  I sank to my waist in the mirror, and swung my purse like a rope toward Ari. It hit something invisible in the air and bounced to the side. In the mirror, I saw my curse hovering there, his eyes glowing. A claw wrapped around my waist and pulled me under.

  I fell through the mirror and beyond.

  • • •

  I LANDED ON grass and clamped my hands over my ears. If the voice of the fae had sounded like thunder, the sounds of birds twittering rushed through my brain like the squeal from a microphone, and the bright glimpse of green seared into my brain. The intensity of this world washed over me like a wave, tearing at my mind. Even the softness of the grass brought pleasure to the point of agony. Then Fairy Godmother spoke.

  “Hush,” she said, and the world grew quieter. I opened my eyes, and I lay on a vast field of green as far as I could see. My purse had fallen through the mirror, and my driver’s license and everything else lay scattered in the grass. “You must not go mad yet, darling, or you will not appreciate your third wish.”

  I looked for Prince Mihail. “Where are they?”

  She floated backwards a few steps. “The queen and her pawn? This was not their checkmate.”

  “I’ve won. Ari will take the Seal back to the fae and end the war. They will know what you did. You took the Seal. You hid Mihail. You took the child.”

  “And then what, darling? What will the fae do against one of us, the old ones? They are only our dreams, born when our minds wandered. Not unlike yourself.”

  “Why? Why start a war?”

  “The fae kill the Kingdom, the Kingdom kill the fae, and the people of your miserable slice of world belong to me. Such an irony, in that dull, dreary world, the people grow magic.”

  “You started a war for magic?”

  She tipped her head. “What else would be worth it? Humans are unremarkable. They grow and die in the blink of an eye, and when they wield magic, they are feeble and clumsy. Still, I assure you—if you took every bit of magic and killed every dream in that city, tomorrow something amazing would happen. Do you know what it is?”

  My bracelet glowed white as Grimm tried to reach me. “Enlighten me.”

  “They’d get up and go about their miserable little lives, and before they could even make it out the door they’d have a tiny hope. Maybe today they wouldn’t get yelled at. Or today they’d win the lottery, or today they might find love. That pitiful race creates magic it can’t even use. But I can.”

  I spotted something lying in the grass and smiled. “It is beautiful here.”

  She returned the smile. “I am glad you like it, darling. You will never leave.” She swept her hand, and the sun swung toward the horizon. “I like it best at sunset.”

  Rising to my feet, I took a few steps away. “How far does it go?”

  “Beyond forever.”

  While she spoke, I picked up the gun and hid it in my palm, and picked a glorious pink flower. “I have something for you.” I turned to her and held out the flower.

  She bent to smell it, and I pulled the trigger. The gun roared, a muffled, mechanical noise foreign to this world, sending out that last magic bullet in a burst of smoke. The bullet exploded into a cloud of butterflies.

  I knew she had toyed with me, but she wasn’t frowning. She was smiling. “So clever. So cunning and courageous. No wonder he took you as his agent. No wonder she marked you as her own. So stupid.”

  My hands felt like lead, and my arms hung limp.

  “You don’t like that gun,” she said.

  Fear gripped me as I realized I didn’t. I hated it, in fact.

  “You want to throw it far away.”

  My arms shook as I clenched my hands down on the grip.

  “You need to throw it.”

  This was a thousand times worse than Grimm compelling me. That felt like someone else moving my arms and hands. This was different. She spoke of need, and I felt it. I threw the gun with all my strength, flinging it away. I swung at her with my fist.

  “Back,” she said, and I was flung through the air, landing in the pile of debris, where my purse overturned. Something streaked through the air, whistling like an incoming missile. Two Harakathin, one golden white and one sparkling purple. They flew at her, biting and tearing and scratching.

  I rolled to my feet in the grass and a gleam caught my eye. In my purse had been the Root of Lies. In my world, it was an ebony claw like tree roots, but here it was dull bronze. I touched it. It ran like liquid in my fingers, becoming a curved dagger. A weapon. I picked up the Root and held it against my arm. While I held it, her power over me seemed weaker.

  Fairy Godmother crossed her arms before her. “Away.” My harakathin were flung out of sight, but I knew they’d be back. I stood and walked toward her. “Yes. Come to me, darling.” She reached out to embrace me. I flipped the dagger over and sliced up and back, attempting to cut her throat. On the upstroke I missed her artery by a centimeter and the downstroke cut her cheek clean through her lip so her teeth showed.

  “Down!” she screamed.

  The world crushed me to my knees. It felt like the sky lay across my back. She bled, and the drops turned to Glitter as they fell. “Never has one dared to strike at me in my home. Never has my blood been shed. You will wish for death, and never find it granted.”

  The Root of Lies lay a few feet from me, the blade writhing as it drank the fairy blood. I saw two comets come shrieking through the sky, blessings and curse returned, but they bounced off of her like she was stone.

  “I will devour your curse children later, but first I must complete my promise to you. I owe you your third wish.”

