Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  I held up the scroll so that Echo could see. “I don’t know what this is, exactly, but I asked my enchanters to find the focus point, and they gave me this.”

  “Marissa, it is important, for your own safety, that you do not go there.” Echo’s eyes had edges of white.

  “Why? Explain to me why, and I’ll consider not going. I unleashed another plague on the city.” I glanced over at Ari. “I’m sorry.”

  Echo glared at me. “We’ve had this discussion. I am incapable of answering that question.” I’m guessing I managed to annoy him.

  “What about me? I used to be a princess. Does that still get me in the door?” Ari tapped her fingers on the side of the table.

  “You are no less a princess now than you were before. Did your stepmother’s banishment change that? No. Nor will the state of your eyes change the nature of your soul. But I am afraid that it would be equally dangerous for you. Marissa’s presence on the focus point may be tolerated. Yours would certainly attract attention.”

  Ari glanced over to me with what would have been an envious stare if it hadn’t sent shivers down my spine. “Why does she get to go?”

  “I made partner. When you make partner, we’ll talk about it.” I really tried not to sound smug.

  “This conversation is over. Neither of you are going anywhere near the focus point. Now, unless you’d like me to verify your identity again, I’ll bid you good day.”

  I thumbed the power switch and snapped the briefcase closed. “I don’t know what these mean, but I intend to find out. First, though, I’m going to go over and kick that miserable sack of crap Wyatt in the crotch for running away.”

  “I want to see him.” Ari’s voice quavered.

  “Then come with me. Yeller, I need you to play nice.” As a manifestation of torment, it wasn’t normally in his nature to play nice.

  On the way out, I checked in with Rosa. “Anything you can’t handle here?”

  “Him.” Rosa pointed to the corner, where Payday George read the news.

  “You going to send off the kobolds?”

  Rosa reached under her desk and brought out a garden rake. The tines had a yellow crust that looked suspiciously like kobold blood on them. “Yes.”

  I walked over to George, with Ari in tow. “This isn’t a payday-loan place.”

  He stood, shorter than me, barely taller than Ari. “I just need a little help until Friday, Ms. Locks.”

  “If I give you a twenty, will you leave?” I already fumbled in my purse, coming up with the contract, my scroll of runes, and a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.

  “I’d do almost anything to help you out,” said George. Same as he’d said for the last four years.

  “Unless you can interpret runes or contracts, you can’t help. See you tomorrow, George.” I handed him the bill, then nearly broke his nose when he grabbed at my purse. George never attempted to mug me before, which was the only reason I dealt with him rather than letting Mikey encourage him to go elsewhere.

  “Let me see that.” He clutched the papers close to him.

  “M?” Ari stepped up, ready to try the princess charms on him. “George, why don’t you give Marissa her papers back. Please?” Ari took her sunglasses off and gave George a smile that would have defrosted a fridge from a hundred paces.

  And Payday George went crazy. He tried to leap backwards, hit the wall, and fell cheek first to the floor, where he scrambled to get as far away from Ari as possible. “Don’t let her get me, please, Ms. Locks.”

  “She’s not after you.” I resisted punctuating it with my toes to his ribs. “Get up. Give me back my papers, and get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Locks.” George stumbled to his feet and held out the scroll. “I’m sorry. Them runes, they’re coordinates for a portal. I didn’t get to finish the contract before she attacked me, but it looks pretty good. I’m guessing you’re going to have to call down the apocalypse.” Then he ran out, leaving the office door open behind him.

  It’s safe to say I had several good questions, like, how in hell did Payday George know what runes were? And if he could read celestial writing, why wasn’t he making big cash? At the moment though, I had to stuff all those questions and deal with Ari.

  I think, somewhere in that Pollyanna mind of hers, things were going to work out. People always loved her. So they always would. The thought that her very face sent people into hysterics probably didn’t go too well.

