by J. C. Nelson
“That one hadn’t fed on hellfire and human flesh. Don’t get me wrong, it was still evil, but this, this is a piece of Inferno, come to play games in the city. They get stronger and cuter with every person they kill. So you can lead rats. You can control teenagers. So what? This is what counts.”
Beth reached into a pocket and took out her kazoo. A low, mournful hum came from it as she began to play.
The poodle stood its ground, ears flattened back, teeth bared.
Beth played louder, longer, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with such power it almost compelled me to follow her wherever she would go.
The poodle leaped at the kennel door again, rattling it.
With an exhausted sigh, Beth dropped her kazoo. The brass clinked on the floor as she panted. “I can’t do it. It doesn’t listen.”
“You can. You’ll have to practice. Rats want to eat garbage. Teen boys want to eat and have sex. Poodles have a will of their own, and to be able to run them off into the river, you’ll need to match it.”
I left her with her fuzzy white nemesis.
* * *
WHILE MY TEAM of enchanters worked to figure out where the Poodle leak was, and my new piper worked to control a single weak poodle, I grabbed some lunch. In the kitchen, Mikey sat at the table, his gangly arms propped up as he ate a sandwich of indeterminable origin. He looked like he was about to vomit.
“What’s the matter, Mikey? Did you eat the special at Froni’s this weekend?”
He slumped over, dejected. “Steph didn’t show up for our date. We talked on the phone, I went to meet her at the subway, and she never showed up. I didn’t even get spaghetti.”
Mikey had never eaten at Froni’s, which was the only reason he was upset about not getting to go. The place violated every health ordinance in the city. In fact, I suspected Froni lobbied for new regulations every month so he could break them.
“Sometimes things come up. It’ll get better. I need you to take the night shift tonight to give the moat monster and Shigeru a break. Eat anyone who comes near Ari.”
He pulled out a phone and dialed a number. After a few moments he slammed the phone down. “She’s not answering my calls, and her voice mail is full.”
I remembered being so in love with someone I could hardly breathe. “Is she beautiful?” Given Mikey’s taste in women, it was possible she looked like a yeti. Heck, it was entirely possible she was a yeti, or the bearded lady at the circus. Wolves were known for their taste in sausage, not women. Also, occasionally for making sausage from women.
Mikey punched a few buttons on his phone. “This is her at the fountain in Kingdom.” He handed me the phone.
I looked at her red hair and familiar face, and my stomach turned. “Mikey, what’s Steph’s last name?”
He caught the tone in my voice and looked up, his forehead creased. “Thromson.”
I did my best to keep my voice calm as fear and anger warred for which emotion would be the first to break through. “Mikey, did Steph ask about your day?”
He nodded.
“Did she ask what you did?” My hands tightened around the phone until I was afraid I’d crush it.
“Yeah. She always asked about my day.” Mikey didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Did she ask what you were doing Monday?”
He put his head in his hands. “Yes. She asked—she asked what all of us were doing.”
I had one more question to ask before I’d know if I needed to go get the reaper bullets and kill Mikey. “What’s Ari’s last name?”
He didn’t as much as flinch. “Locks. It says Locks on all of her packages.”
Locks was technically my last name. Ari shared it with me while she lived in my apartment, and since her stepmother disowned her and kicked her out of Kingdom, Ari kept it when she moved out on her own. “Arianna Thromson is her real name, Mikey. You’ve heard Ari talk about her family, right?”
He dropped his shoulders, and his eyes became unfocused. “But she wouldn’t—I mean, Steph didn’t—”
“Steph didn’t have to do anything. She just had to find out where we were all going to be. Me, at the college. Ari at the department store. You at the Agency.”
He jumped to his feet and grabbed the phone, smashing it. A roar came from his throat like a hurricane blast. I thought of the three little pigs and wondered how much of the huffing and puffing was roar.
“You told her where we’d be. You set us up, and it nearly killed all of us.”