  I laughed at her.

  “You don’t think I can hurt you more,” she said, and she waved her hand. The sky became a mirror, and I looked out at the main hall of the castle. Ari walked like a sleepwalker, carrying the Seal before her, right through the middle of the hall. Wolves lay shredded or burned, and only the armored knights remained. Liam tore the head from an armored knight as it approached Ari, and sent a burst of flame at the others.

  “I can be her.” She shifted, her face running like wax until Ari stood before me. She spoke in Ari’s voice. “I can be your friend, darling. Or I can be him.” Now Liam stood on the grass plane. “I will sweep you off your feet. You are mine now. You agree to it.”

  As she spoke the words I felt something snap into place between us. A feeling I recognized from the night I was sixteen. I forced my image of her, demanding she appear as the gray queen, and she did.

  Blessings, I said in my mind. Their faces snapped to me, watching with eager round eyes. They could hear my thoughts, something I probably should have realized. Please, take the Root of Lies and stab her with it. Beatus immediately flew to it and seized it, but before he could turn around, he was tackled by Consecro.

  “Your playthings amuse me,” said Godmother. “As doe
s your request to them.” She could hear my thoughts, which definitely was not good.

  She held out her hand along mine, and beckoned to them. “We will play a game. Let them decide.”

  The harakathin rolled in the grass, biting and squealing and screaming until Consecro used the dagger like a club, bashing Beatus. He limped over, the dagger in his hands like a broadsword.

  Please, I thought, please let it be her. You are mine. He kept his little snout down, and he refused to look at me as he approached. He raised the dagger, a gleeful smile on his face. And he brought it down, driving it through my palm.

  Pain shot through me and up my arm like I had never known. As my blood touched it, the dagger changed back, becoming the claw root again. It clasped my fingers like an old friend, letting my blood dribble onto it.

  “I have seen your desires,” said Godmother, “and I fulfill them. I grant you your third wish. You will never be alone again.” I felt her presence descend on me like rain, pattering into my heart and mind, pushing on me, and all the while the claw writhed in my hand. As it did, an idea took form. I pushed it away, refusing to let it take focus.

  I shaped my mind, calling on all the need in my heart, to see her as I needed her to be, and she changed. “Yes,” she said, “yes.” Her gray hair became black and her pale skin tan and the smell of the rain became the scent I knew from a hundred nights of reading with her or doing homework. It was the smell when she hugged me when I was sick, and when I opened my eyes, Fairy Godmother was gone. I stood with my Mom.

  I gripped the Root of Lies in my hand as she hovered over me, overpowering me. Becoming me.

  “Ask,” she said, feeling the question that came to me every time I saw Mom.

  I waited, waited until I could feel her taking over my thoughts. I finally asked the question I knew I always had.

  “Mom, do you love me?”

  She breathed out a scent of warmth and kindness I’d never known. I knew the truth.

  “Of course I do.”

  There was one heartbeat of peace, one moment of silence, and I felt the Root tear in to me. Touching the Seal felt like electric death, and I thought I’d felt the worst I could. All the pain of six years, all the broken bones and stitches, it was nothing. The Root of Lies shot up through my skin, tearing through my arm and into her. She screamed and fought, but it held her as tightly as I did, and the thorns cut into her lungs, choking her screams into whistles. Still it grew, curling around her and through her. Thorns sliced into my scalp where our heads touched.

  She writhed and twisted as the thorns consumed her. Glitter ran from her like blood as the thorns burst through her skin and thickened, blackened. The thorn branches holding me to Fairy Godmother crackled and broke. I collapsed forward, and lay in the grass, alone with pain and blood.

  Something bumped into my chest, and I realized Beatus and Consecro stood before me. I willed them to come, and they did. First Beatus, then Consecro, they snuggled up next to me. In this world, I could feel them. I put my good hand on Consecro’s head and held him close. The sun set for the final time on this world, and without Godmother I could never leave. I curled up with my harakathin and waited for the end.

  • • •

  I FELT HIM coming before I saw him, a rumbling like an earthquake, a light shining like the first sunrise on earth. His light swept over me, shining like a spotlight, so bright it blinded me. In the light, I saw Fairy Godmother was gone. The Root of Lies had grown through her, tearing her apart, replacing every piece of her with thorns. Where she had stood, a thorn tree loomed, bent into the shape of a woman. She was dead, and the Root was destroyed. A ball of blazing light settled before me, brilliant like the rainbow, brighter than the sun.

  “Marissa, my dear, what did I tell you about mirrors?”

  When I looked at Grimm, there was this odd moment. See, I’d never seen him from the waist down, so I didn’t have an image of what he looked like. He looked like a butler. He looked at his legs. “I had hoped you would give me a more striking figure.”

  “It suits you.” I began to shiver violently, though I no longer felt the cold. Thorns stuck out through my skin in places, and my hand was a pile of ruined flesh where the Root had grown through it.

  Grimm reached down and took my good hand. “This is my home now, and in it, you are what I make you.”