  “Everyone out.” I didn’t carry a shotgun or a garden rake, but I had a buckshot tone in my voice. The kobolds filed out. I stopped a couple with a frog in a plastic bag. “Push the frog through the mail slot there. I’ll have him ready for you tomorrow.” When the office stood empty, I locked the front door, then sat beside Ari in seats we chose specifically because they weren’t comfortable.

  After thirty minutes, she finally looked up. No tears to go with the sobs, but I had no doubt how it hurt her. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes.” Ari took my hands, her grip crushing my hands.

  I did. The edges of the eyes had veins like normal, but where the eye should have been white, Ari had only diseased yellow. The blood vessels looked swollen, irritated. She had no iris, no pupil. Just stretches of yellow, like her eyes rolled back in her head.

  And I decided, right then and there. I didn’t care. I’d learned to live with Ari when she was a princess. She couldn’t help that. I would learn to live with her like this. Witch? Princess? I didn’t really care about either of those. It was Ari I cared about.

  I made sure to look directly at her when I spoke. “It’s going to be okay.” I stood, letting her hands slip from mine.

  “I can’t go see him. I can’t take that reaction from him.” Ari stayed in her seat.

  “Let me take a first pass at him. In the meantime, there’s a book in my desk you might want to read. You aren’t the only person Grimm wasn’t telling the whole truth to. And stay out of the book closet. I think I upset Grimm’s librarian last time I was there.” I leaned over for one more hug, ignoring the scent of roses she couldn’t quite get rid of.

  Then I headed down and caught a bus, determined that before the end of the world came, I’d make Ari’s prince behave.

  * * *

  WYATT’S HOUSE HAD the curtains drawn on every window. It had a lock on the gate I climbed over. It had four “No Trespassing” signs, two “No Solicitors,” and at least one “Keep Out.” I liked “Keep Out” signs—they made handy footholds when I had to climb over something.

  I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. Twice. Then I knocked. Knock is a euphemism for pounded, each blow meant to warp the wooden frame. The windows rattled as I worked my way up to kicking in the door.

  “I know you are in there,” I yelled. A few people stopped on the sidewalk to stare. “Those are your credit cards, Mrs. Pendlebrook. You haven’t made your minimum payment.” The crowds moved on. At this point, I could lob a Molotov cocktail through the window and people would assume it was a normal debt collection.

  “Go away.” Her voice came from a second-story window. I backed up off the porch to see her glaring at me.

  “Send girly man down to talk to me. Then I’ll go away.” I stared right back. That woman obviously never had people work for her; I’d met Girl Scouts with better stares.

  “He’s done enough for you already. He woke your friend, what more do you want?”

  “Did he tell you he ran? He ran from her, straight out the front door. Ari’s hurt, and she wants to talk to him.”

  “Keep the witch away from my son, or I will have her dealt with.” The tone, cold and calm, left me shaking.

  Ari already had one crazy queen trying to kill her. I wasn’t going to tolerate a second one. I headed up the stairs, ready to kick in the door.

  “I warn you, Ms. Locks. The kind of wards I have on my house won’t take nicely to you breaking and entering. For your own sake, leave.”

  I headed out toward the gate, glanced back
to see her giving a satisfied smile to me from her window. “I’m not done. I’ll bet dollars to donuts you aren’t warded against delivery trucks. Won’t be the first time I’ve driven through someone’s front door.”

  “You’ll break the crystal.” The tone of fear in her voice was much more to my liking.

  “And the china, and pretty much tear the front off the house. You shouldn’t have threatened Ari.” I hopped over the gate and began to walk up the street. The nearest rental place was at least ten blocks, but she’d given me all the motivation I needed.

  “Hold on, Ms. Locks.” I was only a couple of blocks from her house, still running on cold fury and determination that there would be one less person threatening Ari very shortly. I swung around on her, wanting more than anything to tackle her.

  “You threatened Ari. Let me be clear: There is nothing I won’t do to you to protect her. You aren’t warded against wrecking balls or back taxes or sewer breaks. You aren’t warded against satellite crashes.”