Mikey seemed to shrink. His face turned white; his hands trembled.
“So now I have to decide what to do with you.”
Sixteen
MIKEY PUT HIS hands together in front of him like he was praying. “Please, Marissa. How was I supposed to know my girlfriend was actually the stepdaughter of an evil queen?”
I stood up, walked to my office door, and grabbed my purse. “Follow me.”
“I need this job, Miss Locks. I really do.” Mikey looked like he was about to choke. He did that one time at lunch, and a pinky finger came out his nose.
I patted my purse. “Come with me willingly, or I’ll shoot you and drag you to the elevator.”
He came.
We rode down in the elevator, with him staring at the ends of his shoes the whole way. The elevator opened and we walked out into the cargo bay where our workers dispatched shipments. I whistled, and a group of dockworkers gathered.
“Mikey here wants to know how he could have known his girlfriend was actually the stepdaughter of an evil queen.”
The men began to chuckle. Then one stepped forward. “Man, I can’t remember the last girl I dated who didn’t turn out to be the stepdaughter of an evil queen.”
“Or the long-lost princess,” said another.
“My ex was the evil queen.”
The others looked at him a moment.
“Well, she was evil. You’ve got to give her that.”
Mikey sat down on a crate and rubbed his forehead. “So any girl I meet might be working for someone evil, or evil herself?”
The last dockworker came over. “Don’t listen to them. Not every girl who wants to marry you is an evil queen or her daughter.”
I nodded in agreement. “How’s your sister doing, Ben?”
He shrugged. “She’s good. Still in therapy. We both are, actually.”
“I’m so done with this city.” Mikey stood up and walked back to the elevator. Interns were only marginally better than princesses, in my book.
* * *
A FEW HOURS later, after I hired a team of bakers to dispose of an obese witch, I’d just settled back into paperwork when another knock at my door interrupted. I looked up at one of the enchanters.
He shuffled into my office, sweat pouring down his clammy, olive skin. “We know where the poodles are coming from.”
I ran to their office to find an enchantress unfolding a large map of the city on the table. “Where?”
She pointed to the doorway, where an enchanter stood, wheezing. Then they began to hum. Then chant, an eerie, echoing tone. The sound vibrated the bones in my skull, like being too near the speakers at a concert. It rose in pitch, louder, stronger, and she began to sing, a warbling opera note.
The enchanter pitched forward and began to cough violently and shake. Then he reared back his head and coughed. A missile of phlegm shot from his throat to land on the map, and the chanting stopped. “There,” he said, pointing to the map.
Magic phlegm rocketed the Enchanters from low on my “detest” list to somewhere in the top five. “Can’t you do it the normal way? Like cut open a rabbit, let the guts fall out, and tell things from the patterns?”
The enchantress looked at me with shock. “We’re not fairies or drug companies, so it’d be animal cruelty. Besides, we’re not finished.”
I looked back to the table, where the map sizzled. The glob of mucus boiled as it sank into the table, then dropped to the floor and burned into the carpet. “Have you been gargli
ng battery acid? Do I need to call 911?”
The enchanter shook his head. “It’s below there.”
I took a closer look at the map, careful not to touch the moist edges, and swore. The map showed exactly where our poodles came from. “You,” I said, pointing to the enchanter, “I’ll have Rosa bring you a mask. Don’t cough on anyone.” I looked to my enchantress. “There’s an aquarium of frogs one room over. Start doing the frog prince thing.”
I went back to my office and got my purse and jacket, then hit the intercom on my desk. “Rosa, I’m going out to do some fieldwork. Put a muzzle on our enchanters and hold down the fort.” I could feel the disdain oozing through the speaker. I meant to get back to visit our dwarves anyway, so now was as good a time as any.
* * *
THE SMALL WONDERS jewelry store still stood out as the nicest shop on the block. No dust inside the windows, not a single broken window, and bars that actually looked nice, instead of looking like they’d been forged in the middle ages. I kicked open the door, noting that I left a nice dent, and strode into the shop.