  I winced and looked away, waiting for the wrenching healing to begin.

  “Marissa, here I am not limited in my abilities.” Grimm spoke softly, patiently.

  I opened my eyes in time to see a burst of light wash across me. Warmth like fire raced along me, tracing my wounds, numbing the pain. The thorns dissolved like butter and the cuts healed. My skin grew tan and smooth. I wished Grimm would heal like that more often. Only the scars remained on my hand, tracing out in white the handmaiden’s mark. “You can’t do anything about this?”

  “I’m afraid not. Your scars are not something I can take from you.” A table appeared behind him. “You said once I’ve never had you over for dinner.” Food grew on the table from a vine, with goblets and platters. “It never occurred to me to, shall we say, turn down the volume on my realm. Would you like to have dinner?”

  Though I no longer ached, I was tired beyond all knowledge. “I want to go home. Rain check?”

  “Out through the mirror is a more difficult task,” said Grimm, “but one I can handle. We’ll go through fae to retrieve Ari, and that means you must sleep. I would not have you ruined for your home by the journey.” A portal sliced itself out of the air, and through it came the colors and sounds of fae, pale against the colors here. “Do you trust me?”

  A bed appeared, a luxurious four-poster bed with deep satin sheets and silk pillows. As I touched them, all the weariness of six years came on me. I barely managed to climb in before my head became too heavy to keep off the pillow. Grimm leaned over and tucked me in.

  “Sleep, my dear, and dream.” Sleep wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and took me home.

  I dreamed we traveled down a tunnel made of diamond, but the diamond moved in waves like the ocean, and mighty voices thundered around me as I passed. The Fae Mother came to me, gliding on the wind.

  I trembled when she reached out to me.

  “Peace. You do not need to fear my touch here. The Princess has restored our Seal. We have ceased our war. But yours is only beginning.”

  I remembered her words so long ago when she blessed me. The Black Queen would come. I would drink of a river of pain.

  “You must tell her. She must become what she is, if there is to be hope.”

  “Who, Ari?” I asked, and she nodded. Behind me, I realized Ari traveled with us, her eyes shut tight. My bed had changed into a box that looked disturbingly like a coffin.

  The Fae Mother brushed my cheek. “You will bring the end of the world, and carry its hope.” She drifted away, carried by the wind. We sailed on a river of rainbow, until darkness wrapped me and I truly slept, until I heard his voice.

  “Go on, kiss her,” said Grimm. “It is traditional.”

  I opened my eyes, and I saw Liam’s face. He smiled at me in that way I had waited so long for, and I flung my arms up around him. I was free. He was mine.

  Thirty-Four

  I STOPPED BY the Agency on my way out of town, and of course Liam went with me. Jess asked for one more look at Liam’s curse. I watched him through the normal monitor, almost as pleased to see him shirtless as he was to see me.

  Jess had him turn around enough times that I figured she was no longer looking at the curse. “That’s one hell of an entanglement.” She shook her head.

  “I’ve seen worse,” said Grimm. “It’s been a couple of millennia since then, but with two of you working on it, I’m certain you could earn enough Glitter for a cure. I doubt it would take more than a couple of decades.”

  I let out an offended gasp. “What happened to the ‘No Men’ rule?”

  “I’ll make an exception in this case.”

>   “No thanks. I’m looking forward to getting back to doing art.” Liam put his flannel shirt back on, buttoning each row with care.

  “I could use the services of a half-dragon,” said Grimm, and he morphed into his temptress form, a lush woman with purple locks of hair. “And you’ll love the way we sign our contracts.”

  I hooked my arm into Liam’s and pulled him toward the door. “Vienna, Grimm. We’re taking some time.”

  “I’m well aware of that. Leaving me to handle cleanup from the largest war in sixty years. I’ll be overseeing reconstruction of Kingdom for the next six months, so don’t think you’ll get out of it.” I shook my head. “Running DNA tests on the remains of half of Kingdom’s army isn’t my idea of relaxation.”

  Grimm shifted back to his usual self. “Well, I’ve got offers for work in the old country. In case you get bored.”

  I tossed Ari the keys to my apartment. “You’ll keep an eye on it while I’m gone?”

  She looked at the key ring. “No car key?”

  “I want you alive when I come back.”

  Jess came over and put her hand on Ari’s shoulder. “I taught Evangeline how to drive. I can teach anyone.”

  Ari turned a little green. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. Mother’s banned me from Kingdom, I don’t have a job. I was supposed to marry for happiness.”

  Grimm cleared his throat. “In light of past events, I’ve been considering an opportunity for new agents. I offer medical, dental, and employee education plans. You’ll need the medical and dental more than the salary.”

  “Sorcery?” said Ari, a note of hope in her voice. She practically beamed with excitement.

  Grimm crossed his arms and gave her a stern look. “College, young lady. A smart agent is an effective agent. Though were you to excel in your normal studies, we might negotiate access to other training resources.”