  The sunlight washed out her skin, revealing liver spots. Her hair seemed so much thinner, so much weaker.

  “The wards around my home must remain intact, Ms. Locks. They are not for my protection. They are for my son’s.” She looked up at me, pleading.

  To keep her from charming me, I kept Ari firmly in mind. “You have anyone cut a strand of hair off Ari—”

  “I won’t. Wyatt told me about the girl. She attempted too much magic at once, didn’t she?”

  “Ari was trying to protect me.” The only person who could really tell me what happened wasn’t around. “Are you a seal bearer?”

  “No. My sister was the family seal bearer of my generation. She went to visit in Avalon when she was seventeen and never returned. Come back to the house. It isn’t safe for me to be out here for long. Even my trip to your Agency was a fool’s errand.”

  “You’ll let me speak to Wyatt?” I’d go either way, but I wanted her to be clear.

  “No. But I’ll explain why he did what he did.”

  So I followed her back, wondering what else I’d missed out on.

  * * *

  “YOU ARE YOUNG, Ms. Locks. I’m guessing no more than thirty.” Mrs. Pendlebrook poured herself a cup of tea without offering me one. Not that I really wanted tea, unless it came with alcohol.

  “Twenty-seven. Call me Marissa. I get enough ‘Ms. Locks’ around the office.” Plus, first names were supposed to make people like you better. I waited for her to offer me her first name.

  “Do you know why I left Kingdom?”

  “I’m guessing mental breakdown. No. Turns out there’s a really convenient lack of detail on the subject.” At least, according to the intern I paid to read the history book, there was.

  “Yes. Your employer. Your partner? Your Fairy Godfather assisted me in that. In April, it will be twenty-four years since my Charles died. Twenty-four years since I gave up the position of High Queen and left Kingdom.” She set down the teacup, waiting for a question.

  Which one though. That statement left so many to ask. “How did he die?”

  “You might say I had him killed.”

  Twenty-Eight

  GRIMM WOULD NEVER assist someone in disappearing after a murder. Oh, sure, he kept a few assassins on retainer, mainly for government contracts, but your average murderer got an average trip to jail if he showed up asking for help. “I wouldn’t say that unless I knew it. How did he die?”

  She looked past me, to a painting on the wall. I’m guessing the artist was either poor or love truly was blind. If that was Charles, she must have loved him very much. “All I ever wanted was to be High Queen. To have all those other little snots bow before me and obey my whims. Twenty-three years ago, I went to your Fairy Godfather, and I asked him for a wish. Nothing special. The same as he gave everyone else.”

  “Grimm doesn’t grant wishes. I don’t think he has the pow—” I caught myself too late. Some details I didn’t exactly mean to share.

  “He did. Back then he did. Nowhere near the rate of other fairies, but I assure you, he did. So when I asked him, I expected him to say yes.” The bitterness in her tone matched the scent of the tea.

  “I’ve never seen him offer anyone a wish. That’s why he keeps agents.”

  She tilted her head to the side, studying me. “He said no. No matter how I begged. No matter what I offered him, he refused. So I went elsewhere. I found someone else who would make my dream come true.”

  My voice shook. “A demon?”

  Mrs. Pendlebrook narrowed her eyes at me. “Have you not guessed?”

  In that moment, it made sense. “You made a deal with a witch.”

  “High Queen, in exchange for a son I didn’t even have. A son who wouldn’t be born for a year. Sometimes what you need isn’t a wish, Marissa.”

  Now it all fell into place. The wards. The Celestial Crystal. “You reneged.”

  “Of course I did. I wasn’t going to give my son to that thing. They can’t have children of their own, so she wanted mine.”

  I considered pointing out that only evil witches couldn’t have children of their own, but thought better of it. Occasionally I did manage to rein in my tongue.

  “For five years I avoided her, and for five years she became more and more enraged. I don’t know if it was a fault in the wards, or maybe I was careless about the nighttime rituals, but she came for him. My husband exploded the way one pops a balloon, Marissa.” She stared at me, not realizing I’d cleaned up after more massacres than I could keep track of.