“You’re closed.” I turned over the door’s sign.
“Ms. Locks?” Magnus the dwarf sat on a stool behind the counter, a look of concern on his face.
“I need to see that room you found again.”
He rose and locked the door, then led me to the vault. “We ain’t been down there since yer strike team went missing.”
I shrugged. If I were him, I wouldn’t admit to it either. When the elevator opened into the workshop, the first thing I smelled was sulfur, like I’d stepped into the Cabbage and Bean Eating World Championships. Grimm’s replacement enchanters might be completely insane, but they were right. I crawled my way down to the tunnel, wondering how much it cost to keep those lights lit just in case someone came crawling down the pipe.
Sure enough, the door stood cracked open, a foul, hot breeze wafting from inside. I threw open the door and looked inside. The dealing room, as Grimm had called it, still glowed with orange light from the walls. I noted the ring of Celestial Crystal at the doorway.
Grimm told me I’d be perfectly safe. He’d even asked me to go back and talk to whatever I’d heard on the other side. At that moment, I wished more than anything I’d said yes. The summoning portal, which should have been sealed, still jetted wisps of flame at intervals, like a miniature geyser.
Throughout the room, statues of six nineteen-year-old slackers in blue jeans and T-shirts stood frozen, looks of horror fixed forever on their faces. Grimm’s team of clerks hadn’t fared well. With a final look around the room, I stepped over the threshold.
When I did, a shiver crossed my skin, cold pressure pulling me back. Without a doubt, a familiar feeling—the Celestial Crystal had trapped blessing and curse on the other side. The two had a serious case of separation anxiety when forcibly removed, and no doubt they’d spend the rest of the day breaking every bit of glass I came in range of.
I headed for the hellfire portal.
While I couldn’t open one of these to save my soul, I’d learned enough about portals to close one. I touched the runes in a pattern I’d practiced over and over, watching them light up under my fingers. When I clicked the last, a single jet of flame popped over the circle, and the orange light in the chamber faded to a dull glow.
Now that I’d sealed the hellfire leak, I took a closer look at my ex-clerks. Normally, I wouldn’t bother. Statue transformations were, in essence, permanent. Problem was, the market for fine sculptures of liberal arts majors was quite lean, so if I could do something, I would.
That’s when I began to wonder how deep the stone actually was. I knew of two types of statue transformations. One turned you to stone clean through. Gorgoning was pretty much the end of the line. The other covered the victim in a layer of stone, trapping them in statue form.
I glanced around the room, looking for something to chip with. There, on the center table, stood a crystal block, and embedded in it, a long quill worked from quartz. I picked it up, noting how sharp both ends were. Once, someone had used this to sign their soul away.
I knelt by the foot of one of the statues. He’d frozen doing the traditional “beg for mercy” pose. I knelt and swung the quill, aiming for a toe. The quill shattered the stone, showing marble clean through. The population of fast-food workers had gone down permanently by six.
“I didn’t like that one either.”
Without hesitation, I spun and pulled my gun, squeezing off three shots. A cloud of darkness floated a few feet away, almost taking form, and then turning to mist to let my bullets pass through. It took shape again, forming an impossibly slender man, at least seven feet tall.
I let my gun speak for me, carefully firing a bullet, and noting that it passed through him, leaving barely a vapor disturbed. Then I remembered Grimm’s assurance that he would have negotiated with whatever it was. I held my fire, waiting for him to solidify.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the man, tipping a bowler hat at me. His translucent purple skin showed the bones underneath, except for his eyes. The eyes were demon eyes, bloodred with black pupils.
“Go to hell,” I said. Not exactly the right way to begin negotiations, but Grimm had warned me about demons before.
The man turned and swept his arm toward the portal. “I would, but you’ve cut off my route home. Quite irresponsible, I think. My name is Malodin. May I have yours?”
Names were power for most things, and I wasn’t keen on giving a demon any more power than necessary. “Goldy Locks.” Grimm’s nickname for me, because I had to get things just right.