  “I expected to die the same way, but she ignored me. Went to the nursery. Killed our nanny the same way and tried to take Wyatt from his crib.”

  “He was still sleeping in a crib at five years old?” I tried not to laugh. Really, I did.

  “The crib was warded. She could not touch him within it, no matter how many spells she summoned or how much power she drew. And I too would have died, were it not for one of Fairy Godfather’s agents. She came bursting through the door, a brilliant young lady armed with a bag of bone dust.”

  Grimm had a knack for sending his agents to the right place at the right time. “Bone dust to cancel spells?” I considered my encounter with the Gray Man. Even my harakathin had trouble breaking through.

  “And a sledgehammer to break the witch’s legs. My desire to rule led me to make that deal. It cost me my husband, and my son his father. The only move I could possibly make to atone would be giving it up. I left my position as High Queen. The agent who saved me put me in touch with Fairy Godfather, and he arranged discreet wards, made alterations as necessary to the official records.”

  “Grimm helped you disappear, and according to our books, Clara Wellington was the agent who handled everything. How did she kill the witch? Sledgehammer?” Clara had been one of Grimm’s agents long before me. She made the mistake of getting caught up in Fairy Godmother’s plans and paid for it with her life.

  Mrs. Pendlebrook looked at me with shock. “The witch wasn’t killed. After her trial, she was bound, and forced to serve as a shopkeeper in Kingdom. You want to know why Wyatt is afraid of your friend. The witch’s attack is his first memory.”

  All the curse words in an entire battleship worth of sailors wouldn’t have done it for me right then. How was I going to explain this to Ari? I stood, making Mrs. Pendlebrook nervous. Then I got to thinking. Small house. More like a three-level cracker box.

  When I spoke, I nearly shouted. “She’s still Ari. I don’t care what she looks like. Still too optimistic for her own good. Still probably incapable of driving. Still trying to see the best in everything.” Any thought of dragging Wyatt back to the Agency was gone. Well, a little thought still remained, but really, it wouldn’t work out.

  I went to let myself out and couldn’t quite shake the detail that still bothered me. “If the witch is bound, how come you have to hide here?”

  “She possesses a lock of his hair. She asked for it in his stead, and I did not understand.” F
inally, it made sense. I always figured Ari would fall in love with a sandwich delivery boy. Instead, she had to pick a promised child with a magical bond on him. It wasn’t about the hair. The hair was a promise, an old one with the power of thousands of years of ritual. If the boy left the protection of his wards for more than a day, the witch could pull him straight to her, bound or not.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY back to the Agency, I passed Beth and Mikey walking in a pack of poodles. The tiny nylon leashes she had clipped to each of them wouldn’t have slowed them down for a moment without Beth’s power.

  “Really? Taking them for a walk? And where do you keep getting them?”

  Beth had a chain running from one ear, into one nostril, out the other and out to the other ear. “Mikey found me a police scanner. I go wherever there’s been a murder and let out a few bars of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and they come running.”

  “How are you going to run them off into the ocean if you’re playing catch and rubbing them under the chin?” Business first, murderous toy poodles second.

  “These little bumpkins are special-weshal. They’re my friends.” I liked the rats better, to be honest.

  The “Closed” sign still graced the Agency doors, though any of the big hitters, say, the Royal families, would call straight through to Rosa. I went in through the service entrance. Ari’s voice drifted from her office down the hall.

  “Ari?” I peeked into her office, where I spent six years working. Oh, I recognized the princess hissy right away. Ari’s cheeks had a bright red flush to them; her hair clung in little tendrils to her face. She shook her fist at Echo’s briefcase.

  “M, I swear to you, if I ever see Grimm again, I’m going to break every mirror I see him in for a week. He knew. He knew I wasn’t getting better. And he knew about the Black Queen.” I always thought Ari looked cute. With witch eyes, her temper tantrums were at least moderately terrifying.