“Lie, with a grain of truth,” said Malodin. “Your name is Locks. Your first name . . . I’m getting something. Starts with an M.”
“Marigold.”
“Another lie, Marissa.” He took off his hat and bowed low, his knees hinging to the side like a cricket’s. “Marissa Locks, I am Malodin, Prince of Inferno.”
I ran for the door. When I got back to the office, I’d tell them how I hit him with holy water, or a binding spell, or something that would make a run for the door seem less cowardly and more worthy of the woman in charge of the Agency, but for now, getting out would do fine.
In a flicker of black, he reformed between me and the door.
I steeled myself, remembering Grimm’s words. Celestial Crystal meant he couldn’t touch me. I took a step forward, eyes closed. Then another. A soft, warm breath of sulfur hit me in the nose, and I opened my eyes. I stood less than a finger length from him.
His mouth hung open in a slack smile, the teeth like shark’s teeth inside.
“You can’t touch me,” I said, as much to myself as him. “That’s Celestial Crystal around the edge of the room.”
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “That means I can’t touch things outside the room.” Then he reached over and patted me on the shoulder.
I rolled backwards, firing four more shots that passed through him, and Malodin began to advance toward me, an idiot grin still plastered to his inhuman face. “Don’t panic, little woman. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.”
“Then what do you want?” I slipped my gun back into my purse, then flipped the quill over. If it was sharp enough to chip marble, it would make a decent dagger.
“I need someone to do a few odd jobs for me. Prepare the way, as it were.”
I swore. Why it was that every time I met someone, they either tried to kill me or hire me, I couldn’t say. “I already have a job, thanks. One with great benefits.”
Malodin shrugged. “How about a part-time gig? I can offer you anything.”
“Sorry, last couple people to offer me anything tried to kill me.” Admittedly, one of them was a fairy, and one was a queen, but I figured demons couldn’t be much better.
“Let’s make a deal,” said Malodin, stepping back from me. He leaned up against the doorway, blocking my only exit. “You tell me what you would want if we had an agreement, I let you go.
”
I ran over his words again and again, considering each way they could be interpreted. No way in hell was I going to make a deal with a demon, but if it would get me out of the room, I’d tell him almost anything. “How do I wake up Ari? How do I bring back Grimm? How do I save Liam? How do I make Queen Mihail pay for what she’s done? How do I turn a bunch of clerks back into slackers?”
Malodin cocked his head at each question, his flaming red eyes losing focus. Then he swiveled his head down like some sort of insect, staring at me. “Mihail, you say? I completed a deal with her, not a week ago. To get her, you’ll have to bring charges against her at the Court of Queens.”
Now the queen’s knowledge of how to get at each of us made perfect sense. She’d made a deal with demons for the chance to gain revenge. “She sold you her soul?”
Malodin wrinkled his nose and hissed like a cat sprayed with whip cream. “Not hers. Her soul is so withered it’s barely worth taking. She sold us her son.”
I can’t say if the knowledge that Prince Mihail was still alive or the fact that his mother had sold him to Inferno shocked me more. Last time I saw the prince, he was covered in a corrosive spell and looked more like a B-movie swamp monster than an A-list jerk. “I have to be going.”
“Make a deal with me, I’ll help you. You can say I tricked you. You can tell everyone that I trapped you. You can lie about it, and no one will ever know.” Malodin’s words made the chamber vibrate, his voice causing the quill in my hand to resonate.
I glanced over my shoulder. On the drafting table lay a contract the size of a blanket. It draped over the edges.
“I can give you the means to save your friends. A way to revenge. She tried to have your best friend killed. She’s landing a strike team to kill your boyfriend right now. And you, you haven’t got a prayer against her.”
Kingdom help me, but for a moment, I thought about it. About signing the contract and letting him bring down revenge on the queen. Then reality caught up with me. I would never agree to his terms.
“No deal. Now let me go.”
